By Douglas Barreto da Mata
As communication and semiotics scholar Wilson Ferreira said, on his cinegnose blog, the film that gave actress Fernanda Torres the Golden Globe, as the protagonist of the film “We are still here”, is a tailor-made product from Globo and Sony Pictures to control the narrative about the military coup in Brazil. It would not be the first time that a mass cultural product, or a medium or platform interferes in the direction of History, used as an instrument of ideological persuasion. In fact, the entire cultural goods industry is focused on this task, despite a few naive people and many cynical people saying that art is a free manifestation of these links.
These people will hiss, demanding an aesthetic reading of the film, demanding that its value as art be taken into account, devoid of “intentions or messages”. I respect the right to this speech, although it completely disrespects the argument. The fact is that “timing” suggests this logic, as Wilson Ferreira warned.
No one doubts the importance of remembering the savagery of the dictatorship. The problem is isolating this violence as something resulting from the “evil” or “sadism” of the military. Ferreira pays attention to this fact. I agree with him
Detaching this violence from its historical context, focusing only on the life of the deputy’s family, and on the personal aspects of his widow’s struggle for recognition of his murder, is a way of “removing” any causal relationship, exempting Globo from blame, the USA and its geopolitical cultural industry, and finally, the father of Walter Salles, banker who owned Unibanco, at the time, if not an organizer of the 64 coup, certainly benefited from it.
That’s what it’s all about. In the film it appears that the 1964 coup is an Ex Machina, or “spontaneous combustion” event. Creating a romanticized way of telling part of the story, seducing the audience through the drama of the restrained and affable mother courage, is to confirm this anti-historical thesis.
Without a doubt, this process of discursive creation helps to perpetuate the invisibility of the rest of society, the majority of whom are black and poor favela dwellers, who suffered, and still suffer, the effects of state violence.
Yes, sir, today’s state violence is directly related to that violence of ’64, and before, before and before. The suffering of relatives of activists, almost all of them middle class, must be remembered. The problem is to forget the 20, 30, in some years, 40, 50 thousand deaths per year by PAF (firearm projectile), a contingent made up of the same people as always (black and poor)
Selective amnesia prevents correct reparation and retraction not only to this or that fragment of society, but to the entire country, at least the part that has always been at the base of the pyramid.
A country that has amnestied military torturers and murderers, and continues to kill and beat, or throw them off bridges, or kill by asphyxiation in the beds of vehicles, or in highway approaches, as we see on social media, has nothing to celebrate. And you should watch the film with less jingoism.
After all, we don’t care yet, right?
