Terra em transe: a story about populism

• Grant number: 15/03144-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Effective date (Start): May 01, 2015
• Effective date (End): December 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of Brazil
• Principal Investigator: Gustavo José de Toledo Pedroso
• Grantee: Izabella Cardoso da Silva
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais (FCHS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Franca. Franca , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The civil and military coup of 1964 opens up a new period of Brazilian politics that marks profoundly the cultural production of this period. In turn, this production was quite worried with the nation's politics. The New Cinema, for example, mainly worried with the before period, the Third Republic. Lot of these concerns are in one specific work in the movement, which is the movie Entranced Earth (1967) by Glauber Rocha. According to the cinema critic Ismail Xavier, it aims to be a representation of the political frame before the coup. In it, is central, in the representation of Brazil, the concept of populism used to explain the relation settled between leader and people in that period. Still for Ismail, this issue is present in the movie throughout several elements, among them is the character Paulo Martins, an intelectual left-wing that makes alliances with the national bourgeoisie against the imperialism, in order to promote social justice, but without concerning about the real misery of the people. Similarly, also academic productions longed to explain this period as populist. Given the distinctions in each case, those authors agree in one point: populism was related to manipulation of the masses. It is noticed, between these interpretations, a parallel, that is the use of the concept of populism to explain the Third Republic. Thus, we propose analyze a vehicle where this issue appears in a privileged way, the movie, in order to understand the centrality that the debate about populism reaches throughout the 1960's. In this sense, this research seeks to be a contribution for the study of interpretations about populism.