O herói conciliador: a construção da imagem de Tancredo Neves nas revistas Veja e Manchete (1982-1985)

Abstract

This research analyses the picture construction of Tancredo Neves on the Veja and Manchete magazines from 1982 to 1985, period of his election to Minas Gerais government, his campaign and victory to Republic President and his death high after. The central hypothesis is that these vehicles constructed, in a spectacularized form, an image of an ex-president as a hero at the final period of transition from the authoritarian military regime to the democratic one. On their economic interests defense, the both magazines completely situated in the cultural industry, took part in the moderate and conservative opposition movement (part of PMDB and Frente Liberal). This movement began to construct a hegemonic discourse about Tancredo Neves as the legitimate representative of the popular will and the one capable to save the country from the crisis through a big conciliation national project. That aimed to promote a transition process smoothly and without splits to the existing order, which benefited the economic and politics country elites. In the Veja and Manchete articles Tancredo got first the characteristics of the hero who was going to conduct the country to salvation and, after his death, of a martyr of democracy. This research contributes, on the history and communication fields, to a better understand of the media influence on the big politics events of the country, especially on the first years after the military regime end and resumption of democracy. The study is performed through the critic analysis of the corpus and bibliographical research, under four main theoretical and methodological contributions: 1. The discourse theory from Ernesto Laclau, mainly on the concept of hegemonic discourses , 2. The semiotic discourse, used in its most fundamental aspects to verify the sense construction around the ex president in the texts verbi-visuals. 3. To the results obtained in the study of the corpus is added other analysis based on the historiographycal, sociological, political and communicational critic, according to authors as Florestan Fernandes, Bernardo Kucinski, Alfred Stepan, Bolivar Lamounier, Thomas Skidmore, Maria H. Alves, Basilio Sallum Jr., Ciro Marcondes Filho and others that deal with the cultural industry subject areas