if only they were all as sexy as carmen miranda

As promised, I will now discuss the lecture/seminar I attended last night. I think the speaker came all the way from Victoria, Australia, to give this talk among doing other things in the UK, too. She might have been jet-lagged, so please keep this in mind while I write about the experience. Superficially speaking, I think she was very nervous. In some parts, she spoke too fast and/or stumbled. She was also very expressive with her hands. I appreciate people who talk with their hands (they won't be restricted to expositing only with their mouths), but it was a bit distracting, like fireworks or an interpretive dance.

The lecturer spoke on the kinds of representations women and femininity receive in contemporary Brazilian cinema. She focused on Me You Them (2000) and Central Station (1998). I have only ever seen Central Station, and that was years ago, but I remember it surprisingly well, especially as she talked about it. So, any of my thoughts regarding the first film were pretty much based on what she gave us in her lecture. I had heard of Me You Them before and have always wanted to see it, but I had no idea it revolves around a woman who finds in three different men what she wants: a home and security from her--albeit oppressive--husband, a friendly and compassionate helping hand from her husband's cousin, and a passionate and corporeal relationship with a younger man who works in the fields with her.

When it came time to the Q & A section of the talk, I asked if it is possible to read the protagonist, Darlene, as a feminist figure. I had gotten this impression of her because she isn't framed, according to the speaker, as a slut even though she sleeps with various men and has children with the two men that are not her husband while she is still married to him. She wants all three of the men, and the system--this postmodern or non-traditional family structure--does work. Also, the previous question asked how female directors in Brazil approach (re)constructing Brazilian female sexuality in the face of the stereotyped but ultimately accepted view of women as being hypersexual. This discussion led into my question, I think, especially since the director (Andrucha Waddington) is a man and the screenwriter (Elena Soarez) is a woman.

In short, the lecturer did not think my interpretation had no grounds, but she doesn't think she is that great a feminist figure because her husband, at the very end of the film, registers all four of her children--none of which he fathered--as his children, under his name. Legally, this means he retains ownership of them, just has he has over Darlene because she is his wife. The speaker thinks this move is his way to of re-affirming his authority, now making it impossible for Darlene to ever leave him for the youngest man because she would never leave her children.

To write Darlene off as not being a feminist figure for this reason supposes that in order for her to be feminist she must be the most powerful force in the house. Can she not be a feminist for finding a way around patriarchal norms, for finding two men that fulfill her needs in addition to what her husband has provided her with (food and shelter)? She is subverting his power over her body when she sleeps with these other men. She is re-claiming it for herself. That she does not leave him because of the legal binding he has wrapped her in is just realistic, I suppose. In my opinion, the film suggests that gender equality is not something that happens overnight.

The film apparently does not have full closure. You don't see how they adjust to what he has done, but the speaker agreed with me that just because he has registered the children under his name does not mean that they cannot go on living like this in the poor rural Northeast.

All in all, she did not convince me that Darlene isn't an allegorical feminist figure. I have to see the film for myself.

Moving on: at first I found the speaker's examination of Central Station problematic. When discussing the lead character, Dora, I thought she was saying that she was not feminine. Maybe in the strict hyper-feminine way, she is not, but Dora is neither masculine. In listening to her further, I came to better understand what she was talking about.

The film charts Dora's transformation from a bit of a "cynical" loner to a more feminine maternal figure for a boy who she is trying to reunite with his father and brothers following the sudden death of his mother, one of the illiterate people Dora would write letters for in the central station. I agree with the lecturer's interpretation that Dora's journey to maternal figure is at the expense of her sexuality. She may become more feminine--she wears lipstick to appear pretty for a truck driver while she and the boy are on the road--but she never gets laid.

I am not saying her attempts are fruitless (who knows what will happen when she returns home to Rio; she might get a date!), but it is her conformity to heteronormative social patterns that I find distressing. It doesn't help that she arrives at this transformation following the encouragement of the boy who, let's face it, at his age can recognize normal gender roles and appearances, but does not necessarily understand how they are a social construction, and that he's just policing appropriate gender behavior. Figures this film was made by men (director Walter Salles and screenwriters Marcos Bernstein and João Emanuel Carneiro).

Very anti-climatically: I think I am done.