The social in scene in significant materiality

Suzy Lagazzi

doi:10.4025/actascilangcult.v32i2.11759

Abstract

This paper analyses the movies: Tropa de Elite, Tereza and Boca de Lixo, with the aim of providing visibility, in the imbrication of different significant materialities, for the discursive work of textualizing social differences. In the theoretical and methodological perspective of the materialistic Discourse Analysis, this text allows us to observe the functioning of the contradiction during the oppositional naturalization that structures most of the relations which organize our society, presenting the resistance as a process of possible displacement

Highlights

In my analytical work on documentaries and movies, the analyses of Boca De Lixo, by Eduardo Coutinho, Tereza, by Kiko Goifman and Caco de Souza, and Tropa De Elite, by José Padilha, are meaningful to understand the ways by which the difference is textualized in social relationships
Discourse Analysis considers the interpretation as a symbolic work and allows understanding what it means, according to Pêcheux (1990b), the gesture of interpretation being denied at the very moment it takes place, that is, it allows us to understand that the work of the ideology turns evident the result of the relationship between the significant materiality and History
I highlight the formulation ‘significant materiality’, on which I have insisted in my analysis of documentaries and movies

Summary

Introduction

In my analytical work on documentaries and movies, the analyses of Boca De Lixo, by Eduardo Coutinho, Tereza, by Kiko Goifman and Caco de Souza, and Tropa De Elite, by José Padilha, are meaningful to understand the ways by which the difference is textualized in social relationships. The voice-over points out to a polemic and complex subject: the traffic in the slums - Rio de Janeiro has more than 700 slums, almost all dominated by heavily armed drug dealers - and the relationship between drug dealers and police - It’s insane to think that in a city like that policemen will walk up the hill just to enforce the law/ in this city a cop has to choose from corruption, neglect or war.

Results

Conclusion