From "cordel" to "folhetim"

the circulation of meanings in the Ângela Diniz case

Abstract

In this article, we analyze the publication of the cordel O trágico romance de Doca e Ângela Diniz [The Tragic Romance of Doca and Ângela Diniz], featured in Folhetim, the cultural supplement of the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, dedicated to “weekend leisure.” The supplement consistently highlighted, on its front page, cases of major national repercussion. One of these issues was devoted to the murder of socialite Ângela Diniz by her boyfriend, Doca Street—an emblematic case of violence against women that still endures in social and media memory. Our aim is to understand how Folha reinscribed the crime within a space devoted to culture and how this reinscription produces meaning effects, situating Ângela and Doca within an imaginary of tragic romance. We also examine the representations constructed around the female victim and the male perpetrator, as well as the silencing of feminist voices. Our analyses were conducted from the perspective of materialist Discourse Analysis. Among the concepts employed, we highlight the conditions of production (Pêcheux, [1969] 1997), from which any discourse is always articulated. Understanding such conditions in the context of the Folhetim enables us to examine how journalism, by reinscribing the Ângela Diniz case within a cultural supplement, produces certain effects of meaning while silencing others. The analyses reveal how the meanings produced by the media participate in the construction and circulation of imaginaries that position women in places of seduction and transgression, while men are positioned as victims – meanings that legitimize and even banalize the murder of women.