For an analysis of bourgeois ideologies - 2. The «social drama»

Abstract

It is around 1850 that one can recognize the appearance, in Portuguese theatres, of the so-called «social drama», a theatrical genre intended to be edifying. In this article one makes a first interpretative analysis of a group of plays belonging to that genre. Within the theatrical production of that time, the «social drama» seems to be like a privileged instrument of socialization for petty and middle bourgeoisie in development and ascent. In this sense, the «social drama» shared with the press a function that the schooling apparatus was not yet able to perform. From the explicit didactic intention of the «social drama» results the coexistence in it of
two kinds of speech, overlapped more than articulated, properly speaking: a rationalizing speech and a speech of the imaginary. It is through this hybrid speech that a «regulation» is made, submitted to the ideal of a society of small and middle independent producers. Under this point of view, this regulation» is detached from the acting of the characters regarding wealth, either as to the form of reaching it or as to the form of using it. As a counterpoint, one sees the legitimation of wealth as a product from «work» and as a source of progress, an ideal incarnated in a hero that is, at the end, a producer not separated from his means of production, being this either material or intellectual.