"The Many Faces and Shades of Blackness": Race, Class, and Geography in Early Twenty-First-Century Telenovela Representations

This article explores how Brazilian telenovelas reflect long- term understandings of race and race relations in Brazil, as well as within the (tele)visual legacy and representations shared by the slave societies of the Atlantic world. Specifically, it focuses on two TV Globo telenovelas that were especially significant to Blackness and its televisual representations in the early 2000s by respectively presenting the first main female and male Black telenovela protagonists to the Brazilian televiewing public. Concentrating my analysis on the representations of Black female beauty and subjectivity in Da Cor do Pecado (2004) and on Black male sexuality and agency in the space of the favela in Duas Caras (2007-2008), I contend that, while these telenovelas were certainly important in challenging racial democracy, they nevertheless fell victim to the stereotypical representations and tropes created by slavery and its racialized and often racist aftermath, as well as to the dynamics of completion, distancing, and the ethnographic attitude that are also important components of this (tele)visual legacy. Thus, rather than breaking from the predominance of the continuing hegemony of racial democracy in Brazilian media and society, these telenovelas serve to emphasize it.