1 Favela Chic in Action: Soundtracking Urban Violence in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
K. E. Goldschmitt
Rio de Janeiro is famous for its extremes. It has some of the most dramatic coastlines in the world, featuring steep mountains that give way to the beaches lined by alternating forests and ritzy neighborhoods. The city’s tropical mystique has often inspired makers of glamorous international spy film franchises (and their spoofs), such as Moonraker (1979) and L’homme de
Rio (1964), to incorporate Rio de Janeiro into the plot. In recent years, however, the city’s violent crime (often called the murder capital of the world) and extreme poverty have also come to the forefront of international awareness, making its favelas––the local word for its hillside slums––as popular in action film as its beaches.1 The favelas of Rio de Janeiro are now so famous in the global imaginary that “favela” has become shorthand for precariously constructed neighborhoods that are both culturally rich and replete with crime and poverty. What’s more, favelas are now trendy in international settings, inspiring art gallery shows, and a globe-spanning chain of high-end music clubs called “Favela Chic.”2 It should be no surprise, then, that alongside their monetization in international markets, favelas have become the site of fantasies of vigilante justice and improbable feats of survival, soundtracked so as to emphasize urban grit.
For almost two decades, action films set in Rio’s favelas have reinforced a link between favela life and fantasies of global slum violence. In most cases these films used musical and visual references to that location to add a level of realism to the action sequence in question. However, an early chase sequence in Fast Five (2011) shows the extreme of using the setting of a favela to enact fantasies about global slum violence. The sequence focuses on the flight of Dominic (Vin
Diesel) from combined U.S. and Rio de Janeiro forces and drug lord lackeys in Rocinha, Rio de
Janeiro’s most famous favela, in the tourism-friendly South Zone of the city. Rather than choreographing the chase along the scenic topography of Rio’s iconic forests or beaches, the filmmakers chose to feature the grit and poverty of a favela, as Dominic leaps from rooftop to rooftop to composer Brian Tyler’s score.3 The chase intensifies when Agent Hobbs (Dwayne
Johnson) breaks through a giant glass window to pursue Dominic on foot (Figure 1.1a), emphasized by a swell in the low brass. Soon, the pace of the visual editing speeds up to quick cuts between aerial and hand-held shots of Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker) and Mia Toretto
(Jordana Brewster) racing through the narrow passageways between favela homes (Figure 1.1b), and Dominic running away from the drug gang’s machine gun fire. The sequence comes to a climax when all three of the film’s protagonists attempt their escape via the rooftops of Rocinha
(with complementary rising lines in the brass and strings). As the characters attempt to escape both law enforcement and drug gang lackeys, alliances shift, with Dominic saving a member of
Rio’s military police (played by Elsa Pataky) and soon joining up with task-force members to attack the masked gang members. The rooftop action comes to an abrupt end when Mia suddenly halts, and we’re shown a rapid panoramic view of Guanabara Bay off in the distance before the camera shifts to the rooftop below—a precarious structure that will not support a landing. Mia and Brian jump anyway, crashing into the home and leaving their pursuers without a trail.
By the time that Fast Five was produced, the meaning of favelas in film has become so cemented that the imagery alone did all of the work of communicating gritty, authentic, slum life as the backdrop for action without the need for sonic reinforcers. Apart from a brief interjection of spoken Portuguese—Brazil’s national language––as the protagonists flee their favela hideout, the sonic makeup of the sequence employs standard action film conventions and could be placed anywhere. The filmmakers chose to strip the soundtrack of any sounds that originate in the favela to make more room for sonic fantasies of action and violence. The score is hard-hitting, emphasizing lower frequencies, digital effects, and percussion meant to complement the excitement on screen. That soundtrack choice is puzzling, given that it is the only major sequence to take place in the favelas, and in light of the effort the filmmakers went through to license hip-hop music from Rio de Janeiro for use elsewhere in the film.4 One could interpret that choice as generalizing the favela as a location, equating it with anywhere else The Fast and
The Furious franchise has been set (Tokyo, Los Angeles, etc.). From the conventional score to the lack of sounds from the favela, elements of the sonic design express a randomness or haphazard scene placement. In that sense, it is a type of “any-space-whatever” (via Gilles
Deleuze), where the location is not yet fully fleshed out or situated in the sonic world of the film, and instead functions more like an obstacle course that could be anywhere; indeed, the musical specifics linking the film to Rio de Janeiro only appear in later scenes.5 The combination of action film tropes (e.g., Agent Hobbs breaking through a giant glass window) and this lack of specificity demonstrates just one common way that favelas have been portrayed in major blockbuster films. Filmmakers have been so successful at linking favelas to fantasies of poverty, criminality, and violence, that these neighborhoods have become a shorthand. Audiences no longer require sonic or musical signifiers to understand these references. Cinematography alone offers films exotic specificity without distracting from the excitement taking place at the center of the screen. That chain of signification has consequences for interpretations of Brazil as a country and favela life. Even as it only vaguely depends on its location, much of Fast Five’s use of the favelas resembles similar chase scenes in films helmed by Brazilians, cementing an emerging trope of what favelas can do for action films. To address that trend, this chapter situates the role of film music, specifically in chase sequences and scenes that depict corruption in the face of Rio de Janeiro’s drug trade, in films made by Brazilians. Through an analysis of how music and sound take part in the perpetuation of stereotypes about urban violence in Brazil, it argues that sensationalist depictions of Rio de Janeiro’s slums and related fantasies about favela life rely on a combination of stereotyping and audiovisual hyperrealism. This happens through the willing participation of local, national, and international promotional apparatuses. In most cases, action sequences set in the poorest neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro overemphasize their roughness through shaky handheld camera techniques and musical and sonic details that, as I elaborate below, have clear links to discourses of authenticity specifically from the favelas. The placement of these sounds exemplifies the kind of aural verisimilitude that exaggerates the grittiness and violence of these neighborhoods.6 Further, I show that the combination of these forces intensifies the social exclusion of Rio de Janeiro’s poorest residents both in Brazil and abroad. Through the confluence of local policies and international distribution, these films’ soundtracks have contributed to the exploitation of these residents in the service of entertainment and fantasy.
Before I demonstrate how films have exploited the reputation of Rio de Janeiro as a place replete with crime, I first detail how favelas have come to symbolize marginality in music and international film. After explaining some of the historical context for the enduring draw of favelas, especially as the setting for portrayals of crime and violence, I explore how soundtrack choices play into and against depictions of violence and criminality in two films made for a
Brazilian audience, which later gained international acclaim. By untangling the link between favelas and film music, I hope to encourage a more nuanced view of depictions of violence in the
Global South.
The Legacy of Favela, Funk, and Samba in Audiovisual Media
At the time when Fast Five was filmed, the setting in Rocinha was in keeping with major trends in big-budget action films. Just a few years earlier, Marvel’s Incredible Hulk (2008) had Bruce
Banner hiding out in a bottling factory in the same favela to lay low as he attempted to find a cure for his condition of turning into Hulk. Even the animated feature Rio (2011) gave audiences both the Brazil of postcards––tropical beaches, jungles, and carnival––alongside the crime and violence (and limited action scenes) located mostly in favelas, thereby binding crime and violence to action in that country for a younger audience. Due to the support of municipal and national cultural policy changes, Fast Five was part of a wave of interest by non-Brazilian filmmakers and musicians in Rio de Janeiro’s poorest neighborhood.7 In all of these cases, one could argue that fantasy was largely at play, causing Fast Five to be panned by Brazilian critics for feeding negative stereotypes. For audiences who only take note of Brazil in the abstract, and for whom such places as “Brazil” and “Rio de Janeiro” conjure a collection of vague references,
Fast Five accomplished its goal and was of value. It was a fun fantasy of vengeance and street justice in a recognizably exotic location; even as the specific qualities of the favela were largely superfluous, they did enough to keep audiences interested. That mutability of the favela—both specific and vague—is part of a much larger complex of meanings that have been ascribed to these neighborhoods in Brazilian policy as well as in cinematic representation. This section details some of the history of what favelas have meant to the city of Rio de Janeiro and Brazil as a whole. Ever since the iconic opening images of Orfeu Negro (1959), films set in favelas and other impoverished neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro have relied on a handful of stereotypes to communicate to audiences. The first of these is marginalization. For over a century, the residents of the favelas have lived at the edges of society—often in precarious housing built in a haphazard, unplanned manner. Favela residents have largely been excluded from municipal life, while also providing much of the manual labor in the so-called “marvelous” city. Until recently, roads that ran through these neighborhoods did not appear on city maps, and many of the residents did not have access to basic utilities due to the informal manner in which these hillside neighborhoods developed. From the beginning of the late nineteenth century, favelas were unofficial resettlement communities that were initially composed of newly freed slaves (slavery was abolished by a royal decree in 1888), former soldiers, and poor migrants from other parts of the country (especially the interior and Northeast regions). In other words, they were populated by social outliers and undesirables. Anthropologist Erika Larkins succinctly states, “From its inception, the favela was imagined as a hindrance to the development of the otherwise modern,
‘marvelous’ city.”8 In essence, the favela had long been a prime example of the divisions in Rio de Janeiro between the wealth and luxury of beachside apartments and the poverty exemplified by precarious construction on the hills.
For much of favela history, residents lacked access to basic services and rights. Historian Bryan
McCann notes that what unites favela residents from the 1970s with those of today is their squatter status—they do not own the title to their homes, even if they built them.9 However, while they have certainly been marginalized for much of their history, favelas were not initially synonymous with drugs and violence. As McCann explains, there was widespread economic turbulence as the country ended its military dictatorship (from 1964 to 1985) which, in turn, hampered Rio’s efforts to upgrade the favelas. Additionally, the combination of new state policies of increasing police violence and the internal change of favela leadership from neighborhood associations to drug traffickers resulted in massive spikes in violent turf battles.10
In conjunction with their reputation for violence and precarity, the hills of Rio de Janeiro have also held an elevated place in Brazilian musical history, with musical movements regularly referencing the importance of “climbing the hills” (subindo o morro). Although multiple musical movements such as samba––the country’s national popular music genre––originally emerged in other locations throughout Rio de Janeiro, many lyrics reference the hills (and the marginality therein) as an important discursive marker for authenticity.11 This includes the samba sub-genre samba do morro, often described as a stripped down version of samba dating back to the 1930s, and funk carioca (funk from Rio de Janeiro) a sample-based popular music genre that spread from funk parties (bailes funk) in the favelas to the more affluent neighborhoods in Rio de
Janeiro in the late-1980s and 1990s.12 Both genres maintain a balance between signaling the favela in various ways and appealing to audiences that never or rarely spend time there. (I discuss some of the musical features of samba and funk below in their soundtrack contexts.)
Funk music has historically symbolized the marginality of the favela in the international marketplace of ideas, and it has also become one of the most popular music genres in Brazil more generally, traversing boundaries of race, class, and geography.13
The trendiness of visually representing Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, on the other hand, is something that has only emerged in recent decades. As Beatrice Jaguaribe argues, films often rely on favelas as the backdrop to spectacle, overly inscribing their precarity onto international representations of Rio, and replacing the iconic images of the city’s beaches, forests, and the
Christ the Redeemer statue, that dominated filmic depictions of the city up through the 1980s.14 Critics have noticed this change. Melanie Gilligan dubs this trend “slumsploitation,” and Michael
Chanan has bemoaned the primitivist lens through which such films have been received at major film festivals.15
Yet, dismissing these depictions with such broad strokes ignores the dualities that characterize favelas in Brazilian culture. A fundamental tension is that residents of the favelas, or favelados, embody an iconic essence of the Brazilian spirit in the abstract and yet are also institutionally marginalized; even as the favelas have become a major tourist draw and generate revenue for the state, the militarized police forces increasingly do not afford residents basic human rights. One dominant contradiction of favelas on film is that they encapsulate both the natural beauty of their steep hillsides, in contrast with Rio’s cultivated beaches, and the ugliness of violence and poverty.16 In films that feature the violence of the drug trade, many aesthetic choices also reveal contradictions in how favelas can frame either fantasies about urban violence or, on the other extreme, a type of hyperreal grit. As I show through close analyses of the soundtracks to action scenes set in Rio’s favelas and poorest neighborhoods (both in this chapter’s introduction and the discussion that follows), those various dualities also contribute to how poverty and violence are depicted in film soundtracks. Filmmakers often opt for the music in the action sequence to either emphasize fantasies of the hills and residents of the favelas, or to utilize gritty realism to emphasize depravity and violence. That some of the most prestigious films about Rio de Janeiro have managed to play into both extremes of representation is a testament to how compelling they are in fueling stereotypes.
Samba, Funk, and Slum Violence in Brazilian Films
Of the Brazilian films portraying slum violence in Rio de Janeiro, the two that have received the most accolades are City of God [Cidade de Deus] (2002) and Elite Squad [Tropa de Elite Squad] (2007). These two films have been critically acclaimed in international film festivals, with City of God gaining tremendous buzz at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival and Elite Squad winning the
“Golden Bear” at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival. Of the two, City of God has received the most recognition, including numerous Academy Award nominations (Best Director for Fernando
Meirelles and Best Editing for Daniel Rezende, among others). That international attention has resulted in unique instances where musical codes do not translate neatly for some audiences.
City of God has had a particular resonance in the favelas even though the neighborhood that it portrays (City of God) is not technically one of Rio’s iconic hillside slums. Rather, City of God is located in the West Zone of Rio de Janeiro and was built in the 1960s by the government as an attempt to move favela residents into a suburban community after they were destroyed by devastating floods. In that sense, its residents share much with those in the favela
(socioeconomic status, precarity, drug violence, etc.), without the iconic geographic imagery.
Further, the widespread use of the label “favela” to describe the film reflects the loosening of the word to apply to all Brazilian slums. As many scholars have noted in studies of favelas in recent years, the popularity of the film both within and outside of Brazil has been so profound as to shape the favela residents’ notions of their own identity, and to inspire foreigners to take part in favela tourism.17
City of God opens with an iconic metaphor of the precarious life in a Rio slum. The first thing that appears on the soundtrack is the low hum of cars driving in the distance, followed by the sound and extreme close-up of a knife being sharpened against a stone (Figure 1.2a). The scraping of the knife is joined by the iconic sounds, rhythms, and rapid jump-cuts of an informal samba. The high-pitched rhythms and harmonies of the cavaquinho (four-stringed lute, similar to a ukulele but tuned D-G-B-D) and hand percussion of a samba ensemble enter the mix. Like many examples of an informal samba for a barbecue, this is fast-paced music meant to make people dance. The visual editing shows mere glimpses of who is playing, singing, and dancing, with the camera movements meant to convey the perspective of a live chicken as it watches the preparation of chicken skewers on the barbecue, from their slaughter to the removal of feathers and guts (Figure 1.2b). The fast samba rhythms match the rapid, jerky movements of the chicken as it tries to escape the tether around its leg. When it finally succeeds and jumps away from the barbecue, the samba abruptly stops with a close up of blood on a plate. In the opening two minutes of the film, the audience is treated to a very clear metaphor in that chicken. It escapes its own death through a combination of luck and cunning to the sounds of an upbeat samba, a pairing that feeds into ideals of not just slum life but also of the character of Rio de Janeiro residents. It is a moment thick with local resonance.
Within seconds, Lil Zé (Zé Pequeno, played by Leandro Firmino), the film’s primary antagonist yells, “A galinha fugiu!” [The chicken got away!]. He orders his underlings (teenage boys and young men) to catch the chicken, thereby initiating the first action sequence of the film. As the chase begins, the soundtrack features a slowed down samba score by Antônio Pinto (in contrast to the diegetic fast tempo samba heard seconds before), complete with the iconic yelping sounds of the cuíca friction drum as the only discernible melody, punctuated by the sounds of Lil Zé and his gang shouting, laughing, and shooting their pistols at the chicken. The chicken is moving rapidly; it is blurry and at times the camera takes the chicken’s perspective, near to the ground, while at others it is at the eye level of its pursuers. There are even aerial shots showing the small army of boys chasing it around tight corners as the samba rhythm continues. The chicken chase is intercut with Rocket (Buscapé, played by Alexandre Rodrigues) talking to his friend, Stringy (Barbantinho, played by Edson Oliveira) about the possibility of escaping the favela through a lucky break by getting his photographs published in a top newspaper while they walk toward the road. Rocket’s fear at having to photograph the gang leader, Lil Zé, is palpable, especially after his friend points out that he would be risking his life to do so. When the chicken jumps into the middle of the road in front of a police car, Rocket and the chicken join narrative trajectories. All music on the soundtrack stops as Lil Zé orders Rocket to get the chicken, while the gang brandishes their guns. As Rocket slowly bends down to grab the chicken, an armored car full of corrupt police pulls up behind him. The two opposing forces (police and Lil Zé’s gang) draw their weapons in a stand-off, with Rocket and the chicken caught in the middle. The film’s voiceover narrator interjects that while a picture could save his life, in the City of God, if you run away, they get you. Like the chicken, Rocket’s very survival depends on his wiles and sheer luck, due to the vulnerability engendered by his environs. The film’s producer Walter
Salles described the psychological state of the chicken and the protagonist as “traumatized . . . in crossfire.”18
For an international market, the use of samba in this scene would not be especially meaningful to the characters or the plot. Rather, it would play into long-standing stereotypes about Brazilian music. Samba has been shorthand for Brazil in international markets for decades, functioning at times as a type of synecdoche for the vast corpus of Brazilian musical styles.19 It has represented
Brazil because the nation-state appropriated it in the 1930s and, further, some of the popular music styles that developed from it, especially bossa nova, found success all around the world starting in the 1960s. In a film depicting urban violence and poverty on the scale of City of God, the samba stereotype is operating on a register that reinforces broad generalizations about Brazilian identity for outsiders, which may have been unintentional on the part of the filmmakers. In other words, the samba in this scene (as diegetic party music and nondiegetic score for the chicken chase), can be decoded by non-Brazilians as just another facet of the film’s gritty and hyper-realistic aesthetic that emphasizes slum poverty, thereby complementing many other reductive stereotypes in the film.20
Yet, for Brazilian audiences, the confluence of samba and the misplaced dexterity through which the chicken finds itself in the crossfire extends the genre’s role as a musical encapsulation of national essence. The favelados’ knack of surviving through ingenuity and cunning, skills that are discursively proximate to values inherent in samba’s ties to national identity, link the film’s music and sound design to old musical codes of favela (and Brazilian) authenticity. Both samba and favela-dwelling have long-standing connections to tactics for survival that are adaptations to a system that does not provide support.
Here, samba accompanies characters using cunning and luck to piece together a better existence.
In that sense, it gestures to a complex of concepts at the root of Brazilian culture that emphasize improvisation and tactical responses to structural obstacles that most Brazilians would instantly recognize. Among these is malandragem, or roguery, a polemical figure who was both romanticized as heroic in numerous songs and disparaged by others during the Golden Age of recorded samba in the 1930s. Another important concept is the jeitinho brasileiro, which loosely translates to “Brazilian knack” for working around structural inefficiencies, laws, and bureaucracy. Both of these concepts address the challenges of urban life in Rio de Janeiro.
Famed anthropologist Roberto da Matta wrote in the mid-1980s—at the height of Brazil’s re- democratization process after two decades of military rule—that the jeitinho brasileiro was a personalized response to the impersonal, draconian system of laws that have their roots in the country’s origins as an independent empire in the nineteenth century (when Pedro I declared the country’s independence from Portugal), rather than any subsequent elected democracy.21 Rule- breaking, workarounds, and cunning are necessary adaptations to a system of governance that does not protect its most vulnerable citizens. Or, as Jason Stanyek puts it, these improvisations in the context of slums are at their root compensatory.22 Jeitinho is far from a guarantee that one can continue in such a fashion, however. Using the jeitinho is risky––so risky, in fact, that many
Brazilians are afraid to go around the rules in fear of what they will lose if caught. Even still, for a scene featuring drug gangs and favelados, it is intuitive for samba to be linked to a cunning ability to improvise and bend rules to get by. Thus, the chicken has loosened itself from the tether just as Rocket is using his photography skills to potentially escape poverty; the chances of survival for either of them are not great.
Elite Squad, by contrast, uses samba in a scene to signal the explicitly corrupt side of the genre: malandragem. In a scene 37 minutes into the film, the narrator explains the slippery slope between doing something outside the rules to benefit the entire unit, and something outside the rules for the smaller team. In what follows that explanation, he details how kickbacks work with the police in Rio de Janeiro by highlighting a conversation between two officers and the man running the repair shop to the sounds of samba in Pedro Bromfman’s score, complete with the cavaquinho, as a patrol car passes by in the background (Figure 1.3). Samba appears in other film scenes as well, and what unites all instances is the conceit of jeitinho among those with more power, in this case the police, and its close neighbors in roguery and corruption.23
Regardless of the film’s international success, it is unlikely that non-Brazilians can catch the musical codes.
October 2007, the city of Rio de Janeiro was at once a violent city, with regular protests about wars between the drug gangs and the police, and a city experiencing rapid economic growth. The film’s subject matter, the elite forces sent to raid the favelas, was topical; for favelados, the depiction of the shameless corruption of the regular police force and the overzealous enforcement of the special forces (B.O.P.E.) often elicited humor for being all too real. Indeed, a common theme in academic engagements with the film is an overriding ambivalence as to whether it is a critique of fascist law enforcement or a celebration of it.25
In contrast with the other films in this chapter, it is telling that the most violent film on offer utilizes carioca funk to open the film and lead to a bloody encounter in the favelas between the police and drug traffickers. The song featured in this scene, “Rap das Armas” (Gun Rap), is an example of the controversial funk ostentação (ostentatious funk) subgenre that addresses violent subject matter, and multiple versions of it have circulated around Brazil. The version of the song that opens the film is by MC Júnior and MC Leonardo, and features lyrics that are a critique of gun violence in Rio de Janeiro, with a memorable descending melodic hook based on an onomatopoeia of machine-gun fire (parapapapapapapapapa / parapapapapapapapapa / paparapaparapapara click boom). The backing funk beats enter and leave the mix as the names of actors appear onscreen, intercut with glimpses of favelados dancing, only settling on the scene after the lyrics “Fé em Deus, DJ” [Faith in God, DJ]. It is a stylistic way to both grab audience attention and place the scene in the middle of a party. The sound design changes to make it clear that the music is diegetic, taking on an overabundance of high frequencies, muffled bass and mid-range frequencies, and incorporating echoes off the tightly arranged houses. The voiceover (Wagner Moura as Capitan Nascimento) explains that
Rio de Janeiro has hundreds of favelas, most of which are ruled by drug traffickers who regularly use automatic weapons. The music fades further into the background as two honest police officers (André Ramiro as Matias and Caio Junqueira as Neto) rush in to attack corrupt cops who are driving up in an SUV to collect a payout just outside the party as partygoers dance to the music making gun shapes out of their index finger and thumbs. The scene pauses just after the
“honest” cops shoot at the corrupt ones (Figures 1.4a and 1.4b), unleashing a bloody battle between the police and the drug traffickers as party attendees flee. At this point, we can hear high-pitched screams and shouts alongside the gunshots and firecrackers, signaling a police raid.
The music stops altogether as the police and drug gangs chase each other down the narrow passageways of the favelas. From the firecrackers to the crumpling sounds of plaster giving way, the sound designers opted for gritty hyperrealism to match the shaky movements of hand-held cameras. It also parallels tropes from other action sequences in the Rio de Janeiro slums. Like
Fast Five, it features police officers and drug gang members running down narrow walkways and offers no humanization for the favelados involved in the fight. Audience sympathies in this case are with the two lone police officers. That aesthetic choice makes the film’s undercurrent of fascism (and the transformation of Matias into a brutal enforcer of the state) all the more frightening. It raises questions as to whether or not the film’s hyperreal depictions of state- enforced violence intensify fascist fantasies about “cleansing” Rio’s slums, in stark contrast with favelas as the staging ground for action and adventure. Increasingly films depict favela residents as dangerous, irredeemably criminal, and disposable all the while soundtracked to musical genres that reinforce a sense of danger and precariousness. This association has been reinforced by many films and has become a feature of widely held understandings of who favela residents are and what they deserve, whether its vague references to their homes as an obstacle course or serving as fodder for hyperrealism as dancing feet and the occasional grizzly death.
In this chapter, I have sought to show some of the ways that music in these scenes of violence in the favela feeds into stereotypes about Brazil. There are institutional reasons why films depicting slum violence in Rio de Janeiro have proliferated, regardless of whether the music and visuals emphasize hyperreal grit or shiny action film fantasies. In 2011 alone, over 80 international film productions used Rio de Janeiro as the backdrop, with an increasing number turning their attention away from the traditional locations along the city’s iconic beaches. As scholars of
Brazilian film note, the sudden influx of international film crews working in Rio de Janeiro and the emphasis on areas of the city that played up urban grit took part in the country’s rebranding effort of the early twenty-first century.26 Brazil’s twenty-first-century brand has been overtly tied to notions of diasporic blackness and diversity, which is something that films about the slums in
Rio excel at highlighting (given the exceedingly high numbers of Afro-Brazilians living there), thereby linking blackness and racial diversity to poverty and violent crime.27 The Rio de Janeiro municipal government worked hard to lure these international film companies through the efforts of the Filme Rio/Rio Film Commission (RFC), offering international film crews logistical support and sending representatives to the Cannes Film Festival.
Yet, there are material consequences to fantasies about violence. While there is a clear monetary incentive in slumsploitation that fulfills audience desires for the continual marginalization of favela residents, their propagation inevitably has lingering effects on the culture. As neoliberal capitalism rewards the monetization of the city’s marginalized neighborhoods, there is little to gain for filmmakers who choose reality over themes of corruption, cunning, and violence. The cultural penetration of tropes of slum violence is so extensive, that it has affected Brazilian electoral politics. Indeed, one of Jair Bolsonaro’s campaign promises in the 2018 presidential election was to allow police to shoot suspected criminals on sight, and his signature gesture involves turning his index fingers and thumbs into the shape of guns (in the same manner as that made by party-goers in the opening sequence to Elite Squad). It seems that the musical and visual stereotypes about Brazil’s slums are an old story that resonate for Brazilians and international audiences alike.
Figure 1.1 Fast Five (2011): (a) Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) runs throughout the Rocinha favela; (b) Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster) and Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker) leap to their escape with Gaunabara Bay in the background.
Figure 1.2 City of God (2002): (a) close-up of a knife sharpened against the grindstone in the opening of the film; (b) blurry close-up of an informal samba setting during the opening credits.
Figure 1.3 Elite Squad (2007): Officer Neto (Caio Junqueira) and Capitão Fábio (Milhem
Cortaz) look over their shoulders to evade police detection as they collect a payout to the sounds as samba.
Figure 1.4 Elite Squad (2007): Officer Neto (Caio Junqueira) (a) takes aim and (b) shoots at the corrupt police officers in the opening of the film.
Notes
1 Although murders in Rio de Janeiro in fact dropped in the 2010s, overall murder rates in the country jumped. See Tom Embury-Dennis, “Brazil Breaks Own Record for Number of Murders in Single Year,” The
Independent (August 10, 2018), https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/brazil-murder-rate-record- homicides-killings-rio-de-janeiro-police-a8485656.html; Kenneth Rapoza, “Brazil Is Murder Capital of the World,
But Rio Is Safer Than Compton, Detroit, St. Louis. . . ,” Forbes (January 29, 2016), https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2016/01/29/months-before-rio-olympics-murder-rate-rises-in-brazil/.
2 Favela Chic was so successful in Paris that there is now a location in London. For more, see James
McNally, “Favela Chic: Diplo, Funk Carioca, and the Ethics and Aesthetics of Global Remix,” Popular Music and
Society 40, no. 4 (2017): 434–52.
3 Considering that scores are completed during post-production, this detail is remarkable for its lack of specificity.
4 The choice to license hip-hop and not funk carioca is also odd. While there is a hip-hop scene in Rio de
Janeiro, it is minuscule by comparison with the scene in São Paulo. Funk carioca employs a memorable syncopated rhythm based off the tresillos and is more of a mixture between hip-hop and electronic dance music in practice.
Simone Pereira de Sá, “Funk carioca: música eletrônica popular brasileira?!” E-Compós 10 (2007), http://www.e- compos.org.br/e-compos/article/view/195; Leonardo Cardoso, “Brazilian Hip-Hop in Three Scenes,” in Justin D.
Burton and Jason Lee Oakes (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Hip-Hop Music (New York: Oxford University Press,
2018).
5 For more on Deleuze’s concept of “any-space-whatever,” see James Buhler, Theories of the Soundtrack
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 104–07; and Greg Reddner, Deleuze and Film Music: Building a
Methodological Bridge between Film Theory and Music (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2011), 144–50.
6 For a good discussion of hyperreal verisimilitude in other recent audiovisual media, see Zarah Erzoff,
“Treme’s Aural Verisimilitude,” (POP/IASPM-US Sounds of the City Issue, edited by Justin D. Burton), JPMS
Online (November 19, 2012). http://iaspm-us.net/jpms-online-empiaspm-us-sounds-of-the-city-special-issue-zarah- ersoff/.
7 Other U.S.-based musicians who have filmed videos in Rio de Janeiro favelas include Michael Jackson
(“They Don’t Really Care About Us” in 1996), Michael Franti (“Say Hey” in 2008), Alicia Keys and Beyoncé (“Put
It in A Love Song” in 2009), and Beyoncé (“Blue” in 2013).
8 Erika Larkins, The Spectacular Favela: Violence in Modern Brazil (Oakland: University of California
Press, 2015), 7.
9 Bryan McCann, Hard Times in the Marvelous City: From Dictatorship to Democracy in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 2.
10 The turbulence, easiest to quantify in extreme inflation, was so destabilizing that by the decade’s end, numerous Brazilians emigrated to the United States. The economy only stabilized through privatizing state assets and linking its currency to the U.S. dollar. McCann, Hard Times in the Marvelous City, 134–41.
11 See the discussion of Zé Keti in Schuyler Wheldon, “The Political Voice: Opinião and the Musical
Counterpublic in Authoritarian Brazil” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, Musicology, 2019).
12 Marc A. Hertzman, Making Samba: A New History of Race and Music in Brazil (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2013), 125–34; Hermano Vianna, O Mundo Funk Carioca (Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 1988);
George Yúdice, The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2003).
13 For a discussion of the politics of funk music in the lead up to the 2016 Summer Olympics, see Gregory
Scruggs and Alexandra Lippman, “From Funkification to Pacification,” Norient (Website) (May 23, 2012), http://norient.com/academic/rio-funk-2012/.
14 Beatriz Jaguaribe, Rio de Janeiro: Urban Life through the Eyes of the City (New York: Routledge, 2014).
15 Melanie Gilligan, “Slumsploitation—The Favela on Film and TV,” Mute 2, no. 3 (October 2006); Michael
Chanan, “Latin American Cinema: From Underdevelopment to Postmodernism,” in Stephanie Dennison and Song
Hwee Lim (eds.), Remapping World Cinema (London: Wallflower Press, 2006), 38–54.
16 Verônica Ferreira Dias, “A Cinema of Conversation—Eduardo Coutinho’s Santo Forte and Babilônia
2000,” in Lúcia Nagib (ed.), The New Brazilian Cinema (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 106.
17 Larkins, The Spectacular Favela, 109–12; Bianca Freire-Medeiros, “‘I Went to the City of God’: Gringos,
Guns and the Touristic Favela,” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 20, no. 1 (2011): 21–34.
18 Walter Salles, “A Traumatized Chicken in Crossfire,” in Else R. P. Vieira (ed.), City of God in Several
Voices: Brazilian Social Cinema as Action (Nottingham: Critical, Cultural and Communications Press, 2005), 3–4.
See also Zita Nunes, “Fernando Mereilles’ City of God,” Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art 18 (2003): 8–
91; Larkins, The Spectacular Favela, 109; Sophia A. McClennen, “From the Aesthetics of Hunger to the Cosmetics of Hunger in Brazilian Cinema: Meirelles’ City of God,” Symplokē 19, no. 1–2 (2011): 95–106.
19 I discuss this idea at length in my monograph, Bossa Mundo: Brazilian Music in Transnational Media
Industries (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020).
20 These tropes include not featuring the favelados working (e.g., the poor are lazy), farm animals throughout the film (e.g., they are uncivilized), and sexual violence as a response to infidelity and sexual jealousy (e.g., they are hypersexual) among many other problematic stereotypes in the film.
21 Roberto Da Matta, O que faz o brasil, Brasil? (Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 1986).
22 Jason Stanyek, “‘A Thread that Connects the Worlds’: Ovoid Logics and the Contradictory Lines of Force of Brazilian Improvisations,” Critical Studies in Improvisation/Études critiques en improvisation 7, no. 1 (2011).
See also Carlos Borges, “Improvisation in the Jeitinho Brasileiro,” trans. Micaela Kramer, Critical Studies in
Improvisation/Études critiques en improvisation 7, no. 1 (2011).
23 For more on this, see Aline Fábia Guerra de Moraes, Danilo Cortez Gomes, and Diogo Henrique Helal,
“Cultura e Jeitinho Brasileiro: Uma Análise dos Filmes Tropa de Elite 1 e 2,” Revista de Administração Mackenzie
(Mackenzie Management Review) 17, no. 3 (2016), http://editorarevistas.mackenzie.br/index.php/RAM/article/view/8054.
24 Alexander S. Dent, “Piracy, Circulatory Legitimacy, and Neoliberal Subjectivity in Brazil,” Cultural
Anthropology 27, no. 1 (2012): 28–49.
25 Ângela Cristina Salguero Marques and Simone Maria Rocha, “Representações Fílmicas de Uma Instituição
Policial Violenta: Resquícios Da Ditadura Militar Em Tropa de Elite,” Revista FAMECOS 17, no. 2 (2010): 49–58;
Paulo Menezes, “Tropa de Elite: Perigosas Ambiguidades,” Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais 28, no. 81
(2013): 63–75.
26 Leslie Marsh, “Another Good Neighbor?: Hollywood’s (Re)embracing of Brazil in Rio (2011) and Fast
Five (2011),” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 37, no. 1 (2012): 67–85; Stephanie Dennison and
Alessandra Meleiro, “Brazil, Soft Power and Film Culture,” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 14, no. 1
(2016): 17–30.
I discuss this political legacy and its relationship to samba of the 1930s in Kariann Goldschmitt, “From Disney to Dystopia: Transforming ‘Brazil’ for a US Audience,” in Miguel Mera, Ron Sadoff, and Ben Winters (eds.), The
Routledge Companion to Screen Music and Sound (New York: Routledge, 2017).
27 Michel Nicolau Netto, “Novas Formas de Associação Entre Estado e Nação: Marca-Nação e a
Desestabilização de Um Hifen Na Globalização,” Dossiê Capitalismo Cultura – Arquivos do CMD 4, no. 2 (2016):
11–33.