Brazilian Film

The one line description of the film, called Mango Yellow, is that life consists of sex and stomachs. So you get an idea of what it will be like.
Many Brazilian films like to show the underbelly of the country since its elite are on display in the wildly popular soap operas, shown relentlessly from 5:30 to 10:30 every day on the most popular television station, watched by 80% of the country. The opulent lives of the rich and often deplorable characters shown in the soap operas contrast to the physical condition in which most Brazilians live, and it is this side Brazilian filmmakers seem to prefer to portray.
The result is that most Brazilian films can only be made with grants of some form or subsidy, i.e. they don’t make money but are rather patronized. People seem to much prefer to escape into the stories of those better off than them or have two hours where they can watch Tom Cruise hanging from a cliff with two fingers killing multiple bad guys. Despite this, filmmakers here are intent on receiving public subsidies and producing films that hardly anybody, besides critics at obscure film festivals nobody has ever heard of, watches. The French have traditionally been the culture emulated by the Brazilian intelligencia and notions about the utter futility of life rather than the optimistic, American idea of the perfectibility of man are accentuated.
Everything in Mango Yellow happens on one day and revolves around a seedy flophouse, in the city of Recife, the second biggest in Brazil’s northeastern region of around 2 million inhabitants. The city is very much part of the film; some of its best moments are touring around town to a soundtrack of samples of the great and wildly eclectic music produced there. It’s a culturally vibrant place and also a site of many of the world’s shark attacks.
The characters in Mango Yellow lack a certain role model quality. The first scene sets the tone. A woman is filmed, naked and getting out of bed, slinging on a dress (no underwear) and making her way to an adjacent bar, which we assume to be hers as she starts to clean it up. She is blond (maybe a descendent of the Dutch who occupied the city in the 17th century for 25 years) and maybe her one role model quality would be for aspiring fashion models as flesh is all she has.
The bar is messy, there’s a lot of work to be done, and from the Helena’s ensuing monologue, which touches on such existential considerations such as ‘‘life is crazy, during the day it’s lights, at night it’s dark, we live and then we die,” we realize that the picture is not altogether rosy. Her philosophical knowledge seems to have come from unsuccessful self-help books. Helena gets on with her prosaic tasks as the day progresses. The first alcoholic arrives at seven in the morning for a dose of cachaca and appears regularly throughout the day for a top up.
We get to know a middle aged man, Otavio, one of a cast of the flophouse residents that feature in this sanguine film. He is incapable of making a sentence half of which are not swear words, and derives intense sexual pleasure from shooting at bodies of recently dead people (the warmer the better). It is not clear whether he has sex with them, the film doesn’t specify. Certainly that act would likely also be morally acceptable for our hero. For this rather torrid pastime, Otavio provides heaps of pot to a guy who works in a mortuary.
All het up from his latest shooting of a dead person, Otavio takes the supplier of his thrills to Helena’s bar to celebrate. Before they get there, Helena has thrown out two guys who talk about world politics and other intellectual themes while getting outrageously drunk. One had grabbed her and she had struck back like a snake, violently attacking him and cursing his ‘whore’ mother. The expulsion was quick and efficient, the chastened pair, so inebriated as to be barely able to walk, skulked off.
Otavio and his friend are intent on reaching the same level of intoxication as the banished pair and quickly there are many beer bottles besides the table. This Brazilian custom in ‘popular’ restaurants or bars (i.e. which cater to poor people), of leaving the beer bottles at the table so as to avoid accusations of cheating when bills are tallied, is ruthless for giving away the level of drunkenness of the table’s occupants.
Predictably, beer does nothing to sweeten Otavio’s nature and he is soon making outrageously permissive comments to Helena. He asks whether the hair ‘down there’ was also blond and as she sashayed over you remember she has no underwear. She lifts up her leg onto a chair and raises up her skirt. This is full frontal stuff and of a delayed nature not allowed in Hollywood.
Of course Otavio cannot contain his brutish, libidinous nature and tries to accost her at which point the bottles become convenient weapons for her to smash over his head. Mr. Cadaver man quickly splits the scene as Otavio is also repelled with the rage and savagery of Helena. You have to respect her.
Another person we are introduced to is Augusto. He works in a slaughterhouse and we get to see a cow being killed. What a treat. Augusto then goes around in the meat truck and delivers large slabs of meat to supermarkets and hotels. One of the clients is the flop house and Augusto walks into the kitchen to be greeted by the flop house manager who as soon as he popped out of the womb, it was obvious he was gay.
As Augusto cuts the meat, Felipe, in shorts so tight it’s how to imagine how he managed to get them on, taunts him relentlessly and quickly unleashes the side of the macho man who thinks it okay to be the active one, whether with a man or woman. Augusto then goes home to his wife, a born- again full of Christian pudency , thank God according to Augusto, and they eat bread, cheese and drink coffee.
Not only is he sodomizing Felipe, but Augusto also makes eternal promises to Eva, his lover, that he will give up his wife for her. For this, he gets to sleep with her though she swears she will leave him but never does. Felipe, now falling in love with Augusto, and conveniently friends with Eva the lover, arranges for the Christian wife to catch Augusto with Eva up to no good later that evening.
This duly happens, and the born again, in that gesture of female solidarity so common here in South America, immediately attacks the woman and, drawing inspiration from Mike Tyson, bites part of her ear off. It’s a bloody scene. This acts has dislodged Jesus from her heart and on her way home, overtaken by the deadly sin of lust, she gets picked up by the guy who shoots (and maybe screws) cadavers. Their ensuing, wildly ribald tryst confirms her utter abandonment of chaste and obedience to God.
The hotel owner dies, leaving Felipe distraught in a very stereotypical gay way, i.e. endless screaming and carrying on. No one has money, or is willing to give money, to buy a coffin for the wretched owner. It is here we get to know more about the fat woman who never leaves her room and refuses to give a cent toward a dignified burial for the newly deceased owner.
She hints at how bad she has been, pointing out that her family, perfectly decent people, want nothing to do with her. Her breathing is impaired, and for this she constantly is using an oxygen mask. Our parting scene is with her rolling about on the ground with the oxygen mask most definitely not on her mouth but rather glued to her private area, the sounds of her moans more like an old dog than erotic in any way.
The plot, such as it is, is circular. In the end we are back with Helena, who just can’t take it anymore and whales balefully at the injustices of life as she picks up beer bottles and empties ashtrays. I am told the director has produced an even more bleak movie, where life and a sewer are basically interchangeable. I look forward to it.

The Fight

For me, a successful international journey in the air is one where the plane doesn’t crash. This low expectation, plus the four or five of those little wine bottles I imbibe mean I’m slightly exhilarated when I arrive anywhere, especially in the tropics.

I was traveling with a friend, and we both were carrying tons of electrical equipment. Like a fool, last time I’d left Brazil I’d asked people if I could bring anything back with me from the US. That’s the last fucking time I do that.

The customs man stopped my friend and unloaded two printers, miles of cables and other items that make custom’s people’s mouths water in countries with huge import duties on electrical goods. My friend protested innocence in English.

“All for personal use,” he declared with a straight face. The customs guy spoke no English and waved him on.

Also stopped, I tried the same tactic, sweating and in Portuguese. The customs guy said straight up that he didn’t believe me, which made me sweat more. But he bade me on with a piteous smile, perhaps realizing that someone involved in contraband would not be such an obvious liar.

It was my friend’s first time in Brazil and even though it was two in the morning, we decided to go out. I knew the perfect place.

Barracas are small wooden or iron kiosks that sell just about everything and dot the streets of Salvador. The kind of establishments that will probably eventually be crushed by the Walmarts of the world.

There was a 24-hour ‘Barraca’ close to where we were staying. Beside it some tables had been set up for people to drink. It was extremely clean and organized.

The beer came ice cold. Next to us was a group of prostitutes, their reptilian eyes following any movement, who drank beer and smoked cigarettes. They quickly realized we weren’t to be customers and paid us no further attention.

We chatted but also became increasingly diverted by a very drunk man standing at the counter. All drunk people should be filmed and the next day made to watch themselves to see what complete fucking idiots intoxication makes them.

A VW Beetle with loud Bob Marley music pouring out of it pulled up. Five young men ambled out, their eyes the small slits of those who’d been smoking a ton of weed. They were dark and bleached from the sun and there was a 99% chance they were surfers.

“These fucking pot heads are ruining the country, vagabonds, no-good-for-nothing pot heads.”

This was said by the drunk man as he stared menacingly at the young men as they settled into their table. He was about forty-five and spindly. This didn’t seem the most intelligent thing to do.

I gave an anthropological lecture to my friend about how in Brazil people loved to joust and wail at each other but didn’t fight. Look at how the customs guys let us go, isn’t this country great I said, so relaxed, the people so friendly.

One of young guys quickly attacked the drunk who was immediately flung to the ground and kicked him repeatedly in the head. It was a swift, efficient and brutal beating and the enforcer and his crew were quickly off.

The drunk guy, nose bleeding, shirt torn, head gashed and stumbling somehow made it back to the bar. He was now crying but to his credit still cursing the potheads.

We sat their stupefied but guiltily amused. When we paid, the owner apologized to us with an explanation.

“Put it this way, on a weeknight at 4:00 in the morning there is not much more than whores and drunks around the streets.”

And us.

The C Word

I had only met Brian a couple of times and it was clear that he was an acquired taste since his parents seem to have not bothered teaching him the fundamentals of social graces. Despite this he was interesting and intelligent, two traits that serve to counteract general unpleasantness, in small doses anyway.
It was through Michael and Steven that we had come to know Brian. We were all PhD students in New Jersey studying things related to human ecology, biology and anthropology. Michael was studying the bearded pigs of Sumatra, Steven the cat tail wetlands of New Jersey, and I was studying the reproduction patterns of tyras in northeastern Brazil. A good deal of my time was spent hunting for tyra scats because you get to know a lot about an animal through its excrement. Obviously, these are all subjects the world cares immensely about. But we were undaunted and sacrificed years of our lives studying things that have about as much relevance to the average person`s life as Jupiter`s moons or the keeper of the heads in medieval London.
It was a Saturday night and Michael had been invited to a party to which he asked us to accompany him. None of us wanted to go straight to the party and rather juice our moods with beer beforehand to unleash our social skills in the remarkable way alcohol does.
We congregated at a bar called The Cellar. Why anyone would go to this bar was a legitimate question. It was dark, decorated principally with heads of unfortunate deer and smelled of beer and wood. There were two pool tables and a darts board and many of the empty tables were cluttered with beer bottles which no one had bothered to clear away. The amount of people hovering outside smoking cigarettes gave away the fact that most of its patrons were working class. The person designing the place must have decided that aesthetics were for pussies and that sparseness, ugliness and general disrepair were in fact the appropriate setting for real, blue collar people. As opposed to wimpy wonks like us, with our fancy ideas and uncallused hands.
Brian was studying the sexual mores of the transvestite population of Aruba, again another subject of inestimable relevance to human history. His academic advisor was infamous in academic circles for doing things like traipsing around his office naked while smoking copious amounts of pot. This professor had long ago crossed the line between eccentric and bonkers though his pioneering studies on patterns of incest in Papua New Guinea assured him permanent employment. And anyone who wasn`t mad would have been able to guide Brian to a doctorate and with it some kind of legitimacy.
Our parents always tell us that honesty is a noble characteristic which we should strive to enact and cultivate throughout our lives. But in fact, we spend a lot of our lives lying blatantly, as when we ask our work colleagues how their weekend was when in fact we couldn`t care less or say how nice someone looks when in reality that person`s ugliness cannot transcend any amount of make-up or elegant clothes. In fact, lying ensures a certain social cohesion.
The problem with Brian was he was incapable of lying. He had gone through many jobs, the last one lasting but one day after he questioned who ‘the fucking retard was who designed the filing system’ and being told that that person was his new boss who almost immediately became his ex-boss. For people like Brian, the rest of the world is at fault for his travails in being unable to maintain relationships or steady employment.
We entered the bar to polite but wary nods from some of the regulars and having ordered a couple of pitchers of beer an argument almost immediately ensued between Brian and Michael.
“I can`t believe someone as intelligent as you could believe such an asinine theory. Hooligans fight because it’s fun, it’s so fucking obvious.”
This was Brian’s way of arguing with someone he thought was a friend. They had diverged on the causes of violence between soccer fans. Michael, who had a benevolent view of humanity and thought depraved behavior explainable by economic hardships, countered.
“In the Britain of the seventies and eighties, there was no hope for the working classes, what with the shutting down of the mines and shifting of industry abroad. They were desperate so of course this took the form of violence.”
Brian was unconvinced.
“That’s utter bullshit. Soccer fans were in fact mostly middle class, how else could they travel to all those game? You’re talking out of your ass.”
Michael, familiar with Brian’s inability not to be rude, did not take umbrage. We continued to talk of this and that, the main purpose being to achieve the kind of buzz that makes us and other people more interesting. There was a juke box which contained mostly Bruce Springsteen songs, him being one level down from Jesus Christ among people from Jersey. An occasional ACDC or Led Zeppelin song broke the Boss’ monopoly on the musical repertoire. There was not a lot of R&B or soul music being chosen. Make that none at all.
At around ten we left the bar, and walked in the direction of the house where the party was being held. Michael gave us some background. The house was shared by four women who were studying things like women’s empowerment, gender identification, the evils of patrician societies or the West`s role in female circumcision. Michael warned us that it was `best to stay away from telling dumb blond jokes’ or sympathizing with the president of Harvard who had said recently that woman were hampered and hindered by nature to be good scientists. This would likely be viewed dimly.
We stopped at a local store owned by Koreans who behind plexi-glass accepted your money for the beer they provided. In the store there was a group of Asians, two Ethiopian descended teenagers, a few American born whites and blacks. Outside, Palestinian taxi drivers drank coffee, smoked cigarettes and talked their guttural Arabic. This is the kind of scene the Ku Klux Klan depicts in recruitment drives, the darker masses slowly taking over.
The house was in a typically upper middle class neighborhood, but the signs outside the houses made it clear that these people were comfortable but enlightened. US Troops Out of Iraq placards were plentiful and the rainbow flag on more than one house. This was a street where humanity was loved, although not necessarily represented.
The garden of the party house was just kempt enough to not have neighbors ring the cops. The bushes and plants were slowly being strangled by ivy and weeds would soon be the majority plant. If you want to rent a house to students, kiss goodbye to your garden for a while.
As the door opened the energy of the party whooshed out onto the street and we walked in. Unconsciously, we held up the two six packs of beer we had bought to make sure people knew we weren`t chumps. Jimmy Hendrix was playing and a few people ran their fingers along their palms pretending to be a guitarist and emulate the God of guitar in a rather cringe-making fashion. Little groups had formed, as they do, and laughter in the air floated a bit like smoke.
We headed over to the table where the food was laid out. Predictably, soy made up a good deal of the composition of the food, this being a vegetarian household. In fact two of the girls were vegans and regarded drinking cow’s milk as a crime against the universe.
“What if we stuck a big, fat bloody steak bang in the middle of this shit right now?” Brian suggested this less than tactfully and loud enough to be heard by those around. This produced a series of disapproving glances and should have foretold of what was to come. We moved over to the fireplace, where some bowls with cut vegetables and dip were our immediate victims since we hadn’t eaten dinner.
The place had that typical feel of a group house filled with people who would probably not shed a tear if someone tortured Dick Cheney to a slow death. There was a poster of Martin Luther King on the wall with a small exert from his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. Another poster announced a massive pro-choice march that was held in Washington some years back. Surprisingly, Sweet Honey and the Rock and Holly Near were the musical entertainment. On another part of the room, a large poster of Mercedes Sosa adorned almost an entire side of a wall. El Pueblo Unido Nunca Será Vencido.
A bookshelf was sparsely occupied by a couple of Alice Walker books, an Erica Jong book placed quite prominently to show no one here was a prude. The New Our Bodies Ourselves and not much else. Chairs were arranged around a television, a couple of plants made up the rest of the sparse furnishings.
Unfortunately, Brian was getting drunk and this led to his talking about his love life. As I hope is clear from my description, the fact that Brian`s romantic experiences have been disastrous, rancorous, seedy and full of bitterness should come as no surprise. His one true love, a black woman with whom he was married (and would come up in conversations when he was accused of saying something racist), had left him for her cousin.
“Their parents were brother and sister for fuck`s sake,” he said once in disgust.
The latest travails for Brian involved a graduate student who had not managed to immediately see that Brian was not someone her parents would approve of and when she did, she dumped him with little ceremony.
“She wrote me an email. “You`re a real asshole, Brian,” it said. She was a real cunt.”
A woman who had been walking past suddenly stopped dead. She had scraggly dreadlocks and was wearing the multi-colored clothes Mayan woman in Guatemala use. She was likely to have had a lesbian experience at some point in her life but decided she wasn`t gay. She narrowed her eyes, pursed her lips and glared at Brian.
“I would very much appreciate it if you would not use that word in this house.”
We were all a bit taken about since the aggression in her voice belied her attempts to appear polite. This was one of those situations where some groveling would have rectified the situation. I mumbled an apology which was almost immediately drowned out by Brian’s indignant voice.
“Excuse me, but I didn’t think I was talking to you.”
Why people use words or phrases like “excuse me” or “I`d appreciate it,” when clearly they feel neither of these noble sentiments, is interesting. This little confrontation had rippled through the party and people’s attention suddenly focused on the scene.
“That is a foul and derogatory word and it’s not appropriate in this setting.”
She was wagging her finger now, and another woman had joined in the fray and nodded her head vigorously. Brian was unmoved and unrepentant.
“You`re probably the type that thinks that pornography exploits woman; that prostitutes are forced into selling their bodies. Why the fuck are you studying anthropology?”
Michael and I looked at each other a little incredulously. Where had he come up with that one, we both wondered?
She seemed startled by this new line of argument, which she called ‘heinous’ and ‘misogynist.’
“What is your problem? Do you hate women?” Her head was wobbling like Indians in those films where they`re being chewed out by some British colonial officer with a stupid looking mustaches.
“No, I love woman, especially having sex with them.”
“You’re basically a sexist I would say.”
Brian was enjoying the confrontation and the attention it was attracting. To capitulate in an argument was about as foreign to him as rationality for those who take the words of the bible literally.
“Well I would say you’re basically a fucking cunt.”
When Hitler invaded Poland, he made war with Britain inevitable. In a venue of infinitely less importance, Brian’s last statement made our expulsion from the party a question of time. In fact, it was almost immediate. Our Guatemalan loving friend literally screamed for us to get out or she’d call the police. Briefly I wondered what a cop would make out of this scene. He’d probably have more serious matters to attend to, I reasoned. But like the ‘here, here’ in the House of Commons, others in the party were loudly voicing their disapproval of our presence. It was clearly time to go.
I had never been kicked out of a party before and we really didn’t know what to do. Expletives continued to pour out of Brian’s mouth, his complaints about how we were being ‘throttled by self-righteous assholes,’ and intellectual discourse was now being censored’ struck a chord among us.
We went back to the Cellar bar where last call was being announced. Brain used the ‘c’ word several more times that night and nobody seemed to care. Obviously the people hadn’t studied enough anthropology.