Netflix and Over the Top Politics? The Mechanism TV series and the dynamics of entertainment intervention

Abstract

Produced and released by Netflix in March 2018, The Mechanism (2018–), a web series, fictionalised the Lava Jato operation, a series of criminal investigations about corruption in the Brazilian political system that led to the imprisonment of leading Brazilian politicians and businessmen. Analysing the series along with the media coverage in the Brazilian mainstream online and printed press, this article examines the complex and troublesome relationship between an ongoing criminal investigation with ramifications for the political system and its fictionalisation on a worldwide internet television platform.

Keywords

Netflix Lava-Jato Brazil media imperialism

Produced and premiered by Netflix, Brazilian web television thriller, The Mechanism (O Mecanismo) caused enormous public interest and controversy for its depiction of the Lava Jato (Jet Wash) operation. A criminal investigation led by the Brazilian federal police and Judge Sergio Moro, Lava Jato began as a money laundering investigation and evolved into an investigating corruption of the semi-public Brazilian oil company, Petrobras. Provoking an earthquake in Brazilian politics and its economy, the Lava Jato operation led to the imprisonment of leading entrepreneurs and political figures, the most prominent being Luis Inacio ‘Lula’ da Silva, the former Brazilian president who had governed the country for two consecutive tenures and one of the most prominent figures in Brazilian politics during the last four decades. Released at a critical moment in Brazilian politics, The Mechanism is considered part of a strategy developed by Netflix to reinforce its dominant position in the Brazilian and Latin American television streaming market. Progressive politicians and activists perceived the series´ as a deliberate intervention in to Brazilian public life, aimed at damaging the chance of the left-wing Workers Party in the elections, held a few months later, and thus a boycott of Netflix was called (Nobrega, 2018). In a desperate attempt to alert his party, the Workers Party (known as PT from thereon), and in recognition of the harm caused by the series, former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff accused Netflix of intervening into Brazilian politics and The Mechanism’s creator and director, Jose Padilha, for spreading fake news. At the same time Rousseff warned other countries and foreign leaders about a new pattern in what we could call ‘Over the Top Media Imperialism’, an overt intervention in local politics by an American streaming service (Laguna, 2018). On the other hand, the series’ creator denied any ideological bias, arguing that the whole Brazilian political system was corrupt, and of how the series depicts corrupt practices across political parties (Maria, 2018).

The link between television fiction and ongoing political processes is not a widely researched topic in media studies. While the analysis of television news and news programmes were and still are considered a critical device to understand public opinion, several scholars have pointed to the increasing impact of entertainment television on the political education of audiences (Gerbner et al., 1984; Holbrook and Hill, 2005; Mutz and Nir, 2010). The high number of hours people are exposed to media content and the psychological predisposition of audiences while watching television drama are seen by cultivation theory scholars as having a critical influence in shaping audiences’ political views (Slater et al., 2006). Changing the focus from audiences’ reception to the analysis of audiovisual content, Holbert (2005), Christensen and Haas (2005) and Eilders and Nitsch (2015) created a typology for examining the intricate relationship between television and film fiction and politics. Categories such as proximity to real political events in the plots, the generic identity of a series and the intensity of political content displayed in the series are offered as valuable tools to analyse the links between films and TV entertainment fiction and politics. The present study differs from the afore mentioned works on media fiction and politics in two main ways. First, almost all the content analysed in previous projects focused on American and British films and TV series, which poses the question if other types and patterns of relationships between television fiction and politics may be formed within different geo-political regions of the world. Second, this article proposes to embrace ‘political intent’ as a category of analysis despite it being rejected by most scholars because of methodological and conceptual concerns (Christensen and Haas, 2005: 8–10; Eilders and Nitsch, 2015: 1567–1568).

Latin American scholars and Brazilian media researchers have thoroughly analysed the connection between telenovelas and national political, economic and culture spheres. Several studies published during the 1980s and 1990s emphasised the inclusion of previously marginalised groups and topics in Brazilian telenovelas’ narratives often excluded from television news (Lins da Silva, 1985; Ribke, 2011a; Tufte, 2000; Vink, 1988). However, other studies indicate a bias in the framing of politics and politicians as social actors in Brazilian television fiction. In his study on the representation of Brazilian politics in the telenovela, Terra Nostra (1999), Mario Porto argues that telenovelas restrict the access of viewers to the complex world of politics offering a ‘single interpretative frame’ and ‘narrowing the range of interpretations available for viewers to make sense of political issues’ (2005: 355).

Within the Brazilian media landscape, where The Mechanism was conceived and produced, two apparently opposing tendencies coexist side by side: the first, a tendency or tradition connecting genres with local reality and everyday life; and second, a tradition of media intervention into national politics. The overwhelming influence of Globo on national politics in Brazil has occupied activists, media scholars and politicians alike. Since its emergence in 1965, the year after a coup d’état that led to the military governing Brazil for two decades, Globo has been the focus of criticism for its monopolist status in the television market. Various scholars highlighted Globo’s allegedly illegal partnership with a US media corporation, its close cooperation with the Brazilian military government and its influence on Brazilian politics after the country’s return to democracy (Amorim and Passos, 2005; Hertz, 1987; Porto, 2012; Ribke, 2011b).

While television news during the period of the military dictatorship (1964–1985) was extremely supportive of the authoritarian governmental regime, late night telenovelas enjoyed a higher degree of freedom and sometimes used sarcasm and creative metaphors to express critical views of Brazilian reality (see Borelli and Priolli, 2000; Gomes, 1998: 249–250; Ribke, 2011a). After the return to democracy several scholars pointed to an increased intervention of Globo in Brazilian politics, through the manipulations of news and the favouring of candidates close to the network’s economic and political interests (Amorim and Passos, 2005; Miguel, 2003). Not only news programmes or presidential debates were manipulated in order to shape the political preferences of the audiences, but also several telenovelas broadcast by Globo were perceived as playing a role in the new political-mediatic constellation. For example, some Brazilian scholars argued that Que rei sou eu? (Which Kind of King am I?) (1989), a telenovela broadcast by Globo before the first democratic national election after the military regime, played an active role in the rise to power of the Brazilian president, Fernando Collor de Mello. Located in Avilan, an imaginary European country 3 years before the French revolution, Que rei sou eu? contained multiple references to the Brazilian political and economic situation, denouncing corruption and condemning the misery of the people. A centre of the telenovela was the bastard son of the dead king who, according to studies mentioned previously, shared many characteristics with the right-wing candidate supported by Globo (de Almeida and de Almeida, 2014; de Lima, 1993; Weber, 1990). Other scholars rejected at that time the accusation of the use of telenovelas to manipulate the election outcomes, arguing instead that market orientation and audience preferences shapes the thematic choices of the producers (de Melo, 1992). However, a memorial book published by a Globo research project admitted the references and allegories displayed in the telenovela were intentional and referred to the pre-electoral political and economic crises of Brazil in 1989 (Maior, 2006: 287–289; Ribke, 2010). Although we cannot measure from the evidence collected in those studies the true impact of telenovelas on the final outcome of the electoral process, we can argue that an intent to connect with the political moment or, as I will argue in this paper, an intent to intervene by shaping audiences perceptions regarding the political and institutional processes.

While previous studies analyse the connection between local media content, corporations and national politics, the case study of this paper presents some complexities and challenges because of the new global streaming platforms that problematise the local-foreign dichotomy. The Mechanism is a TV series produced by Netflix, an American streaming platform available across the world, but the series was written, acted and produced by Brazilian directors, scriptwriters and actors and aimed first and foremost at Brazilian audiences. Although Netflix is the lead streaming service for consumers in Brazil, its participation in the competitive and well-structured local media production ecology requires further analysis. How could we otherwise understand the risky move the streaming service made dealing overtly with an extremely controversial and sensitive topic within a foreign country? How does Netflix’s global and local production strategies intercept? What can we infer from the Brazilian story about the relationship between market share, political alignment of audiences and streaming TV consumption?

Methods of research

This study aims to understand the complex interaction between an online TV series depicting an ongoing criminal process with significant impact on Brazilian national politics and the major ‘real life’ events and protagonists depicted in the series. While most studies on television programmes focus on a textual analysis of the audiovisual content, this research proposes to examine both the ‘textual’ and the ‘paratextual’ information about the show (Genette, 1997). It will examine both the audiovisual primary source and the paratextual dominant interpretations, discursive strategies and dialogues between the fictional text and ‘real life’ protagonist of the story depicted in The Mechanism. This research endeavour is divided into two main phases that also reflect the internal structure of the article. The first is composed of a textual analysis of the first season of the series, which contains eight chapters, each 45–55 minutes in length. The textual analysis was conducted through an examination of the generic features of the show, its main themes, narrative structure and televisual style (Butler, 2012).

In the second phase of the research I collect and analyse printed and online press articles published in Brazil referring to The Mechanism series. The articles were found through a keyword search in the online digital archives of three leading Brazilian newspapers, Folha de Sao Paulo, Estado de Sao Paulo, O Globo, as well as the weekly magazine, Veja. Alongside the mainstream media I selected articles on online alternative media portals such as GNN, CDM and Carta Capital. One hundred and fifty-seven articles were selected for examination. They were published between March 2016, when the series was in its production stage, and August 2019, 3 months after the second season ended. The articles were arranged first following a chronological order and then subdivided according to three main criteria: first, articles containing responses or references to The Mechanism made by ‘real life’ protagonists portrayed in the series. Second, articles containing interviews with the series’ protagonist involved in different stages and levels of the production of the fictional story about the Lava Jato operation. This subdivision involves interviews with the creator and director of the series, actors, executive producers and Netflix authorities. The third group of articles contained media reviews of the series and interviews with the series’ protagonists about the second season of The Mechanism. Most of those articles belonging to this section focus on the main narrative changes and political leanings of the series in comparison to the first season and the responses of the series’ creators to the new political context in Brazil after the election of far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro to the presidential office.

The Mechanism and the didactics of ‘anti-politics’ entertainment

Inspired by an investigative book about the Lava Jato operation written by journalist Vladimir Netto (2016), The Mechanism exploits the narrative devices of the crime series genre to create an attractive entertainment programme to engage audiences unfamiliar with Brazilian politics. In many ways, The Mechanism shares features with other international ‘quality television’ such as large production budgets, a creative process centred on the author/writer/director, a ‘quality demographics’ and an aesthetics of realism (Feuer et al., 1984; Thompson, 1997). At the same time, for local audiences The Mechanism presents a powerful and persuasive interpretative framework of Brazilian politics, not only, but mainly since the arrival of the centre-left PT in 2003. The main hero of the story is Marco Ruffo, played by Brazilian actor Selton Mello, a hardboiled and self-destructive police investigator working from Curitiba, the capital of the southern state of Parana. A decent but impulsive cop, Ruffo is obsessed with an investigation which involves money laundering from government-owned enterprises and private companies. Father of a daughter suffering from autism, Ruffo also represents in the series the struggling Brazilian middle classes, annoyed by rampant State corruption and meteoric conspicuous consumption of the privileged classes and crooked officers. ‘Twenty years serving the police. Enough to buy a used car for my wife and a ranch in Paraná to secure my daughter’s future’, repeats Ruffo across the first chapter of the first season when describing the fortune amassed by his nemesis and current dealer, Roberto Ibrahim. It is through Ruffo’s voice narrating events and leading the series’ plot that the creator of The Mechanism lays bare the main ideological assumptions about Brazilian politics and society, offering both a diagnosis and a prognosis.

I focus in this section on the main metaphors and allegories employed by the series’ leading characters to convey the main political messages of The Mechanism. Used several times across the opening two chapters and later the two last episodes of the first season, Ruffo and later his team colleague Verena Santana (Jonathan Haagensen) define corruption as the main problem of Brazil, explaining that it ‘is a cancer’ and ‘if we don’t kill it from the roots now, that shit will spread out’. ‘No one fights a cancer and walks away unharmed: ‘No one’, is repeated across four out of eight episodes of the first season. The title of the series The Mechanism also functions as a metonym of the metaphor of cancer in the series. At the end of episode seven of the first season, Ruffo’s voice-over explains the long chain of corruption that includes high and low level public officers, politicians and businessmen in the following words.

Ibrahim, João Pedro Rangel, Mário Garcez Brito…all sick. Cancer is a disease caused by a failure in the regulation of cell growth in our bodies. Almost all cases are caused by environmental factors. It can spread from its original location and affect the entire body. That is what’s called metastasis. Even with all the treatment available…cancer fights to stay alive. And most of the time, it wins. When there’s no exact understanding of how a disease works and where it can spread…That is my mission: to decipher the mechanism.

Ibrahim, João Pedro Rangel, Mário Garcez Brito……todos doentes. O câncer é uma doença causada por uma falha no regulamento de crescimento celular em nossos corpos. Quase todos os casos são causados por fatores ambientais. Pode se espalhar a partir do seu original localização e afetar todo o corpo. Isso é o que chamamos de metástase. Mesmo com todo o tratamento disponível……o câncer luta para se manter vivo. E na maioria das vezes, ganha. Quando não há entendimento exato de como funciona uma doença e onde pode se espalhar……não há como encontrar uma cura. Essa é a minha missão……para decifrar o mecanismo.

Across two scenes of episode eight (the last of the first season), the series employs both the mechanism and cancer metaphors through the voice-over of Ruffo, who didactically explains his overarching thesis on Brazilian society’s illness to his wife, Regina (Suzana Ribeiro), and by extension, the audience

The mechanism is in everything. Do you understand? In everything. From the government to Mr João. On the macro and micro levels. It’s a pattern. The economic power and the public agents work together. Politicians appoint boards that apportion projects among the same contractors. They overbill the projects and give back some of the budget to the politicians, the board, in the form of a bribe. It’s a self-perpetuating system. Get it? From Petrobrasil to Sanesul, Miller & Bretch to Mr. João, Ibrahim to Alfredo, the mechanism is in everything. Workers cheating parking meters, fake IDs to get into places…bribing the police officer so he won’t give you a ticket. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. There’s no political party. There’s no ideology. There’s no left or right wing. Whoever is in charge must keep the wheel turning. It’s a pattern. And that’s what’s elected every single president so far. Those who don’t participate are spit out. Everything. Everything. Everything…is the mechanism. Everything. [Translation by the author]

mecanismo está em tudo. Voce entende? Em tudo. Do governo para o Sr. João. Nos níveis macro e micro. É um padrão. O poder econômico e os agentes públicos trabalham juntos. Políticos nomeiam conselhos que distribuir projetos entre os mesmos contratantes. Eles sobrecarregam os projetos e devolver parte do orçamento para os políticos, o conselho, na forma de suborno. É um sistema de autoperpetuação. Pegue De Petrobrasil para Sanesul, Miller & Bretch para o Sr. João, Ibrahim para Alfredo, o mecanismo está em tudo. Trabalhadores trapaceando parquímetros, identidades falsas para entrar em lugares……subornando o policial então ele não lhe dará um ingresso. Os ricos ficam mais ricos e os pobres ficam mais pobres. Não há partido político. Não há ideologia. Não há ala esquerda ou direita. Quem está no comando deve manter a roda girando. É um padrão. E éisso que é eleito cada presidente até agora. Aqueles que não participam são cuspidos. Tudo. Tudo. Tudo……é o mecanismo.

The mechanism is a cancer, Regina. It’s a human meat-grinder. It has no soul, no limit and no ideology. We struggle to survive…and it adds insult to injury. It laughs in our faces. It humiliates us. Sometimes, I think all this effort is in vain. That it’ll lead to nothing. I am not able to quit, Regina. I’ll keep on fighting, even if it means losing you. I promise I’ll come back. Wait for me, if you can. If you can’t…don’t forget I love you. [Translation by the author]

O mecanismo é um câncer, Regina. É um moedor de carne humano. Não tem alma, sem limite e sem ideologia. Nós lutamos para sobreviver…. e acrescenta insulto à injúria. Ri dos nossos rostos. Isso nos humilha. Às vezes, eu acho que todo esse esforço é em vão. Isso vai levar a nada. Eu não posso desistir, Regina. Eu vou continuar lutando mesmo que isso signifique perder você. Eu prometo que vou voltar. Espere por mim, se puder. Se você não pode……não esqueça que eu te amo.

Metaphors, according to Lakoff and Johnson (2003: 9), are linguistic devices employed in everyday life to structure our way of thinking and experiencing reality. The use of corporeal and organismic metaphors in politics has a long tradition, but the use of illness as a metaphor for the problems affecting the whole of society gained prominence during the Nazi regime in the 1930s (Musolff, 2004: 84). Alerting us to the political uses of the cancer metaphor, Susan Sontag argued that ‘cancer’ operates in public discourse ‘in the service of a simplistic view of the world that can turn paranoid. The disease is often experienced as a form of demonic possession – tumors are “malignant” or “benign”’ (1978: 69). That same oversimplistic view of politics is conveyed across the series through the voice of Ruffo, who embraces an overarching negative view of the entire political system, erasing differences and scales regarding political programmes, ideologies and corrupt practices across it. The question of how to finance the whole political system remains untouched and there is no distinction between the use of public funds for the financing of political campaigns and corrupt practices for personal benefit. Corruption is the terminal disease in The Mechanism. The series embraces the thesis that a strong and coercive intervention is the only solution, without engaging in possible alternatives or the consequences of aggressive ‘medical treatment’. Within a country that experienced 21 years of authoritarian rule, the series’ anti-politics discourse embraced by the leading character, represented as a decent, uncorrupted police officer, could easily be interpreted as a call for an authoritarian alternative. Although due to the methodologies adopted for this project, I cannot evidence a direct impact of the series on the election of Bolsonaro 7 months after its release on Netflix, there are several connections between Ruffo’s anti-system discourse and Bolsonaro’s far-right anti-system approach. Bolsonaro, a former low-rank military officer with a right-wing radical authoritarian discourse, won the election as an outsider embracing an anti-politics moralist discourse similar to those displayed across the series’ first season.

The porous limits between fiction and reality and The Mechanism of creative intervention in politics

The production of The Mechanism began in 2016 when the impeachment process that ousted Dilma Rousseff from the presidential office was already well under way. It also occurred before the book on the Lava Jato operation that allegedly inspired the series was published (Grillo, 2016; Redação, 2016). While the formal charges against Dilma Rousseff were related to a minor irregularity in the management of the budget (known as pedalada fiscal), several scholars saw the impeachment process as a soft coup orchestrated by right-wing political parties with the cooperation of the conservative media (de Albuquerque, 2019; van Dijk, 2017). Ever since the production was announced in the press, Jose Padilha, the series’ creator and producer defended the veracity of the show’s arguments and disputed publicly with former Brazilian presidents, Luiz Inacio ‘Lula’ da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, who accused the series of manipulating public opinion to damage PT’s electoral chances (Pennafort and Batista, 2018). Known from his work as film and TV series director and producer of semi-fictional crime-police stories such as Bus 174 (2002), Elite Squad (2007) and Narcos (2015), Padilha enjoys a prestiged and public visibility in the Brazilian media because of his international career and commercial success (Escalante, 2018; Marthe, 2018: 92–93).

Both Padilha and the mainstream conservative press, through interviews, reviews, articles and other kinds of paratexts covering the series, provide an interpretative framework that reinforces the status of The Mechanism as a truthful account of the facts. I was able to identify two main discursive strategies aimed to reinforce the credibility of the series and its creators. First, the series’ author and the series’ protagonists denied any political or ideological motivation in the making of the series arguing that The Mechanism presents the facts as they are known. When asked about the complexities of adapting an ongoing case to the screen, Padilha denied any complexity

because everything is very clear, and all the facts are known. This is not a show aimed to provoke controversy. It may arouse controversy among people watching it through ideological lenses. There is a huge polarisation in Brazil between left and right, and each side tries to confuse the people. Understanding this case [Lava Jato] is not difficult, what is difficult is to narrate the facts without being carried over towards a stupid and dishonest debate about ideology. I felt that Netflix is the right place for making the series because the company doesn’t have any political interest in Brazil. [Translation by the author].

La verdad no, porque siento que está todo muy claro, y todos son datos que se conocen. No es una serie que busque generar polémica, pero probablemente sí lo sea, por temas ideológicos. En Brasil hoy hay una polarización gigante entre la izquierda y la derecha, y cada lado trata de confundir a la gente. Entender este caso no es algo complejo; lo difícil era contar los hechos sin ser arrastrado hacia un debate estúpido y deshonesto sobre ideología. Sentí que Netflix era el lugar ideal para traer esta serie, porque no tienen ningún interés político en Brasil. (Cited in de la Maza, 2018)

When commenting on the Brazilian political situation, the series’ creators, actors and real-life protagonists from the prosecution team employed the same metaphoric language developed by the series, creating a perfect homology between the fictional narrative and the political events beyond it. ‘The Mechanism is the cancer that affects Brazilian society, widespread corruption is the logic behind politics nowadays’, argued Padilha (cited in Escalante, 2018, emphasis added). The lead prosecutor of the Lava Jato operation Deltan Dallagnol also referred to the series’ authenticity arguing that despite it being a fictional work, ‘the central character of the series is real. It is not a human being, but it is a mechanism of how corruption operates in Brazil’ (cited in Dayrell, 2018, emphasis added).

Second, using a perhaps more pervasive strategy, the series incorporated, selectively and with some meaningful distortions in its narrative, elements of reality, such as the speaking style of the protagonists, events and behind the scenes dialogues, widely exposed by the press. Former presidents Lula and Dilma Rousseff complained publicly about the story told in the show, declaring that they would sue Netflix (Laguna, 2018). Both Lula and Dilma were depicted as almost caricaturised, ineffective figures in opposition to the seriousness, professionalism and humility represented by police and justice investigators. For example, in a scene of the opening chapter, both Lula and Dilma – named João Higino (Arthur Kohl) and Janete Ruscov (Sura Berditchevsky) in the series – are shown as failing to pronounce simple sentences while training to deliver a public speech. Both characters representing the respective Brazilian leaders are flanked by PR advisors who display facial expressions denoting frustration at the lack of skill and understanding of their bosses. However, most probably for practical propose, both Lula and Dilma concentrated their critique on the main, most visible and evident manipulation in the series. In episode five of the first season, the character of João Higino (Lula) in a private conversation with Mario Garcez Brito (a character inspired by Marcio Thomaz Bastos, the former minister of justice under Lula’s presidential tenure) says that ‘we have to stop this bleeding’, referring to the damage the Lava Jato operation is doing to the government. In real life, that sentence was uttered by Romero Jucá, a senator member of the PMDB party, part of the government coalition that took power after the impeachment, and referred to the need to stop the Lava Jato operation before it reached PMDB leadership files. The sentence, spoken during a private conversation, had a huge public impact when the audio was leaked to the press in May 2016 (Ferrari, 2018).

Transformed by the mainstream press and right-wing activist into national heroes, the prosecutor team members were depicted in extremely positive terms. Judge Sergio Moro, represented in the series as Judge Juiz Paulo Rigo (Otto Jr.), was depicted as a serious, hardworking and ascetic person living in a modest, discreet house and riding his bicycle every day to work. In the series he speaks in a fluent, formal and elaborated Portuguese, while in real life Judge Sergio Moro often struggles with Portuguese grammar, making strikingly basic mistakes in his public talks (Arrais, 2018; Polito, 2019). Judge Moro appraised The Mechanism in positive terms, not so much for its accurate depiction of events, but for the role the series played in creating awareness of the severity of corruption within Brazilian institutions (Ribeiro, 2018). When asked about the similarities between him and the character represented by Judge Rigo, Judge Moro commented humorously that the series took too many creative liberties, ‘but in fact I rode a bicycle to work from time to time’ (cited in Venceslau, 2018). The lead prosecutor of the Lava Jato operation Deltan Dallagnol, represented in the series as Dimas Donatelli (Antonio Saboia), also enjoyed the fame and popularity the positive media exposure brought him. In a motivational talk in front of 900 businessmen and attorneys in Sao Paulo, Dallagnol shared with the audience personal difficulties he faced during the Lava Jato investigation and when referring to the character representing him in the series commented jokingly that he is ‘much more good looking than the character of the series, at least that is what my wife and daughter said’ (cited in Gonçalves, 2019).

The Mechanism’s second season, or re-writing Lava Jato after the big bang in Brazilian politics

When the second season was released, the outcome of the earthquake that shook the Brazilian political system’s foundations, ‘the side effects of the cancer treatment’ in the series’ own metaphorical language, became more visible. Two former presidents and several leading political figures and businessmen were arrested. Lula da Silva, former president and leading candidate, was incarcerated and prevented from participating in the presidential elections. After a violent and polarised campaign, the controversial far right-wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro won the national elections and began his already scandalous presidential term (Hunter and Power, 2019; Lehmann, 2018). Federal Judge Sergio Moro, the leading figure of the Lava Jato operation became Bolsonaro’s minister of justice, reinforcing the suspicions regarding the political bias around the criminal investigation that put Lula da Silva in prison. The nomination of Gisele Siqueira, the wife of Vladimir Netto, the Globo journalist that published the book on which the series is based, as the head of communications for minister of justice Serio Moro reinforced the conjecture raised by former president Lula that Globo was involved in the production of the series released by Netflix. Vladimir Netto is also the son of Miriam Leitão, a prominent Brazilian journalist who had worked for several decades in different Globo media outlets (Faermann, 2018; Nogueira, 2019).

Beyond the personal links between Netto, Globo and Judge Moro, one should ask why Netflix, a foreign media entertainment content provider, would risk alienating parts of the political establishment and viewers with such an extremely controversial fiction series. There could be more than one answer to this question. First, in a polarised political environment like Brazil, political or controversial local content may alienate some subscribers, but presumably they also entice a significant share of the middle and upper classes opposed to PT and Lula da Silva’s leadership. That strategy of producing polarising content about local current affairs was not employed only in Brazil, but also in the Philippines with the series, Amo (2018), which portrayed president Rodrigo Duterte’s ‘Drug War’, as well as the production of the second season of the Israeli series, Fauda (2017), about an undercover Israeli military unit operating in the occupied territories. While polarising local audiences may guarantee an affluent segment of subscribers, selecting controversial topics that make headlines in the international news may also help to capture the attention of Netflix’s global audiences.

The new political constellation in Brazil impacted the narrative presented in the second season of The Mechanism. Most of the reviews agreed that the last one was much more balanced than the first, presenting corruption as a phenomenon that transcends the PT party. The impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff is shown in the series as a coup orchestrated by corrupt politicians to preserve their own interests and privileges. The title of a review of the second season published in Folha de Sao Paulo ‘“O Mecanismo” is now more balanced and even the Workers Party may like the series’ (Goes, 2019) is quite illustrative of the transformations in the series’ narrative. A reviewer writing for the conservative Estado de Sao Paulo went even further, complaining that the second season ‘bought’ the left-wing thesis about the impeachment process being a coup orchestrated by corrupt congress members and the Superior Court of Justice (Venceslau, 2019). In June 2019, a month after the release of the second season, the alternative online news website The Intercept published a series of leaked telegram messages between the Lava Jato Operation leading team, among them former judge and current minister of justice Moro and prosecutor Dallagnol, that proved violations of legal procedures and blatant partisanship against the PT party’s former president and candidate (Greenwald and Pougy, 2019; Martins et al., 2019). The participation of Judge Moro in Bolsonaro’s government and the leaks revealing the partiality and illegal procedures employed by justice officers and police investigators brought Padilha to review his position regarding the Lava Jato operation and Judge Moro. He stated that Judge Moro disappointed him; however, far from assuming any degree of responsibility, he blamed the left for Bolsonaro’s election, for not supporting a candidate from outside the party files.

Conclusion

The Mechanism was produced and released at a critical time in Brazilian politics. While there is no doubt that the topic would attract audiences, the series did not present a neutral and de-ideologised version of the Lava Jato investigation as the series’ creator and producers argued. During its first season, the series presented an engaging and entertaining thriller, while at the same time clearly targeted the PT leadership and adopted a dangerous anti-politics discourse similar to those employed by authoritarian ideologies. While film and television fiction enjoy creative liberties and are released from the responsibility ascribed to non-fiction genres and news in the treatment of reality, the series’ narratives, producers, actors and ‘real life’ protagonist embraced a discursive strategy aimed at reinforcing the perception of the series as a truthful account of contemporary Brazilian politics. Complaints made by former Brazilian presidents Lula and Dilma regarding distorted representations of the case were downplayed by the mainstream media, drawing on two contradicting arguments: a) the modifications made by the series did not alter the facts, and b) after all, The Mechanism is a fictional entertainment and, as a result, there is not much to worry about it. We cannot measure the true impact made by the series in the disturbing political events that took, and still are taking, place in Brazil since the impeachment process of 2016. Beyond the series, news programmes, popular magazines and other media outlets targeted the PT leadership and thereby propelled a similar ‘anti-politics’ authoritarian discourse. However, I argue that under certain circumstances, like described throughout this article, fiction producers and creators should be made as accountable for their treatment of reality as journalists and non-fiction media professionals. Within a context where fake news is normal currency and the lines separating entertainment and news blur, this request may seem unrealistic, but encouraging awareness of this issue may be a first step.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Nahuel Ribke

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