The Transnational Journey of the Celluloid Baiana: Round-Trip Rio-LA

Abstract

This chapter will consider how a form of regional dress favoured by Afro-Brazilian women from the city of Salvador in Brazil’s North East was adopted by both Brazilian film-makers and Hollywood in the 1930– 1960 period as a signifier of national and pan-Latin American identity, respectively. It will begin by tracing the cultural origins of the baiana costume and how it was first transformed for the screen in Brazil. It will then examine how Hollywood employed the stylized baiana costume of tutti-frutti turbans and frilly skirts, which would become Carmen Miranda’s cultural straightjacket. Miranda as the archetypal screen baiana came to personify Latin America in the context of President Roosevelt’s ‘Good Neighbour Policy’. Projected back to Brazil, Hollywood’s representation of Brazil/latino identity began to dialogue with Brazilian attempts at national self-definition. Finally, this chapter will turn its attention to the Brazilian film industry’s vernacular variant of the musical comedy, the low-budget chanchada, which re-worked the baiana persona, and just as Carmen Miranda had done in Hollywood, whitened her skin.