Controversies
One of the characters of the supporting cast, Viviane, gets involved with Lipe, a pedophile, on the internet. After his mother's death, Lipe moves from São Paulo to Nova Iguaçu, and ends up raping Viviane in the forest. After his second rape attempt, Lipe is caught by the police, but escapes. Viviane gets pregnant and undergoes an abortion. Besides being a legal procedure on rape cases in Brazil, abortion was never treated in a frank and positive way on telenovelas such as it has been on Chamas da Vida. On the other hand, the telenovela also portrays the drama of women who decide to carry on a pregnancy resulted from rape with the character of Raíssa. She is forced by her parents to gave birth to Gabriel, who is raised as her brother. After both her parents die in a car accident, she becomes responsible for Gabriel, taking him from the countryside to Nova Iguaçu. The telenovela was also groundbreaking in Brazil for showing the prejudice transsexual people suffer with the character of Carlão/Docinho (lived by Roberto Bomtempo, one of its directors).
Read more about this topic: Chamas Da Vida