Visual Style and Racial Politics in Three Brazilian Features
1998; Volume: 11; Issue: 21-22 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/ntc.1998.0014
ISSN1940-9079
Autores Tópico(s)Race, Identity, and Education in Brazil
ResumoVISUAL STYLE AND RACIAL POLITICS IN TOREE BRAZILIAN FEATURES ________________ROBERT STAM________________ New York University General Context The post-world War II period in Brazil was a time of relative democratization after the authoritarian Vargas regime. Internationally, the rise and defeat of the Nazi Regime led to the discrediting of racism in international politics and the repudiation of "scientific racism" in intellectual discourse . In Brazil, right-wing Integralism was on the defensive and democracy was on the upswing. In Sao Paulo, the First Brazilian Writers' Congress called for free elections as the only legitimate expression of popular sovereignty. In the following year, 1946, Josué de Castro published his Geografía da Fome (Geography of Hunger), a classic of social ecology subsequently translated and disseminated around the world. In racial terms, the defeat of Nazism strengthened anti-racist currents. In 1951, the Congress passed the Afonso Arinos law prohibiting racial discrimination in Brazil, provoked by an incident in which African American dancer Katherine Dunham was refused entry to a Säo Paulo hotel, under the pretext that her presence might perturb other Americans staying there. The need for such a law suggested that all was not well in the land of "racial democracy." Two years later, UNESCO, in the erroneous belief that Brazil had found a workable formula for racial togetherness, sponsored a series of studies of race relations in Brazil. Florestan Fernandes, Roger Bastide and Oracy Nogueira were assigned to research black/white relations in Säo Paulo, Thaies de Azevedo and Charles Wagley were assigned to Bahia, while Darcy Ribeiro was to study the assimilation of indigenous people. In all cases, research uncovered a subtle web of prejudice trapping blacks, with "Indians" oppressed even more violently. During this same period, in 1944, the Afro-Brazilian actor/writer/activist /plastic artist Abdias de Nascimento founded his Black Experimental Theatre in order to train black actors and fight against discrimination. Having seen a Lima, Peru performance of Eugene O'Neill's Emperor Jones 01998 NUEVO TEXTO CRITICO Vol. XI No. 21/22, Enero a Diciembre 1998 102_________________________________________________________ROBERT STAM starring a blackfaced white actor (Hugo d'Evieri) as Brutus Jones. Abdias resolved to valorize actors of color: Both on a social and artistic level, the Black Experimental Theatre strives to restore, valorize, and exalt the contribution of Africans to the Brazilian formation , unmasking the ideology ofwhiteness.1 The goals of the Black Experimental Theatre, at the moment of its founding at least, were to: 1) integrate blacks into Brazilian society; 2) criticize the ideology of whiteness and the sociology and anthropology that promoted it; 3) valorize the African contribution; 4) promote the theatre as an ideal medium for these ideas. Apart from plays, the Black Experimental Theatre also founded the journal Quilombo and organized the National Black Conference (1949) and the First Congress for Black Brazilians (1950). The Black Experimental Theatre vigorously defended the theatrical aspects of African culture, citing the continent's religious feasts, its danced liturgies, and the primordial role of song and mimicry. African religions, de Nascimento argued, are no more "folkloric" than are Catholicism or Islam. Through song and dance and pantomime, blacks "capture the divine, configure the gods, humanizing them and cohabiting with them in mystic trance."2 First Style: Grande Otelo and the Chanchada The most important black star of this period was Sebastiäo Bernardes Souza Praia, or "Grande Otelo." If artistic prestige were distributed more fairly, Grande Otelo would be as well-known as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, or James Earl Jones. One of Brazil's finest and most versatile actors , Grande Otelo was described by Orson Welles as "the greatest comic actor of the 20th century" and by novelist Jorge Amado as "the epitome of Brazil." Grande Otelo's multiple talents included composing, singing, dancing , acting, and screenwriting. He performed in over one hundred Brazilian feature films, participating in virtually all phases of Brazilian Cinema and television, from the chanchada (carnival-inspired musical) through Cinema Novo, the Underground of the 1960s, and the telenovelas of the 1970s and 1980s, working tirelessly up until 1994, when he died just after arriving in Paris for a French retrospective of his work at the "Three Continents Festival...
Referência(s)