"This book aims at a dual objective: first, to analyze the formation of the Brazilian commercial television system and the emergence of a genre, the novela; and second, to establish theoretical guidelines so as to understand better the stakes of critical reflection on the upheavals occurring in television today [...] In ten years, Brazil has succeeded in creating a national audiovisual program industry that has shown itself capable of exporting on a grand scale. The internationalization of Brazilian programs goes hand-in-hand with the attraction of a cheap, efficient mode of production. Confronted with the dual need to increase their production and lower their costs, European television channels have recently developed an interest in the novela; it copies neither the European serial nor the U.S. series, yet fits into the dynamics of serialization. This book invites the reader to consider the history of genres, the ideological and aesthetic forms that have crystallized the collective imagination and in which popular memory and national memory are always in tension." (Preface, page x-xi)