Tag Archives: blackness

Black Intellectuals: From Elitist to Activist

Terms of Inclusion: Black Intellectuals in 20th Century Brazil is a secondary source written by Paulina L. Alberto. It was published in 2011. Her intended audience is those in academia, to provide more insight to research that came before her and will come after her. This source can be classified as an intellectual history.

In summary, these two chapters cover the emergence of afro-Brazilian papers as activist instead of elitist. Chapter three focuses on the nuances concerned with the Mae Preta statue; white Brazilians saw the black wet-nurse as the obedient slave who suffered in silence, accompanied by a sense of nostalgia for a time when black voices were more easily silenced. Afro-Brazilians saw the white child suckling the black wet-nurse as an analogy to the debt owed to afro-Brazilians. The reparations owed to these wet-nurses for feeding and sustaining the white population at the expense of their own black children. Chapter four talks about racial tensions after Vargas lead a bloodless coup and installed a nationalist government. He promoted Brasilidade (Brazilianess), which was a mix of patriotism, nationalism, and integration of black culture into the mainstream. White Brazilians preferred a melting pot approach, where the remnants of African culture would disintegrate and mesh with the dominant European-based culture in Brazil. Afro-Brazilians preferred a multicultural/salad bowl approach, where pure African customs should remain untouched and celebrated, such as Candomble. Schisms occurred within the black community concerning the following items: socialism vs. fascism, anti- vs. pro-immigrant, westernization vs. pan-Africanism.

A critique I have is in her periodization. She simultaneously flips through time and space: the events are not chronological, and so it gets confusing as to the order in which the events occurred, and at the same time she is changing between Salvador, Rio, and Sao Paulo.
I enjoyed her sources. She used black, immigrant, and white Brazilian newspapers as sources. This truly gives a three-dimensional look into how racial discrimination/inclusivity was viewed amongst these groups.

Questions:
How would you interpret the Mae Preta?
How do you think the schism within the black community concerning methods of integration affected their eventual integration into mainstream society?

Film Analysis 2

This film is about a young and beautiful woman, Eurydice, running away from home because Death kept threatening her. She stayed at her cousin Serafina’s house and there she grew to love Orpheus, a guitar playing, Romeo who was engaged to marry Mira. At Carnaval, Death gets to Eurydice, and Orpheus is heartbroken as he carries her corpse back home. Mira, having found out about Orpheus’ affair, throws stones at him and he falls over a cliff and dies, embraced to his love. This is a French-directed film, based on a Brazilian play, based on a Greek myth. This opens up the film to criticism about the Eurocentric view of Afro-Brazilians.

A clearly Eurocentric point of view the Afro-Brazilian people is how they were depicted as jovial, street vendors who were constantly dancing to and playing music. Even in the opening scene on the boat, everyone was dancing as the ship was docking. This coincides exactly with Freyre’s idea of people of African descent, and how this jovial culture adds to the value of Brazilian culture as a whole. Another critique is how the women were portrayed; they were fiery, sensual beings as depicted by the strange foreplay Serafina partook in and by Mira’s constantly displayed cleavage. Again, Freyre wrote at length about the sensuality and eroticism of the slaves brought over from Africa, and how the Portuguese focused on bringing over beautiful slaves so as to populate the empty lands of Brazil with beautiful, mixed babies. Finally, the way poor people in Brazil were depicted was Eurocentric. These people were wasting what little money they had on Carnaval costumes instead of food. Yes, this does occur in real life, but there are reasons for such “madness”. They are buying into the illusion of that day; at Carnaval you can be anyone, even the King, for a day and escape the oppression of poverty. A poverty, as Fernandes claimed, that is imposed on the people through systemic racism. The racial inequality present in Brazil could even be seen in the costumes chosen for Carnaval. The people of Day were dressed in French colonial garb whereas the people of Night were dressed in African clothing. One usually associates Day/Light with Goodness and Night/Dark with Evil, thus perpetuating racial ideologies in a subtle way.

Concerning cinematography, the use of color was integral to the film. When Eurydice arrived, she was adorned with a yellow necklace. The camera then zoomed in on a yellow canary, representative of Eurydice, in a cage with black crows, representative of Death. Then the scene skips to Serafina, and her own yellow canary is acting up. Canaries sense dangerous levels of toxins in the air, and were used in coalmines for years, but Serafina’s canary was sensing the impending danger of Death. The red lights represented the Underworld, which was depicted as a favela in Brazil, which many would consider an accurate comparison. Overall, I felt that this was an interesting film that successfully put a modern twist on an old Greek myth.