Terça-feira, Novembro 23, 2004



THE LAND OF THE EXOTIC: BRAZIL IN CONTEMPORARY HOLLYWOOD

Imagine a country where in its north region a gigantic snake brutally kills people. In the south, an alien invades a birthday party, and its image is recorded and broadcasted to the entire planet. Somewhere in the southeast, after being excluded by the Vatican, an Italian priest sets into a community, and after his death, his spirit returns of the dead to torture a young women in the US. This place is Brazil ¿ at least according to Hollywood contemporary production. In times of the globalized media¿s pluralistic and inclusive discourse, the representation of countries that at their best only draw curiosity of American audiences still is based on myths about them. When analyzing the case of Brazil, one must be careful because in the past decades, there haven¿t been any productions about the nation or Brazilian characters in Hollywood. In the few movies that the country has been mentioned, there have been references that may be compared to the bricks in a wall. Alone, they look small and unimportant, but when grouped, they are units of solid and long-lasting structure. Another reason to be cautious is that even though the representations about Brazil are homogeneous in content, they vary in form. The only similarity between the films mentioning Brazil is the mention itself. The nation has been portrayed in genres stretching from comedy to terror. With such scarce and heterogeneous portrayals, Brazil has been presented as a ¿jungle of exoticism.¿ In other words, it has been depicted as a land of odd, strange, unusual and mysteriously different things. As we will see, the land of the exotic in Hollywood contemporary production is a result of myth creation and maintenance and asymmetrical forces in globalization.

Myths are ¿assumptions about the modern world found in a sets of ideas about world history, politics, economics, culture, communication and ecology¿ that ¿become exemplar and repeatable¿ (Ferguson 241). Because of the natural lack of interest for ¿distant¿ countries that every nation has, because of the poor accounts about Brazil in the American media, and due to the power of ¿provid[ing] the broadest common background of assumptions about what things are, how they work (or should work), and why¿ (Gross 132) that these few accounts have, Hollywood and film makers have consistently relied on assumptions every time Brazil has been mentioned in their productions. The result is the portrayal of a country with a culture and a population that contrasts with Uncle Sam¿s civility. Exotic, then, means a country highly identified with primary and physical instincts, with superstitions and lack urban settings. The 1999 production Stigmata exemplifies these three characteristics assigned to Brazil. A small town in the interior of the state of Minas Gerais , with few poor houses, is the place where Father Gianni Delmonico sets his church where saints bleed and miracles happen. The movie shows an enormous degree of commotion and religiosity by the part of the Brazilians. Such situation is translated into the people¿s massive attendance to the church, permeated by singing and demonstrations of faith that resemble a gigantic tribal gathering. At the same time, New York, with its urban landscape of night clubs, raves and subways, serves as the background for Frankie Paige, the main character. Exotic, then, contrasts to rationality, technology and urban settings ¿ the images about the US encoded by Hollywood. There is no evidence about foreign characters, not only from Brazil, in contemporary Hollywood movies that deal with computers, rockets and any kind of technology that in a semiotic chain is attached to rationality and urbanization. As these binaries are formed, they ¿serve as a model, and by the same token as a justification, for all human [and Hollywood] actions¿ (Ferguson 241).

The origin of Brazilian exoticism in Hollywood can be traced back to the Walt Disney Brazilian character Ze Carioca, a Brazilian parrot who lives in the (fictitious) Vila Xurupita neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro and who appeared in Saludos Amigos (1942) and The Three Caballeros (1944). Ze Carioca is supposed to embody Brazil and the particularities of its people. From a poor background, he is a friendly and easy going guy, but a bit of a hustler, generally on the lookout to work his way up the social ladder. Thirty five years later, it was on the hands of James Bond in the 1979 production ¿Moonraker¿ to confirm the myth about Brazil. In the two films with Ze Carioca and in ¿Moonraker,¿ the characters take a trip to Rio de Janeiro during the carnival holiday. The viewer is faced with images of massive gathering of people dancing and partying for no apparent reason in a nihilist scenario that may be compared to the views of Western societies about tribal ritual. The portrayal of a people shaped by physical and pleasurable activities is accentuated even more on Bond¿s movie as the spy is constantly tempted by beautiful Brazilian women in small bikinis. The myth here is created and perpetuated because of the simplistic approach of constructing the image of Brazil based on the four days of its most celebrated holiday. There might be some truth about the identification of Brazilians with music and dancing, and about the existence of attractive women on the beaches, however, reality has been distorted in such a way that these images have become synonymous of Brazil. ¿Typically, myth has a complex relationship to social reality. It builds on what is already at work. Combining the real with the ideal, it produces something of an ideal type that stretches beyond what the evidence will show¿ (Ferguson 241). Brazil has been portrayed in other productions during the period between Ze Carioca and James Bond, but because of the recognizable status of the Disney¿s and Bond¿s trademarks, it had a great deal of influence on the creation and reinforcement of the myth.


The representations of Brazil in contemporary production in Hollywood have inherited and made use of the exotic in more subtle forms. In the 2001 comedy The Animal, Marvin Mange (Rob Schneider) is trapped in a scientific experiment that leaves on him animal traits with and instincts that start taking over him at the most improper times. The opening scene shows the garage where he lived and surprisingly, since the character has no connections with Brazil, a big Brazilian flag lies on the central wall of the tiny room. Relying on the Brazilian exoticism, the director decided to associate his character to odd and unusual things from the beginning of the movie, and clearly a flag from an industrialized and ¿rational¿ country would not fit the personality of character who later would literally turn into an animal with basic and physical needs. In the 1997 action movie Speed 2, Annie Porter (Sandra Bullock) is aboard of a cruise liner which is set on a collision course into a gigantic oil tanker. Before all the action takes place, Porter appears watching a strange and eccentric performer on the cruise. His name is Carlinhos Brown, a Brazilian singer famous in the country more for his obsession for being different than for its vocal gifts. Needing to creating an exotic atmosphere typical of cruises, the director decided to use the Brazilian singer instead of artists and musical styles associated to ¿industrialized¿ and ¿urban nations.¿

Myth making about ¿distant¿ nations in Hollywood is a result of asymmetrical characteristics of globalization. Bianca Freire-Medeiros says, ¿The images about a [country]¿contribute, intentionally or not, to the diffusion of a set of beliefs and fundamental values that¿ are part of a dualistic situation: interpretations about the place to be represented are determined by the [country] where the representations emanate¿ (202). The representations and interpretations ¿ the myth - carried in American movies about Brazil exposes a situation which Hollywood has all the actions and Brazil has to accept the consolation price of being on the screen. In other words, directors and filmmakers are not concerned about how they portray the image of a distant country and how it is easier to label it ¿distant¿ (therefore ¿different¿) because the appearance itself is seem as a form of recognition. The territorial, cultural and economical distance between Brazil and the US propitiates the perfect situation for myth making and maintenance. ¿The contributions of mass media are likely to be most powerful in cultivating images of groups and phenomena about which there is little first-hand opportunity for learning particularly when such images are not contradicted by other established beliefs and ideologies¿ (Gross 132). Since there has never been a voice opposing the exotic character of Brazil, it has been easy for Hollywood to do movies like the 1997 Anaconda. The movie shows a crew of anthropologists taken as hostage by a hunter obsessed to capture a giant and legendary snake Anaconda. It takes place in the Brazilian Amazon, and for American audiences without any background information on the country, Brazil might be decoded as an exotic jungle where mysterious animals exist, ignoring even the fact that Sao Paulo is a city larger than New York in size and population. The lack of an urban setting, as it has been said, is one of the ways that define exoticism. Hollywood, then, provides ¿a somewhat distorted picture about what human life looks like in other parts of the world¿ (Rosengren 232).

The economical and territorial distances, two problems of globalization, accentuate the myth because the trade of information is a one way street, with Brazil being bombarded by US culture, but not the opposite happening. The notion of a distant and unknown land permeates the myth about Brazilian exoticism, and this is due the fact that even though globalization calls for a international community, space and time have not disappeared as Ferguson argues. The author says, ¿Uncertainty about where and when we are in the world is at odds with the idea that technology can offer benefits of time-distance compression for all¿ (244). Even though, then, there have been more representations of other countries, like Brazil, in Hollywood, preconceived and ¿influenced mental maps,¿ like argued Rosengren, have been responsible for the construction of a country¿s image and its subsequent encoding. In 2002, Signs with Mel Gibson joined Stigmata and Anaconda in the hall that depicted Brazil as a distant land, and therefore predetermined to be a stage for unusual things. In the movie that shows the invasion of aliens in the Earth, the first images of the creatures were presented as a home-recording from a birthday party in a small town in Brazil. In the movie, Mel Gibson began to believe that the aliens were real after watching those images; in real life the American audience has confirmed that Brazil is a ¿far away¿ land where it is understandable the existence of unusual and odd things.
Looking from a more political and economical perspective, the ideas of Antonio Gramsci, the influential Italian journalist who spend some time in prison for making the Italian government uncomfortable, about hegemony and power maintenance still resonate. In this way, the dominant group frames the media according to its interests. James Lull quotes Stewart Hall, ¿Hegemony is a framing [of] all competing definitons of reality within [the dominant class's] range, bringing all alternatives within their horizons of though¿ (50). In the economical globalized world, obviously Brazil is subordinated to the US, so its depiction in a more exotic form justifies its subordination, like the colonizers in sixteenth century portrayed the indigenous people as savages to justify European colonization. When Brazil is on the spot, even cheap erotic productions hold to the myths created by James Bond, instead of just showing the usual robotic and androgenic sexual encounters. In the 2003 Emmanuelle in Rio, the scenes of sexual acts are intercalated by images of candomble, the particular Brazilian religion which is a syncretism between African religions and Catholicism, and speeches about the natural beauty of Rio. The range of alternatives suggested by Hall in the Brazilian case is limited to exoticism, and so economical and political hegemony is justified. Freire-Medeiros says, ¿[Hollywood depiction is] a sight that gives theme to our [country], and in the radicalization of the strange, it plans¿to make sense of what Brazilians are¿ (203).

The representations of Brazil in American contemporary cinema shows a country controlled by physical and primary needs, moved by superstitions, home for odd and mysteriously different events, and having as background non-urban settings. The land of the exotic is a result of myth creation and maintenance that have as its starting point Ze Carioca and James Bond. Myth-making is a result of asymmetrical characteristics of globalization. The country portraying another nation is the one that will generate interpretations and understandings; whereas the portrayed nation will limit itself to accept the portrayal. Territorial and economical distances reinforce those understandings, and hegemonic characteristics of globalization explain why Hollywood is not open to more realistic representations. Obviously, to cry for more realistic representations of Brazil in Hollywood contemporary productions sounds unrealistic. The paradox is true because of the little importance and influence that the South-American has on the US. The purpose of this essay was to expose the issue, and show Brazilians that if they wish to obtain better portrayals in the international community, they¿d better construct it through their own cinema. Otherwise, looks upon the exotic nation in South America will continue to exist.