Telenovela brasileira e Brasil Profundo

Since at least the 1990s, I have been progressively working on the epistemological-empirical construction of a new conception of telenovela and, more broadly, of television fiction, through the concepts of narrative of the nation (Lopes, 2003) and communicative resource (Lopes, 2009). Now, I add a third—Deep Brazil, a notion still under development. Present in reports by travelers and discoverers, in chronicles and narratives, it was in this context that the categories of sertão and litoral were forged, which ended up being appropriated by the media, books, cinema, and, later, television, in order to highlight the contrasts between rural and urban spaces. However, we want to advance a more current proposal of Deep Brazil, which affirms more the hybridization of sertão and litoral than their opposition or complementarity. For this, we will make an approach to the theme followed by an empirical analysis in images from Cinema Novo films and in three television fictions from 2023: Cangaço novo (Prime/O2), Terra e paixão (TV Globo), and Vai na Fé (TV Globo).