Ethno-Cinema, Youths and Public Health: the Social Practice of The
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PhD in Public Health, EVELINE STELLA DE ARAUJO Faculdade de Saúde Pública, PAULO ROGÉRIO GALLO Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. ETHNO-CINEMA, Faculdade de Saúde Pública, Universidade de São Paulo, YOUTHS AND PUBLIC São Paulo, Brazil. HEALTH: THE SOCIAL PRACTICE OF THE CINEMA AND THE INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH ON RESEARCH ABSTRACT We propose in this paper a theoretical purview with- in the fields of Anthropology and Cinema, Public Health, Creative Processes, and Youth Studies to ana- lyze youth film production on the outskirts of São Paulo, as a social practice tied to cinema. Data from this academic literature was triangulated with that the data collected in ethnographic research and data constituted through the analysis of a short-film vir- tual bank, projecting media technologies as sources of information on behavioral and social character- istics. Results include identifying diverse social ex- pressions of young people as being specific to each community, and also revealed in the films produced; keywords the creative process moves between real and virtual Cinema and Health; Visual worlds through the use of social networks by youth Anthropology; Public Health; groups while emerging as a research locus by evi- Youths and Outskirts; Social dencing a series of choices; collective artistic creation Communication. as a preventive strategy in the field of Public Health. 159 São Paulo, v. 2, n.1, p.159-184, may (2017) INTRODUCTION In this article we analyzed the theoretical scope that helped us to think about the film production by young people on the outskirts of São Paulo1 as a social practice affiliated to cinema2. The critical-theoretical revision was triangulated with the data collected through participant observation, presented in this article, and the data constructed by an analysis of a bank of short films3, presented in another article. The results reveal that the diversity of social expressions affiliated with young people changes in accordance to their specific community, and furthermore this affects the films produced. But, in what social and political context do these youth live, even though they have different cultural specificities? They are young people from low-income families, residents of the outskirts of big metropolises, such as São Paulo, for example, who are encouraged to develop skills that allow them to live with the paradox of having as home a place from which they have to move away. This obligation appears in the form of necessity, when they face extremely long travel times to reach plac- es of study, work and leisure, and perhaps they turn these hardships into a yearning for better opportunities for themselves in social terms. But what does it mean to talk about the outskirts of big cities in Brazil? It is rather to imagine or unveil a space-time of abandonment by the state, located in the geographical limits of the cities or embedded in the middle of them. The outskirts of the big cities are marked by social and fiscal neglect, as well as by constant gentrification’s processes. These territories are sub- ject to parallel forms of governability that dictate local standards and rules in the absence of any legislation (Feltran, 2012). They are other spaces and times, because the average citizen is incapable of imagining such a reality. Places where dreams are curtailed, hindering the development of autonomy and communication beyond this environment. It is a place where everyone is watched and everyone is a potential enemy. Educational standards are very low, health services are inadequate, safety standards are ineffective - 1. Another article “Perception in film montage like as an internal ordering process: films produced by youths in Sapopemba - outskirt of São Paulo” corresponds to the ethnographic field of theoretical scope presented here, by Eveline Stella de Araujo and Paulo Rogério Gal- lo, available in: https://pontourbe.revues.org/2438. 2. Graemer Turner, in 1970, proposes the term Social Practice of Cinema and develops an interdisciplinary theory on the subject; however the term is taken as the social activity of going to the cinema, instead off a Social Practice of Cinema while An artistic, political and social empowerment force, as in this article. We understand, in this article, that the whole process of film making and film festivals are social cinema practices. 3. The related base of short films can be accessed through this link http://www.kinoforum. org.br/webdoc/#linha_do_tempo, access. October 9, 2016. 160 São Paulo, v. 2, n.1, may (2017) we refer to general safety standards as including a set of factors such as street illumination, sanitation, and public security. Furthermore, beyond what is offered by churches and bars, there are very few cultural spaces. Within this context, this article is based on the understanding that the re- lationships between young people and the community they live in goes be- yond any individual question and pertains to the collective in light of the fact that the surrounding environment affects and even defines social relations. In this article, we focus on cinema as a social practice of empowerment, shifting the potential of artistic production from the individual – as pro- posed by Nise da Silveira (1986) within the context of mental illness – to collective forms of preventive health: as a strategy of social advancement in the field of Public Health, as reflected upon by Araujo and Gallo (2014). Thus, in proposing the elaboration of film productions about the living world, the objective was to promote a reflection on the social and urban condition of the participants, young people aged 14-24, living in Sapopemba, East Zone of São Paulo. The film festival and the interlocution with social networks on the internet and blogs amplified the voice of these young peo- ple, reverberating the issues dealt with in the films beyond the lived territo- ry, placing the local and global in a dialogue. The young people, in making short films, also realized the reflection of their own image of marginality and constructed representations of themselves in dialogue with their peers and with the society by the virtual network and artistic events. Authors of Anthropology and Cinema have brought us elements to think about the socio-cultural representations and to give voice to the populations silenced or invisible; those authors of the Public Health and Creative Processes, to analyze the potential of health promotion from the collective practice of the arts; and those who research themes of the Youths, enhancing relations with communication and the virtual environment. We started by the field of Youths introducing who are the subjects producing films, relating the youth category to the identification of spaces of ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ circula- tion, describing the characteristics of social behaviors and forms of resist- ance and adaptation to the capitalist social exclusion system. YOUTH’S: BEHAVIOR AND COMMUNICATION In this theoretical field, the researcher of youth in Latin America, Canclini (2009, 210) proposes that one should “take seriously, without attenuating, the mismatch between hegemonic organizational forms and the predom- inant behaviors among young people”. There is a contradiction between conventional visions of social temporality and those emerging in youth cultures. According to this author, in asking what it means to be young these days “society is responding to itself that it has little capacity, so to speak, to rejuvenate itself, to listen to those who could change it” (ibid., 210). 161 São Paulo, v. 2, n.1, may (2017) With this, the role of the youths is to confront the previous generation showing how much it is able to reformulate, provoking the dialogue. When this does not happen, this author considers that such a society is stagnant. The context of large metropolises, such as the city of São Paulo, accentuates this dialogue and forms of social manifestations, either by the proximity of the people who identify themselves, or by the urban mobility, as well as by the available technological networks, which are more quickly updated in the big centers. These factors have partially interfered with the process of personal exposure, mostly by young people, on the Internet. The speed of technological development re-elaborates the outskirts-center relation as it was given previously. The popularization of the digital camera in mobile phones, access to the Internet, in the early 2000s, and the creation of the Youtube platform, in 2005, followed by the proliferation of social networks on the Internet, there was motivational leverage of juvenile protagonism of the outskirts, interfering even in the mainstream programming. Youths, in this sense, like to be noticed, to be present in a critical way, al- lowing the adult to stop to think, to reflect on behaviors automated by the responsibilities and the routine of work. Understanding what these young people mean, how they communicate using film language, and what their appropriation of the Internet is rather an expectation of establishing dialogic communication relations in a polyphonic city, in terms of Canevacci (2004). Youths of the great metropolis, in Brazil, have grown since the end of the 20th century with the constant stimulus of the audiovisual and film language spread by television and film and at the beginning of the 21st century, there was also the broadcasting of the mass media on the Internet, this way the audiovisual language became familiar and habitual. Several studies analyze the influence of these media and this language on the young (Fischer, 2005; Njaine, 2006; Conti et al., 2010). In this sense, several researches developed in the field of Urban Anthropology (Magnani, 1992) investigate the formation of ‘urban tribes’ and the forms of circulation and socialization of youths in the city. Among them, we can mention Carrano (2002), Pais and Blass (2004) and Rosatelli (2007). Carrano (2002) has identified the urban circulation spaces of young people, proposing a critical analysis of the concept of tribe, based on Benjamin’s method of deviance (1984).