Cannibalizing Queer: Brazilian Cinema from 1970 to 2015 (Queer Screens Series)

Through an analysis of contemporary Brazilian cinematic production, Cannibalizing Queer: Brazilian Cinema from 1970 to 2015 discusses which queer representations are erased and which are acknowledged in the complex processes of cultural translation, adaptation, and "devouring" that defines the Brazilian understanding of sexual dissidents and minorities. João Nemi Neto argues for Brazilian cinema studies to acknowledge the importance of 1920s modernism and of antropografia, a conceptual mode of cannibalism, to adopt and extrapolate a perverse form of absorption and raise the stakes on queer theory and postcolonialism, and to demonstrate how they are crucial to the development of a queer tradition in Brazilian cinema. In five chapters and two "trailers," Nemi Neto understands the term "queer" through its political dimensions because the films he analyzes represent characters that conform neither to American coming-out politics nor to Brazilian identity politics. Nonetheless, the films are queer precisely because the queer experiences and affection explored in these films do not necessarily insist on identifying characters as a particular sexuality or gender identity. Therefore, attention to characters within a unique cinematic world raises the stakes on several issues that hinge on cinematic form, narrative, and representation. Nemi Neto interviews and examines the work of João Silvério Trevisan and provides readings of films such as AIDS o furor do sexo explícito (AIDS the Furor of Explicit Sex, 1986), and Dzi Croquetes (Dzi Croquetes, 2009) to theorize a productive overlap between queer and antropofagia. Moreover, the films analyzed here depict queer alternative representations to both homonormativity and heteronormativity as forms of resistance, at the same time as prejudice and heteronormativity remain present in contemporary Brazilian social practices. Graduate students and scholars of cinema and media studies, queer studies, Brazilian modernism, and Latin American studies will value what one early reader called "a point of departure for all future research on Brazilian queer cinema." Cover Page Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Approaching Antropofagia: Cannibalism at Home and Abroad Anthropophagic Queer: Queering Gay in Brazil 1. Devouring Cinema: Queering Antropofagia Why Is Antropofagia Important to Queer Cinema? Antropofagia / The Anthropophagic Movement What Is Queer about Antropofagia? Trailer 1: The Revitalization of Antropofagia in the 1960s and 1970s 2. João Silvério Trevisan’s Orgia ou o homem que deu cria: The Quintessential Anthropophagic Queer João Silvério Trevisan in the Context of Cinema Marginal Boca do Lixo and Cinema Marginal João Silvério Trevisan and His Manifesto Entendido Orgia ou o homem que deu cria The Characters 3. HIV/AIDS in 1980s Brazilian Cinema: Abjection and Shame in Documentary, Fiction, and Pornography Understanding the Genres: Chanchadas, Pornochanchadas, and Pornography Romance and the Future in the Past AIDS, furor do sexo Estou com AIDS Trailer 2: Brazilian Cinematic Production and Effeminophobia 4. Dzi Croquettes and the Queer Documentary Tradition 5. Contemporary Trends in Anthropophagic Queer: Challenging Effeminophobia Madame Satã and the Fictionalized Reality Tatuagem and the Uses of Naturalism Conclusion Appendix: with João Silvério Trevisan in São Paulo, Brazil, October 2018 and June 2019 Notes Works Cited and Supplemental Readings Index Through an analysis of contemporary Brazilian cinematic production, Cannibalizing Queer: Brazilian Cinema from 1970 to 2015 discusses which queer representations are erased and which are acknowledged in the complex processes of cultural translation, adaptation, and "devouring" that defines the Brazilian understanding of sexual dissidents and minorities. João Nemi Neto argues for Brazilian cinema studies to acknowledge the importance of 1920s modernism and of Antropofagia, a conceptual m ode of cannibalism, to adopt and extrapolate a perverse form of absorption and raise the stakes on queer theory and postcolonialism, and to demonstrate how they are crucial to the development of a queer tradition in Brazilian cinema--back cover