The Spheres of Power in "Xica da Silva"

Abstract

Xica da Silva, Carlos Diegues's Brazilian film that became successful the seventies, is not merely a comedy about slavery or a historical reconstruction of colonial times through fantasy and myth. It is not only about the possibility of liberty through love, as its director has stated (Johnson 76). text is much more serious than it seems to be, and its dialogic structure reveals the paradoxical reality of a dominated country: on the one hand, the continuous and frantic exploitation of the richness of the country; on the other hand, the frivolous alienation of a people that, despite being oppressed and hardened, dream and live a world of fantasies. Above all, however, Xica da Silva is the vivid representation of the voices of power their various spheres and connotations. Through a presentation, which is nothing more than the true representation of reality, the text unveils the game of power between the dominant and the dominated, a game that ruled colonial Brazil and still rules Brazil today. To say that Brazil is an underdeveloped country, or a Third World country, or a country in is to repeat the obvious. To insinuate that it was never independent and is still a colony is also redundant. To insist on the exhaustive discourse that the people are deceived daily and that its governing agents are corrupt agreement with higher governmental institutions and imperialistic countries is commonplace too. Xica da Silva is a text that exploits the lush Brazilian setting as a background for the development of the plot, along with an apparent reversal of master-slave roles. What is not so explicit is the core of the plot: the mechanism that allows the coexistence of polarized concepts like the ones present Arraial do Tijuco during colonial times. In order to have access to the invisible, however, we have to discuss the visible. Johnson, his analysis of the movie, uses Bakhtin's theory of carnivalization to explain the title character's presentation. This approach is one of the possible readings of the movie, although what is apparently carnivalized is part of real life Brazil. Actually, the phenomenon of the relationship between the contractor Joao Fernandes and Xica is a microcosm of the relationship between the system and the people. As the anthropologist Roberto Da Matta states, The ruling classes attempt to control the masses and yet leave them content