Debating Xica: The Role of the Mass Media in the Definition of Racial Relations in Brazil in the 1970s

The paper will explore how historians, anthropologists, political scientists, writers, artists, filmmakers, and activists were engaged in one of the most important public debates about race and slavery in the Brazilian media triggered by the popular film Xica da Silva released in 1976. The intense public discussions about gender and particularly race relations were also influenced by the intense circulation of images of the US civil rights movement popularized by the mass media, specially Manchete and Fatos e Fotos, photojournals in the venue of Life magazine. This work also intends to contest the conception of the public sphere addressed by J. Habermas and traditional political scientists about the alienating role of the mass media and cultural industry in the 1950s on. In my specific case, the massive audience and the degree of public attention achieved by the film created a broad discussion about race and gender relations in the Brazilian society, questioning the role of the intellectuals during the post populist era and the expansion of mass culture and cultural industry. The aim is to illustrate not only how the media worked as a key element in the constitution of a public sphere, but also the media as a component of the cultural field.