The critical condition of the body in recent Brazilian audiovisual: social figures and parameters of analysis

Abstract

This research project aims to develop first analytical parameters for the study of the body in Brazilian audiovisual works made in 2010s, primarily in productions starring or directed by historical subjects who are victims of class, race and ethnic violence. As far as we know, the centrality of social issues in such cinematography limited previous research to thematic analysis and, consequently, to indifference to formal inventions. Seemingly the current lack of studies on the aesthetic guidelines mobilized for the mise en scène and the figuration of the body is a flagrant epiphenomenon of the predominance given to the content. On the contrary, this research is based on the imperative articulation between politics and aesthetics. When analyzing works in which the body is exposed to an adverse historical-social situation, which threatens the subject's life or leaves scars on it, it is proposed to understand the formal experiments from a ternary scheme composed of: convalescent figures, images of trauma, and encounters with the enemy. In all three cases, there is often an articulation between national issues and aesthetic features of a transnational cinema; and the imposition of alterity on the filmic form. Under these conditions, the structural hypothesis of the project is that the critical conditional of the body shapes and makes cinematographically visible the social forces and the mechanisms of power that affect the subject. Along with examining the hypothesis, I intend to inquire how the primacy of the body invites the revision of pillars of the modern Brazilian critical tradition, such as the category of nation and the image of the Other, in the light of emerging epistemes. (AU)