film, television and traditional folk culture in bye bye brazil

8/10/2019 Film, Television and Traditional Folk Culture in Bye Bye Brazil

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Brazilian Cinema Novo [New Cinema] has produced a number of films

that have circulated

in

the United States but perhaps the most familiar to

American audiences is Carlos Diegues Bye Bye Brasil(l980). In his article,

Randal Johnson focuses on this i lm which presents Brazil as a country in a

process of rapid transformation, an agro-pastoral economy giving way to

rapid industrialization. He notes that running throughout [the work] is a

subtext which constitutes a good-humored yet critical retrospective of the

trajectory o Brazilian cinema over the last twenty years and its

relationship to other conscious-forming media, notably television.

Johnson examines this subject as well as the complex relationship between

cinema, television and popular culture as developed through the device of

the Caravana Rolidei, a small-time circus troupe. Each of i ts characters

represents a dif ferent aspect of contemporary Brazilian society, and the

film as a whole presents the panoply of Brazilian culture, a mixture of

elements from diverse sources, both foreign and domestic.

Randal Johnson teaches literature and film at the University of

Florida. He is the co-author of Brazilian Cinema 1982).

Film, Television and Traditional Folk Culture

in Bye Bye Brasill

Randal Johnson

In 1974 Luis Carlos Barreto produced his son Brunos A Estrela Sobe

The Star Rises),

the story of the career of

a

radio and television performer

featuring television s ta r Betty Faria. The film was intended

as

a means of

bringing the padrzo Globo de qualidade (the globo standard of quality) into

Brazilian cinema. The following year Daniel Filho, a well-known television

producer and direc%r, made the film

Casal The Couple),

stamng

television actors Jose Wilker and Sonia Braga. In tha t same year 1975),

Jorge Bodansky and Orlando Senas docu-dramaIracema tookup the fallen

banner of Cinema Nouo [New Cinema] and drew a parallel between the

prostitution of a young Indian girl and the rape of the Amazon region by the

Brazilian military government and multinational interests. In 1978 Xavier

de Oliveiras

Gargalhada Final [Last Laugh]

presented

a

pair of circus

performers who find themselves marginalized and unemployed in an age of

mass communication.

Carlos Diegues eighth feature film, Bye Bye Brasil 1980),combines

elements from all of these films into a vast mural of Brazil which isas vaned

as the country itself. As Diegues himself has observed, his film presents a

country that is beginning

to

disappear, giving way to one that

is

just

beginning to take form.2

It

is a Brazil in a process of rapid transformation.

An agro-pastoral economy

is

giving way

to

industrialization; the Amazon

jungle is occupied by multinational corporations while its original Indian

inhabitants are on the verge of extinction. Television antennas sprout in

every village. The Elm develops metaphors of prostitution and penetration

as

it

reveals the pollution and destruction of the countrys natural resources

and the homogenization of its indigenous and folk cultures. It denounces

the decharacterization wrought by internal and external cultural

dependence.It includes contraband, Indian chants and the disco beat, rural

121


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122 Journal

of

Popular Culture


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Film, Television and

Traditional Folk

Culture

23

Brazilian music and Frank Sina tra, an accordian and

a

rock band; snow in

the sertgo [the arid backlands of the Northeast].

Bye Bye Brasil, dedicated to Brazilians of the twenty-first century,

juxtapose Brazil of the past, the present and perhaps

the

future

as

seen

through

the

travels of

a

small-time circus troupe,

the

Caravana Rolidei (a

Brazilianization of holiday). The troupe is comprised of yagici an and

clairvoyant Lord Cigano (Jos6 W i l y ) , exotic dancer Salome (Betty Faria)

and the strongman Andorinha (Pnncipe Na;bor). In

a

small Northeastern

town they are joined by accordianist Cico (FabioJr.)and

his

pregnant wife

Dasdo (Zaira Zambelli). Like the circus performers in Garg alhada Final,

the troupe represents

a

form of spectacle which finds itself less and less

viable and on the verge of extinction i n a n

age

of mass communications,

as

through their travels they experience what Robert Stam calls the

aftershocks of multinationalization of the Brazil-ian subcontinent., In

this film of the road, the troupe goes from the

sertao

to the sea, then along

the Trans-Amazonian highway to Altamira in the depths of the Amazon

jungle, presenting their show to small towns not yet contaminated by

television. In Altamira Lorde Cigano an d Andorinha lose their truck and

belongings to

a

local hustler-in the service of

a

multinational

corporation-and the trpupe, now in dissolution, catches a boat down-river

to

the bordellos of Belem. There they separate, only to meet again some

time

later

in Brasilia, the nations ultra-modern capital.

Running throughout B ye B ye B r a d is a subtext which constitutes

a

good-humored yet critical retrospective of the trajectory of Brazilian cinema

over the

last

twenty years and

its

relationship to other consciousness-

forming media, notably television. Critics have tended to see Diegues film

as a denunciation of television and its effect on Brazilian ~ u l t u r e . ~close

reading of the film, however, renders t ha t denunciat ion ambiguous at best.

Bye B ye Brasi l in fact incorporates television into its diegesis and

is a

result

of a decision on the part of its producer (Luis Carlos Barreto) to incorporate

elements of television into Brazilian cinema. My purpose in this study is,

first, to disengage the subtext concerning the development

of

Brazilian

cinema and, secondly,

to

examine the relationship between cinema,

television a nd traditional folk culture as they a re articulated through the

internal and external conflicts of the Caravana Rolidei.

Bye Bye Brasil

rests on

a

number of contradictions which, ra ther than invalidat ing it,

make it a complex and rich discussion of contemporary Brazilian society.

Throughout his career, Carlos Diegues has shown

a

concern with

different forms of cultural communication and spectacle and with the

film/spectator relationship, t hat is, how

a

film

is

perceived and understood

by the spectator and what mode of cinematic discourse is most conducive to

that understanding. Such a concern has led him to experiment with

different cinematic styles an d genres. His preoccupation with spectacle and

rommunication is often internalized in the films as they self-reflexively

discuss modes and forms of representation. In

a

sequence of

Ganga

Zumba

(1963), for example, slaves act out masterlslave relationships. A Grande

C idade [The B ig C i t y , 19651which many consider Diegues masterpiece,

is

a

veritable collage of such cinematic styles and genres

as

the Western, silent

melodrama, documentary and police thriller. At the end of the film,

Calunga its meneur de j eu [narrator] reenacts the films action in a n open-

air arena. In s Herdeiros The Heirs, 19701,

a

mural of Brazilian political


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24

Jou rna l of Popular Culture

and cultural history from

1930

to

1964

seen through the trajetory of

a

single,

bourgeois family, the focus

is

on radio, more specifically on the role of the

Raio Nacional [National Radio] as a consciousness-forming medium

during the period in question. Quando of Carnaval Chegar When Carnival

Comes,

19721

deals explicitly with spectacle and implicitly with the

relationship between art and politics as it focuses on

a

musical troupe-not

so different from the Caravana Rolidei-that travels in a gaudily-colored

bus but that refuses

to

play for the King. In this homage to the

chanchada

[light musical comedy15 the immediacy of musical spectacle

is

questioned as

it is frequently removed from its context by Gordardian jump cuts and

is

distanced from the spectator. The underlying theme of all of Diegues

films

is

in fact Brazilian cinema itself in its multiplicity of themes and

styles.

The Caravana Rolideis itinerary recalls Cinema Novos trajectory

from the early sixties until today.

Cinema Novo

initially revealed

a

strong

documentary tendency. Bye Bye B r a d opens with a brief sequence which

lends it a documentary tone: an extreme long shot of a primitive ferry boat

crossing the muddy Siib Francisco River, followed by several shots of

people and merchandise in a small Northeastern river towns open market.

The Northeast was one of early Cinema NOVOSreferred scenarios. Groups

of local musicians stroll through the crowds and, to one side, an

accordianist (Ciso) plays regional music for handouts. After seeing the

Caravana Rolidei, and infatuated with Salomk, Ci o decides to leave the

Vidas Secas [Barren Lives,

1963),

Cigo tells his father tha t he can nolonger

live in the sertgo. Just a s Fabian0 and his family in Vidas Secas are forced

to leave their land, Cico must leave his as well, albeit for different reasons.

From the sertao the troupe goes to the sea in a geographical

visualization of the slogan in Glauber Rochas

Deus e o Diabo nu Terrado

Sol Black God, White Devil,

1964

which prophesies that the sertao will

become the sea, the sea sertao. But the mythical, utopian sea of Rochas

film has changed; it is M W polluted with industrial and human wastes.

Cinema Novo

arose initially as part of the cultural euphoria of the

developmentalist period, the ultimate symbol of which was the ultra-

modern architecture of Brasilia. But the Brasilia seen in

Bye Bye Br a d

does not correspond to its original ideal. The democratic hopes of socialist

architect Oscar Niemeyer and of the developmentalist period have been

dashed, as the capital itself has become the exclusive residence of

government bureaucrats while the people who built

it

are, like Cico and

Dasdo, shunted off to outlying satellite slums.

Cinema Novo initially had difficulty in communicating with a broad

public. The public that supported the

chanchada

in the forties and fifties

preferred to stay home and watch television. The troupe also has a difficulty

in finding large audiences to perform to and must also compete against

television, which has become an audio-visual totem for Brazilians of small

towns

as

well as of the cities. Faced with a market dominated by American

films: Cinema Novo increasingly turned toward the state for protection,

subsidies and production financing. The Caravana Roleidei depends on the

largess of local mayors to be able to perform. Cinema Novo evolved from a

stance of critical realism to the often hermetic, allegorical discourse of

tropicalism. The documentary tone of Bye Bye

Brasils

initial sequence is

Northeast and go with them. In a sequence whos f mise en sdne recalls


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Film, Televis ion

and Traditional Folk

Culture

125

disrupted

as

the Caravana rolls into town, loudspeakers blaring

a

pop song.

With the entrance of the Caravana, the film moves to an allegorical register

tempered by a carnivalesque atyosphere reminiscent of Joaquim Pedro de

Andrades tropicalist

Macunazma 1969)

and Diegues own

Quando o

Carnaval Chegar .

The relationship Lorde Cigano creates with his audience

is

analogous

to that

between cinema and

its

public: sometimes fascinating, sometimes

tedious, sometimes participatory, other times passive. The link between the

Caravana R51idei and cinema is rendered explicit when Lorde Cigano

encounters

Ze

da Luz in

a

small Northeastern town plagued by drought. Ze

da

Luz (Joe of the Light, literally) offers

a

form of entertainment

something like the Caravana: cinema. He travels through the nterior of

Brazil showing old copies of Gilda de Abreus

1946

classic

Ebrio

[The

Drunkard],

starring her husband, singer Vicente Celestino. Like the

Caravana, Zgde Luz (played by Jofre Soares)

is

marginalized by television

and by the impoverished econoyic conditions of Brazils interior. The

situation of Lorde Cigano and Ze da Luz, two sides

of

the same coin, is

analogous once again

to

that of Brazilian cinema

as

a whole, which has

historically been marginalized within

its

own market.

The opposition between the Caravana and television, symbolized by

the ubiquitous fishbones (antennas), would seem

to

suggest that

television

is

responsible for the destruction of Brazilian indigenous and folk

cultures as well as for the homogenization of cultural expression in Brazil.

We

see

the inhabitan -of

a

Northeastern village, including the priest and

mayor, narcotized by Sonia Braga in the

telenovela

[television soap opera].

(Dancin Days (the original title was in English),

a

tale of intertwined

affairs

among Rio de Janeiros disco crowd. Regional cultures lose out in the

face of the massive penetration of television images

as

the s tandards of

powerful commercial television networks (especially TV Globo), geared

largely toward urban audeinces of the south, are imposed upon Brazilians

throughout the country, with no reciprocity possible.

Since the military

coup d etat

of

1964

and especially since the

implementation of satellite transmission in the late sixties, television has

become a major instrument in the governments policy of national

integration. But the integrative goals of s tate communications policy has

been less than successful, resulting in what Carlos Diegues refers to as

internal cultural imperialism.? According to

Dov

Shinar and Marco

Antonio Rodrigues Dias, 77 per cent of the total television broadcasting

power

is

located in state capitals with

45

per cent concentrated in the

prosperous States of Rio de Janeiro a nd Sao Paulo.a They continue:

A few integrative sideeffects of broadcasting n Brazil can be observed. Because

of radio and television, a standardized Brazilian Portuguese language is replacing

the different accents and regional expressions which predominated until the 1940s

and

1950s.

The carioca Rio de Janeiro) way of speaking has been adopted in all

corners

o

Brazil, probably thanks to the electronic media and

t

the fact that Rio has

been traditionally considered the culture center of the country.9

The result of the pattern of growth

of

television over the last twenty years

ha s been

a

one-sided flow of communication, which inevitably results in the

homogenization of cultural expression.

The

process

of cultural decharacterization and homogenization

is

most


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26 J o u r n a l of Popula r Cul tu re

strikingly poignant in the sequence where Lorde Cigano an d he Caravana

meet

a

group of Cruari Indians along the Trans-Amazonian highway. This

sequence calls into question highly ideological interpretations of Brazil and

its

culture.

The

Indians are no longer the noble savages of Jose de

Alencars Romantic novels, nor the proud cannibals of Oswald de

Andrades cannibalist movement of Brazilian literary modernism (and

subsequently of Nelson Pereira dos Santos 1972 film, H ow T a s ty w a s m y

Li t tl e F renchman) .Rather, they are sickly

and

poverty-stricken, much like

the Indians pictured in such recent Brazilian documentaries

as Raoni

1978), by Luis Carlos Saldanha and Je an Pierre Dutilleux and Terra

dos

Indios Land

of

the Indians, 1979 by Zelito Viana.

The Indians village has been destroyed and,

as

the chief says, they

want to go to town to pacify the whites, a remark which ironizes genocidal

pacification programs of the Brazilian government. Their society has been

decimated and their culture decharacterized. The children carry toy

airplanes and television sets carved out of wood. Their grandmother listens

to the Everley Brothers version of Bye Bye Love on the transistor radio

glued to her wr . They go to town and discover ice cream, Coca Cola and

color television, which, significantly, transmits nothing but the pre-

program color pattern. Television, however, is only par t of a larger process

of the gradual extinction of indigenous cultures. It is only one of the more

visible components of the advanced technology which ha s brought isolated

an d feudal regions

of

Brazil into the space

age

(it s significant that Brazils

final link-up to international satellite transmission systems occurred in

1969

shortly before the f irs t moon landing). iiThile television may have had

a negative effect on the Indians , so too does Lorde Cigano. Upon seeing

them along the road, he takes from the chief the only natural thing they

possess: a monkey. The monkey, in Lorde Ciganos hands, becomes jus t

another commodity which he loses, together with the truck, to the hustler in

Altamira. While he is concerned with his own marginalization, he

symbolically participates in the increased marginalization of the Indians

by expropriating what is theirs.

Bye B ye Brasils critique of television, however, is rendered ambiguous

in the diegesis an d also-and perhaps more importantly-in its mode of

production. If,

as

I

have suggested, the Caravana Rolidei allegorically

represents Brazilian cinema itself, then it is in

a

sense equated with

television. The entertainment offered by the Caravana is neither better nor

worse than that offered by television. If TV Globo offers a n Americanized

telenovela (Dancin Days), then the Caravana offers visions of snow in

the sertz-the dream of all Brazilians,

says

Lorde Cigano-to the

sounds of Bing Crosbys White Christmas.: If television presents false or

spurious values, promising a paradise of consumerism, so too does Lorde

Cigano offer the credulous

a

vision of an earthly utopia. Like Dancin

Days, B ye Bye B r a d also has a title in English. Its soundtrack is a

veritable pot-pourri of national and international music, including Frank

Sinat ra singing the Brazilian classic Aquarela do Brasil (Brazil, in i ts

English version). The difference between the two forms of spectacle is the

degree of penetration achieved by each and in this sense the Caravana-

and Brazilian cinema-cannot Compete.

There are Some 15 million television sets in use in Brazil by some 60

million telespectators.10 The Globo organization has been the

tnost


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Film, Television an d Traditional Folk Culture

27

successful of the Brazilian teIevision networks, accounting for up to 90

percent of the viewing audience. The penetration of television on a nation-

wide basis

is

on a scale unprecedented in Brazilian cultural history. While

some 30 to 4 million people may watch a Globo

telenovela

on any given

weekday night, in

its first

year of exhibition

B ye B ye

Brasil the

fifth most

popular national film exhibited in Brazil in 1980-drew only 1,335,000

spectators. The total number of spectators for all of Brazilian cinema

is

on

the order of 60

to

70 million per year,12a figure easily reached by Globos

eight oclock novela in less than a week.

The problem is not that television has achieved a high degree of

penetration, but rather t ha t it

is

controlled, through advertising and other

economic imperatives, by multinational intersts. Fifty-seven percent of all

Brazilian television programming consists of foreign (read United States)

series and films. As Jog0 Silveira Raoul notes, television acts as an

instrument in the substitution of Brazilian cultural standards through the

massive importation of canned program^. '^ Bye B ye Bras i l ,however, does

not so much criticize television as it implicity calls for its democratization

and

its

integration with other national forms of expression such as cinema.

Television in Brazil deveioped independently of cinema. When

television was inaugurated in Sao Paulo in 1950, other entrepreneurs from

this industrial city were engaged in the creation, with capital from the

Matarazzo group, of the ill-fated Vera Cruz Film Studios.14 Since cinema

had not been able to establish itself with the countrys potential audience as

a

strong audio-visual tradition, television had to depend on its own

resources and on certain forms of presentation that

it

borrowed from radio.

With

C inema Novo there was no question about participating with

television, since the new medium was not taken particularly seriously by

filmmakers. The result has been a total lack of integration of cinema and

television in Brazil. In 1975 of 1,329 films exhibited by Rio de Janeiro

television stations, only six were Brazilian.15

While national cinema has largely been unable to penetrate television

(with some exceptions), in the last few years television has exerted a

considerable influence on cinema.

B ye B ye B r a d

is one of a number of

recent films which explicitly discuss the role of television in mdoern

Brazilian society (others: Arnaldo Jabors

Eu te Amo

[I Love You, 19811and

Antonio Calmons

Novela das Oi to [Eight OClock Novela ,

19811, u s t as it

is

one of a number of films that borrow elements from television in its

production.

It is

the latest in

a

line of production developed since the mid-

1970s

by producer Luis Carlos Barreto and.others which takes advantage of

the popularity of television star s (in this case Jose Wilker, Betty Faria and

Fib io Jr.). This line of production began in 1974 with Bruno Barretos A

Estrela Sobe Th eStar Rises),

a story of a radio and television star played by

Betty Faria and continues with the same directors Dona Flor e seus Dois

Maridos Dona Flor and Her Two Hu sband s) , 1976. Dona Flor, the most

successful Brazilian film in history, not only starred television actress

S h i a Braga (fresh from the novela Gabriela) and JosQWilker, but was

also based on a massive television advertising campaign. Like these others,

Bye B ye B r a d

depends at least in part on television for its success.

The films discussion of television continues and perhaps deepens

through a conflict within the Caravana Rolidei between Lorde Cigano and

Cico.

The oppos t on between them is aprt of a larger opposition between


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28 Journal of Popular Culture


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Film, Televis ion and Traditional Folk Culture

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130

Journal of

Popula r Cul tu re

traditional artisan culture (Cigos regional music) and industrialized

culture (cinema and television). The Caravana Rolidei would at first glance

seem to be a n intermediary cultural form which atttempts to incorporate

elements of both traditional and industrialized culture. In the films first

sequence, the Caravana rolls into town, loudspeakers blaring and drowns

out Cisos music with

a

pop song. When Cigo asks Lorde Cigano to let him

join the troupe, claiming tha t he can play the accordian, Lorde Cigano

responds condescendingly, we have

a

record player.

Lord Cigano and h is Caravana , like cinema and television, represent a

predominantly urban phenomenon trying to impose itself on the

predominantly rura l space of the small villages they visit. Cifo, on the other

hand,

is a

rural musician. Although

it

ha s never aimed

at a

rural audience,

Cinema Novo

was also an urban phenomenon th at frequently took rural

topics as its subject. The opposition between urban, rural, industr ial and

traditional,

is

developed through what might be called the films embedded

detail: scenes of

Rio de

Janeiro and o aulo painted on the t rucks doors;

continued references

to

the troupes itinerary (after a n extended tour in Sao

Paulo and the rest of the South of the country.. .); Lorde Ciganos

Copacabana T-shirts.

Lorde Ciganos dream

is

to find

a

place without television, not because

he is concerned about its impact on Brazilian culture, but rather because it

is

a

factor in his economic marginalization. He ha s a utopian vision of the

world and longs for the place where pineapples are the size

of

watermelons. He dreams of wealth and finally achieves it-not through

his magic performances, but rather through contraband and Salomes

prostitution. He is not afraid of change and adventure and he realizes that

he must go forward at all costs. We have to keep rolling, he says, or we

will fal l off and screw ourselves. He

is

the eternal artistic gypsy

cigano,

n

Portuguese) in search of the perfect spectacle an d the perfect audience. At

the same time, he continues to be the huckster who promises hi s audiences

the undeliverable.

Ci$o, on the other hand, dreams of the sea and he departs with the

Caravana as if on

a

magic carpet

to

the land of h is fantasy. He represents

an essentially conservative ideology based on tradition and the

permanence of values. His name

is

that of the Northeasts b,eloved Padre

Clcero, Cifo for short. While Lorde Cigano pimps for Salome throughout,

Cifo refuses to follow his example with Dasd8. At the end of the film, the

contrast between the two becomes even clearer when g c o refuses to

accompany the new, improved Caravana Rolidey (now w t h y) to the

territory of Rondonia in search of new audiences. Rather, he decides to stay

in Brazilia with his wife and daughter, playing

at a

local

forro

[dance hall]

and billed

as

the accordianist of the plateau.

Both Lorde Cigano and Ciqo have by this time incorporated television

into their acts. h r d e Ciganos new truck has two screens on one side and

Ci5o an d his band play on

a

stage behind six television sets which transmit

their image to the immediate public. The Caravana Rolidey, advertising

itself with neon lights an d sexual imagery (reflective of the current luxury

an d sex phase of Brazilian cinema?) ha s also incorporated

a

troupe of go-

go

girls a nd become

a

rolling bordello. Ci50, in contrast, has incorporated

his wife an d child into his band. His advertising, in opposition to the gaudy

neon lights of the Caravans,

is

drawn from the traditional wood carvings of

the Brazilian interior. ci s use of television, in sharp contrast to the


11/12

Film.

Television

and Traditional Folk Culture

3

earlier mesmerization of villagers by the

telenovela

Dancin Days seems

to exemplify

a

democratization of television itself. Despite the fact that

CiFo, like Lorde Cigano, has transformed his appearance, he remains

closer,

so

to speak,

to

the roots. His music

is

for a melting-pot of workers

from all over Brazil,

a

fact seen in the different dancing styles (not disco)

revealed in the dance hall.

If Ci2o represents traditional popular culture (i.e., of the people), then

what does the film s ay about him and popular culture in general?

First

of

all, By e Bye Brasil seems to reject the notion

that

there exists somehow a

pure, untainted Brazilian culture. Ci o is not without

his

own elements of

make-up, his use of television, even hi s use of a n accordian,which

is

in itself

the product of a culture industry. Brazilian culture, rather, is a mixture of

elements from diverse sources, both foreign and domestic. The cultural

formation of Brazilians includes Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra ,disco an d the

Everley Brothers, just

to

mention those in the film.

It

also includes strong

Indian and Black contributions. It

is

both urban and rural, both national

and international, both positive an d negative.

B ye Bye B r a d

thus rightly

proposes

a salutary

form of cultural anthropophagy in which the origin of

cuItural elements is

less

important than the way they are assimilated and

re-elaborated.

It would

be

erroneous to say that the directors sympathies lie

exclusively with Cico and his traditional values. Such a position would

contradict the very nature of filmmaking in Brazil. Lorde Cigano is Carlos

Diegues, or

at

least his alter-ego: a n urban artist who has travelled the long

roads of Brazil in search of the perfect audience an d the optimum form of

spectacle. He knows the frustration of empty theatres, the difficulty of

economic survival based on his

art

alone, the contradictions of his art . His

cinema has evolved from the relative poverty of Ganga

Zumba to

the

relative luxury of Bye B ye Brasil , from the esthetic of hunger to a more

commercially oriented and more communicative esthetic of artistic

pluralism. Like Lorde Cigano, Carlos Diegues ha s been figuratively run out

of town by critics, but more importantly, like Lord Cigano, Diegues knows

that the only choice

is to

go forward in search of the artists utopia.

hucksterism: the show-business clo hes he wears in Brasilia, his stage

Notes

Bye Bye Brasil

is

distributed in the United States by New Yorker.

LFrom the press book of Bye Bye Brasil.

3Robert Stam, Bye Bye Brasil, Cineaste, XI, ,o.

1

(Winter 1980-1981),pp. 34-36.

See

for example, Reinaldo da Costa, Transicao, Transitivo, Televisivo, Filme Cultura,

XIV, no. 37 (January-March 1981), pp, 70-72.

5The chanchada is a light musical comeciy which began i n the mid-1930s with Adhemar

Gonzagas A16 A16Brasil(1935)and

A 6

lo

Carnaual(1936), both of which featured Carmen

Miranda. It was

a

very popular cinematic genre through the forties and into the fifties before it

began

to

lose its audience to television.

6BeCause of foreign domination of the domestic film market, the Brazilian government ha s

imposed, since the 1930s, screen quotas for national films. As of today all theatres in the country

must program Brazilian films for at least 140 days per year.

7Jornaldo Brasil,

5

August 1979.

n D ~ ~hinar and Marco Andnio Rodrigues Dias, Communications Policy in Brazil, in

Teheranian, Hakimzadeh and Vidale, eds. Communications Policy for National Development:

Comparative Perspective (London: Routledge Kegan Pau l, 1977), p. 233.


12/12

132

Journal

of

Popular Culture

yIbid.

Decio Eignatari, oder global e o fim do improviso,

Jornal

da Tarde,5 anuary 1980.

Embrafilme: Relatorio da Directoria,

Gazeta Mercantil, 2527

April

1981.

1ZLei B&ca do Cinema Brasileiro,

Filme Cultura,

no. 33 (May

1979),

.

114.

1 J J o ~ kilveira Raou1,;O Desenvolvimento da Televisao no Brasil,

Suplemento do

Centenario, Estado de Sao Paulo,

4

October

1975.

*Vera Cruz attempted to create

a

studio system based on the MGM studios in Hollywood.

While it managed to improve the technical quality of Brazilian cinema, it made many errors. It

gauged its production for the international market and left distribution in the hands of Columbia

Pictures. It inflated productions costa way above the lucrative potential of the Brazilian market.

Vera Cruz went bankrupt in 1954afterproducing

8

eatures, the most famous of which was Lime

Barretos Cangaceiro. For a discussion of Vera Cruz see Maria Rita Galv&, Vera Cruz: A

Brazilian Hollywood, in Randal Johnson and Robert Stam, ed.,Brazilian Cinema (Rutherford,

N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press, 1982),pp. 270-280.

15Estat&icas

76,

Cinemateca do Museu de Arte Moderna, Ria de Janeiro, n.d.

Randal Johnson, a frequent visitor to Brazil, teaches literature and film at the University of

Florida. He

is

the author of

Cinema

N O V O

5:

Masters

o f

Contemporary Brazilian Film,

1984)

and

Literatura e Cinema: Macunaima

do

Moderniamo nu Literatura ao Cinema, 1982).

ogether

with Robert Stam he is coeditor of

Brazilian Cinema 1982).

film, television and traditional folk culture in bye bye brazil

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