Unraveling Normalized Rhetoric of Violence and Human Rights: the Dissensual Intervention of Sergio Bianchi's Quanto Vale Ou É Por Quilo?

Abstract

Brazilian filmmaker Sergio Bianchi1 is known for his biting commentary on contemporary Brazilian society, exposing contradictions in the way that such themes as violence, inequality, and human rights are perceived and discussed, while leaving no group unscathed in his critique of social ills. He does this through a meta-filmic approach that not only presents social problems to spectators, but also interrogates the discursive structures that inform our engagement with these issues, exposing our own complicity in perpetuating social inequality. The 2005 film Quanto vale ou é por quilo? (How Much, or is it by the Kilo?)2 perhaps best exemplifies Bianchi's style, offering a sardonic critique of Brazil's social problems and an idealized international human rights discourse through satirical dialogue, ironical performances by actors trained in theater, and a cinematographic structure that disrupts both Hollywood-style films and the documentary genre. While some academic work has been done on the film, there has been little analysis of what I contend are the most important pieces of Quanto vale ou é por quilo?: the critique of the commodification of humanitarian aid and the disruption of normalized discourses related to violence and social inequality in Brazil. Drawing from theoretical discussions on the visibility of violence and human rights by such authors as Slavoj Žižek and Jacques Rancière, in dialogue with the critical contributions of Ivana Bentes and Fernão Pessoa Ramos related to problematizing representations of violence and the ‘other’ in recent Brazilian cinema, I contend that Quanto vale ou é por quilo? offers a more critical engagement with these issues than national and international box office successes such as Cidade de Deus and the Tropa de Elite series. I argue that Bianchi's work constitutes a dissensus in the normative rhetoric surrounding the issues of violence, human rights, and social inequality, exposing the symbolic/systemic violence constituted and perpetuated by social consensus in Brazil.

Notes

1 While here I focus my analysis primarily on Quanto vale ou é por quilo? (Bianchi 2005), I examine the manifestation of these themes in both Cronicamente inviável (Bianchi 2000) and Os inquilinos (Bianchi 2011) as pieces of my larger project on Bianchi's recent work. Also, please note that while ‘Sérgio’ is typically written with an accent mark in Portuguese, Bianchi does not include the written mark himself in the film credits, so I follow his own spelling.

2 All translations from Portuguese in this essay are my own.

3 There are of course other films that could be mentioned here, including many from the initial phase of the so-called retomada in Brazilian cinema, such as Central do Brasil (Walter Salles 1998) or O que é isso companheiro (Bruno Barreto 1997) or other films with less international exposure such as Como nascem os anjos (Murilo Salles 1996) and Um Céu de Estrelas (Tata Amaral 1996). I specifically mention the more recent films above because of their immense popularity and exposure outside Brazil, and thus their complicity in the production and consumption of spectacular violence and human rights discourse through international cultural exchange. This does not, of course, ignore the critical debates on cinematic production at the local level, but rather points to the dialogue between national film production in Brazil and the global consumption of cinema.

4 Prysthon examines the question of ‘peripheral cosmopolitism’ and the aestheticization of marginalized/subaltern subjects throughout her work. See for example Prysthon 2002 and Prysthon 2005.

5 Here my view is more aligned with that of João Luiz Vieira's interpretation of the role of Alfredo, as he lays out in ‘Chronically Unfeasible: The Political Film in a Depoliticized World’ (Vieira 2003).

6 While I do not have space to enter into an analysis of Cronicamente inviável here, I develop a more detailed discussion of the film in my larger project on Bianchi's work.

7 It is not the primary intent of this article to enter into an in-depth analysis of these films, but to rather demonstrate the ways that Bianchi's work differs from these films and opens up alternative interpretations/critiques of the conceptualization and representation of violence and human rights.