The media representations of transexuality in telenovela A força do querer

Abstract

This article reflects on the representation that the soap opera A força do querer of Rede Globo built on transsexuality through the character Ivana/Ivan. The analysis of the work is based on the analytical instrument of the Culture Circuit, a theoretical and methodological contribution of Cultural Studies (DU GAY et al., 1997), which comprises five distinct processes - representation, identity, production, consumption and regulation - as responsible for producing meanings in society. They are differentiated processes that are articulated in the construction of meanings. In this article, we present the content worked on the Representation axis, with the theoretical support of the queer studies of Judith Butler. The study concludes that the telenovela had an intention to promote a discourse in favor of diversity, demystifying essentialist conceptions and pointing to the new possibilities of generalized identities, brought to the surface from the experience of transsexuality. Nevertheless, the telenovela constructed a transsexual subject according to the parameters of the medical discourse and, in this way, its representation establishes a truth about the transsexuality, that confines the transsexual identity to the rigid standards of what it is to be transsexual, leaving aside the diversities and the pluralities that exist in each experience.