Bandits and Biopolitics: Power, Control, and Exploitation in Cidade Dos Homens (2007)
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7 Bandits and Biopolitics: Power, Control, and Exploitation in Cidade dos Homens (2007) I am Favela Yes, but the favela was never the refuge of the marginal, I said There are only humble people, marginalized And this truth does not appear in the newspaper The favela is a social problem. —Bezerra da Silva1 Stephen A. Cruikshank* metropolitan sprawls of São Paulo and Rio” (xiii). Such sensationalism is evident The urban slums of Brazil, known in the 2002 hit flm Cidade de Deus (City as “favelas,” are sanctuaries for bandits, of God), co-directed by Fernando Meire- villains of state power, that have drawn lles and Kátia Lund. Originally adapted public attention through the narratives of from Paulo Lins’ 1997 novel of the same twenty-frst century Brazilian flm. Else R. name, the flm’s plot is loosely based on P. Vieira notes that “Brazilian flms have real events that depict the criminal under- been sweeping over the favelas, catch- takings and drug wars in the Rio de Janeiro ing Brazil’s and the world’s eyes, making favela Cidade de Deus occurring between ever more visible the burgeoning of these the late 1960’s and early 1980’s. Cidade de quintessential sites of exclusion, as if Deus was met with both domestic and inter- they were self-contained cities within the national success, receiving four Academy *Stephen Cruikshank is a 2015 SSHRC doctoral prize recipient and a Ph.D. student in the department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada. His research focuses on Latin American Studies and culture, with particular at- tention to the Caribbean and Brazil. Scum & Villainy 8 Te Word Hoard Bandits and Biopolitics Award nominations in 2004. Two years fol- in Brazil between the metropolis and the lowing the flm’s initial release, Meirelles slums, between the citizen (o cidadão) and and Lund, with the support of 20th Century the favelado. I contend that what allows Fox and TV Globo, went on to direct the the flm to cultivate the successful nation- four-season television program Cidade dos al image of favelados is the presentation Homens (City of Men) between the years of the “biopolitical event” of urban re- 2002 and 2005. The series met with sim- sistance,2 an event that has its roots in the ilar success and was watched by millions hegemonic power system of the favelas. of viewers across Brazil who witnessed the Here I employ the Foucauldian notion of unfolding story of two young friends grow- biopolitics, drawing on this term’s use by ing up in a favela in Rio de Janeiro among the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben a community of drug traffckers, hust- and the post-Marxist philosophers Michael lers, and fellow teenagers. The popularity Hardt and Antonio Negri. In this respect, of the series led to its cinematic release I see the existence of the favelas as repre- under the same title in 2007, directed by senting a history of hegemonic control over Paulo Morelli. marginalized territory in Rio de Janeiro Morelli’s adaptation of Meire- and the consequential urbanized exploit- lles and Lund’s cinematic depictions of ation of human bodies. Films like Cidade criminal youth in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas dos Homens provide an effective medium is backed by a local and international ac- to advertise the biopolitical event of the claim that speaks to a broad public inter- favelados, aesthetically drawing the viewer est in favela narratives. Why, however, into the inherited struggle against poverty, is the favelado (the resident of a favela) racism, economic seclusion, and urban so popular? The answer to this, I argue, violence experienced by the “multitude” is found in the depiction of “banditry” in of favelados.2 Cidade dos Homens, in this the favela and its contingent identifcation manner, documents a narrative of banditry with subaltern struggle that is depicted in that exposes the viewership to the hegem- the outlaw narrative of the protagonists. As onic oppression of favelas and, in doing so, bandits, the youth in flms such as Cidade obliges the audience to confront the mod- dos Homens are positioned outside of the ern constructions of new subjectivities in law and segregated economically as poor, Rio de Janeiro’s urban culture. racially as Afro-Brazilian, and territorially Hegemony is at work in the fave- in the favela. Their marginalized position las. This is evidenced not only through the in the favela consequentially critiques the urban war against drug traffcking, but also two sides of a long-standing urban confict through the coordinating power of urban Issue 5, 2016 Cruikshank 9 design that, beginning in the late nine- implies two important features of biopoliti- teenth century, designated the favelas as the cs: frstly, it implies that bodies are created urban “leftovers” to be herded into shanty- agents, contingent in the struggles of urban towns—an example of what Foucault calls hegemony. Secondly, it implies that the a society’s “threshold of [mercantilist] body’s agency is therefore always-already rationality” (102) and what Agamben later an ambiguous construction. Bodies make attributes to Foucault as the “threshold of up the defnitive building blocks of the biological modernity” (3). Otherwise said, hegemonic binary: the formative and the favelas are a threshold of biopower, a place resistant, the legal and the outlaw, the pol- designed by the rationalized exercises of itical and anti-political, the citizen and the state power to distribute and distinguish bandit. When these bodies become active in wealth amongst urban elite and legitim- a “multitude”—what Hardt and Negri de- ate this through “bio-logical” segregation scribe as “an open and expansive network tactics in urban environments. Favelas are in which all differences can be expressed ruled by biopower because what is truly freely and equally” (Multitude xiv)—their at stake is not so much the city itself but constructed representation realizes biopol- rather the safety, security, and basic bio- itics. Hardt and Negri assert that biopolitics logical rights of its human inhabitants—the “is a partisan relationship between subjec- favelados—who, as Janice Perlman elabor- tivity and history that is crafted by a multi- ates in Favela: Four Decades of Living on tudinous strategy, formed by events and re- the Edge in Rio de Janeiro (2010), are sub- sistances, and articulated by a discourse that jected to the “lack of a well educated labor links political decision making to the con- pool, safe drinking water, [or] reliable elec- struction of bodies in struggle” (Common- tric power” and the “fear of getting killed wealth 61). Therefore, if we are to consider on the way to work or having one’s child the favela to represent such a political con- mugged on the way home from school” (9). struction of bodies, what then is the struggle The lack of physical security in the favelas of these bodies, the favelados? This is an represents an urban strategy of marginaliz- important question that Morelli targets in ation, representing what Foucault describes the flm Cidade dos Homens. In particular, as “the set of mechanisms through which the title of the flm blatantly attributes this the basic biological features of the human struggle as an event both within a cidade species become the object of a political (the city) and occurring between os homens strategy” (16)—an urbanized stronghold (men)—a point that the directors Lund and of biopower. Meirelles highlight in their television series To connect the body with the favela by playing with the name of their previous Scum & Villainy 10 Te Word Hoard Bandits and Biopolitics flm Cidade de Deus. The titular change the state and the powers of os homens (re- to Cidade dos Homens speaks not only ferring here specifcally to the favelados). to the continuation of their initial work, On one side, the law, arriving from outside Cidade de Deus, but also to what appears as of the favela, condemns the violent resist- a thematic overture of the man-made, rath- ance to the law; on the other, os homens er than God-granted, agency of the favelas. within the favela experience this violence The very change of the titles speaks to the as a daily reality. This violent reality is formation of a biopolitical narrative. De- what tests the bond between the key pro- picting the favela as a “city of men” high- tagonists of the flm, the two best friends lights the human condition of favelas. The Luís Cláudio (known as “Ace”) and Uólice temporal being, o homen, rather than the (known as “Laranjinha”). Meirelles and eternal God, o Deus, becomes the propri- Lund’s television series originally depicts etor of urban space. Here, St. Augustine’s both characters as young boys. However, in theological establishment of the De Civitate Morelli’s flm version both Ace and Laran- Dei (The City of God), the analogical root jinha are seen as adolescent men entering of the favela of the same name, gives way the heavy responsibilities of adulthood to the humanized establishment of the “city and the temptations of the violent gang- of men.” The human bandit, not God, be- life in their favela community of Morro da comes the faculty of violence in the urban Sinuca. The young men are seen through- world, changing the course of urban design out two revolving plots of the flm that from an omnipotent designation of power often jump from one to the other. In one to a temporal struggle for power; the power plot the flm narrates Ace and Laranjinha’s shifts from uncontested sovereignty to the new developments as eighteen-year-old enigmatic resistance against hegemony.