Velho Chico: a semiotic-systemic analysis

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the audiovisual poetics articulated by director Luiz Fernando Carvalho in the recent soap opera Velho Chico (2016). Understanding poetics from Bordwell (2008) who defines it as a branch of film studies focused on audiovisual manufacturing, that is, an understanding of the process of creation, production and effect. However, unlike Bordwell whose conceptual matrix revolves around cognitivism, we take as a starting point the systemic theories of Edgar Morin, Mario Bunge, Ilya Prigogine and Jorge Vieira. Thus, the text focuses, firstly, on the clarification of the systemic organization that shapes the audiovisual poetics in terms of its collaborative character, that is, several semiotic agents contributing to the manufacture of the work, in this case the soap opera. Second, its semantic complexity is observed with its sign encounters and syncretisms arising from various cultural and aesthetic influences. Next, the article points out that Old Chico is both a point of arrival and a starting point for signic circle-evolutions, that is, for other signic corners, flowing, draining, and branching into other strands, creating a synergistic and mestizo language proper to that fictional universe. Finally, the text concludes that Velho Chico is an intellectual journey of director Luiz Fernando Carvalho in search of a new paradigm, an audiovisual poetic that embraces its aesthetic ideals: unic, multiple, complex.