Abstract

This essay ponders on reading based on Jogo de Cena. Following a perspective built on the Literary Studies field, three objectives are established: (1) examine the literary aspect of the film in simultaneity to its commodity character; (2) search for an understanding of how fiction and nonfiction are disposed in Coutinho’s film; and (3) approach what could be understood as transparent and opaque in that work. Attaining those goals is a manner of approaching an issue related to the apparent waning of the distinction between fiction and nonfiction caused by media, to the impoverishment of fiction in literature, and its spread in daily life. This discussion searches for contributions to cinema, theater, and literature studies. It involves reviewing publications on that film, a description of the work, and some theoretical references from the fields mentioned previously, including the formalist notion of literariness related to the presence of narrative, dramatic, and poetic elements in works beyond literature. Starting with a close reading of that descriptive study and the selection of excerpts from the film, a discussion confronts the analysis with some bibliographical sources. The results are as follows: (1) it is not possible to categorize Jogo de Cena in terms of being just a commodity or an artistic work; (2) reading narratives should consider the simultaneity of fiction and nonfiction; (3) apparent transparency takes the reader directly outward the work while its opacity, endowed with literariness, plunges the reader in the materiality of the film where historicity is present among the work, the author, the reader, and the world. Therefore, the notion of reading is rethought to face current configurations of cinematographic and literary works.