Rio de Janeiro

Urban Life through the Eyes of the City

Beatriz Jaguaribe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135166335
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

"Through artistic imaginaries, media productions, social practices and spatial mappings, this book offers an insightful and original contribution to the understanding of Rio de Janeiro, one of the highly contested urban terrains in the world. Offering a rich diversity of examples extracted from lived experience, iconographic materials, and narratives, it provides innovative and compelling connections between theoretical questions and urban vignettes. Throughout the essays, the specificity of Rio de Janeiro is highlighted but framed in relation to theoretical questions that are relevant to major contemporary cities. The book underlines the dilemmas of a city that attempts to compete globally while confronting social inequality, violence, and novel forms of democratic agency. It retraces Rio de Janeiro's modernist memories as the former political/cultural capital of Brazilian intelligentsia and national culture. It explores Rio as a city of popular culture, mestizo legacies, media productions, and cultural innovation."

1 Imagining the “Marvelous City” Spectacle and urban spaces¹

DOI: 10.4324/9780203859513-1

When and how do cities reinvent their symbolic and cultural repertoires? A city’s accumulation of cultural capital depends, evidently, on a series of factors among which are its cultural legacies engrained through history, its economic and political strength, the presence and investment of the state, the global dimensions that the city lays claim to, and the intervention of private capitalist entrepreneurship that redesigns cities as arenas of spectacle and consumption.² As has been often remarked, in the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries, the cities that held International Fairs became showcases of national modernity, the symbolic centers of Western imperial hegemony, and the stage of technical novelties. But also crucially, according to Kevin Hetherington,³ the International Fairs were the site of the new experience of “capitalism’s eye” because they inaugurated forms of viewership and interaction with consumption and display. In the mid-twentieth century and early twenty-first century, Olympic events have displaced International Fairs as the global event in the world. Even more prominently than the International Fairs, in the Olympic event the host city is displayed to the eyes of the world not only because the sporting event itself galvanizes more popular attention but also because the diversified media coverage is now all encompassing. In the light of these international events, the question that arises is what kind of city was/is being designed, desired, and imagined?

In this chapter, I explore how Rio de Janeiro was showcased, imagined, and spectacularized for the International Exhibit of the Centenary of Brazil’s Independence in 1922 and how it is currently being branded by the remaking of its motto as “The Marvelous City” for the upcoming 2016 Olympics mega event. I argue that both events were/are catalysts that generated imaginaries about the “ideal city,” “desired modernities,” and the aesthetics of the spectacle. I use the term “spectacle” in accordance with Debord’s (1967) well-known formulation, where spectacle becomes a form of visual/narrative representation and enactment that stipulates modes of reception and circumscribes the exchanges of the public realm to the consumption and production of images. But the spectacle is not all encompassing, neither does it devour all alternative imaginaries into its orbit. The spectacle can be resisted by alternative forms of critique, satire, and political agency until these forms of resistance themselves become part of the mainstream.

Similar to the International Fairs of the nineteenth century, the Centenary of 1922 was envisioned as a spectacle of modernity, nationhood, and cosmopolitan allure. But its difference lies in the fact that, although the Centenary was an International Exposition, it took place in a peripheral nation and its primary focus was to precisely demonstrate that Brazil’s quite secondary position in the ordering of nations was soon to be altered by its modernizing future already-in-the-making. In order to stress the Centenary as a marvelous showcase of modernity, a certain type of viewership was in demand. This was the viewership of “civilized” decorum removed from the festive contagion of the carnivalesque marvelous so prevalent in the popular festivities of the city. In this sense, the Centenary constituted a pedagogical effort that “taught” the viewing public how to appreciate the displayed promises of a Brazilian modernity.

Although the Centenary Exhibit was staged so as to instill wonderment, its viewership was limited to the inhabitants of Rio and the foreign press and authorities who arrived in the city specifically for the event. By contrast, the upcoming 2016 Olympics will receive total media coverage and will be viewed by global audiences. Rio is no longer the capital and Brazil is no longer a peripheral country but an emerging nation seeking prominence in the world scenario. In the search for global competitiveness, Rio is being branded and the recasting of the marvelous is a crucial issue in the overall imaging of the city. Whereas in 1922 popular culture was cordoned off the event of the spectacle, in 2016 a diversity of cultural manifestations and experiences is being packaged by branding strategies. If the spectacle can be resisted, at least momentarily, can branding also be deflected or punctured by another order of images, narratives, bodily experiences, and events?

In exploring the themes of the spectacle in the 1922 Centenary Celebrations and the current branding of the “Marvelous City” for the preparations of the Olympics, I am conflating together events that are thematically linked but that do not have a direct causal relationship. Although largely forgotten, the Centenary of 1922 left a legacy of architectural constructs. At the time of writing this chapter the 2016 Olympics is still in the future. Therefore, I am not decoding the event per se, nor am I interested in the politics of mega events or in the specific economic factors that condition the Olympics.⁴ Rather, I focus on the Olympics as a catalyst that conditions re-inventions of the city. I am mainly interested in the symbolic dimension of the event and how the expectations surrounding it trigger imaginaries of how the city is or should be. Given the dimensions of this chapter, my analysis of these events is highly selective. Relying on the research of previous scholars and emphasizing original aspects extracted from the illustrated magazines and the press for the 1922 Centenary, I explore specific themes regarding the fabrication of urban imaginaries during these events. These themes refer to the relation between: urban imaginaries and spectacularized events; the possibilities of the marvelous experience in the city in contrast to the urban branding of the marvelous; and the desires and aspirations of an “ideal city,” desired modernities, and the vision of the city engendered by cosmopolitan, national, and global agendas.

The Centenary of Independence, 1922: Cosmopolitanism, the past, and the present

In a nation that was largely agricultural and dependent on coffee exports and in a country ruled by oligarchic elites, Rio de Janeiro was not only the political and cultural center of the nation. It was also the iconic city where new forms of socialization, consumption, and modernization were being essayed.⁵ By the 1920s, the city had already been modernized by the reforms implemented by the energetic mayor Pereira Passos in 1902–1906.⁶

Labeled as the “tropical Haussmann,” Pereira Passos sought together with the federal government to alter the image of Rio as a backward pestilential port.⁷ Passos undertook infra-structural reforms such as the modernization of the port, the opening of new avenues, and the improvement of public transportation. Together with the sanitation doctor Oswaldo Cruz, Passos promoted a veritable crusade to eradicate yellow fever, impose obligatory vaccination, and re-enforce hygienic standards.⁸ If emblematic avenues and monumental buildings were erected, street life also had to succumb to new sanitary measures. The confusing mixture of street vendors hawking their products, the diverse array of peddlers, the display of animal entrails amid a swarm of flies, and the informal clothing of pedestrians were all targeted for reform. Regulations were issued prohibiting the selling of unsanitary foods.⁹ Stray dogs were also the object of the municipal vigilance just as the rat hunt and the reward for the killing of rodents became strictly enforced. Conversely, Passos imported sparrows so that the tropical squares of Rio could be filled with the birds that poetically evoked memories of Paris.

Aside from the hygienic reasoning behind the sanitary measures, the norms and impositions of the municipality were also tinged by a desire to curtail popular culture, rowdiness, and Afro-Brazilian manifestations of culture in an attempt to instill a model of Europeanized bourgeois civility. Bourgeois European codes of dressing and public behavior were enforced and the symbolic buildings of the great Central Avenue as well as the new eclectic building of the Municipal Theater, which mirrored—in a minor scale—the Ópera of Paris, were essential to convey the notion of a symbolic architectural space that would be adequate to the flânerie of the well dressed elite.¹⁰

By the 1920s, the novelties of Passos’ reforms were already dated. The very pace of urban living had become much more accelerated. Rio was in the thralls of the “vertiginous life” to use the expression of one of its foremost chroniclers of this period, the writer and journalist João do Rio (1881–1921). Through narratives, charges, satires, and chronicles of mundane life, the illustrated magazines of the period offered not only caustic and humoristic glimpses of urban living but they also featured the enticing world of new consumer objects, modes of urban living, and fashions.¹¹ The chronicles, short stories, and novels of João do Rio (1881–1921), Lima Barreto (1881–1922), and Benjamin Costallat (1897–1961), and the illustrations and cartoons of J. Carlos (1884–1950), among others, described with irony or celebratory rhetoric the new modes of socialization such as the practice of flirting, the novel mania for sports, and the thrill of velocity epitomized by the status laden automobile. With considerable flair, J. Carlos illustrated the carioca flapper as a lithe and fashionable new girl whose bobbed hair, high heels, flashing lipstick, and short skirts caused unprecedented commotion in the busy streets of the city. João do Rio’s novels and short stories also featured the charming flapper and her partner, the decadent dandy. His vast gallery of protagonists also included the popular classes. Young seamstresses batting their eye lashes against the glass panes of shop windows filled with glittering displays of unaffordable goods, popular artists strumming guitars in favelas enclaves, minor trades people, and participants of a variety of religious cults were all penned by the journalistic eye and the exotic prose of João do Rio.¹² But it was in the alluring dreams of the silver screen, the cinema, among all new forms of entertainment that captivated audiences.¹³ The movies and the images of urban modernity, as well as the glamour of the screen divas, presented new modes of femininity and forms of melodramatic imagination. The cinema also instilled a new form of viewer spectatorship. With its imposing pavilions, modern marvels, dramatic illumination, and display of national achievements, the Centenary also attempted to evoke a vision of the spectacular in keeping with the awed viewership of the movie audiences. In keeping with the attempt to represent state of the art modernity, the Centenary was also the occasion for the official inauguration of the radio in Brazil. As part of the commemorations, the American firm Westinghouse installed an antenna at the top of the Corcovado mountain. The president of the republic, Epitácio Pessoa, proffered his inaugural speech through the radio.¹⁴

The Centenary of 1922 takes place still in the auspices of the Old Republic that would only be politically overthrown by Vargas’ revolutionary takeover in 1930. Yet, according to Marly Silva da Motta, 1922 was a “mythical year” (Motta 1992b:1). This was the year of the famous Modernist Art Week that took place in São Paulo in February of 1922 and would later gain an iconic dimension as the launching ground of the modernist agenda; it was the year of the foundation of the Brazilian Communist Party, and the year where, in July, young lieutenants expressing the discontent of the middle classes arose in revolt at the Fort of Copacabana and pressured for political changes and democratic openings (Motta 1992b:1). In regards to the international scenario, Brazil needed to not only position itself vis-à-vis the new arrangements dictated by the end of First World War by strengthening the nation’s export capacity, but also by fomenting its incipient industrialization. In political and administrative terms, the model of the modernizing engineer and the sanitation doctor that had been celebrated to the utmost in the Passos’ administration now also included the figure of the national architect. Ruth Levy (2010) argues that the Centenary of 1922 made manifest, through the enterprising actions of the mayor Carlos Sampaio, the new value accorded to the role of the architect and not just the engineer that had been the prevailing figure of modernity during the former mayorships of the Old Republic. But most crucially, as mentioned before, the year of 1922 is an explosive signpost in the modernist and avant-garde agendas. The Modernist Art Week in São Paulo had already taken place when the international exhibit of the Centennial was inaugurated. Although the influence of the Modernist Art Week was still not widespread, it was evident that something new was in the making. In this sense, the International Exhibit of the Commemoration of the Centenary was the last great public display of the “old regime.”

The International Exhibit of the Commemoration of the Centenary of Brazil’s Independence in 1922 cost vast sums of public money. It was conceived, according to Carlos Kessel (2001), as a “shop window” of progress and as a “mirror” of the cosmopolitan, Europeanized, and modern self-image that the local elites wished to espouse in their utmost desire to exhibit a “civilized tropical culture” for foreign eyes. In certain aspects, the Centenary of 1922 partakes of the desire to project an image of “civilized cosmopolitanism” that had characterized the Pereira Passos reforms at the beginning of the twentieth century. As mentioned, the Passos reform also sought to constitute a bourgeois ordering of public space by dictating to the public the norms of behavior, dress codes, and hygienic habits. But the Passos reform, according to André Azevedo (2003), was also premised on a d...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• This is a richly textured and fascinating examination of Rio
• Half Title Page
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction The eyes of the city
• 1 Imagining the “Marvelous City” Spectacle and urban spaces1
• 2 Modernist ruins National narratives and architectural forms1
• 3 The visible and the invisibles Photography and social imaginaries in Brazil1
• 4 Carnival crowds1 Caught in the crowd
• 5 Tropical Babylon Copacabana and the poetics of nostalgia and decadence1
• 6 Favelas Realist aesthetics, consumption, and authorship1
• 7 Narrating the street Modernity and decadence
• Afterword The image of the city
• Bibliography
• Index