Rio de Janeiro, cidade-mercadoria: (des)construções de sentidos sobre a cidade e sua marca em documentários internacionais de televisão em tempos de megaeventos

Abstract

This research aims to understand the construction and changes of meaning about the city of Rio de Janeiro and its brand in documentaries produced by foreigners and broadcast by international television networks during the so-called “Olympic moment”. The work was carried out from a methodological construction, that is, there is no single method, but a composition that allows the formulation of questions and the critical understanding of the corpus about how these narratives act in the production of meanings through a multipurpose and non-dominant reading. Eleven programs were selected, considering the following excerpt: documentaries shown by international television networks between 2013 and 2016, produced by foreigners, which promoted displacements in their narratives in relation to the city project built by and for the brand Rio on the occasion of the sports mega-events hosted by the city in 2014 and 2016 and that were available online for viewing or downloading. The analyses show some possible debates around the construction, deconstruction and reconstruction of the imaginaries about the brand Rio and the city. It is a process governed by economic interests, but it is also a living-process, since the senses are re-appropriated by citizens, who build new ways of being and living in this city that it proposes merchandise to be consumed and also a company to manage its processes. The documentary narratives emerge new subjects and subjectivities that are not part of the official discourse of the brand. They also debate the city project built by strategic planning and demonstrate part of the disputes that constitute the urban fabric, especially with regard to disputes over the right to the city, going far beyond the flattening promoted by branding and the consensus aimed by the entrepreneurial city in the construction of the commodity city. Understanding these processes is a way of problematizing these issues and bringing them into a broader debate – a debate that includes the different nodes that constitute the complex construction of the Olympic City.