Body Parts on Planet Slum: Women and Telenovelas in Brazil

Lisa Beljuli Brown

Anthem Press, 2011 - Psychology - 156 pages

Based on a year's research from within a Brazilian slum, this study follows a series of unemployed women who watch up to six hours of telenovelas a day, often in the midst of arduous physical labour in the home. The women suffer in relation to their bodies, but simultaneously invest in a masochistic glorification of suffering that links their lives to the soap operas, revealing disturbing valuations of the female body that traverse reality and fiction. Through its exploration of this daily integration of real suffering and fictional glamour and wealth, 'Body Parts on Planet Slum' reveals how fantasy and social exclusion can together induce a form of psychological survivalism, enabling these women to reconfigure the central features of their existence - their suffering, pleasure, sexuality and embodiment.

Contents

• Everybody Needs an Ideology to Live: 1
• The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth But in the Meantime They Shall Watch Telenovelas: 21
• Suffering Soaps Fragmented Bodies: 59
• The Politics of the Vagina: 67
• The Redemptive Womb: 81
• The Invisible Back: 99
• Final Feliz: 121
• Illustrations: 125
• Women Respondents: 133
• Glossary: 137
• Bibliography: 139
• Index: 149

About the author

Lisa Beljuli Brown is Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. She gained her PhD in social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Body Parts on Planet Slum: Women and Telenovelas in Brazil; Key issues in modern sociology
• Author: Lisa Beljuli Brown
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Anthem Press, 2011
• ISBN: 0857287974, 9780857287977
• Length: 156 pages
• Subjects: Psychology / Gender; Social Science / Feminism & Feminist Theory; Social Science / Popular Culture; Social Science / Women's Studies