This article shows how O Bem-Amado (1973) and Saramandaia (1976), both of Dias Gomes, enrolled within the aesthetic principles of grotesque realism and carnivalization. From Bakhtin's theory of the novel, the text analyses the scenes in soap operas that such principles are proposed in the fullness of sense. These productions were part of the modernization process that took television in the 1970s. However, unlike the current proposal realistic in that process, such telenovelas appropriated from other genres of literary discourse (the fantastic and the grotesque, mostly). The article concludes that these aesthetic choices allowed new "contact zones" to the Brazilian reality and were not restricted to mimicry of the "naturalistic realism".
Carnivalization; Grotesque realism; Teledramaturgy; Modernization; Dias