Memory, meanings and identity construction: the representation of women in the oral narrative of the producers of the miniseries The house of the seven women – 20 years later

Abstract

In this article, we will analyze the miniseries A Casa das Sete Mulheres from the following aspect: the content itself, but from the point of view of its producers: the authors/screenwriters Maria Adelaide Amaral, Vincent Villari, and Lúcio Manfredi. This analysis will be conducted based on controversial points of the representation of women in the miniseries, that is, by dialoguing with historiography and the aforementioned narrators, precisely to understand the meanings that the representations of the Farroupilha women had in the work and thus identify the intentions behind these portrayals. In this way, we can ascertain how these individuals perceived the fictional representations they promoted of women on television twenty years ago. In other words, we will establish a timeless dialogue with the work to determine to what extent this emancipatory representation of women was intended to awaken a social cause among its audience or simply a marketing strategy for the product itself and for TV Globo, considering the problematic aspects in this representation that—often—relegate these women to the secularly imposed submission. For this, we resort to the methodology of Thematic Oral History to glimpse the effects caused in the work regarding the emancipation and submission of the Farroupilha women represented in the miniseries A Casa das Sete Mulheres, based on their respective screenwriters who were exceptionally recruited for this research.