No Brasil, o maior enemigo do negro é o mulato: Racial Representations, Film, Television, and Politics in Brazil during Authoritarian Times, 1968–85

"No Brasil, o maoir enemigo do negro é o mulato:Racial Representations, Film, and Politics in Brazil during Authoritarian Times, 1968-1985."

Abstract

This paper focuses on the transformations of the Brazilian film industry from 1968/1969 in association with the authoritarian state, which fostered an unparalleled expansion of the film market production and spectatorship. It pays particular attention to the significant aesthetic and narrative changes that, foregrounding notions of gender, sexuality and race, recreated the core of a national racial democracy myth enthusiastically consumed by local and international audiences. The figure of the mulata was central to this myth of racial identity. Filmmakers, the state, and audiences alike embraced the mulata as the national symbol per excellence, consuming this figure locally and exporting it abroad. Brazilians found their identity in this image, which allowed a “fun” and benevolent representation of the nation that once again was depicted as a non-racist paradise, in contraposition to other post-slavery countries, especially the United Sates.