Cinema, Slavery, and Brazilian Nationalism by Richard A. Gordon (review)

The aim of this book is to assess the potential of a range of Brazilian films that deal with the subject of slavery, released between 1976 and 2005, to "revise the social identities of Brazilian audience members" (2). The overarching argument is that, in spite of the heterogeneous corpus of films analyzed, they collectively offer "a sort of recipe for persuasively presenting to viewers a new way to conceive of one of their social groups" (2), thus exemplifying common ways that narratives offer new understandings of social groups. Gordon's thesis is that the various filmmakers concerned "have intuitively converged on a series of interconnected tactics that research in behavioral sciences suggests can be effective" (2). He grounds his study in social psychology, following the lead of Patrick Colm Hogan, using the concept of identity as defined by social identity theory, first developed in the 1970s by social psychologists Henri Tajfel and John C. Turner.

The author provides a detailed analysis of five films, all of which deal with the subject of slavery but were produced in very different political and cultural contexts, namely: Xica da Silva (1976, director Carlos Diegues), Quilombo (1984, director Carlos Diegues), Chico Rei (1985, director Walter Lima Júnior), O Aleijadinho: Paixão, glória e suplício (2000, director Geraldo Santos Pereira), and Cafundó (2005, directors Paulo Betti and Clóvis Bueno). The analysis centers on each film's understanding of Brazilianness and how each invites the audience to embrace the latter. Gordon's principal conclusion is that all five films adopt "remarkably similar persuasive overtures toward potential audiences" (4). He argues that this collection of films conveys a vision of Brazilian national identity that is fundamentally syncretic and Afrocentric, yet advocates racial and ethnic inclusiveness, and that, as films about slavery, they intensify the tendency of historical films to stimulate reconsiderations of national identity. His study critically engages with the ideas posited by Gilberto Freyre and Abdias do Nascimento in relation to Brazilian identity, highlighting the rhetorical similarities between the work of these two intellectuals and the films in question.

Via close readings of the five films, Gordon identifies five key, interlinked elements that encourage viewers to rethink their social identities, as follows: underlining the current relevance of the story told in the film by means of clues linking that past to the present; emphasizing national affiliations as more important than those premised on race, gender, ethnicity or religion; casting the film's protagonist as a national metaphor and prototype for the national population; viewer identification of this protagonist as what the author terms a "cinematic self," a model for how audience members see themselves in national terms; and strategically shaping this proxy for the nation and the national population.

In chapter 1, on the film O Aleijadinho, Gordon illustrates the film's embrace of a Euro-African syncretic vision of Brazilianness, exemplifying how eighteenth-century Brazil—the historical setting of the film—functions as an allegory of Brazil at the turn of the twenty-first century. He examines the strategies used by the director to assist viewers' understanding of the protagonist's on-going relevance, including editing and mise-en-scène, arguing that "Aleijadinho emphasizes the national category of identity by depicting a social context—colonization—in which a population that would become Brazil is collectively oppressed" (21). He analyzes the metaphorical status of the figure of the acclaimed mixed-race sculptor Aleijadinho by drawing on the national metaphors and their inner workings identified in Hogan's Understanding Nationalism: On Narrative, Cognitive Science, and Identity (2009), revealing how a protagonist may act as a guide for viewers, helping them to conceive of the national category of their social identities. He then explores the film in the context of identification dynamics, at the core of what he sees as the "cinematic-self effect" (35)—"a specific viewer interface or communicative role assigned in the film to the protagonist" (38)—referencing Murray Smith's breakdown...