Malafaia and Record have denied involvement in an anonymous petition that later circulated on Facebook urging viewers to boycott Babilonia. He blasted Globo as “the biggest sponsor of immorality and homosexuality in Brazil”.
One day after the lesbian kiss on Babilonia, Brazil’s most influential Pentecostal pastor, Silas Malafaia of the Assemblies of God church, called the show “an instrument of moral rot” in a blog post he linked to on Twitter, where he has nearly 900,000 followers. It nevertheless has been panned by critics and subsequently had its run cut by three weeks.īabilonia especially offended conservatives with a kiss between two of Brazil’s most famous actresses playing an elderly lesbian couple in its first episode.ĭespite its international reputation as a sexually liberated, gay-friendly country, Brazil has many people who view homosexuality as immoral. Globo’s Babilonia, a tale of female vengeance set in contemporary Rio de Janeiro, remains the most popular. In one recent episode, a male character based on the historic 13th century BC Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II held vigil over the deathbed of his fictitious wife, Maya, after she was poisoned by a jealous rival.Īn earlier time slot for the program, which begins at 8.30pm six nights a week and competes with Globo’s national news program, also seems to have helped the show’s success. Since its debut in March, The Ten Commandments has attracted about three times as many viewers as Record’s previous prime-time offerings, boosting the network from its typical third-place standing into second place, network officials said. “They now feel they have an alternative and they’re tuning in,” Dieguez said.īrazilian actresses perform on the set of the Brazilian prime-time soap opera The Ten Commandments. In the world’s largest Catholic country, members of that majority faith also tend to be social conservatives, especially in rural areas. That audience includes a burgeoning evangelical community, which now accounts for one-fifth of the population of around 200 million. “There is a more conservative audience in Brazil that we’ve seen is quite strong,” said Bruno Dieguez, a communications professor at Rio’s Pontifical Catholic University.
Some suggest that the surprise success of The Ten Commandments lies in the show’s family-oriented script. It’s helped propel the Rede Record television network, owned by the founder of Brazil’s main Pentecostal church, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, into a showdown with top broadcaster Globo, which for decades has had a lock on prime-time soaps, known as novelas. Swathed in Egyptian robes and sporting lapis lazuli jewelry and Cleopatra wigs, some of the characters are based on biblical or other historic figures, while others are invented. Set in ancient Egypt and loosely based on the story of Moses, The Ten Commandments is billed as Brazil’s first biblical soap opera.
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