Abstract
A História na Ficção Televisiva Portuguesa (trans. History in Portuguese Television Fiction), edited by Catarina Duff Burnay, is an example of a book which believes historical landscapes, sociopolitical conflicts and collective events may be better understood through their filmic representations. Within the wider academic debates, it is precisely how visual media such as film or TV help to portray history that is now under close scrutiny, especially after Hayden White’s (1988) distinction between historiography and historiophoty. Visual media may provide a way to re-present the past (Rosenstone, 2012) and to complement historiography with the representation of history in visual images and filmic discourse, or historiophoty. Historical fiction may thus be very useful to historians since they need to be conscious of imaginative play in the recreation of the past. The introduction, authored by Duff Burnay and José Miguel Sardica, draws upon this debate, placing historians and media professionals in opposition in regard to TV’s ability to cater to both the imperatives of truth and entertainment.
History in Portuguese Television Fiction is a pioneering effort to systematise the way historical fiction has been approached in Portugal throughout the 20th century. Although there are previous publications on the topic (Ferin and Burnay, 2005), this short book (112 pages) constitutes one of the first works to concentrate methodically on Portuguese TV fictions with historical theme, focusing particularly on those genres, such as costume or historical drama, recognised for their engagement with the past. Taking as their starting point an international and interdisciplinary research perspective (uniting TV and cultural studies as well as contemporary history), Burnay and Sardica conclude in the book’s introduction that the period between 1990 and 2013 saw a total of 58 programmes of historical fiction on Portuguese TV, most of which were shown by Radiotelevisão Portuguesa (the Portuguese public broadcasting corporation). As recurring themes, the authors identify the opposition to Estado Novo (the dictatorial authoritarian regime installed in Portugal between 1933 and 1974), the Portuguese Colonial War, the straining relations between Monarchy and Republic and the two World Wars. Also, most of the historical fiction produced for TV takes place in the 19th and 20th centuries. The introduction thus provides a useful overview of contexts and themes which, however, are not always discussed in the following chapters. An exception is Cintra Torres’ chapter which, in addition to a worthy social and political contextualisation of the Spanish Civil War and its repercussions on many villages of the Portuguese frontier, builds on the claim that A Raia dos Medos (2000) established itself as a true historical essay in a TV fictional form displaying aesthetic autonomy and intellectual liberty. A Raia dos Medos provides an audiovisual critique of the lost collective memory of fundamental historical events such as the Badajoz Massacre. The chapter contends that, here, TV helps to bring back into contemporary imagination a long-lost memory from the Alentejo and Extremadura populations of Portugal and Spain.
Similarly, the last chapter, ‘Conta-me como Foi: the (re)construction of historic memory’, written by Pedro Lopes, deals with the reopening of historic wounds in Portuguese civil society, but this time, dealing with the late period of Estado Novo (1968–1974). According to Lopes, Conta-me como Foi (2007–2011) shows the social polarisation occurring between those who advocated democracy and those who sought a communist society. Lopes puts this historical fiction not on the side of a historiophoty but instead sees in it a historiographic dimension, a fictional reconstruction with a strong novelistic feature that renews our perspective on power relations, desire for freedom and the very social and political contradictions of Portugal in the 1960s and 1970s.
History in Portuguese Television Fiction revolves around a key theme in TV studies, and it will certainly be a good reference book on Portugal’s historical TV fiction. It analyses historical titles that were not only acclaimed by audiences but have also made a significant contribution to the popular awareness of Portugal’s contemporary history. Its introduction offers a good theoretical background, making reference to the ongoing debates regarding whether TV helps or hinders the construction of a common past, and at the same time addressing the role of TV and media in teaching and studying history.
Unfortunately, the theoretical grounds raised in the introduction are not clearly pursued in the chapters. Some important questions such as the merging between fact and fiction are not really addressed in the subsequent chapters. The majority of them take mostly a descriptive account of the TV series, offering observations on the contexts of production (Chapter Five), the singularities of the TV adaption (Chapter Four) or the intimate life of a historical personality such as Salazar (Chapter Three). The space taken up by the analysis of the programmes is rather small compared with the space taken by these background remarks. The reader might expect more detailed textual analysis. And, since this is a communication studies book, a theoretical perspective fundamentally dedicated to TV studies would be quite appreciated.
In sum, History in Portuguese Television Fiction opens new paths to study TV programming about history in Portugal. Although the chapters may lack a critical position of key themes, such as historic construction versus reconstruction, representation versus re-presentation, and originate from authors all affiliated to the Catholic University of Portugal, they are important pieces that help us trace the evolution of Portuguese fiction concerning history. This is a book that offers us a general panorama through the lenses of specific TV programmes. It posits itself as a starting point to track how historic events are portrayed and represented. The book could thus prove useful to those interested in thinking through the connections between TV and collective memory.
This review is a CST/European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) collaboration.