Animal suffering and/as discourse in 1960s Latin American cinema

Abstract

Abstract Vidas secas/Barren Lives (dos Santos, 1963) and La hora de los hornos/The Hour of the Furnaces (Getino and Solanas, 1968) made fierce denunciations of poverty in Brazil and Argentina, respectively, such that non-human animals were central to their critiques. Although the directors likely intended those animals (often depicted suffering and dying) to merely metaphorize human suffering, I argue that they become agents of discourse themselves, thanks to cinematic language (even though the use of verbal language is precisely what defines the ontological separation of human animals from non-human animals). Although montage has been historically understood as a device of metaphor, in these films it allows for the representation of very literal commonalities in the suffering experienced by all on-screen bodies, irrespective of species. Drawing viewers’ attention to animal suffering on its own terms can thus broaden the discourses of liberation and compassion inherent to Cinema Novo and ‘Third Cinema’.