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Abstract
Through carnival’s protagonism and positioning within the metropolis, Orfeu Negro defamiliarizes the urban experience and depicts urban modernity as a hellish force through its imagery of confinement, tension-filled editing schemes, vertical framing and an aesthetics of darkness. Representing the modern forces of Rio de Janeiro’s institutional sites in mythic terms, Orfeu’s katabasis into the city’s infernal underworld exposes the hollowness of civil services, renders bankrupt the State facilitation of citizen welfare and lays bare police oppression, crowd control and racial divide. Via a nuanced rendition of Bakhtinian carnival, Orfeu Negro problematizes the status of modernity as a democratic project.
Notes
1 See Robert Stam, Tropical Multiculturalism: A Comparative History of Race in Brazilian Cinema and Culture (London/Durham, NC: Duke U. P., 1997), 175; and Hardy Fredricksmeyer, ‘Black Orpheus, Myth and Ritual: A Morphological Reading’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 14:1–2 (2007), 148–75 (p. 148) respectively.
2 See Fredricksmeyer, ‘Black Orpheus, Myth and Ritual’, 148–49; and Hans Hess, ‘Black Orpheus (1959) and Brazilian Identity’, in Film Music in ‘Minor’ National Cinemas, ed. Germán Giel-Curiel (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 45–70 (p. 46).
3 Charles A. Perrone, ‘Myth, Melopeia, and Mimesis: Black Orpheus, Orfeu, and Internationalization in Brazilian Popular Music’, in Brazilian Popular Music & Globalization, ed. Charles A. Perrone & Christopher Dunn (Gainesville: Univ. Press of Florida, 2001), 46–71 (p. 46).
4 Perrone, ‘Myth, Melopeia, and Mimesis’, 60.
5 Lúcia Nagib, Brazil on Screen: Cinema Novo, New Cinema, Utopia (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007), 91. See also, for example, Glauber Rocha, ‘Orfeu: metafisica na favela’, Suplemento Dominical Jornal do Brasil, 24 October 1959, p. 1; Caetano Veloso, ‘An Orpheus, Rising from Caricature’, The New York Times, 20 August 2000, n.p. (available online at <https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/film/082000orfeu-brazil-film.html> [accessed 1 September 2021]); and Myrian Sepúlveda dos Santos, ‘The Brazilian Remake of the Orpheus Legend: Film Theory and the Aesthetic Dimension’, Theory, Culture & Society, 20:4 (2003), 49–69.
6 Sepúlveda dos Santos, ‘The Brazilian Remake of the Orpheus Legend’, 50.
7 Perrone, ‘Myth, Melopeia, and Mimesis’, 61; Veloso, ‘An Orpheus, Rising from Caricature’, n.p.
8 Robert Stam, Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism, and Film (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U. P., 1989), 137.
9 Stam, Subversive Pleasures, 138; Stam, Tropical Multiculturalism, 174.
10 Edwin Murillo, ‘Orfeu Carioca: Reassessing Orphic Mythology in Rio de Janeiro’, Hispanet Journal, 3 (2010), 1–38 (p. 12); Fredricksmeyer, ‘Black Orpheus, Myth and Ritual’, 156 & 170 respectively.
11 See Carlos J. Alonso, The Burden of Modernity: The Rhetoric of Cultural Discourse in Spanish America (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1998), 19; Michael Iarocci, Properties of Modernity: Romantic Spain in Modern Europe, and the Legacies of Empire (Nashville: Vanderbilt U. P., 2006); Néstor García Canclini, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity, trans. Christopher L. Chiappari & Silvia L. López with a foreword by Renato Rosaldo (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1995 [1st Spanish ed. 1990]); and Julio Ramos, Divergent Modernities: Cultures and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Latin America, trans. John D. Blanco with a foreword by José David Saldívar (London/Durham, NC: Duke U. P., 2001 [1st Spanish ed. 1989]).
12 Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987 [1st German ed. 1985]), 2.
13 Fredricksmeyer, ‘Black Orpheus, Myth and Ritual’, 156.
14 Fredricksmeyer, ‘Black Orpheus, Myth and Ritual’, 155.
15 Fredricksmeyer, ‘Black Orpheus, Myth and Ritual’, 148 & 160.
16 Fredricksmeyer, ‘Black Orpheus, Myth and Ritual’, 153.
17 Stam, Tropical Multiculturalism, 174.
18 See Rudolph Bultmann’s definition of myth and his consideration of verticality as an integral component of myths, in ‘On the Problem of Demythologizing (1952)’, in his New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings, ed. & trans. Schubert M. Ogden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 95–131.
19 See Christopher Schliephake, ‘Orpheus in Black: Classicism and Cultural Ecology in Marcel Camus, Samuel R. Delany, and Reginald Sheperd’, Anglia, 134:1 (2016), 113–35 (p. 124); and Erling B. Holtsmark, ‘The Katabasis Theme in Modern Cinema’, in Classical Myth and Culture in the Cinema, ed. Martin M. Winkler (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 2001), 23–50 (p. 25).
20 Luisa Valle, ‘The Ministry of Education and Health Building, Rio de Janeiro; Utopia or Agenda’, Master’s thesis (CUNY City College, 2012), 28. Oscar Niemeyer, who would go on to be the principal architect of Brasilia (the capital of the federal government), also designed the set for the 1956 production of Vinícius de Moraes’ verse play Orfeu da Conceição: Tragédia Carioca on which the film was loosely based (published in 1955 and performed in Rio in 1956).
21 Richard Williams, Brazil: Modern Architectures in History (London: Reaktion Books, 2009), 11; ‘Beauty of Brazil Depicted in Show; Photos and Models Will Give Story of Architectural Skill of the Nation’, The New York Times, 13 January 1943, p. 25.
22 Beatriz Jaguaribe, Rio de Janeiro: Urban Life through the Eyes of the City (London/New York: Routledge, 2014), 51.
23 See Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. & trans. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1984 [1st Russian ed. 1929]); and his Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky, prologue by Michael Holquist, foreword by Krystyna Pomorska (Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1984 [1st ed. 1965]).
24 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. & trans. Emerson, 122–23.
25 Stam, Subversive Pleasures, 21.
26 Stam, Subversive Pleasures, 130.
27 Stam is quick to point out that da Matta fails to consider the political ambiguities of Brazilian carnival, overlooking that various social sectors separated by race, gender, class and sexual orientation ‘live distinct carnivals […] from a different and more marginalized position than those who enjoy power all year long and therefore have less need to symbolically overturn it’ (Subversive Pleasures, 131). Challenging da Matta’s theorization of Brazilian carnival, Peter Fry has argued that Brazil’s carnival practices vary by ethnic group, city, region and historical period (see his Para ingles ver: identidade e politica na cultura brasileira [Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1982]), and Antonio Riserio has highlighted the ways in which carnival can at times dramatize social inequalities and ethnic allegiance as opposed to invert them, turning to the example of Bahian carnival ‘blocos’ that divide themselves in terms of class and race (see his Carnaval Ijexa [São Paulo: Hucitec, 1984]).
28 It should be recognized that the black Brazilians who were part of Camus’ staged carnival did not receive compensation for their participation even though the film would go on to generate millions of dollars. See Ella Shohat & Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (London/New York: Routledge, 1994), 187.
29 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Iswolsky, 255.
30 Murillo, ‘Orfeu Carioca’, 14.
31 Perrone, ‘Myth, Melopeia, and Mimesis’, 54.
32 Fredricksmeyer, ‘Black Orpheus, Myth and Ritual’, 160.
33 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Iswolsky, 5.
34 Murillo, ‘Orfeu Carioca’, 12.
35 In Brazil, various city carnivals feature a crowned king. The Maracatu traditions of Pernambuco, for example, feature a carnival procession of predominately Afro-Brazilians dressed in colonial-era Portuguese finery, led by a ‘king’ and ‘queen’ crowned and costumed in regal attire. See Tiago de Oliveira Pinto, ‘Musical Difference, Competition, and Conflict: The Maracatu Groups in the Pernambuco Carnival, Brazil’, Latin American Music Review/Revista de Música Latinoamericana, 17:2 (1996), 97–119.
36 Quoted in Denise Mota, ‘Orfeu espera o carnaval de ’98 chegar’, Folha de São Paulo, 20 September 1997, pp. 4–5.
37 Sepúlveda dos Santos, ‘The Brazilian Remake of the Orpheus Legend’, 54.
38 Charles A. Perrone, ‘Don’t Look Back: Myths, Conceptions, and Receptions of Black Orpheus’, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, 17 (1998), 155–78 (p. 167).
39 Perrone, ‘Don’t Look Back’, 155.
40 See George Reid Andrews, ‘Brazilian Racial Democracy, 1900–90: An American Counterpoint’, Journal of Contemporary History, 31:3 (1996), 483–507 (p. 483).
41 Sepúlveda dos Santos, ‘The Brazilian Remake of the Orpheus Legend’, 63.
42 Murillo, ‘Orfeu Carioca’, 2. There are a number of Brazilian films that have documented the socio-historical realities of Brazilian carnival, including the documentary shorts of the first decades of the twentieth century featuring Rio’s carnival and its Afro-Brazilian revellers (see Robert Stam, ‘Samba, Candomblé, Quilombo: Black Performance and Brazilian Cinema’, The Journal of Ethnic Studies, 13:3 [1985], 54–84 [p. 62]). Later, the popular film genre of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s known as the chanchada, musical comedies imitating big-budget Hollywood musicals, featured musical numbers and carnival themes and were designated as ‘films carnavales-cos’ or ‘filmes do carnaval’. On the chanchada, see Lisa Shaw, ‘The Chanchada and Celluloid Visions of Brazilian Identity in the Vargas Era (1930–45)’, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, 6:1 (2000), 63–74.
43 Jared Banks, ‘Cinematic Adaptation: Orfeu Negro da Conceição’, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, 23:3 (1996), 791–801 (p. 797).
44 Banks, ‘Cinematic Adaptation’, 798.
45 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Iswolsky, 198, 197 & 198.
46 Holtsmark, ‘The Katabasis Theme in Modern Cinema’, 25.
47 Holtsmark observes that the entry to mythical other worlds is ‘often conceived as lying in caves or grottos or other openings in the earth’s crust into the nether regions, such as chasms or clefts’ (‘The Katabasis Theme in Modern Cinema’, 25).
48 Perrone makes the passing remark that the Bureau of Missing Person’s is ‘an eerie (almost infernal?) government building’ (‘Myth, Melopeia, and Mimesis’, 57).
49 Perrone, ‘Myth, Melopeia, and Mimesis’, 54.
50 Fredricksmeyer, ‘Black Orpheus, Myth and Ritual’, 165.
51 Fredricksmeyer, ‘Black Orpheus, Myth and Ritual’, 166.
52 Stam, Tropical Multiculturalism, 171; original emphasis. In Vinícius de Moraes’ play, the original myth’s search for Eurydice in Hades is transposed to a dark dancing club in the city called ‘Os Maiorais do Inferno’. De Moraes, who had initially collaborated with the film’s making by working on an adaptation of his play, is the originator of the film’s change of shifting Orfeu’s descent to hell from a dancing club in the play’s second Act to Rio’s carnival in the last third of the film as the atmosphere within which death persecutes Eurídice (Banks, ‘Cinematic Adaptation’, 793).
53 Patrice Rankine, ‘Orpheus and the Racialized Body in Brazilian Film and Literature of the Twentieth Century’, Forum for World Literature Studies, 3:3 (2011), 420–33 (p. 431).
54 Stam, ‘Samba, Candomblé, Quilombo’, 70. Stam notes Anselmo Duarte’s Pagador de Promessas (1962) and Glauber Rocha’s Barravento (1962) as exceptions (70–71).
55 Stam, ‘Samba, Candomblé, Quilombo’, 70.
56 Stam, ‘Samba, Candomblé, Quilombo’, 70. In Orfeu Negro’s depiction of the ceremony, though some critics found the scene ‘disagreeable’ (Octávio Bonfim, quoted in Stam, Tropical Multiculturalism, 172), Perrone applauded the scene’s staging of cult members, garb and music as ‘genuine’ (Perrone, ‘Myth, Melopeia, and Mimesis’, 57).
57 Luis Nicolau Parés, ‘The Birth of the Yoruba Hegemony in Post-Abolition Candomblé’, Journal da la Société des Américanistes, 91:1 (2005), 139–59 (p. 144); available online at <https://journals.openedition.org/jsa/2873> (accessed 1 September 2023).
58 Parés, ‘The Birth of the Yoruba Hegemony’, 144.
59 Murillo discerns the song’s ‘dystopic and sociological quality’ as ‘a lyrical recapitulation of the adversity of favela life’ (‘Orfeu Carioca’, 9 & 10).
60 See Hess’ detailed analysis of the soundtrack and the ways in which it blends bossa nova with multiple cultural expressions of samba. For an astute study of the music’s mythical function in the filmic diegesis and for historical contextualization of the music’s background, see Perrone, ‘Myth, Melopeia, and Mimesis’.
61 Perrone, ‘Myth, Melopeia, and Mimesis’, 55. English-language viewers would have understood, however, the most amorous parts of ‘A felicidade’ that Orfeu serenades to Eurídice, since translations of this part of the song were provided.
62 Murillo, ‘Orfeu Carioca’, 12.
* Disclosure Statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.