THE ETHNIC TURN: STUDIES IN POLITICAL CINEMA FROM BRAZIL AND THE UNITED STATES, 1960-2002 by Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky B.A., University of Pennsylvania, 1997 M.A., University of Pittsburgh, 2002 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of PhD in Critical and Cultural Studies University of Pittsburgh 2009 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky It was defended on August 31, 2009 and approved by Marcia Landy, Distinguished Professor, English Department Shalini Puri, Associate Professor, English Department Adam Lowenstein, Associate Professor, English Department Neepa Majumdar, Associate Professor, English Department John Beverley, Professor, Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures Dissertation Director: Marcia Landy, Distinguished Professor, English Department ii Copyright © by Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky 2009 iii THE ETHNIC TURN: STUDIES IN POLITICAL CINEMA FROM BRAZIL AND THE UNITED STATES, 1960-2002 Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2009 What makes political cinema political? It used to be that the category of political cinema was understood to designate a body of work with a very determinate political orientation. When Comolli and Narboni wrote about political cinema in the late 1960s, they were writing about a cinematic practice defined by its opposition to the capitalist status quo and aiming at the transformation of the social world. But as Marxism has suffered a crisis over the last decades, so has the concept of a political cinema, which has since lost its specificity. I claim that since the late sixties there has been a shift in ideas and practices concerning political cinema: a class-oriented, anti-capitalist conception of politics has given way to a conception of politics that is primarily, though not exclusively, identity-oriented. I call this shift the ethnic turn in political cinema. The ethnic turn has not received much critical scrutiny from film scholars. It tends to be taken for granted as an advance in our thinking about society and a triumph in the fight against racism and Eurocentrism. The aim of my dissertation is to challenge this complacency by asking how ethnicity is constructed—by whom, to the exclusion of what, for what purpose, and why now. Using case studies from Brazil and the United States, I examine the uses of racial and ethnic representation in explicitly political film over the last half century. Both nation-states have inherited a comparable history of African slavery, indigenous genocide, and formidable European immigration. But so far, there has been little comparative work examining the ways in which explicitly political films in these two countries have tried to make sense of racial oppression, how these representations have changed over time, and what those changes indicate about the shifting terms of both national and global debates over increasing social inequality. My dissertation addresses this lacuna. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE............................................................................................................................VIII 1.0 INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1 2.0 QUILOMBO AND UTOPIA, PART ONE: FROM MARXIST HISTORIOGRAPHY TO BRAZILIAN NATIONAL HOLIDAY .................................................................. 25 3.0 QUILOMBO AND UTOPIA, PART TWO: FROM THE AESTHETIC OF LABOR TO QUILOMBISMO .................................................................................................... 85 4.0 BUSH MAMA: A CULTURALIST HEIR OF LATIN AMERICAN THIRD CINEMA...................................................................................................................... 144 5.0 THE PRICE OF HEAVEN: REMAKING POLITICS IN ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS, ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL, AND FAR FROM HEAVEN................... 194 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................................................. 238 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. The Road to Palmares. Ganga Zumba (Diegues, 1963) ........................................................63 Figure 2. Antão’s Call to Action. Ganga Zumba (Diegues, 1963) .........................................................66 Figure 3. A Spatialized Palmares. Quilombo (Diegues, 1984)...............................................................72 Figure 4. New World Paradise. Quilombo (Diegues, 1984) ..................................................................77 Figure 5. Twenty-nine shot fragment from ceramic sequence. Aruanda (Noronha, 1960) ............... 101 Figure 6. Drying Ceramics. Aruanda (Noronha, 1960) ...................................................................... 112 Figure 7. Bolandeira at Work. (Left) still from A Bolandeira (Vladimir Carvalho, 1967). ................. 115 Figure 8. Water-driven Sugar Mill in Pernambuco, Brazil; painting by Frans Post, 1647 ................. 116 Figure 9. Casa de Fazenda em Pernambuco. Painting by Frans Post. .............................................. 117 Figure 10. Plantation Mill Yard and Sugar Mill. Watercolor by Johann Moritz Rugendas............... 117 Figure 11. Sugar Production, Brazil.................................................................................................... 118 Figure 12. Sugar Mill, Brazil. Sugar Mill, Brazil................................................................................. 118 Figure 13. Map of Olinda, Pernambuco. ............................................................................................ 119 Figure 14. Sugar Refining Process...................................................................................................... 120 Figure 15. Selling rapadura at market. The last shot of A Bolandeira (1967)..................................... 124 Figure 16. Quince Marmalade Drying in the Sun, still from Quilombo (Carvalho, 1975)................... 131 Figure 17. Production Process. Quilombo (Carvalho, 1975)................................................................ 133 Figure 18. Opening image and background for the credit sequence. Quilombo (Carvalho, 1975)..... 134 Figure 19. Dorothy (Barabara O. Jones) killing the police officer (Chris Clay). Bush Mama (1976).. 169 Figure 20. Dorothy and the MPLA fighter make eye contact. Bush Mama (1976)............................. 171 Figure 21. The last shot of Bush Mama (1976).................................................................................... 171 vi Figure 22. Wig Signage. Bush Mama (1976) ....................................................................................... 177 Figure 23. Freeze framed image ends the credit sequence of Memorias (1968) ................................. 191 Figure 24. Memorias (1968) Film Poster ............................................................................................. 192 Figure 25. Cary (Jane Wyman) reads from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden .....................................204 Figure 26. Cary (Jane Wyman) is introduced to Ron’s (Rock Hudson) friends ................................208 Figure 27. The scene that separates the two parts of Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974):....................... 211 Figure 28. Repetition with a difference. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) ........................................... 215 Figure 29.“Overdetermination from without.” Far from Heaven (Focus Features, 2002). ................225 Figure 30. Neither black nor white. Far from Heaven (Focus Features, 2002). .................................228 vii PREFACE I would like to thank my dissertation committee for their patience and encouragement these last many years. Marcia Landy, Shalini Puri, Adam Lowenstein, Neepa Majumdar, and John Beverley have provided support and inspiration. Each in her or his own way has nurtured what is good in the project and gently steered me away from blind alleys. I am grateful for their straight-talk and for their anti-bureaucratic approach to graduate study. I only hope to one day emulate their rigorously intellectual, yet pretenseless, mentoring. I would also like to thank my long-suffering parents, Alan and Anexora Skvirsky, for putting aside their better judgment and acting, at least, as if they thought this racket would ever pay. And for taking me to see R-rated movies on school nights in elementary school. And for coming to my defense (that of my dissertation). And for their love. My sister, Karina Skvirsky, was my first interlocutor on intellectual matters. I think she was the only one who anticipated, in my childhood, my bright future. For their love and supoprt, I am grateful to my cousin Bobby Jarrin and to my tias Roxy Jarrin and Zully Lutrario. Finally, I would like to say thank you to the loved ones to whom I am not related: to sweet Chloe Heske for encouragement and editing; to Ben Laurence for dinner on the last night; to Julie Oppenheimer for being a labor organizer; to Bill Cornell for being a good listener, especially on the topic of writer’s block; to the love of my life, Anton Ford, for everything. viii 1.0 INTRODUCTION 1. The Ethnic Turn Racism isn’t what it used to be. In a recent special PMLA issue dedicated to looking at “the state of the study of race in literary studies,” several of the contributors prefaced their comments with an acknowledgement of the changed racial landscape. Arif Dirlik, noting the ongoing pervasiveness of race talk and