AN OPPOSITIONAL REPRESENTATION

    The 3% is a Brazilian television show classified under the drama genre that presents an alternate universe where the world is divided into two separate lifestyles and locations: the inland and offshore. The inland is a poverty-stricken area that everyone dreams to move on from. Therefore, every citizen is given a chance to enter the offshore utopia through a series called the process. During the process, there is a variety of tasks that each participant must accomplish by testing multiple different types of skill sets in order to enter the society of the offshore. The whole purpose of the process is that they can select the perfect citizens which are considered the 3% of the inland population that will follow the proper guidelines when integrating with the offshore utopia. 

    Both societies rely heavily on the technology practices of their everyday life. The cultural aspect is that the citizens must abide by the guidelines of the process and accept the decision in an appropriate manner. Each citizen has a chip surgically placed in their ear with three stitches to allow the government to determine their identity. The government also announces important information through this ear chip. One of the participants betrays this cultural expectation by having a false chip implant to fake his identity for a new chance at entering the offshore society. This is considered extremely dangerous if this citizen were to be caught and he would be punished accordingly. The dominant discourse view is that the citizen must abide by the rules of the elite group that is in charge of the society and the process. That means not inferring with technology assessed by the government and accepting the outcomes of the process. Although many of the citizens have a dominant representation towards the process, the main character Michele has an oppositional representation. 

There is a group of infiltrators and rebels on the inland who are actively but discreetly trying to overthrow the elite group from this separation of societies. Michele joined this group in hopes of revenge for the death of her brother. Michele’s brother was killed by the process leader named Ezekial and she hopes to overthrow the offshore society by becoming one of the 3%. Michele also displays the subversive discourse view of the society because she is actively trying to remove the dominant discourse ideology by this rebellion. As stated by one of the infiltrators, “Revenge is not just about killing Ezekial (the process leader), it is about destroying their (the offshore) world” (Charlone Tiago Mello).

Photo link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3%25

Charlone Tiago Mello, César. “3%, Chapter 01: Cubes.” Season 1, episode 1, 2016.