To focus on the more general issue, it is worth remembering that the problem is not, and has never been, merely Portuguese: to use a fashionable word, its complexity is truly global. There is a combination of non-linear factors – from the proliferation of many new means of disseminating “content” to the emergence of languages that, with greater or lesser imagination, are also audiovisual – contributing in a systematic (in my opinion, tragic) way to the decomposition of the classic patterns of watching cinema and being a cinema spectator.
Returning to the interior of the Portuguese space, it would be interesting to know whether it is possible to face the current problems of cinema – from production resources to broadcasting structures – without taking into account what (other) types of spectators have emerged. More specifically: does anyone in good faith consider that almost half a century of audiovisual production dominated by the industrial, narrative and emotional format of soap operas (and by their gigantic occupation of cultural territory) could contribute to the proliferation of viewers of… cinema?
Any answer to such a question, whether “positive” or “negative”, cannot ignore, I repeat, the globality in which all this is spread. Especially because the concrete conditions of the economic and symbolic life of cinema mean that, for better or worse, there is already a generation (or two) that discovered films outside of… cinema theaters.
There is yet another way to look at all this. It is the most difficult way, the one that triggers the most resistance within the television system, because it is, precisely, the one that faces the respective dominant options head on. Therefore, when asking whether television is, or can be, educational in some way, it is important to reject the abstract sacralization that, implicitly, attaches to the word “education”. And remember something that Roberto Rossellini taught us to take into account more than half a century ago: everything, really everything, that happens on television produces some effect on perception, interpretation and appreciation of the world around us.
Whether out of touching innocence or militant cynicism, some will ask: everything, including “entertainment” programs? The answer will be: everything, especially the programs to which this “entertainment” label is attached – there is nothing more viscerally cultural, that is, that affects all the values of the social fabric.
Journalist