Abstract

PONTES, Heloisa. Inventing names, acquiring fame: the Brazilian theater actresses, 1940-68. Etnográfica [online]. 2008, vol.12, n.1, pp.173-194. ISSN 0873-6561.

Sharing the presupposition that the personal naming is a “privileged entry door to the study of how the great factors of social differentiation become operative through the personal action” (Pina Cabral 2005), the article, “Inventing names, acquiring fame: the Brazilian theater actresses, 1940-60”, discuss the issues of the artistic name and of the renown reached by the Brazilian theater actors. It approaches the names as dynamic instruments of action with the aim at verifying the logic that rules over the choice of the artistic names beyond the discursive rationality specific to each individual case. In the process of the social construction of the artist and of the person that houses it, different marks of gender, class, and generation are combined. In this way, it does not seem random that, in so much unequal and hierarchical societies as the Brazilian one, activities that are dependent upon the body have being converted into a symbolic capital that is essential to “make” famous a name. Of this situation are the witnesses the theater’s actors approached in the article and, contemporaneously, the models and the soccer players.

Keywords : artistic name; theater actresses; gender and cultural production; social history of the theater.

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