Image and racism: Racial anthropophagy and the limits of anti-racist and decolonial cultural production in Brazil

Abstract

In this article, we intend to discuss the representation of black people, pointing out how hegemonic images of Brazilian cinema corroborate the structural racism of our society, analysing films (and other visual narratives) from the 2000s, a period considered the “Resumption of Brazilian Cinema”. Cinema produced by black directors emerges as counter-narratives, deepening the way in which Brazilian cinema represents the racial issue in a stereotyped way. To think about this structural racism in the field of cinema we will deepen the concept of racial anthropophagy (Alves, 2018; Paixão, 2015) a kind of aesthetic of the flesh, in which the image of the “other” is appropriated and devoured in the name of art. We will also establish a dialogue with black feminism, emphasizing the importance of this movement and discussing image production around black women in Brazil.