As aventuras do Flama: a radionovela que ultrapassou os sentidos

Abstract

The dissertation presented here tells, first and foremost, the story of a superhero who appeared in Campina Grande in the 1950s and continues his legacy to this day through multiple means of communication, passing through the senses and imagination of his audience. The radio soap opera As Aventuras do Flama had a story that told the adventures of the protagonist, the superhero Flama, who faced villains like Cicatriz and alien invasions, solving cases together with his team of friends Comissário, Bolão, Zito and his fiancée Eliana. The narrative has transcended various media and carries the legacy of one of the first national superheroes and the first from the state of Paraíba, thus contributing not only to regional but also national communication. Therefore, the aim of this dissertation is to present a chronology of the history of radio and immerse ourselves in the concepts of culture and cultural hybridism, as worked on by Canclini (1997), up until the heyday of national radio, surveying the passage of superhero stories over the airwaves and the sharing of these narratives, long before what Kinder (1993) defined as transmedia. Based on this bibliographical review, the methodology of the qualitative research will be introduced, using the methodology of Oral History aided by Documentary Analyses, to discover the main source, which are the memories of those who experienced radio during the broadcasting of Flama. This resulted in the construction of the memory of Rádio Borborema and the broadcaster's understanding of its role as a local media organisation and, finally, the relevance of the radio soap opera As Aventuras do Flama to society and the history of radio in Campinas, which, in the course of the findings, proved to be a transmedia product that expanded its narrative in the media of the time and gave its audience different ways of consuming it.