Social merchandising and gender analysis on transmedia discourse of human trafficking in Salve Jorge

Abstract

The article analyzes the approach of human trafficking in Brazilian television entertainment products, specifically in Salve Jorge (soap opera broadcasted by Globo Network between October/2012 and May/2013) and its transmedia extension. The inclusion of social issues in soap operas´ plots is recognized as social merchandising and, as these themes dramatized, it places them in a privileged space of visibility and audience. Besides bringing up the subject of public interest, the soap opera narrative typifies the feminine gender in the logic of the human trafficking for sexual exploitation purposes. The study analyzes the presence of the female gender in the trafficking discourse in Salve Jorge. As methodology, it uses the bibliographic and documentary researches, and Critical Discourse Analysis (ACD) (Fairclough, 2001), which presents the analytical three-dimensionality of text, discursive and social practices, concerned with power relations in discourse and context analysis. The article highlights the power of dramaturgy in dealing with themes of public interest, but there is a partial view, guided by the logic of the female genre explored in the narrative proper of fiction. There is a strengthening of women´s objectification and their exploitation in the people trafficking of a sexual nature. Although there is a possible signaling of other social audiences (such as cross-dressers), women and the mercantilization of their bodies stand out in the scenes and the narrative logic, in the telenovela as well as in the derived communication pieces advertised on the web by the broadcaster.