Abstract
This chapter explores how national and individual identities are shaped through cinema. Examining a range of Brazilian films that take place in the space of the favela or poor urban communities, this chapter examines how these spaces have come to define aspects of the Brazilian popular imaginary. Specifically, these constructions are looked at in terms of their implications for gendering the identity of these spaces.
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Notes
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Orfeu Negro was based on the verse play Orfeu Negro da Conceição: Tragédia Carioca, written by the Modernist poet Vinícius de Moraes, and which was itself based on the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice.
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The film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes (1959) and Best Foreign Film Oscar (1960), among numerous other international prizes.
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Carlos Diegues was one of the filmmakers associated with the Cinema Novo or New Cinema movement of the 1960s. He is one of Brazil’s most respected filmmakers of that generation.
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A juvenocracy refers to “the domination … of urban life by mostly male figures under the age of twenty-five who wield considerable economic, social and moral influence. A juvenocracy may consist of drug gangs, street crews, loosely organised groups, and individual youths who engage in illicit activity. They operate outside the bounds of traditional homes and neighbourhood” (Dyson 2004, 436). While Michael Eric Dyson is specifically referring to black and Hispanic communities in the US, the term juvenocracy can be comfortably applied to gang groupings, independent of cultural context, where the ruling sector is composed primarily of young men such as the case of the drug gangs located in Brazil’s favela communities.
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The BOPE itself is a highly controversial entity. Established during the military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985, it is closely associated with a militarized mentality and operational model that is renowned for its violence against its own citizens. Its insignia consisting of a skull pierced by a dagger embodies this stance. After the release of Elite Squad the BOPE found itself facing a surge in popularity from many quarters that felt their violent, militarized response to the situation in the favelas of Rio was an effective strategy. For an extensive look at the BOPE, see Ângela Cristina Salgueiro Marques and Simone Maria Rocha (2010) and Odirléia Lima Arnal (2010) on the legacy of the military dictatorship.
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Throughout the production of Elite Squad, various police and government bodies attempted to block the film because of its depiction of police corruption and violence in the favela communities. In addition, a version of the film was leaked before its official release, ensuring that an estimated 11 million people saw the film before it was available in the national cinemas.
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Frantz Fanon discusses the “mastery of the word” in relation to access to power in a colonial context in Black Skin, White Masks (1967, 18). Morgan and Bennett discuss how global hip-hop culture has gone beyond the mastery of the word to create a new language:
[t]hey have used that new language to redefine, name, and create their many worlds and worldviews. Through their unprecedented global movement of art and culture, the citizens of the hip-hop nation have used their unique and collective aesthetic voices both to ‘possess’ and transform the world, a process that has not merely afforded them power, but has also enabled them to produce new forms of power, beauty and knowledge. (2011, 11)
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The Globo Group is the largest mass media conglomerate in Latin America. The television network Rede Globo is the dominant television network on Brazilian free-to-air television and is the dominant telenovela producer. For more information on the Globo and the media in Brazil, see Mauro P. Porto (2012).
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McDonald, S. (2017). Gendering the Favela: Brazilian National Identities on Screen. In: Monk, N., Lindgren, M., McDonald, S., Pasfield-Neofitou, S. (eds) Reconstructing Identity. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58427-0_6
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