Visualizing Black Lives

Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media

Reighan Gillam

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780252053405
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

A new generation of Afro-Brazilian media producers have emerged to challenge a mainstream that frequently excludes them. Reighan Gillam delves into the dynamic alternative media landscape developed by Afro-Brazilians in the twenty-first century. With works that confront racism and focus on Black characters, these artists and the visual media they create identify, challenge, or break with entrenched racist practices, ideologies, and structures. Gillam looks at a cross-section of media to show the ways Afro-Brazilians assert control over various means of representation in order to present a complex Black humanity. These images--so at odds with the mainstream--contribute to an anti-racist visual politics fighting to change how Brazilian media depicts Black people while highlighting the importance of media in the movement for Black inclusion.

An eye-opening union of analysis and fieldwork, Visualizing Black Lives examines the alternative and activist Black media and the people creating it in today's Brazil.

1

Mediating Resistance

Afro-Brazilian Media and Movements

The Dia da Consciência Negra (Day of Black Consciousness) holiday and celebration in Brazil falls on November 20. On this day, Zumbi dos Palmares is said to have died defending the Palmares Quilombo from Portuguese attackers in 1695. Enslaved people who escaped formed quilombos, communities or settlements typically hidden in remote areas.¹ In São Paulo, November might also be considered Black consciousness month due to the proliferation of activities and events about Black history and culture. Throughout November 2007, I attended numerous lectures, debates, and discussions about topics regarding Afro-Brazilian and African history and culture. On November 20, I attended the Black Consciousness March on Avenida Paulista. Amid the crowd of marchers, contingents of protesters for affirmative action at the Universidade de São Paulo (University of São Paulo) chanted slogans of support and cultural groups such as capoeira practitioners demonstrated their moves as we moved along the avenue. Large trailers carried organizers using bullhorns to call out messages of solidarity and uplift through the masses of people. The recognition and celebration of the Dia da Consciência Negra as a holiday is just one outcome of Black resistance and organizing in Brazil. Black movement activists had called for establishing November 20 as the Dia da Consciência Negra to honor Zumbi as part of their demands for Black recognition and inclusion. The meaning of the day and its activities bring to the fore centuries of resistance on the part of Black people from slavery to the present day.

Afro-Brazilians have taken advantage of media technologies as they have become available during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in order to document Black voices and experiences. This book focuses on Afro-Brazilian media producers I encountered during fieldwork from 2005 to 2013. This chapter contextualizes the media and media producers I examine as part of a larger field of Black media production with a deeper history of individual and collective Black movements for representation. These previous media and visual culture projects demonstrate actions of Afro-Brazilians producing their own media and representations that confer meanings onto Blackness that they control. These actions and the images they created establish a tradition of media and visual culture production rooted in Afro-Brazilian agency and antiracism.

This chapter offers a brief overview of moments in history when protest resulted in significant sociopolitical change. The racial regimes of domination that Afro-Brazilians struggled against include the institution of slavery, post-abolition European immigration and discrimination, and, after 1930, the ideology of racial democracy and continued racism. Protest has been foundational to establishing Blackness as a legible category of identity, demonstrating that racial inequality and racism exist, advocating for Black inclusion in Brazilian institutions, and affirming Black culture, people, and lives. While affirmative action and other educational policies have received attention as the center of Black politics, I argue that media and visual culture have been sites of racial struggle in Brazil. Race-related protest flows from organizations, NGOs, and individuals, who target the government, civil society, cultural institutions, and the hearts and minds of everyday people as sites of change.² Although in this chapter I focus only on large-scale events and recent political outcomes, individuals and small groups continue to work tirelessly along multiple fronts to valorize Blackness and improve the conditions of Black life. Also, while I aim my lens mainly toward southeastern Brazil, Black constituencies all over the country have maintained vigorous resistance and advocated for Black people.³

I argue that Afro-Brazilian media and the antiracist visual politics it engenders emerge from and facilitate Black movement activism. I examine how past media and visual culture projects align with Black activism as well as more recent and explicit interrogations of the racial logics embedded within mainstream media. These explicit interrogations take the form of government sponsored meetings and independent manifestos, which, I argue, are calls to “denaturalize the gaze conditioned by racism” (Ribeiro 2019: 32). Afro-Brazilian activist and philosopher Djamila Ribeiro asserts that “the absence or low incidence of Black people in spaces of power does not usually bother or surprise white people. To denaturalize this, all should question the absence of Black people in positions of management, Black authors in anthologies, Black thinkers in the bibliography of university courses, Black protagonists in audiovisual” (32). I include examples of efforts by Black Brazilians to challenge the hegemonic norms of media production and call for the inclusion of Blackness in public cultural expressions. In so doing, they contribute to a process of questioning the absence of Black media producers and the ways in which Blackness is represented. They extend Black activism to the visual realm by calling for consciousness around how many and how Black people do and do not appear in front of and behind the camera. Black media producers wage protests around representation alongside larger Black mobilizations for autonomy, inclusion, and recognition in Brazil. That they emerge from and contribute to Black activism is foundational to Black media and visual culture's formulation of antiracist visual politics.

Black Media and Visual Culture Foundations

Here I examine key moments of Black struggle and the media and visual culture that emerged in relation to these processes. Media and visual culture offered a space to materialize the political currents of the moment and an opportunity for Afro-Brazilians to present themselves in ways that they controlled. In Brazil, Black resistance to the condition of enslavement took many forms, including stopping or slowing down work, running away, and rebellions. Ultimately, enslaved and free Black people's movements played a critical role in the abolition of slavery. After a series of electoral reforms passed to slow the abolition of slavery during the 1870s and 1880s, radical abolitionists relied on civil disobedience and nonviolent strategies to bring about the end of slavery. Abolitionists circulated throughout the countryside of the state of São Paulo and encouraged enslaved men and women to flee the plantations for urban centers, where fellow abolitionists would provide them with resources and support. Thousands of enslaved people deserted “the plantations in 1887 and 1888 in a massive, non-violent exodus which neither plantation owners nor the state proved able to stop” (Andrews 1992: 151). The full emancipation of people enslaved in Brazil came on May 13, 1888, when Princess Isabel signed the Lei Áurea (Golden Law).⁴ In the last country to abolish slavery in the Americas, “emancipation was precipitated not by the masters, but by the slaves” (151).⁵

After abolition in 1888, many former enslaved people migrated to the cities looking for work. Yet, employment discrimination prevented them from taking full advantage of labor market opportunities (Andrews 1991). In response to this discrimination, Afro-Brazilians formed social and recreational clubs to organize leisure and political activities among themselves. In 1930 a group in São Paulo established the Frente Negra Brasileira (FNB, Black Brazilian Front) for greater political involvement and as a vehicle to put forth Black political candidates. None of their candidates succeeded at winning an election due to the stipulations that made literacy a requirement for voting, the fact that the majority of Afro-Brazilians still lived in the countryside, and internal disputes in the organization (Andrews 1992: 158). The FNB remains an example of Afro-Brazilian political organizing for electoral representation and social support.

The Black press developed alongside these civic and political organizations to enable communication amongst the membership and with the wider public. The Black press includes newspapers and newsletters produced by and for Black people in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and other cities from about 1833 until the 1950s (Butler 1998; Seigel 2009; Pinto 2010). In these newspapers, writers debated the conditions of racial inequality in the country, drew attention to Afro-Brazilian history, denounced racism, and called for particular actions among Afro-Brazilians (Butler 1998).

Photography played a critical role in the Black press. Micol Seigel writes: “Throughout the Black press's pages, sober young men in suits gazed unflinchingly into the camera. Author photos, group shots, regular ‘photo album’ features and occasional portraits of great men of color (sometimes alongside great white friends, all men save Princess Isabel) made the pages a collage of respectable Black masculinity” (2009: 185). These photographs in the Black press allowed Afro-Brazilian men a means of self-presentation that negated the assumption of inferiority they encountered in everyday life.

The Teatro Experimental do Negro (TEN, Black Experimental Theater) constituted another historic venue of Afro-Brazilian resistance that relied on the visual presentation of Black people. Abdias do Nascimento founded the TEN in 1944.⁶ Nascimento gained inspiration to found the TEN after traveling to Peru in 1941 and seeing a performance of the Eugene O'Neill play The Emperor Jones, in which a white actor in blackface played the lead. This performance made him reflect on the conditions of racial representation in Brazilian theater, in which “Black characters were either played by whites in blackface or were changed to whites” (O. Fernandez 1977: 7–8). The TEN would go on to produce a variety of plays in Rio de Janeiro with all-Black casts, thereby offering opportunities for Black actors to hone their craft and a place for Black playwrights to realize their dramatic visions. Although plagued by censorship, scant financial support, and lack of coverage from the mainstream press, the TEN managed to produce plays well into the 1960s. Its presence also inspired the development of other Black theater groups. By exploring the conditions of white dominance, discrimination, and barriers faced by Afro-Brazilians, the plays attempted to meet the goal expressed by Nascimento: “to see that the Negro became aware of the objective situation in which he found himself” (O. Fernandez 1977: 8). The Black press and the TEN were important antecedents to contemporary forms of Black self-representation in Brazil.

Black organizing had to weather the political conditions of two authoritarian regimes, which suppressed Black protest. From 1937 to 1945, Getúlio Vargas led an authoritarian government that dismantled any opposition to his leadership. On taking office, the Vargas regime shut down the FNB as well as other political parties. Later, a military dictatorship ruled the Brazilian government from 1964 to 1985, again suppressing dissent and ruling as an authoritarian regime. The dictatorship sought to prevent leftist political control and strengthen the economy. As part of its strategy of control, “the military dictatorship seized on [Gilberto] Freyre, mestiçagem, and racial democracy as tools of a repressive state, closing all discussions and negotiation, and suppressing race-based organizing” (Eakin 2017: 239). They attempted to consolidate their power by exiling and disappearing dissidents and suppressing protest. For example, among those exiled was Nascimento for his outspoken organizing around racial politics. They also censored media and other cultural productions in their attempts to suppress discussions of race and articulations of Black politics. The censors cut out a speech advocating Black power from the film América do Sexo (The America of Sex, 1970). In 1975, they banned the television broadcast of Awakening from a Dream, a documentary about Carolina Maria de Jesus's book, Quarto de despejo: Diário de uma favelada (Child of the Dark), which details life in the favelas (Stam 1997: 259). Media censorship was partially informed by “a questionnaire distributed by the Federal Police Division of Censorship of Public Diversions as a guideline for censors [which] includes the following questions: “Does [the film] deal with racial problems? With racial discrimination in Brazil? With American Black Power? With problems outside of Brazil that could have a hidden or subliminal connotation in Brazil?” (Stam 1997: 259). The dictatorship contributed to the silencing of articulations of racism and to the organization of a discourse to combat it.

During the military dictatorship, racial politics would appear to take on a more subtle veneer in the form of fashion, style, music, and visual images in, for example, Black soul dances. Aesthetics and the visual elements of Blackness became important conduits of Black expression while the dictatorship outlawed explicit political activity. During the 1970s in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, DJs and other entrepreneurs began organizing soul parties using names such as the Chic Show and Soul Grand Prix at clubs and other venues in working-class neighborhoods.⁷ These spaces were attended primarily by people of color, and they played soul music from the United States, like James Brown, and Brazilian music made in a soul style.⁸ Attendees wore their hair in Afros, danced in soul dance styles, and wore bell-bottom pants and platform shoes. The soul dance attendees visually refashioned themselves to reflect the current style as part of a process of forming and asserting Black identity.

Black soul dances incorporated the visual element of Black films from the United States, like Wattstax (1972) and Shaft (1971), by projecting them onto a wall without sound. While the secret police who spied on the Black soul parties discounted the importance of these soundless projections, Paulina Alberto asserts that these films nonetheless communicated powerful ideas: “Wattstax—with its vibrant shots of almost a hundred thousand Black Americans sporting Afros, dashikis, and distinctive soul and funk styles, and filling the LA Coliseum for a majority Black community event during which Jesse Jackson led the audience (fists held high) in a rousing rendition of his poem ‘I am somebody’ (its words flashing across the stadium ticker) and the Black National Anthem—communicates an affirmation of Blackness and racial pride for which no soundtrack or political oration would have been necessary” (2009: 15). Despite the dictatorship's attempts to promote images of Brazil as racially harmonious and without racial difference, attendees of the soul dances identified with African American scenes of Black racial pride and imbibed scenes that promoted Black identities. Michael Hanchard writes that “scenes of Black people crying while viewing the slides and U.S. movies like Wattstax, and relating the imagery to their own experience, were not uncommon in the clubs and dance halls where the Soul Grand Prix produced events” (1994: 113). Resistance to racism and the valuation of Black identities took the form of manipulating the body through the optics of style as well as by viewing and identifying with visual images of Black pride communicated in U.S. Black films.

As the dictatorship's repression subsided toward the end of the 1970s, Black organizations began to emerge. The Movimento Negro Unificado contra Discriminação Racial (MNUCDR, Unified Black Movement against Racial Discrimination) was founded in the late 1970s to protest and organize against racism. Two racist events catalyzed the movement's founding: the killing of Robson Silveira da Luz by the police on April 28, 1978, and the dismissal of four Black children from the Clube Regatas do Tietê (Tietê Yacht Club) volleyball team on June 18, 1978, in São Paulo (Gonzalez 1985: 127). Black organizers met in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, eventually planning a public demonstration for July 7, 1978, at the Viaduto do Chá (Tea Viaduct) near the steps of the Theatro Municipal de São Paulo. At one point during the demonstration, activists passed out copies of an open letter, which everyone then read aloud in unison. The letter read in part, “We are in the street here today in a campaign of denunciation. A campaign against racial discrimination, against police oppression, against unemployment, underemployment, and marginalization. We are in the streets to denounce the devastating conditions of life in the Black community” (Covin 2006: 72). This reading generated high levels of emotion from the activists and the crowd. People made speeches denouncing racism, and more letters of support were read from different cities and other countries. After years of experiencing a military dictatorship, the act of public protest was a serious matter, and the people who attended demonstrated courage and resolve (Gonzalez 1985; Covin 2006). After the protest, activists organized the movement in other cities through meetings and congresses. They developed an organizational structure, a constitution, and took action to combat racial inequality in Brazilian society and to draw attention to the conditions of Black people.

As the Black movement called for the acknowledgment of racism and the increased representation of Black people in Brazilian life, Zózimo Bulbul's films contributed to that demand. Bulbul, an Afro-Brazilian filmmaker, integrated themes related to Black history and culture into his films.⁹ Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1937, Bulbul attended the Faculdade de Belas Artes from 1960 to 1962. In 1962 he acted in his first short film, Pedreiro de São Diogo (Bricklayer from São Diogo), directed by Leon Hirszman.¹⁰ After a series of acting roles, he gained the opportunity to work as a camera assistant to Nello Melli, which taught him techniques for working behind the camera (N. Carvalho 2012). In 1974 he wrote, directed, and acted in his first short film, Alma no Olho (Soul in the eye). The book Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver, a Black Panther, inspired the title. In the film, Bulbul uses pantomime to tell the history of the Black diaspora until the 1970s. At the end of the film, the character, dressed in African clothes, breaks the white chain, communicating the message that “definitive liberty only comes with the assumption of Blackness whose symbol is Africa” (N. Carvalho 2005: 85). In 1974 Bulbul directed, with Vera de Figueiredo, Artesanato do Samba (The Craft of Samba), which featured the preparations a samba school undertakes leading up to Carnaval.¹¹ After experiencing censorship from the dictatorship, he left Brazil for the United States and Europe. On returning to Brazil, he continued acting and directing films and became involved with the Black movement. In 1988, on the centennial anniversary of emancipation, he released his documentary film Abolição (Abolition). The film explores the history of Afro-Brazilians from abolition to the present day through interviews with scholars, activists, and everyday people. The film presents the overall theme that, for Afro-Brazilians, nothing has changed from abolition to now (N. Carvalho 2005: 89). Bulbul created films that centered themes of Black confinement and liberation in the context of increasing Black movement public resistance.

Those who worked on behalf of Black racial inclusion gained a political opportunity when Fernando Henrique Cardoso was elected president in 1995. As a graduate student in social sciences, Cardoso had studied racial inequality in Brazil and was open to enacting policies that promoted racial equality (Htun 2004). In November of 1995, thirty thousand people organized by the Black movement marched on Brasilia, the national capitol. Movement leaders delivered to President Cardoso a document outlining a program for overcoming racism and racial inequality, which synthesized their demands. They identified “four critical areas of intervention: education, the labor market, infant mortality, and racial violence” and made concrete demands, such as including “survey questions on race/color in all public records” (S. Martins 2004: 797). President Cardoso responded by acknowledging the existence of racial discrimination and establishing the Grupo de Trabalho Interministerial para a Valorização da População Negra (Interministerial Working Group for the Valorization of the Black Population), charged with developing proposals to combat racial inequality. Under Cardoso's leadership, different branches of the government began to implement a quota system to integrate Afro-Brazilians into government jobs.

In 1996, Haroldo Macedo founded Revista Raça (Race magazine), ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Mediating Resistance: Afro-Brazilian Media and Movements
• 2. TV da Gente and Controlling the Means of Media Production
• 3. Animating Racism: Irony and Images of Dissent
• 4. Independent Lenses: Learning to See in Afro-Brazilian Film
• Conclusion: Antiracist Visual Politics
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index
• Back Cover