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• Title: Variations on the Brazilian Orpheus Theme (Critical Essay)
• Author : CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
• Release Date : January 01, 2009
• Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 92 KB

Description

The comparison of the play Orfeu da Conceicao (1956) by the Brazilian poet-songwriter-diplomat Vinicius de Moraes and its two adaptations to film, Marcel Camus's Black Orpheus (1959) and Carlos Diegues's Orfeu (1999), has generated considerable critical attention. Following the international success of Black Orpheus, much has been written about the film in conjunction with the play, both in newspaper reviews and in more in-depth filmic and cultural analyses. Orfeu, while less successful commercially, revived yet again the topos of the Greek myth set against the hillside slums of Rio de Janeiro. There are many reasons for the popularity of the comparison of the play with the films. Not only does Black Orpheus continue to be an international reference for the representation of Brazil abroad, but the juxtaposition of the myth in an Afro-Brazilian setting also highlights issues of race that have been crucial in Brazil from the 1950s to today. Each new revival of the myth in the Brazilian context replays the debate about race relations and social disparities in a new light. My analysis presupposes that this seemingly over-done comparison can still be relevant for the discussion of contemporary cinema in Brazil because it foregrounds the shifting representations about race and also about the role of music in Brazilian culture. The figure of a black Orpheus has become a myth in and of itself in the context of Brazilian cinema, one that departs from the specificities of the Greek myth and sketches a Brazil-specific topos whose relevance has only grown as urban violence and social tensions have intensified in the last decades and changed the landscape of the hillside slums, or favelas. The favelas have once again become a product for export, yet no longer as a tropical paradise in which the people are poor but happy, like in Black Orpheus, but as a contemporary no man's land that serves as setting--sometimes exotic, sometimes painfully realistic--for movies that substitute action and violence for mythical concerns. Hence the international success, for instance, of a production such as Cidade de Deus in 2002. More recently, Favela Rising (2005) and Antdnia (2006) have showcased Afro-Brazilian musicians from the favelas as part of an intricate social network. These protagonists have important roles as advocates for the community through their ability to, like Orpheus, transform life through music.

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