Conflict Cinemas in Northern Ireland and Brazil 3031346971, 9783031346972

Table of contents :
Acknowledgments
Contents
About the Author
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 The Pulsing Life Behind Images
1.2 Living, Breathing Space
1.3 The Sensorial Body in Film
1.4 Making Sense of the Chapters
References
Chapter 2: Unspeakable Acts: Embodiment and Perception in Bloody Sunday and ‘71
2.1 “You can’t just leave them lying like bits of meat here”: Bloody Sunday and a Chaotic Afternoon in Derry
2.2 “Get out of this country, none of us likes you!”:'71 and a Sensorial Journey Across Divided Belfast
References
Chapter 3: Embodied Violation in Tropa de Elite and A Divisão: The Spectacle of Torture and Violence in Rio’s favelas
3.1 “Pede pra sair!”: Corporeal Abuse and Uncontrollable Punishment in Tropa de Elite
3.2 “Tá com cheiro de sangue isso aqui”: A Sensorial Approach to Torture in A Divisão
References
Chapter 4: Corporeal Navigation of Carceral Spaces in Northern Ireland: The Sensorial Geography of Limitation in Maze and Silent Grace
4.1 “Eyes and ears”: Corporeal Navigation of the Carceral Geography in Maze
4.2 “We’re prisoners of war. We’re looking for political status not a bloody bar of chocolate”: Bodies, Incarcerated Spaces, and Sensorial Experience in Silent Grace
References
Chapter 5: Marginalized Bodies and Violated Senses: Representations of Inhumane Confinement in Carandiru and Quase Dois Irmãos
5.1 “Rebelião no 9, tranquei, a casa é nossa!”: The Violated Body in Carandiru’s Merciless Carceral Space
5.2 “Nós somos praticamente o último foco de resistência do país”: Political Oppression and Embodied Disruption in Quase Dois Irmãos
References
Chapter 6: Final Thoughts
References
Index

Citation preview

Conflict Cinemas in Northern Ireland and Brazil Ketlyn Mara Rosa

Conflict Cinemas in Northern Ireland and Brazil

Ketlyn Mara Rosa

Conflict Cinemas in Northern Ireland and Brazil

Ketlyn Mara Rosa São José, Brazil

ISBN 978-3-031-34697-2    ISBN 978-3-031-34698-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34698-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

This book originated from a postdoctoral research conducted at Trinity College Dublin with funding from the Irish Research Council (IRC), and I would like to thank the IRC as well as the staff and students at Trinity for all the support during the time I spent there. In particular, thanks to my supervisor, Ruth Barton, for her invaluable presence and guidance throughout my research process. Thank you so much to all those in Ireland and Brazil who helped my journey of research and exploration. I appreciate the help from the artists and production companies who generously granted me permission to use the photographs and stills from their films in my book. Also, thanks to Beatriz Kopschitz Bastos for her friendship and assistance with the IRC fellowship that made the research for this book possible. My deepest gratitude goes to my family in Brazil who supported me during the happy and difficult moments. My parents, Limar and Roseli, for their constant guidance; my brother Crystie, sister-in-law Michele, and niece Júlia, for their encouragement; and especially my sister Janaina for her everlasting company and unconditional collaboration during all these years.

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Contents

1 Introduction  1 1.1 The Pulsing Life Behind Images  4 1.2 Living, Breathing Space 11 1.3 The Sensorial Body in Film 14 1.4 Making Sense of the Chapters 17 References 21 2 Unspeakable  Acts: Embodiment and Perception in Bloody Sunday and ‘71 25 2.1 “You can’t just leave them lying like bits of meat here”: Bloody Sunday and a Chaotic Afternoon in Derry 32 2.2 “Get out of this country, none of us likes you!”: ’71 and a Sensorial Journey Across Divided Belfast 42 References 57 3 E  mbodied Violation in Tropa de Elite and A Divisão: The Spectacle of Torture and Violence in Rio’s favelas 61 3.1 “Pede pra sair!”: Corporeal Abuse and Uncontrollable Punishment in Tropa de Elite  70 3.2 “Tá com cheiro de sangue isso aqui”: A Sensorial Approach to Torture in A Divisão  88 References103

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Contents

4 Corporeal  Navigation of Carceral Spaces in Northern Ireland: The Sensorial Geography of Limitation in Maze and Silent Grace107 4.1 “Eyes and ears”: Corporeal Navigation of the Carceral Geography in Maze118 4.2 “We’re prisoners of war. We’re looking for political status not a bloody bar of chocolate”: Bodies, Incarcerated Spaces, and Sensorial Experience in Silent Grace 133 References148 5 Marginalized  Bodies and Violated Senses: Representations of Inhumane Confinement in Carandiru and Quase Dois Irmãos151 5.1 “Rebelião no 9, tranquei, a casa é nossa!”: The Violated Body in Carandiru’s Merciless Carceral Space162 5.2 “Nós somos praticamente o último foco de resistência do país”: Political Oppression and Embodied Disruption in Quase Dois Irmãos 178 References200 6 Final Thoughts203 References209 Index211

About the Author

Ketlyn  Mara  Rosa  holds a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Department of Film Studies at Trinity College Dublin, funded by the Irish Research Council, on urban conflicts cinema in Northern Ireland and Brazil. She also holds a Doctoral Degree from the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina in Brazil, having spent time during her PhD as a visiting researcher at St Andrews University in Scotland. Her research emphasis is on war cinema, particularly films, documentaries, and miniseries that portray the Second World War, Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, and currently, late twentieth-century urban warfare in Northern Ireland and Brazil. One thematic point of great importance in her research career is the analysis of embodied violence and the possible meanings it conveys in cinematic representations.

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List of Figures

Fig. 1.1

Fig. 1.2 Fig. 2.1 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2

Photograph of Jack Duddy and Father Daly by Fulvio Grimaldi. (Image courtesy of the photographer. Per request of the copyright holder: photograph by Fulvio Grimaldi, the Italian journalist whose pictures and recordings revealed the truth of “Bloody Sunday”) 5 “Paraisópolis” by Tuca Vieira. (Image courtesy of the photographer)9 ’71 (Yann Demange 2014). Reproduced by permission of Warp Films. (Image courtesy of the BFI National Archive) 43 Tropa de Elite (Elite Squad, José Padilha 2007). Reproduced by permission of Zazen Produções. (Photo by David John Prichard) 71 Maze (Stephen Burke 2017). Reproduced by permission of Jane Doolan of Mammoth Films. (Image courtesy of the Irish Film Institute)120 Silent Grace (Maeve Murphy 2001). Reproduced by permission of Maeve Murphy 140 Still from Carandiru (Hector Babenco 2003) appears courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics Inc 171 Quase Dois Irmãos (Almost Two Brothers, Lucia Murat 2004). Reproduced by permission of Taiga Filmes. (Photo by Estevan Avelar)191

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Suffering […] will remain obdurately mute and, in practical terms, invisible or unheard, unless mediated or narrativized, witnessed, and translated, marshalled into a wider temporal and spatial frame, outside and beyond itself. (Fionnuala Dillane, Naomi McAreavey and Emilie Pine) (This quotation was taken from Fionnuala Dillane et al.’s book The Body in Pain in Irish Literature and Culture (2016, 5))

The power to express ideology and brutality through the portrayal of corporeal violence has been associated with cinema, especially in films that deal with armed conflicts, ranging from total wars to civil warfare, by representing violent images as influential vehicles of social and political messages. Although the focal point of discussions regarding wars might often be on the overall political view of the events, a more targeted analysis centered on the embodied facet of a ground-level perspective can be helpful in comprehending the nature of such conflicts and their intricacies. Kevin McSorley observes that “the reality of war is not just politics by any other means but politics incarnate, politics written on and experienced through the thinking, feeling bodies of men and women” (2013, 1). In this book, I look at images of embodied violence in films that depict complex historical moments in Northern Ireland and Brazil. My discussions are concentrated on the visual representations of corporeal violation in © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K. M. Rosa, Conflict Cinemas in Northern Ireland and Brazil, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34698-9_1

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selected films that take place during the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the environment of favelas1 in Brazil in the late twentieth century. By focusing on the urban environment of street clashes and confined spaces of prisons, I draw attention to the process of understanding constructions of national identity and dominance in both countries that share a configuration of partitioned cities, separated by political and economic wars. These moments of major urban violence position the bodies of the participants in changeable spaces of vulnerability and power, assigning roles of dominance and subordination that can be observed through an intense sensorial display in the films. The representation of the senses plays a significant role in structuring the narratives and mapping the cinematic landscapes of conflict, whether on the streets and prisons of Derry, Belfast, Rio de Janeiro, or São Paulo. Analyzing films through a sensorial perspective enables the comprehension of the landscape of cities and prisons as part of a somatic geography depicted accordingly to the corporeal engagement of the participants with the intimate fabric of the surroundings. The focus on the embodied aftermath of violence for this filmic analysis is connected to the idea that war conflicts, regardless of the scale or geographical location, strongly rely on corporeal violation as their final objective. Elaine Scarry comments that “one can read many pages of a historic or strategic account of a particular military campaign […] without encountering the acknowledgement that the purpose of the event described is to alter (to burn, to blast, to shell, to cut) human tissue” (1985, 64). Scarry highlights the omission of the core activity of armed conflicts in the narrativization of such events, suggesting that injury and violence to the body of the participants must be decidedly taken into consideration as a source of trauma. By bringing the images of corporeal injury during conflicts to the foreground, this book invites reflections on the costs of armed embattlements to the national imaginary of the selected contexts of Northern Ireland and Brazil and the significance of the human factor in urban contemporary warfare in each country. The Serbian American poet Charles Simic has called attention to the impact of comprehending the human element when dealing with war casualty numbers. He explains that “a 1  “Favela is the Brazilian term for informal settlements or shantytowns built on vacant lands by poor migrants to Brazil’s major cities. Often, but not always, favelas lack sanitation, running water, electricity, garbage collection, and other public services. Having a reputation for being crowded and dangerous places, the favela is testimony to high economic inequality within Brazil” (Rêgo 2014, 109).

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figure like 100,000 conveys horrors on an abstract level. […] It is easily forgotten, easily altered. A number like 100,001, on the other hand, would be far more alarming. That lone, additional individual would restore the reality to the thousands of casualties” (2015, 167). The singling out of a distinctive human life for Simic reshapes the perception of violence inflicted on a group of people and reinforces the need to focus on the embodiment of such violation as a way to materialize the consequences of armed conflicts. The filmic analyses in this book propose an interruption in the overflowing examples of visual violence in narratives and invites the pressing of the pause button on one violated body at a time in order to pay closer attention to the intentionally caused corporeal damage inflicted in the contexts of contemporary warfare. The choice of these two territories for analysis, Northern Ireland and Brazil, is based on the similar environment of sectarian geography in their cities. Although the clashes related to the Troubles and in the space of favelas happen in urban landscapes or prisons of each country, they transcend geographical limitations and convey a fierce struggle for power and domination, unearthing a heritage of conquest in the histories of both Northern Ireland and Brazil. Filmic representations of violent images of embodiment in contemporary conflicts in these two countries provide a frame for larger questions of power struggle in their own ways, as the Northern Irish context revolves around political struggles regarding statehood and the Brazilian framework is connected to a territorial dispute between those in the favelas and the city to claim the command of economic and political flow. The cities, divided by either political affiliations or the combination of economical alliances and political authority, are subject to forces that clash in the urban environment and continuously situate the bodies in spaces of extreme violence. The complexity of these cinematic compositions of the body can carry symbolic meanings that are vital to the contextual comprehension of the films. By foregrounding corporeality as a key element to the critical perspectives in the films, this book also raises the question of the role of senses in crafting socio-political meanings regarding the embodied interaction of characters with their surroundings in situations of intense violence. The cinematic analysis of the depiction of the four senses in hostile environments will provide a novel framework for the assessment of the body at risk and its impact on historical representations in filmic portrayals of the two countries. In both Northern Irish and Brazilian contexts, the violated body serves specific purposes in the

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depiction of ingrained notions of subordination and dominance in the respective cultures.

1.1   The Pulsing Life Behind Images One of the most impactful circumstances in Northern Irish history, the Troubles, has inspired artistic representations due to its profound reverberation in society. When talking about cinema, John Hill observes “how difficult it is for any film concerning Northern Ireland to transcend political divisions” and how “films made in and about Northern Ireland have nearly always contributed to, and become implicated in, broader political conflicts concerning the region” (2006, 1). The impact carried by images in society can also be observed in photography, for instance, in the pictures taken in Derry during what became known as “Bloody Sunday,” the massacre of civilians by the British military during a march against internment on 30 January 1972. The filmmaker Paul Greengrass, who directed the film Bloody Sunday (2002a), a dramatization of the events of that day that will be analyzed in this book, comments on the repercussion of the killing by saying that it was “the moment when the Civil Rights Movement was destroyed, when hope was driven from the political stage and the struggle in Northern Ireland became one between men [sic] and guns” (2002b, xiv). His focus on the human factor of the massacre as he highlights the presence of the body in opposition to weaponry points to the complex balance between corporeal fragility and violent dominance in the urban clashes. One iconic image from that day is a photograph taken by the photojournalist Fulvio Grimaldi that shows Father Edward Daly waving a white handkerchief stained with blood, leading a group of people carrying the dying teenager Jack Duddy. The moment captured in this photograph encapsulates the despair and emergency of the situation, unveiling the embodied consequences of the event. Father Daly’s peaceful act of holding the handkerchief and his arched posture as a self-defense mechanism against the military’s rampant shooting demonstrate his corporeal navigation of a space of extreme violence, as the streets of Derry gained a warscape connotation. The impact of the zoomed-in perspective of witnessing the embodied violation of this picture reinforces the need to focus on the personal experiences of violence and their aftermaths during armed conflicts (Fig. 1.1). The meaning conveyed by the imagery of the body at risk can help in the comprehension of the role of violence in society, its ramifications, and

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Fig. 1.1  Photograph of Jack Duddy and Father Daly by Fulvio Grimaldi. (Image courtesy of the photographer. Per request of the copyright holder: photograph by Fulvio Grimaldi, the Italian journalist whose pictures and recordings revealed the truth of “Bloody Sunday”)

origins. In analyzing Irish literature and culture, Fionnuala Dillane et al. mention the complexity of the “narrativisation or witnessing of real instances of horrific pain, those expressive acts that turn bodies into potent symbolic tropes” (2016, 2). Cultural representations of such moments carry intricate sets of notions regarding political, religious, social, and economic facets of the events, a concentration of nuances crystalized in the format of the body, its fragility, and endurance. The authors also observe that in these traumatic episodes, “pain is a thoroughly embodied, multisensory experience” (3) that summons the four senses in an attempt to portray and highlight the existence of the discomfort and violation in corporeal terms. In the films analyzed in this book, one of the focal points is to detect the use of the sensorial apparatus to perceive pain and violent acts in the narratives in order to grasp the importance of the body in society, particularly in zones of conflict. Dillane et al. highlight the impact of the sensorial focus as they describe the effect of violent circumstances: “the eyes might see the bright red of fresh blood, the nose might smell its metallic odour, the mouth and tongue might taste the saltiness of sweat

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and tears, and the ears might hear the crack of the bones breaking, screaming, or other wordless expressions of pain, even deathly silence” (3). The representation of the body as a material witness of violation through the senses in the two particular contexts of this book discloses meanings that can challenge notions of belonging and subjectivity, as the historical events portrayed in the films appeal to an immersive approach of experiencing the circumstances. To contend with representations of violent moments in history unveils a convoluted past for both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in terms of their heritage of oppression. Luke Gibbons refers to Ireland having a “Third World memory” (1996, 3) in connection with its colonial and tyrannized past, an ordeal that lingers in the atmosphere of artistic portrayals of the country. Regarding this notion of hardships, Martin McLoone acknowledges Gibbons’ notion and adds the idea of an Irish confrontation of such disquieting history as he observes that “what is characteristic, therefore, about Irish cultural traditions, […] is that they manifest both the pain suffered and the resistance offered to the traumas of colonial oppression” (2000, 104). McLoone expands that the struggle with issues of dominance in the country is one factor that brings Ireland closer to “other cultures that have experienced such disruption (Third World cultures, the native Americans and Afro-Americans, Mexico) rather than to the modern states of Europe to which it has become linked” (104). In this case, the heritage of colonialism that strongly scars Brazilian history, since the extermination of Native tribes and slavery to contemporary minority oppression, expresses a bridge between the two countries, a borderless connection united by the suffering of their respective populations. As McLoone points out in relation to Irish identity, “only by acknowledging the colonial dimension to its fractured history and aligning itself to other colonial histories and experiences can it achieve a distinctive presence on the global stage” (105). The films analyzed in this book delve in diverse ways into issues of national identity. The acknowledgement of Northern Irish and Brazilian histories, with all their problematic roots of colonialism and dominance, remains a meaningful step toward the understanding of nationhood through cinema. The endeavor to create artistic representations with a confrontational nature can be observed in Brazilian film history, especially through the movement called Cinema Novo during the 1960s and early 1970s. A project that according to Randal Johnson and Robert Stam intended “to present a progressive and critical vision of Brazilian society” (1995, 32),

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Cinema Novo had as its main representatives the filmmakers Nelson Pereira dos Santos and Glauber Rocha whose works were very much impacted by the political scenario in the country, for instance, the dictatorship period in Brazil. Sophia McClennen observes that the significance of Cinema Novo lies in the fact that it explored a “film form that was dedicated to reflecting the harsh realities of Latin American life in ways that would promote social change” (2011, 97). By bringing controversial topics to the surface, especially during moments of censorship, Cinema Novo attempted to challenge forced authority and control in the arts in Brazilian society, striving to prompt discussions about the country’s identity and contemporary state of domination. McClennen argues that Cinema Novo storytelling “aggressively confronted the legacies of colonial and neocolonial power structures” (97), daring to function outside a Hollywood-centric structure by making use of the particularities of regional culture in Brazil. Although this book does not analyze films from Cinema Novo as its main focus, it is evident that such a historical project demonstrates the country’s want for a critical representation of its colonial heritage, a mingling of art and politics achieved through the examination of the past. Contemporary Brazilian cinema, while rarely displaying the defamiliarizing metaphors of Cinema Novo, displays an inclination to incorporate a critical view of society into narratives while using structures and visual formats from its own past in association with foreign designs. Films such as Cidade de Deus (City of God, Meirelles and Lund 2002) and Bacurau (Kléber Mendonça Filho 2019) exemplify what McClennen calls a film that “combines cinematic pleasure with politics, that avoids didactic moralizing and that understands that the mere act of making and distributing a film about these issues in the contemporary context is itself a political act” (105). The films discussed in this book also illustrate this notion by creating a combination of fast-paced and immersive imagery, a characteristic that does not necessarily detract from their impact regarding political discussions of Brazilian society. The struggles revolving around class differences and the presence of favelas in opposition to wealthy neighborhoods have been pivotal themes in art that bring forth discussions about the nature of being Brazilian and in what ways this geographically divided population integrates society. Not only in cinema but also in photography, this subject has been the focus of debate, for instance, in the Brazilian photographer Tuca Vieira’s famous 2004 picture that depicts the chasm between the poor and wealthy sides of São Paulo. In his photograph, the Paraisópolis favela stands on the left

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side while a wall placed in the middle of the frame separates it from the affluent neighborhood of Morumbi on the right side. Seen from above, the difference in texture of the constructions is palpable and telling. The favela side with its gray roofs and orange brick walls points to the half-­ finished state of the houses due to monetary constraints while its maze-­ like layout calls attention to the lack of space and consequent overcrowded living conditions. An arrow-shaped wall, with its tip pointing toward Paraisópolis as if defending the space of Morumbi against trespassing, frailly divides the territory. On the other side, the green of the carefully pruned hedges and strategically planted palm trees is shown alongside the two large tennis courts, swimming pool, and fifteen-story buildings. Each floor of the most prominent building in the picture has its own private swimming pool which adds to the upscale ambience and assists in the impression of towering over the favela territory. The bird’s eye view shot, frequently present in the majority of favela films, now demonstrates the material gap between two clusters of the Brazilian population. Social inequality and its consequences in terms of generating poverty and violence, not only in favelas but in connection with parts of the more suburban areas of the cities, is also a concept dealt with in the films discussed in this book as a way to move closer to the analysis of the effects and circumstances of urban violence (Fig. 1.2). The urban surroundings and their relationships with the zones of conflict can be mapped through the effect on the body of their inhabitants. As Elizabeth Grosz points out, “bodies reinscribe and project themselves onto their sociocultural environment so that this environment both produces and reflects the form and interests of the body” (1998, 31). In Vieira’s picture, the population from the favelas can be seen in the process of going about their daily lives, and from that distance, they appear to be small details engulfed in the immensity of the territory. The opposite side has no person to be seen, not even in the entertainment and sports areas, as if these places remained part of an excess of propriety designed for occasional use. A more zoomed-in perspective of a space of conflict, Grimaldi’s picture during “Bloody Sunday,” demarcates the city as a zone of unstable security with imminent threats to the body from a more intimate point of observation. Both photographs, in their own ways, situate bodies and cities as interconnected elements that impact and are impacted by each other. Grosz observes that “the city provides an order and organization that automatically links otherwise unrelated bodies” and “it is the condition and milieu in which corporeality is socially, sexually, and discursively

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Fig. 1.2  “Paraisópolis” by Tuca Vieira. (Image courtesy of the photographer)

produced” (32). To be immersed in the urban environment is to interact with its multiple facets and conditions, a situation that becomes visible in moments of conflict where the bodies assume positions of vulnerability and aggression. The potential of the city to shape the lives of its population is explained by Grosz as she says that “the city brings together economic and informational flows, power networks, forms of displacement, management, and political organization, interpersonal, familial, and extra-­ familial social relations, and an aesthetic/economic organization of space and place” (32). The film narratives analyzed in this book take place in the cities and prison spaces of Derry, Belfast, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo and are seen as centralized niches of conflict within their own respective contexts where the embodied clashing with forced authority, in the format of the military and/or police forces, creates an antagonistic environment of violence that reverberates into the social fabric in local and national terms. Part of the urban environment is also the space of prisons which is the setting of a selection of films discussed in this book. A zone that is often associated with physical and psychological suffering as well as confinement, its interconnections with the political and social contexts of the

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cities where they are inserted highlight the position of the bodies in subjugation to both internal and external forces. The prison cells, enclosed spaces where the body can acquire symbolic meanings through the intense overpowering of corporeal abilities, are defined by Jennifer Turner and Victoria Knight as “represent[ing] the space around which life in prison is located, arranged and orchestrated both in terms of physical logistics and punitive philosophy” in which the “cellular confinement is a socio-political and economic construction” (2020, 2). In the Northern Irish context of the Troubles, the conflict in the streets was extended to the carceral space as Irish republican prisoners reacted to the outside events even from inside the prisons, for instance, with blanket protests against the use of standard prisoner uniforms and hunger strikes. Jessica Scarlata mentions that the goal of imprisonment in this context was to “shift the center of the conflict from the streets to the jails, where it would presumably become invisible” (2014, 101) in an attempt of the British government to stifle any opposing voices. The author continues explaining that “cellular incarceration was designed to break not only the prisoner, but also the struggle to which he [sic] belonged, the chain of nationalist heroes to which he [sic] attached himself [sic]” (101–102). The expansion of the political clashing from the streets to the prison spaces demonstrates that although the nature of the space has changed, the level of embodied immersion of the participants in violent circumstances still remains a pivotal element in the representations of carceral zones. In Brazil, the issue of abuse in correctional facilities has been a topic of discussion highly associated with social inequality in the cities and severe economic disadvantage in parts of the population. These external forces are extended into the space of Brazilian prisons as drug trafficking and weapon trading compose the environment of violence in the context of carceral constraint. In terms of cinematic representation, Antônio Márcio da Silva highlights the focus of some filmmakers in exposing the issue of human rights violation in these spaces, in particular the work of the Argentine-Brazilian director Hector Babenco whose film Carandiru (2003) is the object of analysis in this book. According to Silva, Babenco’s films expose how prisons reinforce “retrograde means of power assertion and control of inmates” (2018, 73) in the pursuit of an excessive authoritative ambience. Films that foreground the relationship between external forces of political and economic uproar in the cities and the internal environment of violence in the prisons, whether in Northern Ireland or Brazil, can help disclose issues concerning abusive behavior and

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dominance in the construction of a particular image of each country’s identity.

1.2  Living, Breathing Space In order to look further into the corporeal interactions in the films of this book, the space where these life exchanges occur must also be taken into account. Spatial relations are indeed significant in terms of the interplay of existing layers in every interrelation in society, or as Henri Lefebvre explains, the “indefinite multitude of spaces” in everyday life (1991, 8). Lefebvre observes that the “geographical, economic, demographic, sociological, ecological, political, commercial, national, continental, global” spaces exist separately in society, but they also constantly overlap each other in reality (8). The combination of all these elements constitutes space as a complex environment for social relations as will be demonstrated in the films analyzed here. The streets, favelas, and prisons in the stories are not regarded as independent material spaces but complicated processes of social existence, multilayered by the history and present circumstances of the countries and specific cities. Lefebvre also mentions a triad model that helps in the understanding of space and the forces that act upon its formation, as the author points out that space does not merely exist, but it is the result of a societal production. The three dimensions of process are the “perceived,” “conceived,” and “lived” space, constituting a phenomenological view of the production of space (39). Lefebvre’s first notion of perceived space, one of the most important elements when approaching the films in this book, is connected to how space can be acknowledged by the senses, that is, “the practical basis of the perception of the outside world” that has to do with “the use of the hands, members and sensory organs, and the gestures of work as of activity unrelated to work” (40). Christian Schmid adds that this concept “comprises everything that presents itself to the senses; not only seeing but hearing, smelling, touching, tasting. This sensuously perceptible aspect of space directly relates to the materiality of the ‘elements’ that constitute ‘space’” (2008, 39). Looking at space through the senses and the corporeal reaction to the environment is one of the focuses of this book and remains a way of interpreting the relations between the places and the people who interact there, highlighting the physicality and sensations of everyday life. The other two dimensions are also significant in grasping the versatility of the surroundings as the conceived space relates to how prior to being

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perceived, space must be first conceived in thought. Through this notion, beliefs come to the surface and directly impact the relationship of the body in society as conceived representations “derive from accumulated scientific knowledge, disseminated with an admixture of ideology” (Lefebvre 1991, 40). Lefebvre’s third concept, the lived space, “is the dominated […] space which the imagination seeks to change and appropriate. It overlays physical space, making symbolic use of its objects” (39). In this case, the ultimate practice of living is unavoidably permeated by imagination and, as Schmid explains, a kind of experience that is not only related to “theoretical analysis” but can be seen as “a surplus, a remainder, an inexpressible and unanalysable but most valuable residue that can be expressed only through artistic means” (2008, 40). By taking into consideration the perceived-­ conceived-lived triadic phenomenological dimensions of the production of space described by Lefebvre, it is possible to infer that social space is not only constituted of materiality, as empty constructions waiting to be inhabited, but also of experiences that rely on sensual, ideological, and imaginative elements that must be thought and felt accordingly. Envisioning space as a constant construction of social life, of everyday interactions, of intercommunication of bodies and experiences gives life to the urban centers and prison facilities, adding complexity to the settings where the films take place and enhancing the possibility of sensorial acuteness demonstrated in the narratives. Human experience and the geographical characteristics of a given space are also prominent in Yi-Fu Tuan’s discussions of the relationship between people and physical surroundings in terms of values and emotional connections. Similarly to Lefebvre’s triadic notions, this is part of a vital framework to look at the films to be analyzed in this book since the urban settings, favelas, and prisons ignite a number of interactive possibilities that are constructed through physical and sensorial perceptions as well as ideological systems and the living experience. In Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, Tuan singles out the term “experience” as key to “the various modes through which a person knows and constructs a reality” (2001, 8). This is when the sensorial apprehension of the surroundings is highlighted as “these modes range from the more direct and passive senses of smell, taste, and touch, to active visual perception and the indirect mode of symbolization” (8). In this case, human experience is permeated by not only emotions but also thoughts that lead the sensations to be felt regarding the space surrounding them. The senses play an important role in Tuan’s concept of space awareness as he acknowledges that “the

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five senses […] constantly reinforce each other to provide the intricately ordered and emotion-charged world in which we live” (11). Whether together or apart, the five senses bring a unique organization to the spatial world, carefully building an environment that relies on corporeal perceptions. Tuan then poses a question that seeks to further the understanding between the body and the construction of the surroundings: “What sensory organs and experiences enable human beings to have their strong feeling for space and for spatial qualities?” (2001, 12). He provides an answer based on “kinesthesia, sight, and touch” (12). Movement becomes a significant factor in recognizing the vastness or narrowness of space, while being able to see the three-dimensional aspect of the surroundings lends an intense perception of space. The haptic nature of sensorial experience aids in apprehending the world with objects that are constituted of varied shapes and sizes, as touching is directly related to perception and recognition. Therefore, “space can be variously experienced as the relative location of objects or places, as the distances and expanses that separate or link places, and—more abstractly—as the area defined by a network of places” (12). Other complementary senses, such as smell and hearing, enrich the apprehension of space, but as Tuan states, do not allow full knowledge of the world. The combination of the senses, or the restricted use of some of them, shapes the surrounding environment in ways that directly affect the perception of the world and everyday life. The film narratives included in this book address this notion as their violent contexts expose the bodies to extreme moments of somatic interaction that serve as platforms for questioning the relationship between space and senses. The relationship between the body and spatial apprehension becomes the focus of the critical geographer Derek Gregory’s work. In coining the term “corpographies” (2014, 32), Gregory articulates the corporeal immersion of soldiers in the war context with the surroundings in spaces of conflict. He explains that corpographies in the first-hand accounts of battle, such as war diaries, letters, and stories, demonstrate how soldiers must rely on and recalibrate their senses in order to navigate hazardous conditions of violence and trauma. The merging of human geography, cartography, and a somatic approach result in an understanding of conflicts through a distinct vision of more than tactics or politics as it includes a layered notion of human perception through the senses. When applying Gregory’s corpographic notions to war film analysis, Eileen Rositzka observes that they “articulate the missing link between already established

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theories of cartographic film narration, and ideas of (neo)phenomenological film experience, as they also imply the involvement of the spectator’s body in sensuously grasping what is staged as a mediated experience of war” (2020, 3). She adds that the viewer exerts a level of active behavior when interacting with the somatic engagements of the characters in war scenarios and “since film can never be an absolute reproduction of battle experience, it is much more a reflection on sensuous perception itself, an interface relating the audience physically to an idea or a memory of war, rather than to the reality of combat” (4). It is this corpographic emphasis that I seek to apply onto the films of this book by exploring the constructions of the violent acts on the characters’ senses and their reverberations on the filmic space, including the viewer’s perception.

1.3   The Sensorial Body in Film The interconnections between embodiment and moving images have been discussed in film theory, for instance, by Vivian Sobchack whose phenomenological approach foregrounds experience and perception as key points to the understanding of the characteristics of the lived body in films. In her work the focus is shifted from “the body as an abstracted object belonging always to someone else” to the embodied condition that means “to live our animated and metamorphic existence as concrete, extroverted, and spirited subject we all objectively are” (2004, 1). This acknowledgment relies on the fact that to live in context is to take into account both the material and sensorial elements therefore leading to a meaning-making process that places life experiences and the senses as pillars of understanding filmic representation. Sobchack explains that the lived body can be seen as “both an objective subject and a subjective object: a sentient, sensual, and sensible ensemble of materialized capacities and agency that literally and figurally makes sense of, and to, both ourselves and others” (2004, 2). This focus on embodiment leads to a perception of the body, and its portrayals in film, as pulsing organisms that are spatially and temporally located as well as culturally recognizable in the flow of history. To look at the body on the screen and the repercussions of its visual and aural representation on the viewer’s own body is to recognize the engagement between these two parts and particularly observe that “our experiences are mediated and qualified not only through the various transformative technologies of perception and expression but also by historical and cultural systems that constrain both the inner limits of our

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perception and the outer limits of our world” (Sobchack 2004, 4). The corporeal figure in context becomes part of a process that is socially mediated and subjective in which the senses are represented through filmic techniques that make possible an engagement with the audience. A question posed by Sobchack in The Address of the Eye interrogates the place of the lived body in cinema as she asks: “What else is a film if not ‘an expression of experience by experience’?” (1992, 3). By applying Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological notions of the power to signify to film, Sobchack solidifies the multilayered status of experience when watching movies, one that involves the body and the senses, perception, and expression. She explains that by being “objectively projected, visibly and audibly expressed before us, the film’s activity of seeing, hearing, and moving signifies in a pervasive, primary, and embodied language that precedes and provides the grounds for the secondary significations of a more discrete, systematic, less ‘wild’ communication” (1992, 4). This notion is taken into account in my analysis in this book and the films I will be analyzing here with a special focus on the embodied existence as filmic language, that is, the uses of senses and their reverberations on the body as vehicles for the narrative progression, character development, and the possibility of criticism in the context of conflict cinemas. As the audience addresses the films, the process of watching triggers the exercising of their knowledge regarding perceptive experience, and in particular the sensorial engagement in the scenes that involve violent exchanges. As Sobchack observes, “the film experience is a system of communication based on bodily perception as a vehicle of conscious expression. It entails the visible, audible, kinetic aspects of sensible experience to make sense visibly, audibly, and haptically” (1992, 9). The process of embodiment in the engagement with the films, especially the instances of violence demonstrated in the Northern Irish and Brazilian cinema of this book, foreground sensuous engagement as a way to perceive the experiences and make sense of the meaning of such events in the historical narratives. Another example of the engagement between the body and the senses in film is discussed by Jennifer M. Barker as she foregrounds the idea of “cinematic tactility” in terms of “a material mode of perception and expression” (2009, 2) that outlines a reverberation of the filmic narrative and its aural and visual attributes beyond the skin level. “Touch,” the author explains, “comes to mean not simply contact, but rather a profound manner of being, a mode through which the body—human or cinematic— presents and expresses itself to the world and through which it perceives

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the same world as sensible” (2). This approach that takes into account the surface level of the skin but also delves into a notion of corporeal immersion of the bodies portrayed on the screen highlights that the tensions and emotions developed in the filmic narratives run through the bodies of the characters and the audience in ways that elicit a sensorial engagement with the images and sounds. Barker expands by saying that cinematic tactility, then, is a general attitude toward the cinema that the human body enacts in particular ways: haptically, at the tender surface of the body; kinaesthetically and muscularly, in the middle dimension of muscles, tendons, and bones that reach toward and through cinematic space; and viscerally, in the murky recesses of the body, where heart, lungs, pulsing fluids, and firing synapses receive, respond to, and reenact the rhythms of cinema. (3)

This approach elevates the sensorial dimension of films by giving importance to the ripples of corporeal expression which is also part of my framework of analysis in this book. Notions such as cinematic tactility help bring sensorial behaviors, and here I expand to other senses portrayed in the films as well, to the forefront of investigation through an emphasis on how meaning is made and worlds are constructed via the perception of experience. The significance of this focus on senses is discussed by Laura U. Marks as she underscores that cinema has the possibility to rely on sensorial constructions that go beyond verbal and visual characteristics in order to craft meanings. She observes the existence of “haptic images” that “invite the viewer to respond to the image in an intimate, embodied way, and thus facilitate the experience of other sensory impressions as well” (2000, 2). These haptic images aid in the inclusion of a very particular type of recollection: “the unrecordable memories of the senses” (Marks 5). Memories that cannot be visually constructed in a traditional way can then be interpreted through the sensorial apparatus and represented in ways that facilitate an embodied perception. The author points out that “an understanding of the embodied experience of cinema is especially important for representing cultural experiences that are unavailable to vision” (22). A recurrent experience in the films I approach in this book is the moment of immersive violence in urban conflicts. Pain, a subterranean event happening under the layers of private emotions, is often a challenging emotional state to be represented in film and the notion of haptic imagery brought forth

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by Marks appeals to a better comprehension of such circumstances. She comments that “senses whose images cannot be recorded […] are repositories of private memory” (130). The recreation of complex memories that pervade the body of the characters can be crafted and understood by means of embodied knowledge and a sensorial focus since cinema invites such realizations through filmic techniques and narrative constructions. In this process of looking closely at the corporeal portrayals and the meanings attached to them in the context of urban conflicts and prison facilities, the embodied and sensorial perceptions are, as observed by Marks, “to a large degree informed by culture” (2000, 145). The author explains that “our bodies encode history, which in turn informs how we perceive the world” (152) leading to the idea that the corporeal and sensuous representations on screen carry meanings according to their life experiences. The moments of pain, confinement, and trauma are all embodied perceptions shaped by the particular contexts depicted in the films, and therefore signal viewpoints that can be discussed regarding political and social issues. The depiction of the bodies foreground questions of power and dominance and by looking at how the films render sensorial engagement from the characters and the audience, the role of the senses can be understood as “a source of social knowledge” (Marks 195). The activation of this cultural configuration by the senses varies according to the context as Marks acknowledges that “cultures use the senses as sources of information and understanding in extremely different ways” (206), and for this reason, both Northern Irish and Brazilian circumstances are carefully taken into consideration. By looking back at past filmic representations of embodiment and senses in both countries while understanding the particular political and social scenario of the events portrayed in the films, this book takes a step toward a closer analysis of violent conflicts in both cinemas by foregrounding an immersive and experiential approach.

1.4  Making Sense of the Chapters The four chapters of this book discuss a variety of films that take place in Northern Ireland and Brazil during the late twentieth century and display diverse ways of looking at traumatic history by placing the body as a way to map the past. Chapter 2 examines the urban clashes in Northern Ireland during the Troubles in the films Bloody Sunday (Paul Greengrass 2002b)

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and ’71 (Yann Demange 2014) and the corporeal engagement of the characters with the environments of conflict in Derry and Belfast, respectively. These films present narratives that explore the relationship of the hurt body to extreme violent acts in moments of political upheaval. While looking at specific scenes of embodied violation, I examine the images with Sarah Cole’s notion of “disenchanted violence” (2012, 39) in mind. For the author, this type of violence relies on imagery of corporeal destruction with the intention of highlighting the grotesque side of physical violation and abandoning any notion of grandeur or glamour to the hurt or dead body. I also consider how the moments of chaotic exposure to violence are navigated by the characters through the use of the four senses. This sensorial approach leads to the understanding of one’s placement in a somatic geography of conflict that consequently unveils political stances in the narratives. In the circumstances of extreme corporeal confrontation, the senses of touching, hearing, seeing, and smelling act as navigational tools in the exploration of the cities. Bloody Sunday, which brings the representation of the rampage shooting by the British military, and ’71, a narrative about unrestrained violent acts from all sides of the conflict, promote the use of Gregory’s “corpographies” that includes the exploration of spaces of conflict through the employment of the senses (2014, 32). As the landscape of the cities become increasingly unfamiliarized due to the intense level of threat and prospective embodied violation, I analyze how the characters’ bodies are portrayed in relation to such tumultuous geography as a way to better comprehend notions of domination and abuse of authority in the Northern Irish context and the meanings associated to the construction of national identity. Chapter 3 focuses on the Brazilian context of favelas, particularly in the 1990s, with the analysis of the films Tropa de Elite (Elite Squad, José Padilha 2007) and A Divisão (The Division, Vicente Amorim 2020). In this chapter, I consider the geographical gap between the suburban areas of Rio de Janeiro and the territory of favelas but interrogate to what extent these two spaces are connected through a general state of corruption in the city. The environment of favelas in the films are depicted as zones of conflict where drug and weapon trafficking remain as propellers of violence alongside the criminality that springs from the rest of the city. Lawless actions from members of the police force and politicians disclose an atmosphere of power abuse and excessive use of force. As the two films depict a large numbers of torture scenes, mostly enacted by the local authorities, I look at these images in the light of what Elaine Scarry

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mentions regarding the process of torture. For Scarry, torture is a performance that aims at visually showing the mechanisms that cause the tortured person to be overpowered and stripped of agency (1985, 27). In this method of world deconstruction, the portrayal of the senses becomes a way to foreground the impact of the body in the comprehension of the context of violence. The sensorial perception of corporeal violation highlights the morally problematic construction of the characters from the police force, depicting the intensified brutal behavior of authorities, an echo of the military dictatorship years in Brazilian history. Tropa de Elite, a film about an expert group with abusive methods to contain crime in the favelas, and A Divisão, which deals with corruption and authority misuse in the context of kidnapping cases, represent a contemporary national cinema that depicts violence and pain as a product of a much larger national organism, that is, not restricted to the outdated notion of favelas being the ultimate niche of criminality. The heritage of oppression that can be traced to indigenous tribes and centuries of slavery reverberates in the way the country’s identity is questioned in the films and the past is reinterpreted in the tortured body. My fourth chapter brings to the forefront the connections between the outside city and the constrained spaces of prisons in the Northern Irish context of the Troubles. The carceral environment is the focus of the chapter as the navigation of this indoor space can be traced through the embodied interactions of the characters with the confined materiality of the prisons and the antagonistic presence of police forces. Sequences from the films Maze (Stephen Burke 2017) and Silent Grace (Maeve Murphy 2001) are analyzed in detail in order to understand the connections between the personal and public spheres of the characters’ lives in a process of questioning the presence of a concern with political matters. Emilie Pine has mentioned that, especially in relation to the portrayal of hunger strikes in prisons, the “juxtaposition of death and life, and the idea that death can paradoxically feed a living struggle, is based on a shrewd understanding of the power of sacrificial imagery combined with the potency of Irish remembrance culture” (2011, 100). While the film Maze represents the hyper-male microcosm of rebellion in the H-blocks, Silent Grace focuses on the female experience of sisterhood that opposes domination in prison and both continually question the issue of violence perpetrated by the prisoners in the outside context and the guards inside the correctional facilities. The experience of constraint is depicted through the acute positions in which the prisoners, and at times the guards themselves, are

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inserted particularly in the environment of cells. I address how this geography of limitation brings to the surface the characters’ sensorial understanding of space and the navigational tools used to cope with violent episodes. Specifically in relation to the theme of hunger strike, I look at how the representation of the body in the process of self-violation conveys messages concerning political spheres of the conflict and the notion of sacrificial glorification. The space of correctional facilities in Brazil is the focus of the fifth chapter of the book which examines the inhospitality of prisons in the films Carandiru (Hector Babenco 2003) and Quase Dois Irmãos (Almost Two Brothers, Lucia Murat 2004). The stories of embodied violence represented in these two narratives are part of a greater national context regarding social and economic struggles in Brazilian society. Silva comments that “these prison films reveal much about society, especially class and race divisions, as we witness criminality being mostly related to lower classes and the dangerous criminal imaginary to black men” (2018, 88). The country’s segregation is mimicked in the territorialization of carceral spaces, in a clear division ignited by racial and economic positions. In the films, the violation of human rights places the bodies of the prisoners in a sphere of complete vulnerability since their most basic rights of security are denied. The overcrowded spaces in unsanitary conditions accentuate the inhabitable nature of the space where the bodies of the prisoners are placed and must struggle to navigate such violent environment. Carandiru highlights the abuse of State powers by portraying the 1992 massacre in which 111 prisoners were executed by the police in a display of excess of authority while Quase Dois Irmãos brings back to the surface the conditions of political prisoners during the years of dictatorship in Brazil by focusing on the climate of aggression of that historical context. The outside world and each film’s particular national moment, whether the rise in criminal activity in the 1990s or the dictatorship of the 1970s, have an impact on the inside conditions of the carceral spaces that result in the creation of independent organisms in jail, that is, inner pockets of self-­ governing societies where the rules are configured based on the prisoners’ power relations. The senses are used with the objective of survival in extreme carceral conditions since the characters make use of their own bodies as forms of resistance to external violations and pressures. Both films depict spaces of correctional facilities that are no longer functional, the Carandiru Penitentiary in São Paulo that was demolished in 2002 and the Cândido Mendes Prison in Rio de Janeiro that was destroyed in 1994,

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in an attempt to rescue the memory of violence and abusive maltreatment of the prisoners that are part of the Brazilian heritage of oppression. The histories of Northern Ireland and Brazil unveil moments of intense embodied violence in the environment of geographical segregation that are captured by the films analyzed in this book. Images of the ravaged body and its sensorial entanglement with the surroundings are critical for the understanding of the representation of each country’s conflicting past. To remember such unsettling parts of history is to disclose sensitive wounds that must be addressed and interrogated in order to comprehend the interconnections between what happened and the repercussions of these occasions in the contemporary scenario. In this sense, the notion of “cultural memory” brought forth by Marita Sturken is valuable for reflection since it focuses on the process of artistic and creative endeavors with the objective of representing the past, for instance, through films, memorials, and literature (1997, 1). Sturken comments that “cultural memory is bound up in complex political stakes and meanings. It both defines a culture and is the means by which its divisions and conflicting agendas are revealed” (1). The cultural meaning that springs from cinematic portrayals of past events becomes a memorialization of how the country’s national imaginary pictures its own convoluted history and unfinished tensions. I argue that the films analyzed in this book question, in their particular ways, the role of corporeal engagement in instances of violation, contextualizing the narratives in each country’s historical moments. The emphasis on the sensorial depiction of these interactions among people as well as between the characters and the environment only highlights the fundamental role of the individual body in constructing the past, as the agony and pain of the number one in Simic’s 100,001 figure is given a platform of representation in the Northern Irish and Brazilian contexts.

References Amorim, Vicente, dir. 2020. A Divisão. Rio de Janeiro: AfroReggae Audiovisual. DVD. Babenco, Hector, dir. 2003. Carandiru. New York: Sony Pictures Classics. DVD. Barker, Jennifer M. 2009. The Tactile Eye: Touch and Cinematic Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press. Burke, Stephen, dir. 2017. Maze. Dublin: Mammoth Films. DVD. Cole, Sarah. 2012. At the Violet Hour: Modernism and Violence in England and Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Demange, Yann, dir. 2014. ‘71. Sheffield: Warp Films. DVD. Dillane, Fionnuala, et al. 2016. Introduction: The Body in Pain in Irish Literature and Culture. In The Body in Pain in Irish Literature and Culture, ed. Fionnuala Dillane, Naomi McAreavey, and Emilie Pine, 1–20. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Gibbons, Luke. 1996. Transformations in Irish Culture. Cork: Cork University Press. Greengrass, Paul, dir. 2002a. Bloody Sunday. Galway: Screen Ireland. DVD. ———. 2002b. Foreword to the Third Edition. In Eyewitness Bloody Sunday: The Truth, ed. Don Mullan, xiii–xx. Dublin: Merlin Publishing. Gregory, Derek. 2014. Corpographies: Making Sense of Modern War. The Funambulist, December: 30–39. Accessed 25 November 2020. https://geog r a p h i c a l i m a g i n a t i o n s . f i l e s . w o r d p r e s s . c o m / 2 0 1 2 / 0 7 / g r e g o r y -­ corpographies.pdf. Grosz, Elizabeth. 1998. Bodies-cities. In Places through the Body, ed. Heidi J. Nast and Steve Pile, 31–38. London: Routledge. Hill, John. 2006. Cinema and Northern Ireland: Film, Culture and Politics. London: BFI. Johnson, Randal, and Robert Stam. 1995. Brazilian Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press. Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-­ Smith. Oxford: Blackwell. Marks, Laura U. 2000. The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham: Duke University Press. McClennen, Sophia A. 2011. From the Aesthetics of Hunger to the Cosmetics of Hunger in Brazilian Cinema: Meirelles’ City of God. symploke 19 ̄ (1–2): 95–106. McLoone, Martin. 2000. Irish Film: The Emergence of a Contemporary Cinema. London: BFI. McSorley, Kevin. 2013. War and the Body. In War and the Body: Militarization, practice and experience, ed. Kevin McSorley, 1–31. London: Routledge. Meirelles, Fernando, and Kátia Lund, dir. 2002. Cidade de Deus. São Paulo: O2 Filmes. DVD. Mendonça Filho, Kleber, dir. 2019. Bacurau. Recife: CinemaScópio Produções. DVD. Murat, Lúcia, dir. 2004. Quase Dois Irmãos. Rio de Janeiro: Taiga Filmes. DVD. Murphy, Maeve, dir. 2001. Silent Grace. Galway: The Irish Film Board. DVD. Padilha, José, dir. 2007. Tropa de Elite. Rio de Janeiro: Zazen Produções. DVD. Pine, Emilie. 2011. The Politics of Irish Memory: Performing Remembrance in Contemporary Irish Culture. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Rêgo, Cacilda. 2014. Centering the Margins: The Modern Favela in the Brazilian Telenovela. In Brazil in Twenty-First Century Popular Media, ed. Naomi Pueo Wood, 91–110. Lanham: Lexington Books.

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Rositzka, Eileen. 2020. Cinematic Corpographies: Re-mapping the War Film through the Body. Berlin: De Gruyter. Scarlata, Jessica. 2014. Rethinking Occupied Ireland: Gender and Incarceration in Contemporary Irish Film. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Scarry, Elaine. 1985. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schmid, Christian. 2008. Henri Lefebvre’s Theory of the Production of Space: Towards a Three-dimensional Dialectic. In Space, Difference, Everyday Life: Reading Henri Lefebvre, ed. Kanishka Goonewardena, Stefan Kipfer, Richard Milgrom, and Christian Schmid, 27–45. London: Routledge. Silva, Antônio Márcio da. 2018. Human Rights Abuses and State Violence in Prison Films by Hector Babenco. In Human Rights, Social Movements and Activism in Contemporary Latin American Cinema, ed. Mariana Cunha and Antônio Márcio da Silva, 71–93. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Simic, Charles. 2015. Poetry and History. In The Life of Images, 163–169. New York: HarperCollins. Sobchack, Vivian. 1992. The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 2004. Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and the Moving Image Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sturken, Marita. 1997. Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering. Berkeley: University of California Press. Tuan, Yi-Fu. 2001. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Turner, Jennifer, and Victoria Knight. 2020. Dissecting the Cell: Embodied and Everyday Spaces of Incarceration. In The Prison Cell: Embodied and Everyday Spaces of Incarceration, ed. Jennifer Turner and Victoria Knight, 1–19. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

CHAPTER 2

Unspeakable Acts: Embodiment and Perception in Bloody Sunday and ‘71

I heard the sound of a rubber bullet being fired and I saw it bounce off the wall on my right and I then ran to pick it up. As I was bending down to pick it up I heard a shot ring out and I felt a twinge in my right hip. I fell to the ground and I saw blood coming from a hole in my trousers just above my right knee. I then realised that I was shot. (Damien Donaghy) (This quotation was taken from Don Mullan’s book Eyewitness Bloody Sunday: The Truth (2002, 16) and refers to a statement from a survivor of Bloody Sunday in 1972.)

The issue of the Troubles in Northern Ireland has been massively present in films that represent the contemporary political situation of the country, at times foregrounded as a central point of the narrative or as a historical backdrop for action, thriller films, and other genres. As John Hill points out, “the ‘troubles’ has been the distinctive feature of the region and it is difficult to set a film in Northern Ireland that does not deal with the impact of the conflict in some way or other without appearing either naive or willfully evasive” (2006, 242). The immersion into an atmosphere of political and religious conflict, division, and violence impacts the cultural outcoming of the country even years after the peace agreement in 1998. Aaron Edwards observes the reverberation of the Troubles as he explains that “the sectarian nature of the conflict, together with the indiscriminate character of the violence, entrenched the bitterness and hatred that © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K. M. Rosa, Conflict Cinemas in Northern Ireland and Brazil, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34698-9_2

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continues to polarize relations between and within communities in Northern Ireland today” (2011, 7). The relevance of the continuous conversation about the topic is raised by the appearance of contemporary films that, although years apart from the Good Friday agreement, continue to explore different facets and interpretations of the events. Films such as Bloody Sunday (Paul Greengrass 2002b) and ’71 (Yann Demange 2014) help keep the flow of dialogue regarding the memories of the past and their consequences in society. These two movies will be the focus of this chapter with particular attention to the way these two cinematic narratives convey images of violence to the body and illuminate potential significances, foregrounding the senses as a major catalyst of experiences and meanings. This chapter approaches urban space in its sectarian state not as a passive environment simply existing in itself, but as a process of production, the result of embodied interaction. The aforementioned notion of “multitude of spaces” by Henri Lefebvre (1991, 8) with its historical, political, and social complexities is taken into consideration in this chapter in order to understand space being constructed through everyday life and perceptions. The figure of the body, its behavior, and how its sensations are translated onto the screen will play a major part in this analysis. I will bear in mind Vivian Sobchack’s idea that “cinema uses modes of embodied existence (seeing, hearing, physical and reflexive movement) as the vehicle, the ‘stuff,’ the substance of its language” (1992, 4–5). The sensuous perceptions of the characters alongside the sensorial engagement with the audience will be foregrounded in this discussion in order to highlight how the body navigates environments of violence and what meanings can be fleshed out from these interactions. The instances of corporeal destruction in the films will also be discussed considering how the images of violence are constructed, particularly concerning Sarah Cole’s notion of disenchanted violence that will later be further explored in this chapter. By looking at the interaction of the body with violence in a divided space of conflict, this chapter intends to delve into the intimate moments of corporeal violation when the embodied experience becomes the focus, and the bodies of the characters turn into responsive canvases that bring to light the intricacies of this contemporary conflict in Northern Ireland. Debates around the representations of the Troubles have often highlighted the search for a political critique of the conflict in the narratives. Issues related to the contrast between public and private spheres of social interaction (Hill 2006, 215), male-dominated narratives (Pine 2014,

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159), and sectarian geography (McLoone 2000, 77) have underlined the discussions of films that portray the Troubles and their depth of engagement with the socio-political context. Authors such as Emilie Pine, Jessica Scarlata, Fionnuala Dillane, and others have highlighted the role of the body in such representations as the producers of meaning in Irish culture inserted in the context of suffering. Corporeal portrayals of violence remain as vehicles of discussion in which the political body can indicate to what extent the representation is committed to enlightening facets of the conflict, adding to a more comprehensive understanding of the historical context in which the Troubles took place. A number of films have placed the body of the participants in the forefront, for instance Resurrection Man (Marc Evans 1998) and Hunger (Steve McQueen 2008), which prompted discussions on themes of corporeal exposure, martyrdom, and de-politicization of the conflict in the narratives with a greater focus on personal quests than general political matters. The impact of the sectarian geography in films placed in Northern Ireland is observed by Martin McLoone as the portrayal of the cityscape becomes a focus of cinematic expression. He points out that the majority of films that take place in Belfast, such as Nothing Personal (Thaddeus O’Sullivan 1995) and The Boxer (Jim Sheridan 1997), present a substitute representation of the divided city since they were shot on location in Dublin. Still, the alternative Belfast dwells with matters of surveillance and claustrophobia, constructing the space as a “pariah city” (2008, 58) and struggling with its continuously manufactured image of geographical division. What I propose in my analysis is to look at the hurt body inserted in these represented sectarian spaces by considering moments of ultimate vulnerability caused by violence. As I foreground the embodied and sensorial facets of urban embattlement, focusing on the very instances of bodily disruption, this analysis can enrich existing discussions of Troubles cinema and make connections with notions of belonging and oppression. By concentrating on specific examples of the imagery of violence in the selected films, the level of socio-political engagement of these representations can be observed and such connotations can lead to a greater understanding of identity issues. The complexities associated to the body and violence in films set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles are part of what Paula Blair calls “a tangled mass of stories” (2014, 7) encompassing descriptions from different viewpoints of this contested historical period. Bloody Sunday and ’71 present a structure of narration that attempts to connect multiple stories

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from varied sides of the conflict, all of them linked by the acts of violence. Before entering in the analysis of these specific films, a few other visual works are worth mentioning due to their unique way of portraying Northern Ireland and the Troubles. For instance, the convoluted entanglement of viewpoints can be distinctly seen in an earlier short film by Alan Clarke called Elephant (1989) which depicts eighteen killings shot in the format of long takes. At first the camera follows the murderers, but in the third killing the pattern is disrupted and the person followed in the long take is murdered. This characteristic, according to Blair, hints at the issue of how “the ‘sides’ of the conflict are indeterminable, and the perpetrator/victim identities are problematized by the film’s interchanging dynamics” (6). The depth of the violence that each story conveys in the film can be inferred by the small amount of details given but specially in the consistent gaze at the dead body at the end of each scene. By lingering for twenty seconds on the dead bodies, the film focuses on the corporeal consequences of the acts of violence as each deceased person remains in an unnatural position of inertia and the viewer is left the choice of freely scanning the image. The unsettling images of the men’s lifeless legs, arms, and heads are complemented by the bloody walls, floors, couches, and tables in an uncanny juncture of daily life and blunt violence. Far from being a conventional narrative, Elephant challenges the binary structure of victim/perpetrator associated with the history of the Troubles and touches on the intricacies of labeling sides during a conflict by highlighting the acts of the moving body versus the helplessness of the inactive body. One of the distinguishing characteristics of Elephant is the lack of dialogue that is supplemented by ambient sound and, most noticeably, the sounds of the guns being fired. The soundscape of the film leans toward an abrupt violation of the sense of hearing as the dry and sharp gunshots fill the screen multiple times, leading to the sight of corporeal ruin. In films that portray urban conflicts, such as the ones to be analyzed in this chapter, the element of the street soundscape plays an important role in representing the chaos of warfare as a way to sensorially grasp the contours and limitations of the space around. The senses might also be pathways to the analysis of memories, as can be perceived in the work of the artist Willie Doherty entitled “Ghost Story” (2009). Born in Northern Ireland, the issue of the Troubles is present in his works and most prominently in the art installation video “Ghost Story” that depicts a journey through different landscapes of Derry. Leaning toward an unconventional mode of storytelling, the image shows a pathway through the woods while a

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disembodied voice brings back memories of violence associated to Bloody Sunday: The scene reminded me of the faces in a running crowd I had once seen on a bright but cold January afternoon. Men and women slipped on icy puddles as they ran for safety. A few in their panic, ran towards a wire fence, further trapping themselves. As they scaled the fence, a military vehicle drove through it, tossing them into the frosty air. Troops spewed from the back of the vehicle as it screeched to a sudden halt. They raised their rifles and fired indiscriminately into the fleeing crowd (Doherty 2009, 57).

Although the bodies are not shown, the corporeal presence in the memory of witnessing the violent event revives the embodiment of pain and death. Being graphic to a certain extent, the description of the scene leads to the questioning of the consequences as the speaker says “I wondered about what had happened to the pain and terror that had taken place there. Had it been absorbed or filtered into the ground, or was it possible for others to sense it as I did?” (Doherty 57). Questions related to the sensorial residue of the conflict are raised as to whether it has become an intrinsic part of the city itself or a memory that can be sensorially activated by the individuals. As the image changes to an urban setting, the voice-over narrator expresses the relationship between the materiality of the neighborhood and the sensorial experience of violence: The narrow streets and alleyways that I walked along became places where this invisible matter could no longer be contained. It seeped out through every crack and fissure in the worn pavements and crumbling walls. Its substance became visible to me in the mossy, damp corners that never seemed to dry out in winter or summer. A viscous secretion oozed from the hidden depths. The smell of ancient mold mingled with the creeping odor of dead flesh. (Doherty 2009, 58)

In this description, the sense of smell takes the forefront as the apparent absence of violence and the orderly structure of the city, its roads, walls, and buildings, can no longer muffle the memories of the past, in terms of physical and psychological violation. By detecting the odor of the past and decomposing matter, the transgressions of former times return with full and embodied power. As Blair observes, Doherty’s work deals with “the nature of unresolved trauma and painful memories which are continually

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suspended in the present” (2014, 199). This trait can also be perceived in narratives that question the complexities of the Troubles and its interconnections with the ways memories are articulated and traumatic events are remembered, such as the films analyzed in this chapter. Both Bloody Sunday and ’71 are films that can be included in what Louise Harrington calls “conflict cinema” (2016, 4) which relates to narratives that deal with combat in a smaller and different scale from, for instance, Second World War films that rely on a much larger sense of battle engagement. The author explains that conflict cinema “reveals the reality that conflict regions are troubled by a permanent state of antagonism or rivalry, tension, suspicion and fear” (4). The contemporary nature of urban warfare demonstrates characteristics that differ from the patterns of traditional war such as the collapse of highly delimitated spaces of war and peace as well as distinctions between civilians and combatants (McDonald 2013, 138). Conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Israel/Palestine, for example, also share these traits and cinema that portrays these environments demonstrates that “the local and personal nature of ethnic conflict manifests less as a designated warzone and more as an unstable lived space of ceaseless hostility, which bodies must negotiate carefully if they are to survive” (Harrington 5). In Northern Ireland, the city becomes the stage for the conflicts and encompasses elements that greatly differ from the mythological vision of rural Ireland. Martin McLoone points out that although the city may stand in generic terms for the future and rural areas for the past, that is, the old ways, the urban scenario can also be associated with “alienation, exploitation, poverty, pollution of body and mind, immorality and selfish individualism” (2000, 202). As the hostile spaces are represented amidst a sectarian geography, living bodies struggle to negotiate between their daily lives and the disruptive imagery of violence in a strained environment of political discord. As McLoone observes, the notion of identity, of attempting to figure out one’s place in society, becomes the focal point of the conflict (128). As previously mentioned, films that deal with the Troubles tend to display a dichotomy between public and private spaces (Hill 2006, 201), therefore illuminating the world of politics and violence versus the development of personal stories. In this constant friction between the inside and outside forces, films revolving around the Troubles can impact “the continuing symbolic struggle over the representation of the past and the meanings that should be attached to it in the present” (Hill 241–242). The notions of belonging somewhere or to a

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specific political and religious group are highly questioned and become the decisive points in the storylines propelled by divisive acts of violence. The uniqueness of individual and national identity is strongly linked to the memories of the past. Marita Sturken argues that “memory provides the very core of identity” (1997, 1) and that it is “crucial to the understanding of a culture precisely because it indicates collective desires, needs, and self-definitions” (2). As history unfolds, the cultural works that represent these moments have a strong impact on how the events are remembered and assimilated into a national comprehension of the past. Sturken further observes that “the body has been perceived as a receptacle of memory, from the memory of bodily movement, such as walking, to the memory of past events in physical scars, to the memory of one’s genetic history in every cell” (12). The body plays a significant role in enacting and keeping memories, facilitating the construction of sensations and viewpoints that establish the ways the past is at times remembered or questioned. The production of cultural memory can be embodied through a camera image, a phenomenon that Sturken calls “a technology of memory, a mechanism through which one can construct the past and situate it in the present” (19). Such is the impact of images in the composition of the way the past is remembered that “images have the capacity to create, interfere with, and trouble the memories we hold as individuals and as a nation” (Sturken 19). The visual representation of the body remains as a powerful tool of meaning, one that is capable of contextual and symbolic value in the portrayal of the past. In the case of conflict cinema, the significance of the endangered body can escalate to political meanings according to the general significance of the narrative. Fionnuala Dillane et al. highlight that “the body in pain can be subject as well as object, an example of the strength of the survivor, as well as the loss of the victim, the target of power and the expression of power in its endurance” (2016, 5). The multiple meanings that corporeal violation can communicate are encapsulated in the manifold layers of characteristics of each depiction. As the authors point out, “the representation of bodily suffering is moulded and re-­ moulded by generic conventions, intended audience, the material circumstances of textual composition and medium of communication” (11). In the case of cinema and the films of this chapter, their message will come across through a combination of filmic elements in the portrayal of the body during violent acts, the sensorial scope associated to these moments, and how these depictions help shape the way the past is remembered. As films that depict violent corporeal engagements in urban spaces, Bloody

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Sunday and ’71 oftentimes opt to linger on the damaged body, creating an atmosphere of contemplation regarding the fragility of the individual and prompting renewed ways of looking at the acts of violence through an emphasis on the senses and perception of the participants. The ground-­ level frame of reference of the events is achieved through the focus on particular characters and their embodied apprehension of space as they navigate the conflict zones.

2.1   “You can’t just leave them lying like bits of meat here”1: Bloody Sunday and a Chaotic Afternoon in Derry As a civil rights march turns into a modern-day battlefield in Derry, Bloody Sunday has become the focal point of discussion regarding unglorified use of violence and power abuse. Ruth Barton acknowledges that it “has come to bear the weight of contemporary history in the context of the role of the British army in Northern Ireland” (2004, 171) as the culpability of the march leaders and whitewashing of the British military actions in the Widgery report were later rectified by the Saville report in 1998. The military personnel and civilians involved in the events of the march of 30 January 1972, with particular recognition of the killed and wounded, are part of what director Paul Greengrass refers to as a symbolic and “terrible dance of death that Britain and Ireland have been engaged in since at least the time of Cromwell” (2002b, xvii). The colonial ramifications of the event incorporated in the oppressive behavior of the British forces underlie the division between the Catholic and Protestant sides and the film Bloody Sunday acknowledges this hovering imperialistic atmosphere in the portrayal of a stifling British military presence. Don Mullan, the author of Eyewitness Bloody Sunday, the book that served as inspiration for the film, observes that “the political violence of the past quarter of a century, rooted as it is in the unresolved issues of colonialism in Ireland, has inflicted deep wounds and hurt which somehow must be healed” (2002, lxxv). In Mullan’s book, the recovery of the silenced voices of the massacre’s survivors who from varied perspectives witnessed the violence of the day remains as a stepping-stone to a larger conversation that denies the suppressed version of the Widgery report. As their retrieved voices echo on 1  The transcriptions of the characters’ lines for this section were taken from the film Bloody Sunday (Paul Greengrass 2002).

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the book pages, the film adaption strives to problematize the conflict by contextualizing the violence within political agendas and demonstrating that the bodies of the participants impact the memory-making process of the massacre. The first image of Bloody Sunday shows Ivan Cooper (James Nesbitt), a Civil Rights leader responsible for organizing the march, making his way through a group of people and heading to a press conference. The camera shows Ivan’s back and walks behind him following his path, an initial demonstration of his role as a focal character whose eyewitness experience of the upcoming violence will impact the narrative. As a Protestant inserted in a nonsectarian Civil Rights movement, Ivan’s portrayal captivates and invites a sense of empathy, “a contemporary imperative to appeal to the two main communities−Catholic nationalists and Protestant unionists−in Northern Ireland” (Blaney 2007, 125). Throughout the film, Ivan’s friendly actions and calls for justice increase his status as a considerate and sympathetic character. The moments prior to the march find Ivan roaming the streets and back alleys of Derry, handing out pamphlets and inviting people to join the march. His word-of-mouth advertisement of the event demonstrates his engagement and popularity in the community. Aileen Blaney points out that “his swiftness of step as he hurriedly moves through streets or shortcuts down a back alley conveys his familiarity with the terrain in which he has grown up” (126). Ivan’s geographical belonging to the city is clear and the way his body interacts with the crowds of all ages, including walking through a British barricade and slightly touching a soldier’s shoulder, determines his position as an influential insider since the beginning. As Blaney comments, he “embodies the reality of intercommunal cooperation before the Troubles and promotes its desirability in a contemporary context” (125). His vocal presence fills the air and the tactile instances of interaction enhance a sense of friendliness and trust that are taken to the limit as violence escalates later on in the narrative. Although Ivan is the first character to appear on screen, the film opens with the sound of military radio communication. The disembodied voice on the radio transmits information regarding positions and the viewer is left with no visual reference. The voice stands for a general military presence, one that is devoid of personality or distinguishing features. The aural opening of the film already demonstrates the focus on voices and the impact of sound in the understanding of the narrative. The sequence continues as the British military also holds a press conference concerning the upcoming protest and the members sit in front of a gigantic map of

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Northern Ireland. Unlike Ivan’s intimate relationship with the city, the command’s initial engagement with Derry in the film is done solely on maps. A detached, remote approach to comprehend the city is portrayed as the military briefing of the operation is explained in front of a map, a characteristic practice that can be found in war narratives. The pursuit of control is portrayed here as the soldiers calmly lay out the plan to Major General Ford (Tim Pigott-Smith), indicating the intentions of the march and the tactical maneuvers to be applied. They envision the city, the well-­ known places by the population, as a battleground through strategic arrangements. The command mentions specific movements of the operation such as “we’re going to stop them here at barrier 14” when referring to the protesters, and “they’re going to come around, sweep around behind all the hooligans” when explaining the tactical plan for the British Paratroopers. Such arrangements are expressed with cold intonations, signaling a vision from the top, one that depersonalizes the acts of violence. The imagined war zone detaches itself from the theoretical realm of command and is materialized in the film through the depiction of a highly militarized city. The space of the streets is represented as a mixture of daily life flow of civilians passing by and military personnel in intimidating combat apparel and vehicles. The sectarian urbanism is shown as the film goes back and forth between the perspective of the locals and the military. The private lives of the civilians and march protesters heavily feature the beginning of the film as characters’ narratives are developed in family settings, establishing a tone of intimacy and ordinariness that provides an emotional connection to their stories. Later in the film, as violence escalates in the streets, this focus on character familiarization will prove to be a way to enhance the impact of violence to their bodies, maximizing the effects of the military force. The amount of screen time dedicated to the portrayal of motivations and feelings of the military that humanizes the characters and their actions is comparatively smaller. The presence of the “sympathetic Para,” a radio operator from the British Parachute Regiment who reluctantly agrees to participate in the acts of violence against the population, demonstrates that the film “avoids the more conventional device of Manichean narrative, which would have indiscriminately vilified all of the Parachute Regiment on active service on Bloody Sunday” (Blaney 2007, 124). When faced with comments such as “they’re all troublemakers” and “everyone on the other side of this wall is enemy,” the sympathetic Para replies, “I can’t see a kid being an enemy, though.” Soldierly comraderie is depicted very differently here and it is undermined by peer pressure,

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taking away the lure of brotherly unity associated with the military. Although the film gives an insight into a military character’s intimate perspective, its conflicting nature resembles the peaceful approach of the march protester leaders. The narrative majorly focuses on the civilians’ lives, particularly the Civil Right members and the Catholic characters who take part of the march, as it provides details of personal stories thus humanizing their narratives in a more profound way and demonstrating how the tone of the film leans toward the nationalist cause. As the march starts in the streets of Derry, the embodied language of the film becomes the focal point. Sensorial hints associated to hearing, smelling, and touching are shown as tools of survival along with the ability of sight which is massively hindered by the immersive cinematography that often echoes the visual disorientation of the characters and has a similar effect on the audience. Barton observes that the film makes “use of digital cameras to come in close to the characters’ faces, to swing rapidly from event to event, to catch incidental moments as if off-camera, and to give an impression of filming under pressure, with loss of focus, overlapping sound and indistinct dialogue” (2004, 172). The stylistic devices are used to bring a sense of immersion to the viewer and an immediacy to the representation of an event that according to Jane Winter, the former Director at British Irish Rights Watch, happened “against a background of high political tension and in an atmosphere of the apprehension of violence” (2002, xxviii). Such chaotic environment prompted the portrayal of the senses in the film as an approach to the navigation of the landscape of conflict. The critical geographer Derek Gregory brings forth the concept of “corpography” as “a way of apprehending the battle space through the body as an acutely physical field in which the senses of sound, smell and touch were increasingly privileged in the construction of a profoundly haptic or somatic geography” (2014, 32). In this regard, by comprehending the violent environment through the use of the senses, the bodies of the characters become an instrument of adaptation to violence. The filmic devices that provide an immersive approach to the experience enable the audience to become sensuously engaged in the perceptions of this landscape of war by relying on embodied perceptions that are directly linked to the characters’ corporeal interactions. The film depicts the heavily embodied nature of the march itself, with a great number of people assembled, while also representing the difference in sensorial atmosphere the moment the first acts of violence happen. Initially the march maintains a general feeling of peaceful protest, with

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displays of friendliness and chanting. The sounds of the megaphone instruct people of where to go and the instrument is used to deliver messages of hopeful justice. Acoustically speaking, the march starts on a calm tone but as it traverses the streets and encounters the presence of British military, shouts of “Brits go home” disturb the orderly scheme and the gathering splits up to protest by the British barricade. As the instructional sounds of the megaphone are no longer effective, Ivan uses his own body to guide the demonstration. He walks among the protesters asking them to go in the other direction. At one point, a considerable crowd protests right next to a barrier while Ivan tries to cool down the situation. A particular shot demonstrates the ineffectiveness of his actions and the animosity of the situation as the crowd heatedly protests in the foreground, Ivan’s face and arms desperately try to calm people down in the middle ground and the motionless British Army watch the scene in the background. Engulfed by the angry voices, the audience experiences the process of Ivan’s voice and body almost disappearing in this shot alongside his power of persuasion in the narrative. The violent atmosphere is intensified as the protesters start throwing stones and the army uses water cannons and rubber bullets. In a matter of minutes, the soundscape of the streets becomes that of a battlefield composed of guns firing and people screaming. As the streets turn into a war zone, Gregory’s idea that corpography is “an instinctive, jarring, visceral response to military violence” (2014, 33) is notable as the characters’ perception of space is led by a sense of survival. When CS gas, a type of tear gas particularly used in riots, is fired in the direction of the crowd, the automatic reaction of the protesters is to back down and cover their noses. The assault on the olfactory sense is depicted through the white smoke that invades the space and shouts of “I’m choking” and “I’m dying here” accompanied by the sound of coughing. The corpographical emphasis of the senses demonstrates how battle experience directly affects the characters’ bodies, connecting the audience to the physicality of this representation. Paul Rodaway explains that “olfaction is concerned more with encounter with a near or immediate environment and an involvement in that environment” and that the “chemical basis of olfaction makes it a far more direct sensuous geography than sight” (1994, 67). The CS gas, with its suffocation effects and consequent spatial disorientation, is used as a weapon of direct contact although there is no physical nearness between the military and protesters. The weapon itself causes an intimate effect between the chemicals and the protesters’ bodies, one that lingers in their respiratory system in upsetting ways. At this point, the sense of sight

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is the least privileged one in the film, for both characters and viewers, particularly when the sound of a shot is heard. Portrayed in a different way from the sound of rubber bullets, the profound ring of live ammunition elicits a distinct reaction from the characters, both from the military and protesters who scan their surroundings more attentively as a way to cope with danger. Spatial disorientation reaches its peak as the Parachute Regiment is deployed to the streets, arriving in the vehicles. The lack of establishing shots and heavy use of tighter framing highlights the impression of immersion into the conflict environment but simultaneously reduces the audience’s awareness of the sense of geographical direction, a contrast to the greater spatial understanding when looking at the city map. A series of cuts demonstrating real-time reactions from both the military and the civilian sides helps fragment the continuity of the narrative as if meant to overload the viewer with multiple inputs. In one specific sequence, the camera runs along with the characters surrounded by a tumultuous environment in a sensorial display of confusion. The soundscape is composed of a permanent sound of desperate screams, shouts, footsteps, and shots. The close-ups privilege the sight of details and marked episodes, such as rapidly watching a man being dragged by soldiers, but the tight framing denies an immediate comprehension of the event as a whole in consonance with how an eyewitness perspective could be portrayed. The handheld camera enhances the feeling of motion, giving the image a portable and dynamic access to the situations, even if from a particularly located viewpoint. The streets are no longer recognizable from daily life and the familiar spots offer no security from violence. The battle zone has been established in Derry and becomes even more estranged from its commonplace status as the film depicts the corporeal consequences of the shootings. Mullan’s book offers several instances of descriptions of embodied violence from the eyewitnesses of Bloody Sunday that rely on the explicit corporeal effects in a similar way that the film depicts the bodies of the victims. In the book, Denis McLaughlin, a sixteen-year-old witness of the event, describes the violence around him by saying, “I then turned on my back and as I did so I saw a person’s head bursting open with blood pouring out. All I saw was red. This body fell on my side and the blood poured all over my hands” (quoted in Mullan 2002, 72). His tactile and visual immersion into the conflict demonstrates how gruesome the consequences of violence were and how they should not be taken lightly. The film also relies on a very personalized, zoomed-in portrayal of bodily violations, the kind that reflects on how violent acts traumatize and disillusion a society.

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Sarah Cole observes that “violence is almost always political, and demands to be analyzed in terms of the unequal differentials of power it manifests” (2012, 21). By focusing on the hurt body in ways that display forceful dominance by the British military, the film documents the deaths as a product of a systematic brutality, siding with the nationalist viewpoint and its appeal for the end of power abuse by the colonial forces. In her writings, Cole mentions the notion of “disenchanted violence” as the “emblem for grotesque loss” (39), a type of portrayal that relies on images of corporeal destruction and the lack of glorifying principles. She points out that “disenchantment calls upon the hurt body, with its signal fluid, to remind us of its reality and frightfulness. Flesh, wounds, penetration: these provide the core figures for disenchantment” (44). The film offers several moments in which the embodied violence is represented in graphic ways by displaying the corporeal consequences of the shooting. Instead of fetishizing the body as an element of visual shock, the narrative interweaves the reactions of the bystanders, intensifying the traumatic process and mirroring an eyewitness relationship with the viewer. Cole explains that “texts with such goal often focus on a moment of bodily injury (and the consequences that ensue from that violence), drawing the reader or viewer back to the moment of destruction, rejecting the thematics of metamorphosis and the idea of a purifying or cathartic violence” (53). Bloody Sunday relies on the portrayal of the images of the violated body to articulate the wastefulness of violence and hidden agendas of political domination. During the sequences that focus on the escalation of corporeal violence, a particular emphasis on the atmosphere of massacre is given. In one specific moment, the camera follows a few soldiers who open fire indiscriminately at a large group of civilians. Visibly unarmed and composed of women and men, some members of the crowd are hit and fall to the ground only later to be executed at point-blank range. The disenchantment of this representation relies on the lack of sublimity or catharsis, with only a sense of helplessness and injustice. Although there are calls of ceasefire, the soldiers’ ruthless behavior reflects the motivational talk of aggressiveness given by the British command. There are some instances in which command makes use of an “enchanted rhetoric” to guide the soldiers: when talking about the operation to arrest protesters, a senior officer says, “Let’s do the CO proud of us, I wanna show the Brigade what One Para

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are made of,”2 and when Major General Ford sees the Paratroopers off as they deploy to the streets, he exclaims, “Go on, One Para. Go and get them, and good luck.” The avoidance of any consequence of the violent acts demonstrates what Cole calls the “general premise of war enchantement: that in the peculiar conditions of war, violent death is transformed into something positive, communal” (2012, 44). In this case, the incitation of violence by command, having in mind that earlier in the film a reference to the British Prime Minister Edward Heath was made as General Ford says, “the Prime Minister really has had enough of this Londonderry rebellion,” signals that the violent experience can have a beneficial outcome, leading to the practical outcome that extreme corporeal violation in the form of indiscriminate shooting is effective to the cause. As the film directs its attention to the embodied consequences of violence, the tactile sense is foregrounded and becomes a force of unity for the people, a collective form of help. In one particular sequence, the camera accompanies Ivan during a street shootout with his perspective as a filter for the events. Walking behind him, the camera portrays a very limited portion of the chaotic situation in an attempt to emulate a feeling of immersion as an eyewitness to the audience. He gets closer to a character called Barney who was shot when trying to rescue a wounded steward on the street. Another man holds Barney’s head in his hands as the blood stains the pavement. The tactile connection is intensified as a bonding tool, one associated with the urge to protect and heal. Ivan then approaches the other wounded man and touches him in an effort to find out if he is still alive. According to Santanu Das, “touch is the most intimate and elusive of the human senses: it is through this sense that we have access to the reality of own bodies” (2005, 20). The emphasis on the hands, similarly to the eyewitness description from Mullan’s book, signals in this context a form of attachment, of singling out the vividness of human relationships through the acknowledgment of their existence. Cole observes that “to consider two people touching as a fundamental unit in the story of violence […] is to change the scale, back from the numberless hordes, to reestablish the individual’s ordinary imaginative span as the essential one in apprehending violence” (2012, 291). These personal encounters in the film signal that violence is not being represented as a general and nameless event but as an individualized consequence, one that happens to a specific person’s body. Although the shot came from a distance by an unknown 2

 “One Para” refers to the 1st Battalion of the British Paratroopers Regiment.

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shooter, its effect is corporeally highlighted and the sense that twentieth-­ century violent encounters in a global scale, including Northern Ireland, have become desensitized by the use of long-distance weaponry vanishes with the reveal of the individual body. Ivan’s reaction, reinforced also by people’s response of the events, sets the tone of the scene. He calls out Barney’s name repeatedly in a desperate manner and represents the shock of witnessing the massacre as if a surreal event. A disheartened Ivan walks the streets of an unfamiliar Derry populated by dead bodies and mourning people. The experience of walking through the desolate city is the focus as the audience moves along the once vivacious space, prior to the march, to the gloomy space surrounding Ivan. The soundscape has changed from shooting and screaming to an eerie silence accompanied by crying. Slowly walking from one dead person to another in a dazed state, Ivan’s reaction of shock manifests the particularly disenchanted viewpoint of the film in relation to violence as the uncomfortable representations of injuries are showcased. Barney’s body receives a greater focus as he lies on the street in an unnatural position, clothes soiled by the fall and blood accumulated in the gutter, toward the position of his head. The Civil Rights banner is used to cover the body and in a manner of seconds the banner is soaked in blood. Ivan’s paralysis as he stands next to the body is complemented by people’s reactions of grief around him, a moment of mourning for more than just Barney’s life but for the monumental scale of aggression that the massacre signified. As Mullan points out, “Bloody Sunday is not just the day in which thirteen unarmed civilians died in Derry’s Bogside, it is also the day when the British Army effectively killed the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association” (2002, lv). The image of the bloodied banner covering a dead body next to the gutter on the street summarizes this atmosphere and enhances the message regarding the undeniable and horrific embodied consequence of the event. It is at the hospital that the number of casualties is added up and a bigger notion of the damage is represented. Ivan walks the hallways of the hospital and enters a room with six dead bodies lying on the floor. Once again, the audience tags along with Ivan experiencing the corporeal immediacy of the shootout. The bodies are piled up on top of each other, in strangely unnatural positions, blood covering the floor. Ivan angrily exclaims, “You can’t just leave them lying like bits of meat here,” highlighting that for far too long these bodies have been left unmentioned in a proper and critical way as if expendable for history. The effects of the

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deaths are felt more profoundly as groups of relatives try to find information about their family members. As Ivan closely walks among the crowd, in a reverse atmosphere of his hopeful strolls in the middle of the population in the beginning of the film, he collects names of people in order to find their whereabouts. The desperate family members hold tightly to his hands, telling him the missing relatives’ full names. This particular point of mentioning the names of the victims stands as an important moment of individualization of death that takes away the generic feeling of nameless numbers and statistics. In an attempt to console the families, Ivan hugs them saying “I’m sorry” over and over. The tactile display that places the body in “a more intimate, affective level” (Das 2005, 6) intensifies as Ivan holds a man who cries “they shot my dad” against his own body, firmly grasping the man’s head with his own hand. This profound interaction demonstrates what Yi-Fu Tuan points out when he explains that “touch is the direct experience of resistance, the direct experience of the world as a system of resistances and pressures that persuade us of the existence of a reality independent of our imaginings” (1990, 8). This “tactile behavior” (Barker 2009, 3) constructs Ivan as a lived body in the act of perceiving and expressing the immediacy of his environment. Far from being a dazed figure among the crowd of people, Ivan embraces his own pain and of others, urging the manifestation of grief close to his own body. There are no depictions of a transformative side to violence at that moment, but only its agonizing consequence, its disenchanted facet. The film clearly positions the military as the thrusting force behind the violence and presents an unglorified representation of internal manipulation of the facts in a deliberate act of power excess. The complexity of the military hierarchical values and peer pressure is embodied in the figure of the sympathetic Para, Private Lomas, who since the beginning of his appearance in the film displays uncertainty and disbelief with his body language. Recurrently in a tense and unsatisfied position, Lomas speaks his mind more clearly amongst his peers as they gather up near the vehicles after the shooting subsides. He questions his fellow soldiers about their actions and exclaims, “I saw you shooting civvies,” and receives the answer, “all civvies are terrorists, mate.” This foregrounds the discussion regarding contemporary warfare and the gray areas in which military forces act in relation to distinguishing civilians from non-civilians. Used as a justification for excessive use of violence in a geographical delimitation that separates “us” from “them,” the attitude of generalization toward the population demonstrates a colonial driving force that receives orders from

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the British government, one that annihilates the intricacies of the people and works toward subjugation. In the film, the desperate search of the military to find weapons used by the victims strips away any possibility of integrity from them, highlighting the army’s fictional creation of a historical narrative version. As Lomas is questioned in relation to what happened in the streets, his answers coincide with the fabricated account endorsed by high command, depicting that the military scheme and political ties behind it are so powerful and profound that even the sympathetic soldier is engulfed by the corrupted atmosphere. However bleak the outcome of Bloody Sunday is represented in the film, there is an expectation of change by the end of the narrative. The disenchantment of the consequences of the shootout is foregrounded in Ivan’s speech during a press conference toward the end of the film. He says in a prophetic tone: “all over this city tonight, young men, boys, will be joining the IRA and you will reap a whirlwind.” By highlighting the motivational force behind the enlistment, the film acknowledges the revengeful atmosphere of the years to come and, to a certain extent, the “enchanted recruitment” of the Irish Republic Army (IRA) propelled by a sense of justice and reprisal. The main approach of the film relies on demonstrating the lack of glory generated by all the violent acts but also on the necessary critical review of history as a step toward a more comprehensive appraisal of moments of power abuse. The last sentence in the film echoes this wish and it is spoken by Bernadette Devlin (Mary Moulds): “we will not rest until justice is done.” This yearning is not solely based on memorialization and remembrance but a desire to go further into the backstories of military and colonial machinations that drive the violent acts toward the people on the streets.

2.2   “Get out of this country, none of us likes you!”3: ’71 and a Sensorial Journey Across Divided Belfast Belfast and its sectarian geography become more than a setting in which a chase after a lost British soldier takes place in ’71. The visceral animosity found in the relationships marked by a political/religious division is the backbone of a depiction that embraces the volatile atmosphere of 3  The transcriptions of the characters’ lines for this section were taken from the film ’71 (Yann Demange 2014).

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turbulence in the city. John Hill observes that “films made in and about Northern Ireland have nearly always contributed to, and become implicated in, broader political conflicts concerning the region” (2006, 1). By focusing on a chain of characters whose lives are, in different proportions, touched by violence, the film attempts to represent a context that relies on unrestrained violent acts from all sides. Such tumultuous environment is portrayed in a way that appeals to the senses, in a deep engagement with the body and the immersive effects of violence. An urban surrounding that highlights Lefebvre’s aforementioned notion of a perceived space where sensorial input constructs the experience of living (Fig. 2.1). With its release in 2014, ’71 was produced amid the context of contemporary warfare and powerfully technological modes of combat engagement, a very different scenario from the 1970s. Gregory explains that contemporary warfare, namely post-9/11 conflicts, can be understood as “optical war hypostatised: a war fought on screens and through digital images, in which full motion video feeds from Predator and Reapers allow for remoteness from the killing fields” (2015, 117). The reliance on

Fig. 2.1  ’71 (Yann Demange 2014). Reproduced by permission of Warp Films. (Image courtesy of the BFI National Archive)

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technology, and more particularly in advanced weapons such as drones, fosters a sense of distance from the acts of violence that removes the impression of culpability and desensitizes the perpetrators and viewers. Space becomes an abstract construction for the attacker as a bird’s eye view of geography tends to be the focus. However, Gregory points out that “these wars are still shaped and even confounded by the multiple, acutely material environments through which they are fought” (2015, 117), implying a return of focus to the body and its immersion in the corporeality of the surroundings. ’71 relies on this view of warfare, that is, a restoration of the physical and engaging acts of violence as a reverberating element of urban embattlement. The type of guerrilla conflict of Northern Ireland differs from conflicts such as the First and Second World Wars, the so-called total wars in which great-scale battles took place. War becomes an increasingly somatic experience in which the immersion into the surreal world of violence is navigated through a complex web of personal relations mediated by corporeal and sensorial abilities. Although a contemporary production, ’71 carries the heritage of war films in many of its characteristics related to cinematography and themes. Barton points out the connection to Vietnam films, for instance Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola 1979), in relation to the training scenes in the beginning of the film and the disillusioned view of the military (2019, 156–157). The guerilla warfare style of the Vietnam war films, although not in an urban context, matches the alternative approach of conflict fighting in Northern Ireland as well as the military intrusiveness into the intimate fabric of the cities. In an interview for the online Empire magazine (2014), the director Yann Demange acknowledges the influence that Kathryn Bigelow’s films have had in his own filmmaking, referencing action-packed scenes from two of her movies, Point Break (1991) and Strange Days (1995). In Bigelow’s work, the cinematography is used to represent an immersive concept of car and foot chases by relying on the corporeal approach of a shaky handheld camera. This characteristic can be found in ’71 as a tool to corporeally place the lost British soldier Gary Hook (Jack O’Connell) in a chaotic environment and enhance his sense of disorientation. Yet another one of Bigelow’s films can be connected to ’71 in stylistic and thematic terms: The Hurt Locker (2008). A film about a bomb disposal team in the Iraq War, The Hurt Locker presents a camera work that portrays the instability of emotions and the 360-degree threat of contemporary warfare with an emphasis on the levels of damaged masculinity represented in the battlefield. Demange incorporates the feeling

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of uneasiness and constant risk from the surroundings as well as the depiction of corporeal wounds in a graphic way. The visible display of the hurt body in war films was reignited by Saving Private Ryan’s (Steven Spielberg 1998) brutal representation of D-Day landings and carried on in the genre by many other films and miniseries such as Band of Brothers (Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks prod. 2001) and The Hurt Locker’s gruesome scene where the main character removes a bomb from inside the body of a child. ’71 can also be included in this type of representation in which the violated body is depicted in detail as a result of a violent encounter. In terms of films that approach the context of Northern Ireland, ’71 can be linked to Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out (1947). Barton highlights the similarities between the two films in terms of the quest of both main characters who hide from place to place in the city, being helped by locals in order to survive (2019, 156). Another point of connection between the two films is the corpographical approach of the characters in order to navigate the confusing city landscape. Both Odd Man Out and ’71 foreground the characters’ senses as a decisive tool of survival by depicting scenes in which the somatic engagement with the urban sounds and sights determines the outcome of the narratives. For instance, in Odd Man Out, Johnny McQueen (James Mason) has issues with his sight, a consequence of the psychological toll of time in prison, and in some situations suffers from disorientation and hallucinations that expose his life to danger. Sound is also a main generator of dangerous circumstances as the noise of approaching cars, slamming doors, and shots being fired are highlighted in the film as threat indicators. Following this corpographical construction of the senses, ’71 demonstrates how Gary’s firsthand engagement with the city contributes to the understanding of violence as an instrument of displacement in a context of political and religious division. ’71 has as its main narrative arc Gary’s story as an unexperienced British soldier who is dispatched to a stop-and-search raid in Belfast and left behind to fend for himself. By delving into the cityscape, his life is both threatened and saved by interactions with multiple local characters, such as IRA members, British undercover officers, and Loyalists. Before Gary is sent to Belfast, the film shares a glimpse into British soldierly life in an attempt to introduce the physicality that will later on become the focal point of Gary’s street odyssey. The film opens, similarly to Bloody Sunday, with disembodied voices but this time in the context of a boxing match. The sounds of punches and hyperventilation expand beyond the frame of sight and signal an aural focus and the relevance of the audience

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deciphering information through hearing. The first image, the boxing match itself in media res, indicates the centralization of the body as both a weapon to inflict pain and a receiver of violence. Being trained to accept the corporeal discomfort of violence and mobilize forces to retaliate is one of the pillars of military preparation and the scene already hints at the absurdity of the exposure of bodies to extreme conditions. Shouts of “keep going,” “controlled aggression,” and “take it and give it back” are joined by the loud cheering from the surrounding soldiers while Gary’s bloodied face tries to evade the punches. The sequence continues as military team training takes place. Running long distances, crawling in the river, going over high obstacles, and practicing tactical maneuvering are some of the drills the soldiers experience. Their bodies are shaped to endure hardship in a somatic mode of attention that focuses on the physical task at hand but simultaneously needs to be attuned to the surroundings. John Hockey explains that in this context “the individual’s mind and body are combined via intensive training to produce a particular kind of corporeal engagement with the world” which can be called “switch on” (2013, 95). This interaction “means being alert to and employing particular sensory practices (smelling, touching, seeing, hearing and moving)” (95) to ensure survival in combat areas. The use of senses will play a valuable role in the depiction of Gary’s experiences as his switch-on posture is challenged. The film’s basic training sequence is part of a legacy of war films that depict the initial moments of military preparation and introduction of the concept of teamwork, a notion that will be put into question in the narrative. The primary military contact through boot camp sequences can be found in movies such as Full Metal Jacket (Stanley Kubrick 1987) that critically addresses the madness of power abuse and violence, the miniseries Band of Brothers that offers an insight into comraderie and bad leadership as well as the film Lone Survivor (Peter Berg 2013) which represents the elite soldiers’ bodies taken to the limit, both mentally and physically. ’71’s portrayal of boot camp is much milder in comparison to the North American depictions that often rely on patterns of humiliation and extreme antagonistic characters. The film focuses on constructing a fit body for duty but also an obedient body, one that will not question orders from the hierarchy. Harrington points out that while on the field, “the close shots of Hook’s face expose his initial unsureness at being there. His eyes flicker with doubt, but he operates as the consummate soldier responding automatically to calls for attention with assurance, as though his drilled body is

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independent of his inexpert mind” (2016, 7). This robotic response to orders that seem to exclude the wellbeing of the soldiers is a form of colonial corporealization, an abuse of authority from a more powerful side with the intention of submission of both mind and body. By looking at the sensorial portrayal that allows an intimate glance into the characters, the consequences of violent confrontations can be traced, and as Gregory mentions, “if we are to ‘make sense’ of war we need to recover the multiple bodily senses through which the brutalities and erasures of military violence are registered” (2014, 39). The insertion of the soldiers into Belfast’s pulsing geography of division will prove to be a test to the trained teamwork and switch-on attitude. Prior to venturing into the streets of Belfast, the soldiers are introduced to the geography of the city through maps, similarly to what happens in Bloody Sunday. During the briefing that takes place in a classroom setting, with the “student’s” desks facing the board and the “teacher,” a map of Belfast is used to transmit basic information about the situation. The film raises the question of simplification by showing how a conflict that has been raging for a great amount of time is about to be quickly summarized to those who will play a major immersive role on the streets, interacting with the population and possessing the power to be aggressive. The instructor starts his explanation by saying the words “roughly, very roughly” in order to convey the imprecision of the information that is about to be given, a point that will be proven as the soldiers corporeally traverse the city. He then continues by explaining that “you can divide the city between the Protestant Loyalist east, here in orange, friendly, and the Catholic Nationalist west in green, hostile.” This cartographic knowledge, a very theoretical source of information at this point, presents the territorial divisions but suppresses all the particularities of the conflict and offers a detached urban experience of Belfast. Gregory describes a type of “cartographic anxiety” concerning the attempt to match the logical realm of maps and the wildly different reality of places as he quotes a passage about Gabriel, a disheartened soldier character, from William Boyd’s First World War novel An Ice-Cream War: “Gabriel thought maps should be banned. They gave the world an order and reasonableness it didn’t possess” (2015, 90). The geographical separations marked by the instructor culminate in the off-limits zone of the Divis Flats, regarded as an IRA territory, described as “very dangerous.” The bird’s eye view of Belfast and the generalizing explanation of territorial division by the command are contrasted with the immersive experiences once the soldiers enter the city.

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The film demonstrates how the city from a ground perspective does not have the same uniformity as presented in the command briefing. When the soldiers become corporeally involved in the urban environment by driving on the streets, one element of the scenario that calls attention is the presence of burning vehicles. Burning cars and buses are scattered on the streets, signs of past violence and reminders of violent acts to come as the fire still rages from them and the black smoke swirls up to the sky. Vehicles that once had a practical function in society are now displayed as markers of conflict. In many instances, these burning vehicles are used as barricades that block the streets, preventing traffic in specific directions and morphing the geography of the city. The blocking of passages separates areas according to political/religious preferences, further deepening the gap between the sides. The British soldiers face the ultimate result of their lack of territorial knowledge as they get lost trying to navigate the city. At a certain point, they halt the trucks and Lieutenant Armitage (Sam Reid) exclaims “no street signs” as he cluelessly looks at the map. Their displacement is further enhanced as local kids aggressively shout at them and throw urine and feces bags in their direction. Complementing this bodily and haptic encounter, the voices of defiance coming from the children echo in the quiet streets. One of the kids says “get out of this country, none of us likes you!,” depicting a clear position from the Catholic side as a proclamation against the colonial presence. Not much attention is given by the soldiers to this episode, apart from the reactions of discomfort from the body waste confrontation, but it already demonstrates the raging state of agitation underneath the neatly arranged streets on the map. By entering the intimate social fabric of the city, the military disrupts the daily flow, merging public and personal spaces even more. As they drive by the houses, the mixed environment of burning cars and playing children is perceptible. The soldiers’ presence flags a different behavior from the population who switch from daily life to a communal state of alert. This is done particularly through an aural alert system of clattering lids on the ground. As the soldiers drive by, people place themselves on the sidewalks, communicating the military’s appearance. As Tuan observes, the auditory sense “provides information of the world beyond the visual field” (1990, 9) and in this case is used to inform the presence of danger in the community to those who cannot see the events. However, the loud cacophony of clattering lids transforms itself beyond its communicative power into a form of auditory domination as the sounds are also meant to disrupt concentration and create an antagonistic ambience. According to

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Rodaway, “dominating space with sound, such as through the use of excessive amplification of a single source of sound(s) […] literally destroys auditory geography since it reduces or submerges the pre-existing soundscape under the blanket of the dominant sound” (1994, 108). Disorientation also becomes a goal in this case along with the demonstration of the communal power of articulation without words. A strong sense of unity is displayed here as the baffled British soldiers watch all types of people, such as young and old women and men, ceaselessly use the lids as a form of resistance to power control. The audience also experiences this overpowering aural input that dominates the senses leading to a comprehension of the bodies as either attempting to resist, in the figure of the locals, or disoriented by the commotion, in the figure of the soldiers. This sequence also introduces the threatening presence of the police force in Northern Ireland (RUC, the Royal Ulster Constabulary),4 a key player in the enacting of violence particularly regarding the forced entrance into the home space. As possessors of local knowledge, the RUC officers guide the disoriented British Army toward their stop-and-search location. The aggressiveness of the RUC officers starts as they force their way into one of the houses by kicking down the front door. Their hostile corporeal posture and offensive speech toward the woman and children in the living room sets a tone of abuse in the search for supposed guns. Violence reaches its peak as the RUC officers beat two men, one inside the house and another one outside. The lack of a safe space either indoors or outdoors can be connected to what Sahera Bleibleh calls a “forbidden space,” that is, “the dialectical meaning between the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ spaces […]. While the inside is supposed to serve domestic purposes, residents cannot ultimately feel secure inside because of the unpredictable attacks” (2010, 1). The outside is also a zone of danger with the looming presence of the military and police forces. In the film, the instability of both spaces is demonstrated by the readiness of response from the locals who gather around the location, as if this event is not a completely unfamiliar situation and has happened before. Bleibleh observes that the inside/outside dispute has to do with “the hybridity of space due to the colonization and continuous struggle, either directly or indirectly, between the colonizer 4  The Royal Ulster Constabulary was the Northern Irish police force from 1922 to 2001, created following the partition of Ireland. Ronald Weitzer points how the RUC was known for its role in sectarian violence, particularly targeting Catholic neighborhoods and polarizing the community-police relations (1995, 43).

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and colonized, where the public space as well as private space, becomes a space of resistance and confrontation within the current sovereignty conflict” (2). By abusively entering the domestic space, the RUC and the military rupture the flow of private life, blurring the division between inside and outside in ways that demonstrate an excessive use of power and a will to dominate through a display of violent acts meant to send a public message of uneasiness to the community. The clattering lids alert the local population of the military presence and consequently a crowd gathers at the location leading to a full-blown riot foregrounding the corporeal immersion of both the locals and military into violence. The soldiers form a barrier with the collectivity of their bodies, cordoning off the area of the house on both sides. The soldier-­ body barrier is soon confronted by the angry population that demands to go through. Men, women, and children approach the soldiers and the tactile interactions begin. They closely share the space in an intense display of bodily friction, and as Rodaway points out, “touch is above all the most intimate sense, limited by the reach of the body, and it is the most reciprocal of the senses, for to touch is always to be touched” (1994, 41). The population and the military push in opposite directions using their bodies as instruments to insure their positions, both in physical terms and in relation to their purposes. The human barricade can be considered an example of Jennifer M. Barker’s concept of cinematic tactility explained in Chap. 1 in the sense that the tension and agitation of the demonstrators and military forces go beyond the haptic level. The touch of the skin is highlighted in this sequence but the visceral resistance that involves the whole body constructs the perception of the stop-and-search raid as abusive and offensive. Among the crowd, one person in particular calls attention due to his corporeal behavior that differs from the other agitated locals. Sean Bannon (Barry Keoghan) neither shouts nor pushes toward the soldier barrier. He only observes the situation with an unresponsive facial expression, his body swaying to the sides as the movement of the crowd jostles him around. His presence is connected to gathering information to be taken to members of the Republican paramilitary faction. Here the population is not depicted as a heterogenous angry group but a complex combination of different interests. The unique soundscape of the sequence is composed of the sounds of clattering lids, shouting from the population and the military, and an instrumental soundtrack of a continuous sound that together emphasize the out-of-control situation and overpower sensorial

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orientation. A gunfire from the military side is heard and stones start being thrown at the soldiers, initiating an even more confusing scenario that leads to a child running away with a British rifle, the key action that would lead to Gary’s troubled journey through Belfast. The relationship between touching and violence has been a widely featured sensorial aspect of both Bloody Sunday and ’71 and this is deeply showcased in the sequence in which Gary and Private Thompson (Jack Lowden) engage in one-to-one battle with the locals. As the child picks up the military rifle and runs away with it, Gary and Thompson follow the boy, leaving the reasonably safe area where the soldiers are gathered to venture into the streets on their own. They are overpowered by local men who use their bare fists and feet to inflict damage as the soldiers curl up against the wall. Cole argues that “the touch that can be a sign of healing, or of callous and inhumane brutality, or of the way any intimate violent interaction between two people gestures beyond them to broader categories and narratives” (2012, 291). The act of ceaseless violence of the locals stands for more than just a reaction to that particular stop-and-search raid since it is infused with a sense of hatred and revenge that surpasses the personal level and registers a reaction to the heritage of oppression and abuse by the British forces in the community. It is not an individual vendetta against Gary or Thompson in specific but to what the military signifies and to what their forced presence entails for the inhabitants. A woman breaks the fight as she pushes the men away and exclaims, “behaving like animals, you should be ashamed of yourselves,” portraying the diverse opinions of the population toward the use of violence. As Sean and Paul (Martin McCann), a member of the IRA, approach the crowd, it becomes clear that the upcoming violent acts are less of a cathartic nature and more of an act of systematic elimination of the enemy forces, a tactical move. Paul walks up to the soldiers and without hesitation points a gun to Thompson’s head and shoots him at point-blank range. Violence is displayed in its most graphic way as blood spatters on the window behind Thompson’s head and the sound of the shot can be heard alongside a viscous sound. Thompson’s lifeless body is explicitly shown, particularly the hole on his face and Gary’s bloodied hand as he holds his teammate’s head. This haptic and somber intimacy between the two characters pulls the viewer closer to the texture of the wound, being directed to contemplate the image of carnage. The violent act is, once again, emblematic of a much larger frame of political and religious oppression by the British government and military and stands as another step in the circular framework

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of brutality. The executionary nature of Thompson’s death and the close proximity in which the shot was taken set the tone of hostile environment where Gary will navigate in the narrative. Spatial disorientation becomes the major focus of the film once Gary runs away into the Belfast streets being followed by Sean and Paul. The Bigelowesque chase scene features a shaky camera that accompanies Gary as he enters back alleys, climbs walls, bumps into a woman, and enters random houses, all of this without any sense of geographical localization, only an instinct of survival. Harrington comments that the unstable handheld camerawork “while nauseating, operates to fuel the tension of the viewing experience and to amplify the instability and danger of Hook’s situation” (2016, 12). At this moment, the film does not allow a bird’s eye view of Gary’s location, only an immersive tag along of his escape. One particular shot demonstrates how engulfed Gary is by the city: he stands alone in the middle of the street, a rubble barricade behind him with a burning car, rows of two-story houses towering over him on both sides of the frame. He looks small, imprisoned by the urban features of the city and by the context that he little understands. Space in this sequence is a reflection of the character’s perception. The displacement is apparent as he aimlessly enters a house. This particular entrance reveals a complex network of movement in the city as the walls of the houses are partially knocked down to construct what can be seen as a parallel tunnel-like street that runs indoors. Invisible from the outside, hence indetectable by traditional maps, the inside street defamiliarizes the domestic setting, bringing an uncanny feeling of dissolution of public and private spaces. Similarly to the creation of Bleibleh’s “forbidden spaces” by the military forces where the outside and inside are interchangeably dangerous, the demolition of the walls signify a disruption of daily life, a material and permanent reminder of the presence of violence. A transient safe space for Gary is an outhouse that he comes across during his escape, a place of solitude in which his body and mind unwind momentarily, showcasing the traumatic effects of violence. He sits on the floor in a state of fatigue as his heavy breathing demonstrates not only a corporeal exhaustion after the chase but an emotional weariness. Curled up, with his clenched hands, Gary cries. He looks at his bloodstained hands that function as a reminder of the violence enacted against Thompson. The camera slightly zooms in his hands, highlighting the importance of this tactile memory. Cole comments that “the hand, the personal encounter, the closeness of sympathy with grievous violence:

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these infuse something distinctly archaic, elemental, and universal into the violent encounter” (2012, 291). Gary’s hands in this case function both as performers and witnesses of urban violence, stained by the colonizing actions of a street raid and the effects of a coldblooded execution. By portraying Gary’s fragilities in a way that diminishes his super soldier status, this depiction distances itself from the mechanical body that is ever ready and obeys hierarchical orders. The intense focus on his hurt body may divert the narrative from tackling possible political discussions, but it brings to the surface the state of animosity in the city and the delicate areas of affiliation in which the local characters navigate, for instance, the pressure put on Sean to commit extreme acts of violence or the lurking danger caused by the father and daughter’s assistance to Gary. Left without the military framework of navigation, Gary must fend for himself and use his senses to survive. His corpographical attitude, that is, a sensorial connection with the surroundings and adjustment of his own behavior to prevent danger, translates to a tension shared with the audience who closely follows his activities of seeing, hearing, and moving. As Gary hears the first threatening sound, he snaps back into a switch-on mode and, as the scene continues, improvises a change of clothes to avoid recognition. By camouflaging his body into a civilian mode, Gary is able to traverse the city as less of a target as if he were in military clothes. Another group of characters that are dressed to blend in with the population is the Military Reaction Force (MRF), a covert intelligence-­ gathering and counter-insurgency unit of the British Army. Their camouflaged presence adds to the complexity of roles in the Northern Irish conflict in terms of the struggle for power control and allegiance to Loyalist groups. As the MRF assists Loyalist members in the assembling of a bomb at a pub, the theme of terrorism surfaces in the narrative. For Stephen Prince, “terrorism has furnished a defining experience for our time, encompassing policy, politics, emotion, perception, insurgent strategy, aesthetics, and violence in ways that seem insurmountable” (2009, 3). ’71 is produced in a post-9/11 context in which the theatricality of terror acts can be associated to their expansive consequences of destruction. The film provides extreme closeup shots of the explosives and the hands that put the parts together while the characters’ discussion connects the act of denotating the bomb with the broadcasting of a message of power to the IRA. Cole explains that since its inception “the violence of dynamite reverberated across the sensory spectrum as something novel, […] from its chemical smell, to its shattering sound, to its extreme tactile effects, and

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it held pronounced political associations, quickly becoming associated with terrorism” (2012, 83–84). The message of being able to inflict destruction, hence creating a threatening climate, becomes more important than the scope of the wreckage itself, although bomb attacks are often known by their substantial demolition. As the bomb is accidentally set off in the film, the sensorial aspects of detonation, from its aural and somatic violations, highlights the individual destruction and particularizes the violent act. This specific moment is translated to the audience through Gary’s complete sensorial experience of the explosion. He had previously been led to the pub by a Loyalist boy who recognized him as a soldier because of his military boots, the only item Gary was not able to camouflage, and attempted to help the soldier find his way back. The moment the explosion happens, Gary is outside the pub looking at the boy who sits by the counter. The blast illuminates the inside of the pub and propels Gary far away. The camera is lowered on ground level showing his efforts to come to his senses and stand up. As Gary’s face becomes the focus of the shot, a ringing sound takes over the sensorial spectrum as if emulating a hearing condition affected by the loud explosion. The camera then walks alongside Gary, losing focus of the image, a representation of his temporary sight impairment. The moment he enters the pub, the excess of smoke leads to an overpowering smellscape that causes him to cough. He picks the boy up from the floor and takes him outside since now the indoors space has turned into a more threatening environment than outdoors. The boy has lost his left arm and parts of his right arm in a graphic portrayal of the consequences of violence, in this case an accidental explosion but still part of the machinations of destruction. The camera offers a prolonged gaze at the disfigured body of the boy, highlighting corporeal violation not as a celebration of courage and honor but as a waste of life, a disenchanted view of the conflict. Gary’s touch has the purpose of helping although he is able to do very little in this situation, demonstrating his helplessness against a much more complex context. His four senses are foregrounded in this sequence to demonstrate his somatic navigation through the landscapes of violence and his role as a witness to the hurt body. As mentioned in the first chapter, Laura U. Marks points out how senses act as repositories of memories that cannot be visually or aurally represented (2000, 130). Therefore, Gary’s agony and disorientation is fleshed out in the film through an array of filmic techniques that convey a somatic engagement of the audience with his physical experiences. After

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the boy is taken to the hospital, Gary walks the streets as if in a daze, moving forward but stumbling his way into alleys. The complete loss of orientation is demonstrated through the erratic camerawork, eerie instrumental music, and foggy environment. Barton observes that “at first, he seems alone in this post-apocalypse, but gradually others creep out of the gloom like zombie survivors” (2019, 156). The expressionist camera movements and shadowy spaces provide an atmosphere of horror as Gary reaches extreme emotional fatigue and physical debilitation. His body is no longer able to properly function in a threatening surrounding, his corpographical instincts marred by the violence of the explosion, and he collapses on the sidewalk. The vulnerability of the body displayed with the explosion continues to be the focus as Gary’s wounds prevent him from being aware of what is happening. His unconscious body is taken by a father and daughter who come across him on the street. The addition of these two characters further demonstrates the intricacies of the Northern Irish context, personalizing the Divis Flats residents, the off-limits zone mentioned earlier in the film. The Divis Flats bear weight in the film as the representation of the domestic space being incisively intruded by the public sphere. The private world of family life is threatened by Gary’s presence and a possible retaliation that the father and daughter might suffer for aiding a member of the enemy force. The complexity of the situation is enhanced by the portrayal of the civilian world trapped between the war of factions, in this case the animosity between older and younger IRA members. A former military medical member, the father instinctively helps Gary and stitches his abdominal gash under improvisational conditions which causes the soldier to emphatically express pain. The closeup shots of the needle penetrating Gary’s skin represent the utmost tactile experience, the reverberation of violence that affects not only those directly involved in the fight, but people peripherally located in the context. Although a military member, Gary does not position himself in terms of the political/religious particularities of the conflict, and when asked if he is a Catholic or Protestant, he simply replies, “I don’t know.” However, the violent acts in the territory somehow affect both combatants and non-combatants and the film emphasizes how the characters are interconnected by violence. As Gary looks out the window from the Divis Flats, he sees the pub on fire, a reminder of the corporeal damage to the boy. Then the editing cuts to a selection of shots from different characters: the British soldiers in the barracks putting away Thompson’s belongings, the apprehensive father and daughter, a younger

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IRA member, the burning pub again and back to a closeup of Gary’s face. The editing highlights the tension of distinct positions in Northern Ireland’s society and the magnitude of connection among them, all linked by the hovering and affecting presence of violence. The clear-cut generalization of the conflict between Catholics and Protestants explained in the military briefing earlier in the narrative seems now a one-dimensional view of the situation. The final moments of violence in the film, with Sean’s death and the military cover-up of corrupt procedures, speak to the very convoluted nature of the conflict in terms of its ceaseless animosity. A character such as Sean, whose youth seems to be nipped by his involvement with the IRA violent affairs, has an ending with a mixture of tragedy and redemption. He does not have the nerves to execute Gary and is in turn shot by an MRF member who attempts to eliminate Gary due to his knowledge of the British intelligence helping Loyalists. The MRF member struggles to choke Gary in an intense corporeal interaction, a tactile display of the use of the body, particularly the hands, to enact brutality. Although Sean shoots the assailant and saves Gary, the young man is killed by Armitage who arrives at the scene. A hopeless sense of injustice and waste prevails as Sean’s body is laid out on the street as one more casualty of the conflict. Similarly to Bloody Sunday, a very different version of the facts remains as the official military account, dismissing it as a confusing situation. When Gary is told by the command to forget what happened, his wounded face is a reminder of the violence inflicted upon his body, a conduit of brutal memories. The British military is depicted as an institution functioning as a larger organism that chooses to be more interested in self-defense mechanisms and keeping hidden agendas. The film ends as Gary leaves the army and gets together with his younger brother, showing that “there is no political way out of the long history of the conflict other than withdrawal into personal space” (Barton 2019, 157). The retreat into the personal sphere due to the overwhelming weight of violence in the streets signals the lack of a conventional solution for the Troubles as the film does not attempt to bring an upbeat ending to a chase story, but a reflection on the traumatic state of those corporeally and psychologically touched by violence. In both Bloody Sunday and ’71 the representation of the senses plays a major role in identifying the corporeal journey of the characters and their immersion into a hostile environment of violence. The depth in which each film delves in political and ideological terms varies but the two

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narratives focus on portraying violence as a symbol of loss rather than a generative site of transformed power. The violated body is placed in a context that takes into consideration the complexity of the Troubles not as a clear-cut conflict between two ideological sides but as a struggle for domination from varied subtle directions. The particularities of the military, political, and religious standpoints are reflected in the interactions among civilians, rebels, soldiers, and politicians. The films highlight the corporeal violation and psychological devastation that entails such traumatic events, but they do not offer a definite solution to the issues presented in the narratives. As Cole remarks, “violence leaves its stains, and the long march of years, despite efforts at redemption or revisionism, will often fail to obscure them” (2012, 3). Bloody Sunday and ’71 do not attempt to solve such communal traumas as experienced in both cities of Derry and Belfast. Nevertheless, their effort to stir up the memories of violence is significant as an investigation of issues of control and supremacy in Northern Irish society.

References Barker, Jennifer M. 2009. The Tactile Eye: Touch and Cinematic Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press. Barton, Ruth. 2004. Irish National Cinema. London: Routledge. ———. 2019. Irish Cinema in the Twenty-First Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Berg, Peter, dir. 2013. Lone Survivor. Beverly Hills: Emmett/Furla Films. DVD. Bigelow, Kathryn, dir. 1991. Point Break. Los Angeles: Twentieth Century Fox. DVD. ———, dir. 1995. Strange Days. Santa Monica: Lightstorm Entertainment. DVD. ———, dir. 2008. The Hurt Locker. Los Angeles: Voltage Pictures. DVD. Blair, Paula. 2014. Old Borders, New Technologies: Reframing Film and Visual Culture in Contemporary Northern Ireland. Oxford: Peter Lang. Blaney, Aileen. 2007. Remembering Historical Trauma in Paul Greengrass’s Bloody Sunday. History and Memory 19 (2): 113–138. Bleibleh, Sahera. 2010. Everyday Urbanism between Public Space and ‘Forbidden Space’: The Case of the Old City of Nablus, Palestine. UC Berkeley: The Proceedings of Spaces of History/Histories of Space: Emerging Approaches to the Study of the Built Environment, 1–9. Accessed 30 January 2021. http://escholarship.org/uc/item/699616jk. Clarke, Alan, dir. 1989. Elephant. Belfast: BBC Northern Ireland. Aired January 25, 1989 on BBC2.

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Cole, Sarah. 2012. At the Violet Hour: Modernism and Violence in England and Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Coppola, Francis Ford, dir. 1979. Apocalypse Now. San Francisco: American Zoetrope. DVD. Das, Santanu. 2005. Touch and Intimacy in First World War Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Demange, Yann, dir. 2014. ‘71. Sheffield: Warp Films. DVD. Dillane, Fionnuala, et al. 2016. Introduction: The Body in Pain in Irish Literature and Culture. In The Body in Pain in Irish Literature and Culture, ed. Fionnuala Dillane, Naomi McAreavey, and Emilie Pine, 1–20. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Doherty, Willie. 2009. Ghost Story. In Willie Doherty: Requisite Distance, ed. Charles Wylie, 38–91. New Haven: Yale University Press. Edwards, Aaron. 2011. The Northern Ireland Troubles: Operation Banner 1969–2007. Oxford: Osprey Publishing. Evans, Marc, dir. 1998. Resurrection Man. London: Revolution Films. DVD. Greengrass, Paul, dir. 2002a. Bloody Sunday. Galway: Screen Ireland. DVD. ———. 2002b. Foreword to the Third Edition. In Eyewitness Bloody Sunday: The Truth, ed. Don Mullan, xiii–xx. Dublin: Merlin Publishing. Gregory, Derek. 2014. Corpographies: Making Sense of Modern War. The Funambulist, December: 30–39. Accessed 10 December 2020. https://geog r a p h i c a l i m a g i n a t i o n s . f i l e s . w o r d p r e s s . c o m / 2 0 1 2 / 0 7 / g r e g o r y -­ corpographies.pdf. ———. 2015. Gabriel’s Map: Cartography and Corpography in Modern War. In Geographies of Knowledge and Power (Knowledge and Space Book 7), ed. Peter Meusburger, Derek Gregory, and Laura Suarsana, 89–121. New York: Springer. Harrington, Louise. 2016. ‘Conflict Cinema’ and Hostile Space in Northern Ireland and Palestine. TEXT Journal 34: 1–15. Hill, John. 2006. Cinema and Northern Ireland: Film, Culture and Politics. London: BFI. Hockey, John. 2013. On Patrol: The Embodied Phenomenology of Infantry. In War and the Body: Militarisation, Practice and Experience, ed. Kevin McSorley, 93–105. London: Routledge. How I Made ’71 by Yann Demange. 2014. Empire Online, October 8. Accessed 25 January 2021. www.empireonline.com/movies/features/yann-­demange-­ 71-­influences/. Kubrick, Stanley, dir. 1987. Full Metal Jacket. Burbank: Warner Brothers. DVD. Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-­ Smith. Oxford: Blackwell. Marks, Laura U. 2000. The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham: Duke University Press.

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McDonald, Kevin. 2013. Grammars of Violence, Modes of Embodiment and Frontiers of the Subject. In War and the Body: Militarisation, Practice and Experience, ed. Kevin McSorley, 139–151. London: Routledge. McLoone, Martin. 2000. Irish Film: The Emergence of a Contemporary Cinema. London: BFI. ———. 2008. Film, Media and Popular Culture in Ireland: Cityscapes, Landscapes, Soundscapes. Dublin: Irish Academic Press. McQueen, Steve, dir. 2008. Hunger. London: Film4. DVD. Mullan, Don. 2002. Eyewitness Bloody Sunday: The Truth. Dublin: Merlin Publishing. O’Sullivan, Thaddeus, dir. 1995. Nothing Personal. Galway: The Irish Film Board. DVD. Pine, Emilie. 2014. Body of Evidence: Performing Hunger. In Masculinity and Irish Popular Culture: Tiger’s Tales, ed. Conn Holohan and Tony Tracy, 159–170. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Prince, Stephen. 2009. Firestorm: American Film in the Age of Terrorism. New York: Columbia University Press. Reed, Carol, dir. 1947. Odd Man Out. London: Two Cities Films. DVD. Rodaway, Paul. 1994. Sensuous Geographies: Body, Sense and Place. London: Routledge. Sheridan, Jim, dir. 1997. The Boxer. Universal City: Universal Pictures. DVD. Sobchack, Vivian. 1992. The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Spielberg, Steven, dir. 1998. Saving Private Ryan. Glendale: Dreamworks. DVD. ——— and Tom Hanks prod. 2001. Band of Brothers. New  York: Home Box Office. DVD. Sturken, Marita. 1997. Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering. Berkeley: University of California Press. Tuan, Yi-Fu. 1990. Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values. New York: Columbia University Press. Weitzer, Ronald. 1995. Policing Under Fire: Ethnic Conflict and Police-Community Relations in Northern Ireland. Albany: State University of New York. Winter, Jane. 2002. Preface. In Eyewitness Bloody Sunday: The Truth, ed. Don Mullan, xxv–xliii. Dublin: Merlin Publishing.

CHAPTER 3

Embodied Violation in Tropa de Elite and A Divisão: The Spectacle of Torture and Violence in Rio’s favelas

I am participating in a war. It just happens that I come back home every day. That’s the only difference. (Captain Pimentel, Rio de Janeiro BOPE) (This quote was transcribed from the documentary Notícias de uma Guerra Particular (News from a Personal War 1999) directed by Kátia Lund and João Moreira Salles and refers to Captain Pimentel’s opinion regarding the urban warfare circumstances in Rio de Janeiro. He works for the Special Police Operations Batallion (BOPE), a highly trained tactical unit of the Military Police in Rio with vast experience in violent engagements in favelas. Pimentel is also the co-writer of the book Elite da Tropa (2006) that inspired the film Tropa de Elite. This quote was translated by the author from Portuguese: “Eu estou participando de uma guerra. Acontece que eu tô voltando pra casa todo dia. É a única diferença.” All the quotes from Portuguese in this chapter are translated to English by the author.)

Favelas have been recurrently represented in Brazilian cinema since its early years, demonstrating how the changing growth of the cities accompanied by political, economic, and cultural transformations have helped reshape the significance and portrayal of these marginal spaces. As an undeniable part of the social fabric of major cities in Brazil, favelas integrate complex social inequalities that are historically rooted in the country’s past. Lúcia Nagib observes that the fascination of cinema with the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K. M. Rosa, Conflict Cinemas in Northern Ireland and Brazil, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34698-9_3

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theme of favelas reflects the environment “as the privileged repository of Brazilian society’s contradictions” (2003, 157). The chasm between social classes has become apparent in many narratives that feature favelas since the proximity between the “asphalt people,” who live in urbanized locations, and the unpaved inhabitants prompts various interactions. Else Vieira comments that favelas can be seen as “cityscapes of exclusion” in order “to account for the sheer size of the bourgeoning favelas and the wall, real or symbolic, that separates them from residences in the more affluent parts of the cities” (2005, xiii). The importance of these extensive and historical settlements in the films analyzed in this chapter relies on the strong interest of Brazilian cinema in depicting more than just a geographical rift between poor and wealthy areas, but an insistence in portraying the intricacies of a pulsing organism inserted in the heart of the cities. The two films that will be discussed in this chapter, Tropa de Elite (Elite Squad, José Padilha 2007) and A Divisão (The Division, Vicente Amorim 2020), focus on showing a larger frame that envelops the territory of favelas, that is, the state of corruption and disintegration of the police, authorities, and politicians, demonstrating how it directly interconnects with favela residents and those involved in criminal activities in the hills. These films avoid a portrayal where trafficking and criminality spring from the favelas in isolation from the city around them, placing other areas of Brazilian society in direct contact with the circle of violence perpetuated up in the hills. Images of torture and graphic violence enacted by both sides, the police and the traffickers, blur the boundaries of good and evil, disclosing a more complex scenario of power abuse in Brazilian society. In this chapter I intend to look at the spatial processes in favelas portrayed in the films by taking into account their historically charged past and ongoing metamorphosis as a product of living experience. Henri Lefebvre’s triadic notions mentioned in the first chapter will be considered to encompass not only an individual dimension of production but also how the self-experiences reverberate in constructing a reality in society. By bearing in mind the acts of perceiving, conceiving, and living in the space of favelas, the analysis of the films will lean toward an understanding of the sensuous characteristics of space that are directly affected by previously constructed assumptions of favelas as well as the lived experiences of violence. Once again, the sensorial apparatus highlighted in the sequences of the films will be a guiding light to the comprehension of violent events, bearing in mind Laura U. Marks’ observation regarding cinema’s capability of providing a “multisensorial experience” (2000, 131). The embodied

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representations in the films of this chapter call for an audiovisual engagement of the audience that in turn makes use of sensory knowledge and perception to navigate the portrayal of experience in favelas. The instances of torture that overflow the narratives of the two films will be investigated closely by considering Elaine Scarry’s notions of pain as a complex and subterranean feeling and the deconstruction of one’s world through the torturing process. The foregrounding of corporeal senses in order to represent such agonizing moments highlights the engagement of the characters’ bodies with the experiences while also compelling the viewer to create an interface with such perceptions. Favelas are then portrayed as spaces of sensuous encounters directly linked to the urban landscape of the cities and the production of social and cultural values. The inception of favelas in Brazil heavily relies on the country’s roots in social inequality and its heritage of conquest and slavery. Cacilda Rêgo explains that “the first favelas were actually built in the steep hills of Rio de Janeiro by fugitive African slaves and former soldiers in the 1880s” (2014, 95). Nagib complements by observing that “more recently, the favela has also been occupied by north-eastern migrants fleeing the drought” (2003, 160). The reunion of different classes, ethnicities, and backgrounds helped form the multicultural identity of the favela, in an atmosphere that is strongly established by the inhabitants’ histories of injustice and poverty. As Nagib points out, “the population of the Brazilian North-East is concentrated in the Rio hills, and is made up both of descendants of African slaves and of poor Portuguese and Indians” (160). The author connects the geography of favelas with the quilombo of Palmares1 and the Canudos

1  The quilombo of Palmares was a runaway slave settlement in the Northeast of Brazil created during the seventeenth century amidst colonial ruling. According to Pedro Paulo Funari, “at the beginning of the 17th century, runaway slaves settled in the hilly forest area [of today’s state of Alagoas]. The scattered hideouts, consisting of several villages, developed in the foothills from 45 to 75 mi. inland from the coastal plantations, stretching more than 100 mi., running roughly parallel to the coast” (2003, 83). Palmares was seen as a dangerous site of revolt with an average of 10,000 to 20,000 people living in the villages and was eventually destroyed by the colonial forces (Funari, 84).

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War2 that are historically recognized as sites and instances of struggle against oppressive forces: “in a certain sense, it could be said that in the favela the remnants of Palmares and Canudos, that is, the heirs of the greatest rebellions of slaves and north-eastern peasants in the country, have survived and multiplied” (160). The historical heritage of favelas demonstrates the concentration of people seeking refuge from the debilitating living conditions in other parts of the country, leading to the formation of communities that shared the status of outcast in society. It is toward the middle of the twentieth century that favelas started gaining a more distinct shape followed by the changes in the country’s political and economic systems. Rêgo highlights that “the explosive growth of favelas, however, did not occur until the 1950s when Brazil’s accelerated industrialization and urbanization incited massive migration from the poorer northeastern states to the wealthier southern regions” (2014, 95). The following decade would display a favela that differs from the contemporary view of this environment particularly in relation to the type of drugs and weapons being trafficked, and as the filmmaker Walter Salles observes, “the drug was marijuana, which inspired a contemplative, ‘romantic’ lifestyle. Gun use at the time was sporadic and the ends justified the means” (2005, 3). This specific perspective of a utopian favela can be identified in films of these decades, as it will be discussed later in the chapter. Salles continues explaining that “in the 1970s and 1980s everything changed. The first large drug dealers appeared and outlaws ceased to lead a nomadic life and settled their businesses in the heart of the favelas. These dealers began to control the communities in which they operated and created a parallel system of justice within their borders” (3). Some of the biggest changes to the atmosphere of the favelas are based on the type of drug that was consumed and trafficked internally as well as into the city of Rio and the kind of weapon being used by the traffickers as “cocaine 2  The Canudos War “was fought in 1897 in the interior of Bahia, Brazil, between the military forces of the newly-formed Republic and a group of ‘Monarchist rebels.’ The Canudos settlement was finally occupied and leveled by the Republican army after four military campaigns” (Madden 1993, 5). The war invites reflections on the issues of power abuse and fanatism as well as genocide and features as the theme of the acclaimed 1902 book by Euclides da Cunha entitled Os Sertões (Backlands: The Canudos Campaign). Ilan Stavans, in the introduction to the newest translation of the book into English, explains that “the number of deaths was enormous: five thousand soldiers lost their lives, and the entire population of Canudos, estimated between ten thousand and twenty-five thousand people, was killed” (2010, ix).

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became the drug of choice and the .38 was traded for the AK47 and other machine guns. The death toll grew dramatically and the dealers became younger and younger” (Salles 3–4). The formation of a war-like environment was taking its shape with the constant use of heavy weaponry, the establishment of an internal justice system, and the organization of a concrete and profitable drug trafficking structure. In terms of the depiction of favelas in Brazilian cinema, their portrayal has been revised throughout the decades in order to adapt to the country’s shifting political and economic phases as well as the characteristics and infrastructure of the slums themselves. Rêgo points out that “the way that the favela and its residents are represented have drastically changed over time” (2014, 106). She contrasts the favela films in the first part of the twentieth century which “tended to romanticize the culture of the favela such as samba and carnival”3 with the films produced during the 1960s Cinema Novo movement in which the premise relied on “an eminently revolutionary cinema that would bring about a radical transformation of Brazilian society by means of raising the consciousness of the Brazilian people to the problems of poverty in Brazil and the misery of slum dwellers” (106). The appearance and fast proliferation of favelas in the landscape of the cities brings about a cinematic focus on the issues related to such unique and marginal spaces with a gradual shift of attraction toward the social inequalities and violent crime context. Márcia Pereira Leite comments that “in Rio de Janeiro in particular, the favelas invade the field of vision more and more, on the city’s hillsides, in the media and in the cinema” (2005, 151). The theme of favelas becomes a subject that is frequently explored in films that depict the city and especially those that pay close attention to what Carolina Rocha calls “the plight of the lower classes” (2014, 36). The transformation and considerable focus of Brazilian cinema regarding the portrayal of favelas since the early films until contemporary times indicates the relevance of these sites to the understanding of national identity issues and the questioning or perpetuation of crystalized ideas about the country. Prior to the analysis of the two films that will be the focus of this chapter, Tropa de Elite and A Divisão, it is valuable to mention a few other previously produced films 3  The Brazilian carnival, also called Carnaval in Portuguese, is a yearly event that takes place seven weeks before Easter in several cities in Brazil and displays massive parades and popular music, such as samba. This event will be referred to in this book by its Portuguese spelling Carnaval.

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that foreground the favela as a complex site of multiple identities and historical heritage. The first film to feature a favela as a narrative space in Brazil is Favela dos Meus Amores (Favela of My Loves) directed by Humberto Mauro in 1935 and remains surrounded by an enigmatic aura of absence. This status of a “ghost of a classic,” as the film’s screenwriter Henrique Pongetti refers to it, derives from the fact that there are no remaining copies of the movie since they were lost in a fire in the studio of the production company Brasil Vita Filmes (Napolitano 2009, 154). Any understanding of the film has been pieced together through the collage of memories of those who had the chance to watch it and reviews written at the time of the premiere. The Brazilian historian Marcos Napolitano explains that “the film seems to have been an important moment amidst the process of incorporation of the hills into the Brazilian and Rio’s cultural landscape. The film was partly shot in Morro da Providência, the first favela in Rio developed at the end of the nineteenth century”4 (147). The image of favelas in the country’s social imaginary was considerably different from contemporary times and the film’s reception leads to the idea that the hills were regarded by the urban population as an alien space with a certain unique allure. Napolitano observes that “the hills were not seen as a threat to the order nor as an inventory of national identity, but as a ‘peculiar environment’, exotic and folkloric for the delight of the city spectators”5 (149). The film incorporates a narrative structure with musical numbers commonly associated with the Brazilian chanchadas,6 musical comedies that integrated, among many other elements, samba, the country’s prominent musical genre, and Carnaval imagery which had an immense popular appeal. The incomplete comprehension of the scope of Favela dos meus Amores due to its loss leaves unanswered questions regarding the first representation of the space 4  “O filme parece ter sido um marco importante em meio ao processo de incorporação do morro na paisagem cultural carioca e brasileira. Parte das filmagens foram realizadas no Morro da Providência, a primeira favela carioca, surgida no final do século XIX.” 5  “O morro ainda não era visto nem como uma ameaça à ordem, nem como reserva de identidade nacional, mas como ‘ambiente pitoresco’, exótico e folclórico, para deleite dos espectadores citadinos.” 6  According to Randal Johnson and Robert Stam, the 1930s “witnessed the birth of a very Brazilian genre: the chanchada. Partially modelled on American musicals (and particularly on the ‘radio-broadcast’ musicals) of the same period, but with roots as well in the Brazilian comic theater and in the ‘sung films’ about carnival, the chanchada typically features musical and dance numbers often woven around a backstage plot” (1995, 27).

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of a favela in cinema, but its remaining historical documents point toward the possible impact of the portrayal of class and race in Brazil, themes that will take center stage in the narratives in the subsequent decades. One of the biggest contributors to Brazilian cinema in terms of crafting narratives that highlighted new viewpoints regarding the country’s society, Nelson Pereira dos Santos, is usually credited for being the precursor of Cinema Novo with his favela-themed film Rio 40 Graus (Rio 40 Degrees 1955). Randal Johnson and Robert Stam comment on the film as they observe that “by its independent production and critical stance toward established social structures, this film marked a decisive step toward a new kind of cinema” (1995, 32). Rio 40 Graus offers a glimpse into the daily life of young boys who make a living by selling peanuts in the city, and as a consequence, showcases Rio’s tourist attractions as spaces separated from the environment of the hills. Leite explains that “the primary opposition between work and leisure is crucial to its narrative structure as it allows commercial, spatial and social relationships to operate in a Rio de Janeiro markedly divided between the poor and the rich, between the favela and the rest of the city” (2005, 152). In this segregation of Rio into two sides, the favela is depicted “as a homogenous space” and “poverty is shared with affection” (Leite 153), softening the existence of crime in this environment. Dos Santos’ following film, Rio Zona Norte (Rio Northern Zone 1957), represents class issues from a different perspective as poverty becomes more palpable and triggers negative consequences. The plot revolves around a samba composer who lives in the favela and is continually deceived by city people in relation to copyrights of his work, demonstrating how “expressions of evil, crime and violence are external to the favela” (Leite 155). The focus on the cultural heritage of samba with its vivacious musical numbers does not restrict the film from making an “observation of the precarious living conditions which undermine the expectations of the inhabitants of favelas and the suburbs, and which condemns them to a sad destiny” (Leite 155). The enmeshing of themes such as violent behavior, crime, and poverty gradually becomes a predominant way of cinematically representing favelas in conjunction with the city’s own changes as the population in the hills grows and criminality rises. It is in the 1990s that the scenario of the favelas changes drastically as the drug and weapon trafficking become a prevalent feature of the environment and cinema reflects the transformation of the once idealized place into a contemporary combat site. Films such as O Primeiro Dia (Midnight, Daniela Thomas and Walter Salles 1998) and Orfeu (Carlos

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Diegues 1999) indicate a complex web of interests in relation to trafficking in the favelas that is directly connected to the urbanized parts of the city in the figures of wealthy citizens, politicians and police authorities. Nagib mentions that in these depictions “the hill looks like a trenched battlefield, and its inhabitants are like a heavily armed army, with their all-­ powerful commanders, their own rules and their own structured ethos” (2003, 162). The bodies of civilians, traffickers, and authorities are placed in spaces of tension that are no longer viewed as homogenous communities, but conflicting territories that disclose hidden interests. Favelas are not the only main originators of poverty and marginality as the ramifications of lawlessness and injustice can be traced to the very core of Brazilian society, in its political and defense system. In the internationally acclaimed Cidade de Deus (City of God, Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund 2002), the inner workings of Rio’s favelas demonstrate the blatant violence enacted in these spaces and according to Vieira, “its powerful sounds and images strike a hard initial blow at two pillars of Brazil’s imaginary and self-identity: that of a predominantly pacific country whose relations are based on cordiality; and that of flexibility in situations of conflict” (2005, x). Cidade de Deus undoubtably brings an overwhelming depiction of favelas that has visually impacted the way violence and crime in these environments is portrayed in Brazilian cinema and television. Both Tropa de Elite and A Divisão carry the aesthetic heritage of Meirelles’ film in its brutal way of representing embodied violent encounters in Rio’s hills. The fragility of the body and the pervasiveness of threat and torture in daily life are also elements present in Cidade de Deus and, as subsequent films demonstrate, have been preserved as integral aspects of interactions between favela inhabitants and authorities. In terms of exploring national identity issues, favela films strike sensitive areas of Brazilian society by unveiling another side of the picture-­ postcard locations and generally attributed welcoming attitude of the locals. National cinema allows the possibility of raising questions regarding the ways that poverty is intrinsically connected to the high levels of criminality that are extended beyond the territory of favelas into the very fabric of the cities reaching all the way up to governmental positions. José Álvaro Moisés explains that “the country understands, more every day, how important it is for us to look at ourselves in a cinematic ‘mirror’. We realize that we need that fundamental function of self-identification which is made possible by the projection of our common experiences on a screen” (2003, 5). The mirror mentioned by Moisés has often struggled with

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national myths carried across generations regarding Brazilians’ predispositions and temperament. The homogenous representation of the country throughout its history is summarized by Marilena Chauí as she remarks that Brazilian people are seen as a peaceful nation, filled with joy and with a benevolent propensity even under distress as well as a country without prejudices where race and class are not issues in social interactions (2007, 4). Generalizations such as these are sources of conflict in national cinema that tends to be inclined toward a more negative depiction of its people, fitting into what Fernão Pessoa Ramos calls “narcissism turned inside out,” that is, a “wallowing in incompetence” (2003, 66). The author explains that “the nation takes pleasure in exposing its own misery” (74) in order to flesh out the facets of corruption and crime that prevent society from working properly and successfully. As this critical stance struggles to achieve an expression of social examination of the country, national cinema deals with the effects of “mood swings,” as Luiz Zanin Oricchio would refer to the ability of navigating between the two opposite poles of representation. He comments that at times Brazil “is a nation that does not like itself, with an inferiority complex, a perverse narcissist that spits at his own image” and “at other times Brazilians are on a permanent high, with forced smiles on their faces, citizens of the stereotypical sun-tanned and fun-loving nation” (2003, 154). The analysis of the favela films in this chapter will focus on understanding how the fissures of Brazilian society represented in the narratives affect the homogenous and immaculate vision of picturesque conceptions about the country, possibly allowing the pendulum that swings “from euphoria to depression” (Oricchio 154) to operate in more nuanced way. The violence of favela films has been approached by critics mainly in relation to the glamorization of such violent acts and the constant resorting to stereotypes based on undervalued portrayals of favela inhabitants. Authors such as Ivana Bentes, for instance, have criticized Cidade de Deus for its MTV visual style of fast editing and aestheticized imagery of violence, “a discourse that valorises ‘beauty’ and the ‘quality’ of the image” (Bentes 2005, 84) over an in-depth political criticism of Brazilian society. She contrasts it to the ideology behind Cinema Novo which intends to avoid a realistic take on violent imagery by using “a type of aesthetic apocalypse that stirs the spectator out of their immobility” (Bentes 84). On the other hand, this comparison is criticized by Vieira since the forty-year gap between the film and Cinema Novo’s movement should account for Cidade de Deus being “seen within its own rules of representation and as

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a different way of approaching the social problems of Brazil” (2005, xix). The narrative devices and visual mechanisms of engagement with the audience in contemporary favela films, including Tropa and Divisão, can function as tools to construct an environment that carries a message regarding the socio-political context of the country. In this chapter, I propose an analysis of the moments of violent encounter of the characters, particularly where the hurt body is visible, whether belonging to police forces, favela dwellers or “asphalt” inhabitants. In this analysis, the circumstances in which the violated body is disclosed become a source of understanding of the power relations and spatial oppressions in the city. The sensorial approach to the depiction of urban combat in the films will also be observed specially as scenes of torture overflow in both narratives. Torture practices enacted by authorities bring a level of intricacy to the comprehension of the cycle of violence that involves the population partly because, as Teresa Caldeira explains, “violent police action intertwines in complex ways with the rule of law and with patterns of domination and legitimation” (2000, 139). By showing how violence and corruption stretch beyond the favela territory into the “asphalt” regions, Tropa and Divisão distance themselves from a dominant view of the slums as the source of misery and place embodied interactions in forceful and violent manners as central generators of power in the geography of Rio.

3.1   “Pede pra sair!”7: Corporeal Abuse and Uncontrollable Punishment in Tropa de Elite The confrontation of favela dwellers with the police has been included in previous favela films, in Orfeu and Cidade de Deus for instance, but the intense interplay of power on a ground level between these two systems becomes the focus of Tropa de Elite in ways that highlight the embodied interaction in Rio’s hills. Based on the book Elite da Tropa (Elite Squad) published in 2006 and written by the anthropologist Luis Eduardo Soares and two former BOPE members André Batista and Rodrigo Pimentel, the film offers a glimpse into the urban warfare experienced in the city and walks a fine line between glamorizing the excessive violent behavior of the policemen and calling attention to the atrocities that accompany a hyper-­ male team with limitless powers in operations up the hills. The main character, Captain Nascimento (Wagner Moura), is the leader of a BOPE team, 7  “Say you want to leave!” The transcriptions of the characters’ lines for this section were taken from the film Tropa de Elite (Elite Squad, José Padilha 2007).

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a special forces group created in Brazil in 1978 as an option to be mobilized during moments of crisis. Historically speaking, BOPE is “trained to take temporary control of areas that are traditionally under the control of drug traffickers, such as favelas and prisons” (Vásquez 2014, 129). In spite of its notoriety for being a group where members are not involved with corruption schemes such as drug and weapon trafficking, the violent means of achieving their goals and humiliating training exercises precede its name. The book Elite da Tropa, a fictional account of BOPE operations, highlights the ruthlessness of the team as their war chant includes sentences such as their mission being “to invade the favela and leave bodies on the ground” while “spreading violence, death and terror” as well as “I’m trained to kill”8 (2006, 3). The spirit of incentive to be brutal and annihilate the opposing forces permeates the film and is kept as a backbone to the unrestrained actions of BOPE members. This mindset works at times as a fuel to the action scenes while also providing opportunities to unveil and display the cruelty of violence in the system (Fig. 3.1).

Fig. 3.1  Tropa de Elite (Elite Squad, José Padilha 2007). Reproduced by permission of Zazen Produções. (Photo by David John Prichard) 8  “invadir favela e deixar corpo no chão,” “espalhando a violência, a morte e o terror,” “sou treinado para matar.”

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The story centers around Nascimento who is on a mission to find a replacement for his position in the battalion. His voice-over throughout the film actively seeks to engage the audience with the squad’s merciless viewpoint and zero-tolerance policy in relation to criminality and corruption. The layers of society are slowly unfolded in the film as most of the characters from the military police are represented as a class of criminals in a world of different levels of corruption. The NGO portrayed in the film provides a source of aid for favela dwellers and links the upper-class characters to the environment of the hills and its civilians, particularly children, as they all ultimately become involved in situations of extreme use of violence when dealing with drug traffickers. BOPE is eventually given the task of reducing the animosity at Morro do Turano, one of Rio’s slums, for Pope John Paul II’s visit to the city in 1997. Daily operations into the hills demonstrate the instances of brutality and torture that become frequently associated with BOPE’s actions in the film, whether they are dealing with favela inhabitants or during training exercises. Extreme violence as well as drug and weapon trafficking are no longer secluded phenomena inside the favelas, but a product of a larger system of corruption that envelops the city. The opening sequence of Tropa is constructed in a way that foregrounds a sensorial overload in the audience through music and a collage of images of a party at a favela, a baile funk.9 The music genre is no longer the traditional samba initially associated with favelas in the early films but Brazilian funk. George Yúdice explains that samba is associated to an atmosphere of unity that is part of a peacekeeping mechanism for the Brazilian people. Samba musicians, or sambistas, such as Martinho da Vila, foreground its importance in terms of being “a cultural form emanating from ‘the people’ that permeates everything and everyone, blending all into one national identity” (Yúdice 2003, 119) while other sambistas like Beth Carvalho and Paulinho da Viola “emphasize the togetherness that samba inspires and the resistance of the people and the culture to the hardships of everyday life” (Yúdice 119–120). On the other hand, Brazilian funk displays a reliance on a more forceful and intense attitude toward the

9  “In Brazilian Portuguese ‘baile funk’ can be literally translated as ‘funk dances’” and “is currently used to indicate both a dance and a specific type of Brazilian electronic dance music” (D’Angelo 2015, 60).

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difficulties in society, aiming “to establish new forms of identity, but not those premised on Brazil’s much heralded self-understanding as a nation of nonconflictual diversity” but a “disarticulation of national identity and the affirmation of local citizenship” (Yúdice 125). The baile funk, as Sandra D’Angelo observes, “offers freedom through the construction of an ­alternative space” in opposition to “the claustrophobic and violent realities of life” (2015, 49), creating a site for expression of crucial issues of contemporary society, such as racial inequality, identity, and violence. The music played during baile funk, oftentimes criticized by parts of Brazilian society as having low quality and dealing with mundane and distasteful subjects, can be a source of understanding of the anxieties and apprehensions of people in the context of favelas as this particular site becomes the musical focus in opposition to a more general and national viewpoint that could excessively homogenize the local issues. The Brazilian funk song played in the opening sequence of Tropa, called “Rap das Armas” (“Rap of Weapons,” MC Júnior and MC Leonardo 1992), demonstrates a concern with social aspects of favelas and offers a glimpse into an internal war of national identity in terms of comprehending the country’s own territorial particularities. The lyrics express a discontent with the way favelas are nationally perceived: My Brazil is a tropical country, the land of funk, the land of Carnaval. My Rio de Janeiro is the postcard. But I’ll talk about a national problem. Yes, in this country everyone says favelas are dangerous, it’s a bad place, there are no morals. It’s strongly criticized by all society. But there is violence in every corner of the city.10

The song brings to the spotlight firstly the main characteristics generally attributed to Brazil in the form of a tropical country, Carnaval and the touristic essence of Rio. However, a greater issue is at hand, a reference to a different side of the country, and the lyrics start describing how favelas are regarded as controversial sites by the Brazilians themselves. The negative stereotypes that surface cannot be solely connected to the environment of favelas as the social critique urges to consider the city as a whole. 10  “Mas o meu Rio de Janeiro é um país tropical, a terra do funk, a terra do carnaval. Mas o meu Rio de Janeiro é o cartão postal, mas eu vou falar de um problema nacional. É, nesse país todo mundo sabe falar que favela é perigosa, é lugar ruim, é sem moral. Mas ela é muito criticada por toda a sociedade, mas existe violência em todo o canto da cidade.”

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The song continues as the sound of weapons being discharged is mimicked by the singer in the repetitive and rhythmic form of “parapapapapapapapapa” that D’Angelo calls a way to convey “a desire for potency and a sense of abundance while euphorically celebrating the affirmation of baile funk’s utopian dimension” (2015, 57), that is, an escape from reality’s tensions. The verbal simulation of repeated gunshots, resembling an automatic weapon so commonly found in favelas nowadays, and its integration into the music that echoes in the space of the favela during the baile funk demonstrate the absorption of this violent act in the inhabitants’ routine, a reoccurring fact that has become emblematic of the place. The critical stance in relation to national identity brought forth by the song is delivered through the potent rhythm of Brazilian funk in a combination of music and the quick editing of images. The film visually captures the attention by sensorially overwhelming the audience with a fast-paced editing that repeatedly alternates a black screen with the actors’ names in red and flashes of the baile funk. The images that are shown for a fraction of second include favela inhabitants dancing to Brazilian funk, some of them flaunting large weapons, that linger in the mind as the black screen comes up subsequently. Alternated with that, the symbol of BOPE occasionally flashes almost as a subliminal message, and the overall combination resembles an induction to a trance. The film discloses a larger shot of the baile funk where the embodied collective experience is portrayed. Laura Podalsky comments that the tendency of contemporary Latin American cinema is to rely on an “emergent sensorial dynamics” (2011, 7), but advocates against “the notion that the emotions called forth by works of art limit their capacity to be thought-provoking” (10). Although in some ways catering to “the conventions of mainstream crime fiction” (Vásquez 2014, 120), the opening sequence with its choice of popular music and fast editing connects the local culture of a very particular geography of Rio with a national issue of identification in relation to the country’s way of looking at itself, representing a subject that will be later expanded in the narrative. As the favela inhabitants are shown enthusiastically dancing to the rhythm of Brazilian funk, the voice-over narration of Nascimento is inserted and his character is introduced. The first contact with the BOPE leader is through his disembodied voice, detached from any space, floating above the images of baile funk and providing a very detailed explanation of the crime scene in Rio. His explanation, rooted in his own practical experience as a BOPE member, paints a dark and corrupt picture of the

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city and favelas as he says, “the drug traffickers and the police have worked out a peaceful way of coexisting. After all, nobody wants to die in vain.”11 The disclosure of the unethical behavior of the police force and the state of peace equilibrium with the traffickers through illegal transactions represents the favela through Nascimento’s viewpoint as a place of chaos and crime in a state of irreversible turmoil. This disheartened description is set up to contrast with his explanation of BOPE as a different kind of police force, an elite squad trained for urban combat. Nascimento’s intimate and aural presence is an invitation for the audience to enter the space of the favela and experience it through the point of view of the police. Commenting on BOPE’s symbol of a skull, knives, and pistols, he says, “our symbol shows what happens when we enter the favela,”12 in an allusion to the violence perpetrated by BOPE in their operations. The main disclosure of Nascimento’s figure comes after a freeze frame of BOPE’s symbol as his towering physical stance and commanding voice encapsulate him as an all-powerful figure who lords over the police and the favela dwellers. The audience at this moment has access to the sight of his body who is framed showing an authoritative posture. The image freezes again in Nascimento’s close-up whose voice-over includes a self-introduction, creating a mythical moment of heightened representation, a depiction of a hyper-male figure with a tendency to abuse power as perceived in his manner of giving orders to his police peers. The operation that triggers a greater number of interactions between BOPE and the favela traffickers is the intervention into Morro do Turano that aims to reduce the criminality of the area and secure a safer environment for Pope John Paul II’s visit to Rio. The sequence that discloses the plans for the Pope to spend the night at the Archbishop’s house at Turano displays a strategic atmosphere with the use of a model of a favela and maps of the terrain. A traveling shot unveils the cardboard model of a favela with several toy soldiers in different positions. The geography of the favela is highlighted in this scene as the proximity of the houses hints at the complications when planning an operation in such a space. The view from above, with the faceless toy soldiers efficiently positioned in safe spots and the imprecisely portrayed flat terrain, is to be put to the test in the following scenes when the ground-level experience proves itself to be 11  “o tráfico e a polícia desenvolveram formas pacíficas de convivência. Afinal, ninguém quer morrer à toa.” 12  “o nosso símbolo mostra o que acontece quando a gente entra na favela.”

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far from the orderly disposition of the model. Derek Gregory, in his understanding of battlefield corpography in terms of the embodied awareness of space through the senses, comments that the violence enacted in the war zones “is more than a mark on a map or a trace on a screen, and the ability to re-cognise its more-than-optical dimensions can be a vital means of navigating the wastelands of war” (2014, 39). In the sequence, as the BOPE members are gathered to discuss the orders of daily interventions at Turano, Nascimento speaks up in opposition to the idea of bringing an illustrious figure to such a violent place but is soon silenced by Colonel Antunes (Murilo Elbas) who claims that it is useless to try to dissuade the politicians from the idea. The criticism to indifferent orders from political figures suggests a careless management of the operation, a lack of concern for the well-being of both the police members and the favela inhabitants. The inappropriateness of the operation is once again highlighted by Nascimento who stresses the fact that people will surely die in the process since it does not make any sense, strategically speaking. A close-up shows a pamphlet advertising the Pope’s visit on top of a topographic map of Turano. Due to the particularity of the mountainous landscape of the hills, the operations are planned by using the topographic map that discloses the contours of the terrain, the ups and downs of the surface. The complexity of urban warfare in the semi-natural environment of the hills is visible in the use of the two elements of geographical positioning: the model and the map. Both plan from above without the corporeal facet of combat. The pamphlet with the Pope’s picture is accompanied by the inscription “II Global Meeting of the Pope with Families” which ironically advertises the coming together of people at the cost of waging a war between the police and the traffickers. Space and the relationships of the characters with hostile environments feature throughout the film’s narrative. As already discussed in previous chapters, Lefebvre comments on the interactive nature of space by affirming that “(social) space is a (social) product” (1991, 26) in the sense that the surroundings are established by the multiple social, political, and economic exchanges of the population. This dynamic facet takes into consideration the experiences of the inhabitants without resorting only to understanding, for instance, the urban setting as a fixed structure, but a responsive organism that pulsates with the changes in society. Gaston Bachelard points out the phenomenological approach to the comprehension of space since once a place “has been seized upon by the imagination [it]cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates

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of the surveyor” (1994, xxxvi). He highlights that the experiences lived in a given space solidify the vision of what that environment signifies and become integrated in the inhabitants’ perceptual core. In relation to the violence in the favela territories in Tropa, and in A Divisão as well, this idea can be connected to Yi-Fu Tuan’s notion of “landscapes of fear” that “refers to both psychological states and to tangible environments” (1979, 6). By joining the concept of fear, that implies a complex interplay of “alarm and anxiety” (1979, 5), with the subject of landscape, which “is a construct of the mind as well as a physical and measurable entity” (1979, 6), Tuan creates a notion that openly encompasses the material and emotional layers of interaction with space. The favelas, a territory already feared for its inhospitable image, is seen in Tropa as a landscape of fear, a place to be avoided. Tuan explains that these landscapes “are the almost infinite manifestations for the forces of chaos, natural and human” (1979, 6). In the film, the human-made disarray of violence of the favela and its urban surroundings constructs that space as a precarious place to live, a powder keg that requires little friction to ignite and affect those involved in the conflict. The film clearly focuses on the development of the stories of police members, but when it comes to the representation of favela traffickers, they are not portrayed in the stereotypical way of embodying the evil nature of criminality, as if they possessed a predisposition for violence. This becomes apparent in the introduction of the drug lord Baiano (Fábio Lago), a nickname that evokes an identification with Bahia, a state in the Northeast of Brazil, and his welcoming ways. This night-time sequence takes place on the rooftop of one of the favela houses and depicts the get-­ together between the drug traffickers and the NGO members, with a particular focus on Edu (Paulo Vilela), a young university student who buys the drug in the hills to resell on the college campus. Nascimento’s voice-­ over narration mentions the possibility of Baiano turning out a criminal due to his hardships while growing up: “I know how Baiano’s story ends but I don’t know how it started. He must have had a terrible childhood. I won’t take it easy because of that, but at least I understand how he got where he is right now.”13 These remarks distinguish the introductory moment of the drug lord character as a critical way of looking at the social 13  “Eu conheço como termina a história do Baiano mas eu não sei como ela começou. Ele deve ter tido uma infância fudida. Eu não vou aliviar por causa disso mas pelo menos eu entendo como ele chegou onde chegou.”

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and economic environment that leads to organized crime. The recognition of the adversities of favela inhabitants demonstrates the interconnection of drug dealing with how Brazilian society is structured and the deficiencies of a system that allows poverty to rule out options for those growing up in favelas. Not a natural born trafficker but a product of an unfavorable structure, Baiano warmly greets the NGO members as Edu is about to buy drugs for reselling. The drug lord affectionally puts his arm around the NGO leader Rodrigues (André Di Mauro) and nicknames Edu, who has blond hair, “goldilocks.” This short introduction indicates that the focal point will not be on the drug traffickers but the extension of their empire into the city as the upper-class population boosts the cycle of trafficking and unlawfulness. The narrative continues in a reggae-themed sequence depicting Edu materializing his drug dealing process in college. Nascimento comments in the voice-over that what infuriates him is when a person with financial stability, embodied by the upper-class characters, ends up dealing drugs. Corruption is not contained in the favelas in Tropa but spread across the city in pockets of criminality in places and by people that would not stereotypically be associated with drug dealing, such as the college campus and the upper-class characters, unveiling an alternative depiction of how city-based illegal actions support a greater system of transgression. Tropa features many instances in which BOPE members inflict violence and pain on favela inhabitants, and even to their soldiers in training, as a way to achieve dominance to carry out their objectives. This kind of embodied experience carries meanings beyond the frame of the film, relating to the country’s historically charged past. These moments of torture, in a way sanctioned by the essentially limitless powers of BOPE during operations, characterize the portrayal of the special forces’ problematic relationship with law. Their effective results in dealing with criminality are the product of an excessively violent behavior that is intrinsically connected to the country’s heritage of power abuse. As Caldeira points out, “the practice of violence and arbitrariness by the police forces has shown remarkably continuity in Brazilian history, from imperial times to this day” (2000, 151). The author traces the enactment of corporeal abuse to the institution of slavery, abolished in Brazil in 1888, in which “physical punishment of slaves could be carried out not only by the state but also by slave owners” as a legal procedure (151). The legacy of power abuse can be directly linked to the years of military dictatorship in the country (1964–1985) when torture was vastly documented and used for

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oppression of political prisoners. Ângela Marques and Simone Rocha comment on Tropa’s relationship with this historical background as they observe “that the brutality that drives the relationship among police officers, slum citizens and drug traffickers reaffirms naturalized symbolic oppression patterns that were used in the period of military Dictatorship in Brazil” (2010, 49). The film undoubtably unveils this facet of BOPE as the members’ actions, and particularly Nascimento’s abusive behavior, are a reminder of a reminiscent heritage of outlaw treatment of military forces during the dictatorship when absolute authority was used to navigate above the law. Marques and Rocha observe that “the mistreatment given by the police to poor and marginalized citizens shows […] power abuse and physical aggression as the only way to eliminate an enemy” (49). The clashes between police forces and favela traffickers in the film are marked by an intense atmosphere of hostility, outlining the hills as an entrenched battlefield where torture serves to claim momentary power in the struggle for territorial dominance. The first operation up the hills to safeguard the Pope’s visit shown in Tropa starts with an ominous ambience as Nascimento displays a physical and psychological imbalance. His sweaty face, heavy breathing, and restless stance while he is listening to the commander’s orders highlight his hesitancy regarding the strategic plans for the operation. Nascimento’s body expresses an instability that affects his performance during the operation. As the BOPE members silently infiltrate the favela, Nascimento leans against a tree and gasps for air. His corporeal struggles are accompanied by the audience through the aural cues given by the film. The rhythmic song that was heard as an accompaniment of the choreographed movement of the members moving up the hill is now silent, giving way to the sounds of Nascimento attempting to control his breathing. The sensorial display of Nascimento’s difficulties in getting ahold of himself foregrounds his precarious emotional condition and therefore reverberates in the reckless way he treats the favela inhabitants they are about to approach. At Nascimento’s hand signal, a throat slice, the BOPE members move out to confront whoever is on the rooftop of one of the houses. The first movement is not to verbally declare their presence but to shoot the people who are holding guns and then round up the remaining ones. Nascimento anxiously paces around while one of his members asks if he is feeling fine, depicting an obviously unfit state to lead the operation. In an attempt to find out the owner of the drugs that were being dealt at the rooftop, Nascimento repeatedly and aggressively inquires after this information. He approaches

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a young man in particular who claims to be a student. The young man’s body, in comparison to Nascimento’s bulky constitution, seems feeble and fragile. The infuriated Nascimento grabs the student by the hair and, as the erratic hand-held camera follows them, presses the young man’s face against the deadly gunshot wound to the chest of one of the traffickers. His hostile tone of voice in asking the student questions creates an atmosphere of torment, constituting an improvised torture session. The scene’s tension in itself becomes a tactile moment of engagement with the audience due to the experience of witnessing such an unpredictable outcome from Nascimento alongside the combination of the haptic images of the trafficker’s perforated skin and the student’s own skin as they are forcefully put together. Nascimento asks while pointing at the dead body, “do you see this hole here? Who killed him?”14 and while the student replies that he does not know, the BOPE leader proceeds to slap the young man repeatedly only to receive the answer that it was one of the BOPE members. As a punishment for the seemingly improper answer, Nascimento continues to slap and verbally assault the student by saying that it is actually the young man’s fault since he is the one who finances the drug traffic that caused BOPE to go up the hill and kill the traffickers. This exchange that leads to no real obtaining of information is an example of what Scarry calls “the exchange of real pain into the fiction of power” with “an obsessive, self-conscious display of agency” through torture (1985, 27). Nascimento uses the hurt body of the dead traffickers to instill terror in conjunction with the threat of continuous physical violation to publicly exhibit his position of control, creating a detached space of conflict on the rooftop, characterizing a hostile space where power relations are established by his intense use of force and lawless abuse of authority. The focus on Nascimento’s body in a malfunctioning state is further exemplified in the sequence where he is shown rock climbing with his wife Rosane (Maria Ribeiro). The emphasis on Nascimento’s sensorial reactions is demonstrated as he is unable to move while being hoisted up on a rock wall. The camera shows a petrified Nascimento, with his arms stretched out and his body in close physical contact with the rocks. His face also touches the rock wall and as the camera cuts closer, his expression demonstrates facial spams and rapidly blinking eyes. A constant sound in crescendo dominates the soundtrack as if reaching a sensorial peak. The film prompts an engagement with the audience by inviting a certain  “tá vendo esse buraco aqui? Quem matou esse cara aqui?”

14

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physical and sensorial connection with Nascimento’s perception. The sequence continues in the couple’s car, as Rosane drives him to the hospital. The focus is on his left arm that shakes constantly and his quivering voice saying “I can’t breathe, my arm is numb.”15 His arched posture and desperate voice tone, in significant contrast to his previously explosive portrayal, disclose the actual state of disarray of his physical and mental condition. In the doctor’s office, Nascimento claims that “all of a sudden my ears start ringing, my hand starts shaking,”16 in a sensorial description of the aftereffects of the pressure on his body. The discomposure that is usually concealed in the operations becomes visible in his personal life and indicates the problematic circumstance of assigning such unlimited level of power to someone in this condition. Nascimento’s out-of-control state is also highlighted in the montage that connects his own personal life with the life of a lookout boy who was killed by traffickers after failing to warn them that BOPE was infiltrating in the favela in the previously mentioned operation. The boy’s mother comes to the police station to ask Nascimento to retrieve her son’s body that is missing since she wanted to give him a proper burial. This fact triggers a sensorial cascade of memories tangled with a sense of guilt due to the lookout boy’s death. The fast-editing cuts from the ultrasound image of Nascimento’s unborn child, the lookout boy being threatened by Nascimento at gunpoint, and Nascimento himself sitting at his office, panting, with sweat dripping down his face. The audio mixes his son’s heartbeat sounds with the muffled threats made by Nascimento to the lookout boy. The acts of being born and dying are put together through an overload of memories and senses, an example of a visceral cinematic tactility that endeavors to place the most inner layers of perception of the body as a common denominator of experience between the characters and the audience. Torture becomes the vehicle through which Nascimento attempts to discover the information about the lookout boy’s body and in this instance, a different instrument of pain infliction is used: a plastic bag. Starting the sequence in media res, the distressed body of a favela trafficker thrashes around in agony, his head covered with a plastic bag smeared with blood from inside. For ten seconds there is no dialogue, no major action but the graphic image of a nervous swaying back and forth of the tortured body gasping for unattainable air. Nothing is heard but the sounds of the  “eu não tô conseguindo respirar, meu braço tá dormente.”  “de repente fica um zumbido no ouvido, a mão começa a tremer.”

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rustling of the plastic bag and the guttural noises of choking. The close-up shot invites a physical and sensorial engagement of the audience with the agony of the character. As soon as the bag is removed, the loud sound of breathing in is heard, and the figure of Nascimento is disclosed beside the tortured man, with his arms folded, saying that he is in no rush to take care of the matter. The tortured man, still gasping for air, claims he does not know where the boy’s body is in half-formed sentences mixed with cries of pain. Scarry comments that “physical pain does not simply resist language but actively destroys it, bringing about an immediate reversion to a state anterior to language, to the sounds and cries a human being makes before language is learned” (1985, 4). The conversation does not go any further as Nascimento commands the plastic bag to be placed on the trafficker’s head again. After ten seconds, the tortured man passes out and the BOPE members proceed to aggressively throw water on his face in order to wake him up. A radio transmission calls the BOPE squad to another location and they move out, but before leaving they execute the trafficker by shooting him offscreen. The dialogue exchange prior to the killing foregrounds the ruthlessness of BOPE as one member asks, “what are we going to do with this vermin, Captain?” and Nascimento coldly answers, “put it on the Pope’s tab.”17 Before being executed, the trafficker screams and cries, pleading for his life, constructing an environment of aural brutality as the sharp gunshot is heard. The fruitless and once again recognizably pointless process of torture enacted by BOPE, taking into consideration that no information has been retrieved, only serves to demarcate a position of dominance over favela traffickers’ lives as if part of a spectacle of power display in the hills. It is during the BOPE training sessions that the extent of torture reaches a sadistic level of tormenting their own members. The bootcamp begins as the prospective members line up motionless in a poorly lit glade, holding their rifles next to their chests, similarly to the toy soldiers that stood neatly in the previously mentioned favela model while the Pope operation was being planned. The Colonel fiercely exclaims, “prepare your souls because your bodies belong to us”18 and announces the beginning of the bootcamp. This image of order is soon to be disrupted as fireworks are set off all around the recruits and a group of BOPE members step out of the shadows and proceed to aggressively tackle the newcomers.  “fazer o que com o verme aqui, Capitão?” “bota na conta do Papa.”  “preparem suas almas porque seus corpos já nos pertencem.”

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The camera portrays the ground perspective of this attack with hectic movements in a series of close-ups that display a loss of control of any logic while the BOPE members verbally and physically harass the recruits, calling them names, slapping, kicking, and spitting on them. The audience is provided with a series of sweeping and shaky images, an emulation of the characters’ own movements in the attempt to bring a somatic experience to the cinematic representation of hazing. In this initiation ritual, amid the confusion of bodies being pushed around, Nascimento speaks the sentence that became a famous quote from the film: “Say you want to leave!”19 Functioning almost as a motto, this expression is used throughout the bootcamp as a humiliating way to point out the recruits’ decision of quitting. Among the many forms of torture used in the training process, such as sleep deprivation and physical exhaustion, the lunchtime ritual stands out as a cruel method. Positioned with the group in a circle under the scorching sun, Nascimento blurts out orders with his chin upward in an intimidating posture and assertive tone of voice saying that the recruits have ten seconds to eat lunch and that there should not be any leftovers. This absurd order aligned with the threat of physical punishment helps in the creation of a parallel space where illogical demands such as this must be obeyed and a chain of dominance is established. A large pot is brought forth by the members and the content is thrown on the grass. As the food hits the ground, a sensorial focus on its perception is highlighted when a viscous noise can be heard and its unappetizing appearance is visible. Nascimento gives clearance for the recruits to eat and they proceed to do so in a scene that foregrounds the humiliation of the training process. On their knees, or climbing on top of one another, the recruits use their hands to eat causing their faces to be smeared with food. After roughly ten seconds, the recruits are forcefully removed away from the food and Nascimento inquires after the leftovers, threatening to apply an excruciating punishment because the food has not been cleared. The interrogation process based on an unreasonable logic is the foundation of this torture method that already sets out an impossible task to be fulfilled. The bootcamp shows the BOPE members driving the recruits to their physical and psychological limits by using the rationale that only the toughest ones will be admitted in the squad. This type of hypermasculine environment, often found in Hollywood films that represent military training and warfare contexts, is depicted in Tropa at times as a way to indulge in the excess of  “Pede pra sair!”

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male power, but a finer reading of the scenes uncovers that the actual portrayal of these images of humiliation stands as a way of exposing the absurdities of the BOPE mindset. The creation of a brutal environment of training, emulating harsh conditions in order to prepare the members for the actual groundwork, only points to the idea that their prospective ­battlefields, the favelas, are seen from the outside as a place of combat, a landscape of fear, a merciless territory where the only option is to advance at full throttle. In the film, BOPE excursions deal with criminality by using extreme violence oftentimes veering from lawfulness, exhibiting supreme authority, and contributing to the circular movement of violent acts. The behavior displayed by BOPE members as they take part in extreme violent acts and torture procedures toward favela traffickers and their own recruits foregrounds a hyper-masculine atmosphere, but it is not the only representation of power abuse in the film since the drug traffickers are also portrayed as actors of corporeal punishment. In what is possibly the most graphic scene of torture and execution in Tropa, the drug lord Baiano punishes the NGO members Rodrigues and Roberta (Fernanda de Freitas) for their interactions with police officers. Similarly to the BOPE torture sequence, the scene starts in media res as Roberta is on her knees, crying and repeatedly saying the word “no.” Her face is on the left part of the screen and in the background, a blurred pile of tires can be seen. Without much conversation, in a matter of seconds Roberta is executed with a very graphic gunshot to the back of the head. As her body falls inert offscreen, the camera focuses on the pile of tires and discloses Rodrigues inside them, in a state of desperation. The camera turns to the right and shows Baiano cold-heartedly approaching Rodrigues and pouring gasoline on the NGO member’s head. Rodrigues cries and pleads to be released but Baiano sets him on fire. The grotesque image of the human body on fire and the disturbing cries of agony take over the screen, eliciting an engagement of the audience in terms of the perception of pain through corporeal ravaging. In a particularly unsettling long shot, the nightlights of Rio appear in the background as the drug traffickers calmly stand on the edge of a cliff watching the increasingly growing fire pit with Rodrigues inside and Roberta’s body lying on the ground. Scarry comments on the different sensorial states of the torturer and tortured one as she observes that “the distance between their physical realities is colossal” and “although the distance separating the two is probably the greatest distance that can separate two human beings, it is an invisible distance since the physical realities it lies between are each invisible” (1985, 36). The same small space on the

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edge of the cliff harbors two opposite realities embodied by the safe status of the torturers and the agonizing reality of the executed. Differently from the BOPE torture and execution scene, the corporeal consequences of death are much more prominent as the violated bodies are clearly and repeatedly displayed on screen. This constitutes a much harsher portrayal of the drug traffickers, constructing a more perverse behavior and adding to the ideology that favelas are indeed a merciless battlefield. Both sides enact violence toward one another, and sometimes themselves, but the drug traffickers are shown in the film as actors of much more intense embodied disruption since their executions are meticulously represented. As the narrative progresses, one of the BOPE members Neto (Caio Junqueira) is killed by Baiano, a circumstance that escalates the war between the squad and the traffickers, leading Nascimento to go up the hill to search for the drug lord. This particular sequence starts with the establishing of the favela as part of the landscape of Rio. An extreme long shot shows the urban area on the right of the screen, with buildings and the touristic Sugarloaf Mountain in the background while the left side depicts the favela as a patchwork of houses of different shapes and sizes, colors, and materials. It is the colliding of the two worlds that seem separate in geographical terms but remain side by side in the landscape of Rio, each having an impact on the other while the imprint of violence affects the population across both spheres of society. A closer shot demonstrates BOPE members quietly infiltrating the territory and harshly interacting with civilians, including children, through the narrow corridors and staircases of the favela. The BOPE members carry out the revenge mission which includes knocking from door to door and abusively entering people’s houses while screaming and pointing their guns at the civilians, which includes walking in on a family having a meal. This disruption of the social life of the favela does not indicate a lawful behavior of the police force with the purpose of arresting a murder suspect, but a misuse of authority in pursuit of revenge with the clear intention of executing the drug lord. As the disturbance of the favela social fabric intensifies and BOPE’s presence becomes noticeable, Lieutenant Renan (André Santinho) voices his opinion against the operation by saying “I don’t agree with torture, Captain.”20 Nascimento’s response is to tell him to leave the hill since Renan is not obligated to participate in the mission. Renan’s opinion in the film alludes to the idea of absurdity of BOPE’s ways of dealing with  “Eu não concordo com tortura, Capitão.”

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operations and portrays the battalion as more than Nascimento’s ideology, suggesting that his leadership is problematic in terms of power abuse. The edge of a cliff once again becomes the site of torture, this time enacted by BOPE members who pressure a young man to reveal Baiano’s whereabouts. The sequence starts as the mobile camera follows the BOPE members and the young boy to the cliff, disclosing a panoramic view of Rio in the background, a touristic sight that loses its fashionable appeal in the midst of the violence that is about to take place. Nascimento grabs the young boy by the hair, kneels him down, and starts the interrogation process. At the first negative answer to the inquiry after Baiano’s location, Nascimento slaps the young boy in the face. The BOPE leader then sadistically performs the same ritual of asking for Baiano’s whereabouts and slapping the boy as the negative answer surfaces in a total of four times. This tactile behavior manifests itself at the surface of the body of both characters but ultimately translates into the perception of an overwhelming tense rhythm, one that pulls the audience into a sadistic state of mind. Although this only lasts for a few seconds, it is as if Nascimento had created and trapped the young man and consequently the viewer in a torturous looping of pain, a descent into a disorienting ritual of dehumanization. They decide to apply the plastic bag technique to the young man whose muffled cries are mixed with the rustling of the plastic. After physically and verbally assaulting the young man, Nascimento orders the boy’s pants to be removed and picks up a broom stick from a pile of trash nearby. The hostile BOPE members threaten to sexually abuse the boy who gives in and agrees to disclose Baiano’s location. The use of the plastic bag and the broom stick as instruments of torture is explained by Scarry as “the de-­ objectifying of the objects, the unmaking of the made” being part of “a process externalizing the way in which the person’s pain causes the world to disintegrate” (1985, 41). In Tropa, the plastic bag and the broom, as well as the food during training, are removed out of their daily context and given a menacing meaning as tools to generate misery. They are no longer objects that have ordinary connotations since the torture process transforms the items into signifiers of agony. That can also be applied to space as the torture sites in the favelas, generally overlooking postcard views of Rio, become suspended realities where the most violent characters rule over the ones in disadvantage outside the context of law. The film ends with the execution of Baiano as the drug lord’s body becomes the instrument of revenge for Nascimento. After figuring out Baiano’s whereabouts, the BOPE members corner him on the rooftop. In

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this scene the drug lord is portrayed defenseless on the ground, with a gunshot to his chest and a pool of blood under him. Nascimento has his foot on Baiano’s stomach, making pressure on it as a way to micro torture. This particular shot depicts the characters inserted in the very core of the favela shown all around them as the uneven-shaped houses call attention to the domestic environment and the different textures and peculiar way of living are visible. This scene is pivotal to showing the impact of “asphalt” organizations in the center of the favela and the interconnection of these two sides. Baiano’s death has a sensorial priority as his heavy breathing is emphasized while the sun partially blinds the image showing a BOPE member, Matias (André Ramiro), shakily holding a shotgun pointing at Baiano’s head. This scene is constructed in a way that Matias intends to shoot Baiano but points the gun toward the camera, indirectly threatening the audience and leading to the idea that this violence does not affect only those locally placed in favelas but has a wider reach, a nationwide reverberation on the modes of aggression enacted in the country. The pessimist tone of the ending is based on the belief that the violent cycle has not been broken by BOPE in their operations in the favela. On the contrary, their actions have the power to fuel the conflict even more. If Tropa had followed the traditional portrayal of good and bad characters usually found in action films, for instance, the ending would have been the triumphant closure of the police against the drug traffickers. Since the film blurs this idea and depicts characters from both sides in morally problematic ways, the final moments emphasize a sense of cyclical violence and the war in Rio’s favelas as a hopeless cause. In the documentary about favelas entitled Notícias de uma Guerra particular (News from a Personal War, Kátia Lund and João Moreira Salles 1999), Captain Pimentel, also quoted in the epigraph of this chapter, gloomily shares his view of the future concerning the situation of aggression in the favelas by saying “I don’t see an end, I don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t see a solution.”21 His viewpoint is echoed in Tropa as the criminality from both sides escalates to a point in which there is a loss of lawful parameters leading to intensified brutalities. The corporeal engagement of the audience with images of pain and agony leads to an understanding of the lived experience of favelas as part of a culturally aware space where a layered process of perception is highly impacted by the level of violence in the urban surroundings.

 “Eu não vejo fim, não vejo luz no fim do túnel. Não vejo soluções.”

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3.2   “Tá com cheiro de sangue isso aqui”22: A Sensorial Approach to Torture in A Divisão The postcard image of Rio is represented under a different light in A Divisão which illuminates corrupt aspects of the asphalt side in direct connection with the cycle of embodied violence in the favelas. Political maneuvers, illegal economic profits, and authority abuse are depicted as elements that create a gloomy composite of the city, pointing to the idea that the violence experienced in the favelas is not a segregated phenomenon but has a much more complex genesis in the criminality enacted in the city as a whole. A Divisão was first aired as a television series in 2019 then adapted into a film version in 2020. It was spearheaded by the two creators José Luiz Magalhães and José Júnior and produced by AfroReggae Audiovisual, a company part of a cultural group founded by José Júnior that promotes art as a life-changing instrument especially for those living in the context of favelas. Among the documentaries produced by AfroReggae, there is a particular concern with intimate stories of struggle all marked by violence, whether from the point of view of those involved in criminal acts, serving time at penitentiaries, or being part of the police force. The same line of thought permeates A Divisão as the reverberations of violent acts dictate the power relations, depicting a society not mainly segregated by geographical territories but by levels of criminality and their consequences. Jonathan Nichols-Pethick comments that “stories about the police are more than ritual struggles between good and evil” since “they respond to some of our most pressing social concerns about how we imagine and maintain a sense of community in a vast and often alienating society” (2012, 3). A Divisão offers a variety of perspectives on criminality and violence through its morally ambiguous characters, overall denying the creation of someone who fully embodies a heroic attitude in the film. A Divisão takes place in 1997 and deals with the wave of kidnapping that populated the news during the late 1990s in Brazil. Historically speaking, the profile of the kidnapped victims varied from celebrities, celebrities’ relatives to upper-class citizens, including Roberto Medina, the creator of Rock in Rio, and Edevair Farias, the father of the famous soccer player Romário. The film depicts this moment in the city’s history and the attempt by the Rio Police DAAS (Anti-kidnapping Division) to stop these 22  “It smells like blood in here.” The transcriptions of the characters’ lines for this section were taken from the film A Divisão (The Division, Vicente Amorim 2020).

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abductions from happening, an endeavor that discloses the roots of law transgression in the city’s society. The two main characters portray distinctive ways of breaking the law: Mendonça (Silvio Guindane) is a Narcotics Chief of Police in the beginning of the film who makes use of extreme violence to accomplish his goals, including torture, an attitude that leads to him being called by the nickname “genocidal.” Santiago (Erom Cordeiro) is a police officer who illegally kidnaps criminals in order to extort money from their families, earning him the nickname of “mineiro,” a person who is able to quickly and efficiently track down criminals for the purpose of abduction and money coercion. Due to the network of interests surrounding a specific kidnapping case, that of a politician’s daughter, these two characters are brought to work together at DAAS. Their portrayals, especially during moments of immersion in favelas, foreground the corporeality of police work and interaction with traffickers with a focus on the sensorial aspect of this representation. The scenes of torture emphasize the embodied violation outside the limits of law and unveil the level of criminality being enacted with the alleged purpose of justice. The film firstly introduces Santiago and his two partners, Roberta (Natália Lage) and Ramos (Thelmo Fernandes), by placing them as part of an unconventional portrayal of Rio. The first image of the film is a low-­ angle shot of Santiago whose face turns toward the camera in a gentle slow motion. Initially the sunlight from behind him partially blocks the viewer from seeing the details of his face but as soon as his image becomes clearly recognizable, the color palette of the film is settled. Hues of gray and beige dominate the screen while the cloudy sky and the faint sun seem to foster an ambience that moves away from Rio’s typical representation of a warm environment. The elements are there: the beach, the beach umbrella, Sugarloaf Mountain in the background, children playing in the sand. The postcard features of Rio are introduced in the initial sequence, but an ominous atmosphere gives a different tone to the scene. The gray and beige tones of the image transform the once colorful trademarks in down-­ to-­earth, daily scenes without the touch of a touristic appeal. The slow motion adds tension to the characters’ actions, as if anticipating a move from Santiago, Roberta, and Ramos who are on the lookout for a drug dealer at the beach in order to set in motion one of their kidnapping schemes. A small television in a food stand nearby shows Rio’s Chief of Police Paulo Gaspar (Bruce Gomlevsky) giving a statement to the press. He calmly explains how kidnapping has become a business, a very profitable one in the world of criminality. His statement goes to the extent of

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saying that the police is not actually the solution but part of the problem. The film clearly delineates its ideological structure from the beginning as Paulo articulates a detailed explanation: “Things will only change when the Narcotics Department stops dealing drugs, when the Robbery Department stops stealing, the Homicides Department stops killing and the Anti-kidnapping Department stops kidnapping.”23 The idea that law misconduct and violence are initiated and perpetuated by the authorities detaches the element of criminality as exclusively inherent to the environment of poorer city areas of Rio such as favelas and places it geographically around the city as a whole and in different levels of society. Mendonça’s introduction in the film has a peculiar focus on the senses as the character is inserted in the territory of a favela, in the middle of a confrontation with drug traffickers. His portrayal is much more concentrated on brute force whereas Santiago’s has a strategic tone, two opposing characteristics that will be later explored in the narrative. The sequence that discloses Mendonça starts with an image of a window partially covered with a sheet of plastic as if still under construction. The wind strongly blows the plastic back and forth and the howling sound sets up an atmosphere of tension. From that window parts of other unfinished brick houses are visible, a recurrent landscape trait of favelas: houses under construction. As an ever-evolving territory in a constant process of habitation morphing, the lack of resources provides an incomplete look to the constructions in a make-shift collage of different building materials. The next shot shows the screen almost dominated by a poorly done cement wall, with visible lumps on the surface. Behind that imperfect wall, in a slow motion, Mendonça appears with a rifle close to his face in a shooting position. The film focuses then on an extreme close-up of his right eye, concentrating on how his sensorial perception, for instance his vision, will guide the experience of the surreal moment of embodied confrontation that is about to happen. As his team starts getting shot at by the drug traffickers, Mendonça advances through the narrow brick corridor, shooting to kill and managing to inflict many casualties in a mayhem scenario of heavy fire. In one particular moment, the lively action music that accompanies the operation subsides, the image halts to a slow motion of Mendonça pointing his weapon and the cacophony of shots is substituted 23  “As coisas só vão começar a mudar quando a Delegacia de Entorpecentes parar de traficar, a Roubos e Furtos parar de roubar, a Homicídios parar de matar e a Anti-sequestro parar de sequestrar.”

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by the sound of one sharp gunshot from him. The audience is drawn into his own personal world of perception through this filmic arrangement, an invitation to experience the shootout from Mendonça’s angle. His flat stare, determined but heartless, is followed by the image of one specific trafficker getting shot in the head. The sound of the bullet crossing the air amplifies the embodied impact and the violation of the flesh as the result of the gunshot is graphically portrayed. A similar experience is represented in the film minutes later as once again the music stops, the image slows down, and Mendonça shoots. The close-up of his face establishes a filmic intimacy with the audience and stages a mediation of the sensorial experience of violence. This is followed by the buzzing sound of the bullet and the image of the targeted trafficker whose body falls from a rooftop displaying the deadly wound on his torso. The thud caused from the trafficker’s body hitting the ground and the blood that is spilt on the screen heighten the corporeal consequences of the violent act that at this point in the sequence has become a mechanical reaction from Mendonça. The focus on the act of seeing in combination with the sensorial ability of hearing is emphasized when the sequence depicts a pool of blood as corporeal evidence of the drug trafficker’s location. Mendonça is shown looking at the ground and the film cuts to his a POV (point-of-view) shot that slowly discloses a pool of blood. Once again, his perspective is matched with the viewer in an attempt to forge an engagement with the character’s perception. The organic nature of the image, the blood mixed with sand on the unpaved ground, highlights the body as the pivot of the operation and the pursuit of the extinction of its corporeal vitality the final objective in terms of dominance. Mendonça’s eyes are the focal point of perception for the rest of the sequence as the visual pattern of his introduction in the film is repeated: from behind a cemented wall, in slow motion, he appears with his weapon intimately close to his face. The most prominent facial feature that is not hidden by the rifle is his yearning stare, apprehensive yet pitiless. The geography of narrow corridors marked by the patchwork walls of bricks and cement, adorned with clothes hanging from one side to another, demonstrates the need for more than vision as a tool of navigation. The trail of blood leads further into the favela until they hear a metallic sound, as if someone had dropped a can. Mendonça instinctively turns toward the source of the sound, reinforcing the idea of the impact of soundscape in a combat zone. The film highlights that to experience this space is to perceive its sounds through an embodied navigation. Paul Rodaway observes that “auditory phenomena penetrate us from all

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directions at all times. The auditory perspective is not linear but multidirectional” (1994, 92). The multiple sounds heard as they pass through the corridors are analyzed in a corpographical way by the team and the ones that offer some level of threat are taken into consideration, in an improvisational use of the senses in the context of danger. Rodaway also mentions that “auditory experience, within the context of a wider multisensorial encounter with the world can, however, give important geographical information, of location and spatial arrangement and a rich evocation of the distinctive character of places” (106). It is through the sensorial recognition of sounds, or even the lack of them, that Mendonça and his team are able to navigate the labyrinth-like corridors of the favela. Although his eyes are shown as the core of perception in this situation, a combination of senses aids in the comprehension of space and context owing to the fact that “seeing is also touching, smelling and hearing the environment which we explicitly or implicitly compare to our own and previous experience” (Rodaway 116). The soundscape of the favela has turned into more than an ordinary collection of daily sounds as each noise is analyzed as a potential source of threat due to the purpose of Mendonça’s aggressive presence. Mendonça’s connection with his weapon, oftentimes depicted in intimate contact with his skin, particularly his face, establishes his power of domination by force. As if taken from a horror film, a scene shows the distorted shadow of the rifle’s barrel projected on a white cloth as it moves forward. The folds of the cloth bestow a monstrous quality to the presence of the weapon and the soundtrack escalates to the moment when Mendonça appears from behind the piece of fabric. His menacing presence is solidified in the following moment of sensorial overload to the audience when the screen turns black and a loud noise discloses a blurred image in the back showing Mendonça’s out-of-focus silhouette forcing his way through a door into a badly-lit room. There is not enough visual information for the audience to understand this scene at first, constituting this image an example of what Marks calls haptic cinema in terms of “discourag[ing] the viewer from distinguishing objects and encourag[ing] a relationship to the screen as a whole” (2000, 172). This sensorially focused moment invites the audience to engage themselves with an encounter, that is, the discover of meaning behind the bits of visual and aural information provided. A few seconds later, the film shows a drug dealer is sitting on the floor in a seriously injured condition. His body is shot in the abdomen and blood pours out from his mouth. He poses no threat at this moment since it is visible that soon he will be unconscious.

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Mendonça approaches him and after a harsh exchange of words, a medium-­ long shot depicts the ruthless execution. There is no cutting away from the graphic image since the film shows Mendonça’s unwavering stance as he pulls the trigger and the immediate damage on the drug dealer’s head. By shooting the dealer in the face, blood spills to the side and the back of the man’s head displays the exit hole of the bullet. Mendonça stays still for a few seconds, looking at the dead body that is in turn shown in a close­up. The sight of the inert body in a striking corporeal violation, result of a merciless execution by an officer of the law, foregrounds the final stage of domination and abuse of power and portrays Mendonça as a problematic character in the city’s cycle of violence. It is by accident that the Narcotics team stumbles upon the aftermath traces of a kidnapping case by locating an open mass grave. The explicit representation of the dead bodies carelessly piled up is followed by the comment that these are the kidnappers, not necessarily the mastermind behind the kidnapping, but those who guarded the victim. The image shows approximately six very young men, and as the camera pans over in close-ups of their faces, feet, hands, torso and legs, their motionless, almost barren limbs signal decomposition while the sound of flies can be heard. Bullet holes, blood stains, and dirt on skin compose the sea of lifeless bodies, the termination of a kidnapping hideout that intends to have no loose ends. The film depicts this scene by using tight framing, that is, by insisting on an immersive encounter of the audience with the ravaged bodies. This tactile contact of the eye of the viewer with the skin of the characters’ bodies creates an experiential bridge regarding the perception of death. The situation changes when one hand, the smallest of the ones in the grave belonging to a child, moves. A slight movement of the fingers of a hand buried beneath the pile of bodies is the corporeal signal of life. Mendonça spots the movement and rushes to get the boy out of the grave. He hurriedly removes the lifeless limbs out of the way, nervously lifting the unreactive arms and legs as if they were devoid of any human trait. By clumsily lifting the boy in his arms, Mendonça holds him close to his own body in an intense tactile interaction and seems desperate to get help for the boy. Santanu Das comments on the impact of touching by saying that “there is something quite unearthly in the immensity of its [a pair of arms] reach: we get to know through touch alone−or at times in close conjunction with vision or sound−size, texture, temperature, weight, hardness/ softness, viscosity, depth, flatness, movement, composition and space” (2005, 21). When Mendonça lifts the boy and corporeally connects with

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the effects of violence, his facial expression and posture change as he carefully carries the lightweight child, speaking and comforting him as they make their way out of the favela. On the way back, Mendonça displays what could be understood as a heroic attitude since his intention is to save the boy’s life, but as he walks the narrow corridors in the opposite direction of where he entered the place, the camera displays the fallen bodies of the drug dealers on the ground and the pools of blood that Mendonça treads on, functioning as corporeal reminders of his recent past actions. Even the representation of the piled-up bodies, generally associated with historical images of genocide, is a reminder of his nickname. Throughout A Divisão there are suggestions that the representation of Rio will not be a traditional postcard portrayal and the same happens to the way that Mendonça is depicted regarding his status as a hero. Neither city nor main character conforms to the conventions of tourism or heroism. In one panoramic night shot of the city, the Sugarloaf Mountain is partially covered by fog, excluding the popularly recognizable shape from sight. Another panoramic shot shows a cloudy day as the shadowed Sugarloaf Mountain and the gray waters of the Guanabara Bay are portrayed as part of a regular city far from the glamorous image of utopian Rio. The eerie song that accompanies these establishing shots sets the tone of unfamiliarity with the scenery represented through lenses that emphasize its uneventful characteristics. The plasticity of Mendonça’s postcard heroic behavior is also debunked during a conversation between two high-­ ranking government and police figures, General Malta (Paulo Reis) and Chief of Police Gaspar. The topic is to decide who will be transferred to DAAS in order to take care of the kidnapping of a politician’s daughter. As Malta mentions Mendonça for the job, Gaspar’s reaction is to answer with the question “the genocidal?,”24 hinting at the history of inappropriate behavior. They discuss a newspaper cover that calls Mendonça a hero by showing his picture holding the boy. Malta then proceeds to deconstruct the noble headline by saying “this is what we need, a hero”25 indicating the artificiality and at the same time usefulness of Mendonça’s newfound popularity. Mendonça’s name is sarcastically put together with contrasting adjectives, particularly by Gaspar who manages to call him “general’s pet,”

 “o genocida?”  “é disso que a gente precisa, um herói.”

24 25

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“our hero,” and “genocidal”26 all in one sentence as a frequent reminder of his brutal behavior. As Mendonça and Santiago are assigned to work at DAAS together to take care of the kidnapping case of the politician Venâncio Couto’s (Dalton Vigh) daughter Camila (Hanna Romanazzi), their unorthodox methods constantly clash. In one particular sequence, they enter a favela in pursuit of a suspect of the case. The sensorial emphasis of this scene demonstrates how surreal the violent experience of urban confrontation can be since it starts with a disorienting out-of-focus shot. Blurred lights are barely distinguishable in the background of a dark image while unidentifiable figures move from one side to another and the muffled sounds of aggressive screams are heard as if in a dream-like state. The camera pulls back, still out of focus, as the chaotic sounds continue creating a threatening sonic environment. The depiction of this scene by means of Marks’ haptic visuality demonstrates that there is an insistence in highlighting that the “viewer perceives the texture as much as the objects imaged” (2000, 163). The flashing lights, the echoing sounds cause the film and the audience to shift their focal point from the absolute materiality of the surroundings to the corpographical and instinctive understanding of the input gathered from the environment, shaping a sensorial engagement with the narrative. An object is finally shown in focus in the foreground of the image and that is Mendonça’s weapon firing in the direction of the blurred lights. This representation of an urban combat zone that does not rely purely on the information acquired through the sense of sight distances itself from what Rodaway calls “visualism,” that is, the “tendency to reduce all sensuous experience to visual terms” (1994, 116). The author explains that “the visual might be a dominant sense mode but it is not independent of the others and is not necessarily the most important in many situations” (116–117). The constant use of a blurred background and the emphasis on aural cues to comprehend space and context are elements in A Divisão that demonstrate the complexity of navigating a territory of conflict and regard corporeality and its senses as fundamental tools in the process of acquiring information to maneuver a violent atmosphere. The chaotic nature of the battle space leads to the use of different representational strategies in the film in order to cope with the depiction of the sensorial overload of that moment.

 “filhote de general,” “nosso herói,” “genocida.”

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The geography of the favela is highlighted in this sequence, a narrow corridor that separates the police from the drug traffickers. They are only a few meters apart but the chasm between these two sides is intensified by the extreme use of violence as incessant gunshots travel from one side to the other crossing the air like lasers. In a traditional war battlefield manner, a grenade is thrown by the traffickers and the result of the explosion is a return to an inner state of perception from Mendonça’s viewpoint. The noises subside; the slow-motion speed is accompanied by a ringing sound that portrays his temporary disorientation. Through these filmic techniques, there is a perception that for a few seconds the chaos of the shootout overpowers the senses. The only available visual and aural information to the audience to grasp the situation stems from Mendonça’s inability to come to his senses, causing a disoriented perception. The inefficiency of the confrontational approach chosen by Mendonça is defied by the unconventional method used by Santiago to deal with the situation. Unarmed and with his hands up, Santiago walks up the aisle toward the traffickers’ side, his resounding voice announcing his presence. The vulnerability of his body intensifies as he goes further into the corridor and loses touch with the police barricade. A succession of extreme close-ups of gun barrels pointing at him increases the atmosphere of danger and exposure of Santiago’s embodied defenselessness. A sudden silence takes over the scene, only the sounds of dogs barking at a distance, the wind rustling the objects around them, and the fire crackling in a barrel nearby can be heard. The eerie atmosphere of aural tranquility is in complete contrast with only a few seconds ago. The disputed space, the short distance of only a few steps, demonstrates the divided territory in terms of power control between the police and the favela traffickers. The territorial tension is eased when Santiago strikes a verbal deal with the favela leader to give up the kidnapping suspect, an agreement that is settled with a handshake, a personal and tactile arrangement that fuses the sides and indicates the complexity of the situation. Santiago, a police officer with a history of illegal behavior, belongs to a gray area of moral values and is able to make alliances with the criminals, depicting a police force that operates outside the reach of law. The territory of the favela is seen in the film, similarly to Tropa, as a landscape of fear where the menacing ambience of violence constructs the space as continuously hostile. Tuan explains that this type of “fearsome landscape” results in the possibility of an inhabitant having “fear of the imminent collapse of his world and the approach of death−that final

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surrender of integrity to chaos” (1979, 7). The haunting of a potentially uncontrollable situation in the film obstructs any possibility of what Tuan calls “topophilia,” that is, “the affective bond between people and place or setting” (1990, 2). In his analysis, mostly the positive type of attachment is fleshed out from the interaction of the inhabitants with the surroundings. In the case of the favelas, this cordial engagement is not foregrounded, revealing a lack of belonging from the characters, mainly the police officers, and establishing that zone as a place where violence is permitted due to the area’s unfriendly nature. Tuan acknowledges the relevance of looking into “the way human beings respond to their physical setting−their perception of it and the value they put on it” (1990, 2). Therefore, spatial perceptions are directly connected to the use of senses to navigate such territories, and, in the films analyzed here, the filmic construction of such space is related to the perceptions attached to the lived experience in the favelas and the embodied knowledge informed by the sensorial apparatus. The peak of unlawful behavior by police members is solidified, similarly to Tropa, in the sensorial torture scenes but this time taking place indoors, in a black site used specifically for this purpose. The existence of such a space of torture goes against every regulation in Brazil since “the 1988 constitution carries provisions meant to prevent some of the worst arbitrariness and abusive practice by the police. It establishes that torture is a crime not subject to bail or executive clemency and sets forth procedures to prevent arbitrary and unsubstantiated arrest” (Caldeira 2000, 156). The badly-lit, broken-down house that harbors the instruments of torture in A Divisão represents a space of horror and pain, a place that matches the description of torture provided by Scarry as she comments that “torture is a process which not only converts but announces the conversion of every conceivable aspect of the event and the environment into an agent of pain” (1985, 27–28). The black site where Mendonça and his team torture Canô (Amaurih Oliveira), one of the drug traffickers involved in Camila’s kidnapping case, is more than a hidden place away from the radar of the law but a spectacle itself of dirty walls and improvised torture devices. Scarry highlights that “the torture room is not just the setting in which the torture occurs; it is not just the space that happens to house the various instruments used for beating and burning and producing electric shock. It is itself literally converted into another weapon, into an agent of pain” as “the contents of the room, its furnishings, are converted into weapons” (40). At one point in the film, a character visits the black site

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and exclaims as soon as he walks in, “it smells like blood in here.”27 In this case, the intimate association of the sensorial ability of smelling with a reference to the violence enacted in that space can be connected to Tuan’s idea that “odor has the power to evoke vivid, emotionally-charged memories of past events and scenes” (1990, 10). The difficulty in verbalizing or visualizing the sense of smell in film is overcome by attaching a personal memory to the description: in the narrative, the character who delivers this line has also been part of situations of torture. For the audience to understand this sensorial cue, the film brings a fact in common among the characters in the scene, a personal memory they all share. By linking the smell of the place to the violent acts, the film constructs the black site as a reservoir of violation, a reinforcement of the cycle of violence executed outside the law. The first image of torture depicts a literal immersion into the world of agony as Canô’s head is forcibly submerged in water by Bosco (Marcello Gonçalves), Mendonça’s right-hand man. The underwater close-up shot focuses on Canô’s agony as his facial expression shows the desperation of drowning. The immersive perspective given to the viewer stimulates a somatic engagement with the tortured person on film due to the intimate proximity and angle of shot. The muffled sound of his pleading voice is combined with the splashing of water, creating a soundscape of horror complemented by what seems to be an endless period of time of only twelve seconds during which Canô is subjected to this procedure. Bosco lifts Canô’s head from the barrel and a mixture of water and blood spills all around. As Canô does not provide any information to Bosco’s incessant questions, the police officer repeatedly immerses Canô’s head into the barrel and at a certain point exclaims, “I’ll end up killing this bastard.”28 Canô’s body is in a completely helpless state, devoid of any vitality or power. Scarry points out that “for the prisoner, the sheer simple, overwhelming fact of his agony will make neutral and invisible the significance of any question as well as the significance of the world to which the question refers. Intense pain is world-destroying” (1985, 29). Agonizing on the floor and still suffering the effects of asphyxiation, Canô is also subjected to electric shocks and his piercing cry reverberates in the air. The camera is close to the floor matching Canô’s eye level and causing the audience’s engagement with the embodied process of torture to be  “tá com cheiro de sangue isso aqui.”  “Vou acabar matando esse puto.”

27 28

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c­ onstructed from the lower angle of the tortured as opposed to the more distant standing position of the torturers. The soundscape of horror is now composed of the sizzling of electric sparks and Canô’s guttural scream. The torture sequence continues with Mendonça’s presence who adds a more visceral dimension to the interrogation process. Handcuffed to a horizontal pole, with his arms wide open as if crucified, Canô is questioned by both Mendonça and Santiago regarding Camila’s whereabouts. The situation gets out of control when Mendonça proceeds to relentlessly slap Canô and inquire after who else is involved in the kidnapping. Santiago tries to avoid this intense confrontation scenario and calmly asks Canô to give up the information. The two police officers find themselves disagreeing on how to proceed with the situation when Mendonça impulsively pulls out a knife and threatens Canô. The film represents this out-of-­ control interaction by framing both characters’ faces very closely. In an act of sadism, Mendonça stabs Canô in the stomach and places his body excessively close to the trafficker’s. In one particular close-up shot, their lips almost touch, following Das’ idea that “situations of crisis also foster unique moments of intimacy” (2005, 24), and in this case, an abusive and violent intimate relationship. The tactile nature of this scene highlights how the film draws the viewer closer to the bodies of the characters through the use of tight framing that almost dissolves the shape of what is being shown. This abrupt somatic engagement between the two characters and between the image and the viewer constructs the perception of this scene as a crude act of uncontrolled violence. This perception also leads to echoes of dictatorship years of torture in Brazil in the image of Canô being abused in a black site while standing in a Christ-like position by a police officer. Mendonça twists the knife to cause additional pain and removes the weapon from inside Canô’s body in a graphic display of the trafficker’s corporeal vulnerability. The disempowering ritual of humiliation and infliction of severe physical pain leads to nowhere as Santiago shoots Canô and immediately receives Mendonça’s disapproval. Both police officers are depicted separated by a divergence of opinion but united by a bond of illegality, an unspoken agreement of leniency toward each other’s lawless actions as a reflection of the moral fluctuation of those in positions of power in Brazilian society. After establishing the ultraviolent methods used by Mendonça and his team, the film focuses on unveiling another layer of criminality in the city embodied by Camila’s kidnapper. Dantas (Osvaldo Mil), an ex-police officer, is the mastermind behind the kidnapping and all the other suspects

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from the favelas who were approached, and even tortured, only fulfilled supporting roles in the case. The actual source of criminal behavior does not come from someone inside the favela, although the illegal actions take place there, but from a person who once belonged to the very institution that seeks to eradicate the transgression. The unlawful panorama is worsened when the film shows a connection between Dantas and Benício (Marcos Palmeira), the general chief of DAAS, who form an alliance to ensure money is delivered for Camila’s kidnapping as opposed to rescuing her without any financial exchange. Dantas’ cold-blooded conduct is exemplified in his calm and perverse attitude while his level of sadism surpasses any other character in the film. In one sequence, Camila is kept hidden at a family home and is attacked by a drunken man but manages to set herself free by knocking him out with a glass bottle. Dantas brings Camila face to face with the man again and puts a gun in her hands. The camera frames the two characters from behind as only the left side of Dantas’ face can be seen when he whispers in her ear the words “finish what you started.”29 In an intimate gesture of persuasion, Dantas helps her point the weapon toward the man on the floor by holding her hands. Crying and disoriented, she eventually shoots the man in the head. By inflicting a form of psychological torture Dantas not only kidnaps his victim in pursuit of money but demonstrates an abusive tendency, one that is grounded on an uncontrolled performance of violence. His ultimate display of unbounded brutality is portrayed as the family who lives in the house where Camila was kept hidden is executed to avoid loose ends. In this sequence, Dantas drags one of the women of the house by her hair, puts her on her knees, and in front of Camila, slits the woman’s throat without any warning. The graphic image of the knife cutting the skin is followed by the woman’s body slowly losing vitality as the blood flows from her neck. Similarly to a horror film depicting a psychopathic spree, Dantas approaches a younger girl and without much effort breaks her neck and her body falls lifeless beside Camila. His hyper-violent behavior fueled by financial gain exceeds the cruelty previously displayed in the narrative by other police officers and establishes Dantas as the culmination of immorality and unlawfulness. A Divisão confirms what the author Ramos calls “a type of self-­ flagelation” (2003, 67) in Brazilian culture, a negative construction of nationalism that insists on highlighting its flaws and weaknesses. At one  “termina o que você começou.”

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point in the narrative, Mendonça and Santiago initiate a heated discussion about each other’s levels of criminality. Mendonça mentions Santiago’s alliances with criminals and money extorsion through kidnapping while Santiago brings up Mendonça’s ultraviolent ways of torture and execution. As a result of the characters’ conversation, the film exposes the underbelly of the system that should supposedly prevent the aforementioned crimes. Both police officers, tainted by their past actions, are swept up and simultaneously contribute to the cyclical nature of violence in the city. The explanation for the current state of a “sordid and unviable nation” (Ramos 68) is manifested in this scene. While Tropa visually depicts the uncontrolled brutality of BOPE but seldom verbalizes the absurdity of their acts, A Divisão foregrounds conversations regarding the idea that violence and crime in the city are issues closely connected with figures of authority and power. In the film, violence is not a problem that only springs from the poverty and drug trafficking in poorer regions like favelas, leading to the superficial notion that the inhabitants are prone to criminal acts, but part of a dubious morality of police officers, political schemes and financial arrangements of figures in high government positions. The kidnapping business, the careless treatment of fatalities in the favelas, and the violence that surrounds the cityscape portray a gray Rio, one that is prone to disillusionment of its banner characteristics of a welcoming and gracious city. The final stand-off between the police and Dantas reveals a complex web of interests by the positioning of the characters in the scene. As the police identifies Dantas’ location while he tries to run away with Camila, Mendonça and Santiago corner the kidnapper in a nearby neighborhood. In a narrow corridor between houses, Dantas uses Camila’s body as a shield while the two police officers point their guns at him. The tension is created as all the characters stand uncomfortably close to one another, transforming the short distance between them, just a few steps, into a massive gap related to their positions of power. The space acquires a different texture dependable on the arrangement of the bodies and their roles of dominance. Dantas holding Camila at gunpoint retains the upper hand while Mendonça and Santiago refrain from using violence. The situation takes a different turn when Benício appears on the roof of an opposing house pointing his gun downwards. There is no way of knowing for sure in whose direction Benício is pointing his weapon but Dantas instantly assumes they are on the same side and acts as if he had cover from Benício. The complexity of the situation is summarized in this stand-off: a reunion

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of police officers who extort, kidnap, torture, and kill, a whole plethora of different criminal characteristics are joined in one alley. Both Mendonça and Santiago point their guns upwards, demonstrating that they are aware of a potential alliance between Dantas and Benício, a possibility that does not come as a surprise. The film focuses on a close-up of Benício’s gun barrel lowering and the tactile detail of his finger slowly and carefully pulling the trigger. The silence is interrupted by the gunshot and the viscous sound of Dantas’ head being hit. Even after Dantas is on the ground, all the characters continue pointing their guns at each other indicating that the situation is far from being over. Camila’s kidnapping case has been solved but the web of corruption remains tangled, highlighting the intricacies of authority and power struggle. A Divisão brings to the forefront the idea that violence is a consequence of a much more complex system of corruption spread across the city and not limited to the territorial constraints of poorer areas, such as favelas, and their inhabitants. The bodies of the characters are depicted in situations that invite a sensorial engagement from the viewer through filmic techniques that concentrate on using embodiment as a vehicle of expression, a way to translate the perception of space and experiences. The environment of the favelas is explored in Tropa and A Divisão as spaces that carry a convoluted heritage regarding violence and crime. While being synonymous to drug and weapon trafficking in the national conception, the representation of favelas in both films remains as a more elaborated site in direct connection with the city around it. These landscapes of fear are portrayed through images of sensorial intensity, especially in relation to the embodiment of abuse or fragility and the materiality of the landscape, demonstrating that the ways the surroundings are perceived have much to do with the previous perceptions of violence regarding the spaces as well as how the events unfold and are lived through ongoing experiences. The impact of unlawful acts of those in positions of authority, such as the police or politicians, directly feeds into the cyclical nature of violence in the favelas. The instances of torture by the police depicted in the films inevitably cause an embodied engagement with the audience and bring to the memory the country’s dictatorship years as abuse of authority and infliction of pain are regarded as acceptable behavior. Forced confessions, executions, and the use of instruments for purposes of torment such as plastic bags for suffocation recall an emblematic imagery of violation of human rights enacted by the police during the military dictatorship in Brazil. The emphasis on the portrayal of the senses

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in the moments of violent embattlement, and particularly in the scenes of torture, exposes the embodied placement of the characters in the somatic geography of urban warfare as the corporeal perspective becomes the way to apprehend and navigate the instances of extreme violence. Scarry comments on “the events happening within the interior of [a] person’s body” as having “the remote character of some deep subterranean fact, belonging to an invisible geography that, however portentous, has no reality because it has not yet manifested itself on the visible surface of the earth” (1985, 3). By focusing on ways to express such evanescent impressions through sensuous encounters on the screen, Tropa and A Divisão narrate the experiences of pain and violence in the favelas as part of a complex vision of how Brazilian national identity can be understood and reimagined by an audience in contemporary times.

References Amorim, Vicente, dir. 2020. A Divisão. Rio de Janeiro: AfroReggae Audiovisual. DVD. Bachelard, Gaston. 1994. The Poetics of Space. Translated by Maria Jolas. Boston: Beacon Press. Bentes, Ivana. 2005. The Aesthetics of Violence in Brazilian Film. In City of God in Several Voices: Brazilian Social Cinema as Action, ed. Else R.P. Vieira, 82–92. Nottingham: Critical, Cultural and Communications Press. Caldeira, Teresa P.R. 2000. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chauí, Marilena. 2007. Brasil: Mito Fundador e Sociedade Autoritária. São Paulo: Fundação Perseu Abramo. D’Angelo, Sandra. 2015. Sampling the Sense of Place in Baile Funk Music. In Relocating Popular Music, ed. Ewa Mazierska and Georgina Gregory, 44–62. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Das, Santanu. 2005. Touch and Intimacy in First World War Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Diegues, Carlos, dir. 1999. Orfeu. Toronto: Cine-Source. DVD. Dos Santos, Nelson Pereira, dir. 1955. Rio 40 Graus. Rio 40 Degrees. São Paulo: Columbia Pictures do Brasil. DVD. ———, dir. 1957. Rio Zona Norte. Rio Northern Zone. Rio de Janeiro: Livio Bruni Produções Cinematográficas. DVD. Funari, Pedro Paulo. 2003. Conflict and Interpretation of Palmares, a Brazilian runaway polity. Historical Archeology 37 (3): 81–92.

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Gregory, Derek. 2014. Corpographies: Making Sense of Modern War. The Funambulist, December: 30–39. Accessed 15 May 2021. https://geographicalimaginations.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/gregory-­corpographies.pdf. Johnson, Randal, and Robert Stam. 1995. Brazilian Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press. Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-­ Smith. Oxford: Blackwell. Leite, Márcia Pereira. 2005. The favelas of Rio de Janeiro in Brazilian Cinema (1950 to 2000). In City of God in Several Voices: Brazilian Social Cinema as Action, ed. Else R.P.  Vieira, 149–165. Nottingham: Critical, Cultural and Communications Press. Lund, Kátia, and João Moreira Salles, dir. 1999. Notícias de uma Guerra Particular. News from a Personal War. Rio de Janeiro: VideoFilmes. DVD. Madden, Lori. 1993. The Canudos War in History. Luso-Brazilian Review 30 (2): 5–22. Marks, Laura U. 2000. The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham: Duke University Press. Marques, Ângela Cristina Salgueiro, and Simone Maria Rocha. 2010. Representações fílmicas de uma instituição policial violenta: resquícios da ditadura militar em Tropa de Elite. Revista FAMECOS 17 (2): 49–58. Mauro, Humberto, dir. 1935. Favela dos meus Amores. Favela of my Loves. Rio de Janeiro: Brasil Vita Filmes. DVD. MC Júnior and MC Leonardo. 1992. “Rap das Armas.” “Rap of Weapons”. Rio de Janeiro: Nowa Produções. Meirelles, Fernando, and Kátia Lund, dir. 2002. Cidade de Deus. São Paulo: O2 Filmes. DVD. Moisés, José Álvaro. 2003. A New Policy for Brazilian Cinema. In The New Brazilian Cinema, ed. Lúcia Nagib, 3–22. London: I.B. Tauris. Nagib, Lúcia. 2003. Death on the Beach−The Recycled Utopia of Midnight. In The New Brazilian Cinema, ed. Lúcia Nagib, 157–172. London: I.B. Tauris. Napolitano, Marcos. 2009. ‘O fantasma de um clássico’: recepção e reminiscências de Favela dos meus amores (H. Mauro, 1935). Significação 32: 137–157. Nichols-Pethick, Jonathan. 2012. TV Cops: The Contemporary American Television Police Drama. London: Routledge. Oricchio, Luiz Zanin. 2003. The sertão in the Brazilian Imaginary at the End of the Millennium. In The New Brazilian Cinema, ed. Lúcia Nagib, 139–156. London: I.B. Tauris. Padilha, José, dir. 2007. Tropa de Elite. Rio de Janeiro: Zazen Produções. DVD. Podalsky, Laura. 2011. The Politics of Affect and Emotion in Contemporary Latin American Cinema: Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, and Mexico. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Ramos, Fernão Pessoa. 2003. Humility, Guilt and Narcissism Turned Inside Out in Brazil’s Film Revival. In The New Brazilian Cinema, ed. Lúcia Nagib, 65–84. London: I.B. Tauris. Rêgo, Cacilda. 2014. Centering the Margins: The Modern Favela in the Brazilian Telenovela. In Brazil in Twenty-First Century Popular Media, ed. Naomi Pueo Wood, 91–110. Lanham: Lexington Books. Rocha, Carolina. 2014. Constructing a New National Myth in Contemporary Brazilian Film. In Brazil in Twenty-First Century Popular Media, ed. Naomi Pueo Wood, 35–52. Lanham: Lexington Books. Rodaway, Paul. 1994. Sensuous Geographies: Body, Sense and Place. London: Routledge. Salles, Walter. 2005. A Traumatised Chicken in Crossfire. In City of God in Several Voices: Brazilian Social Cinema as Action, ed. Else R.P. Vieira, 3–4. Nottingham: Critical, Cultural and Communications Press. Scarry, Elaine. 1985. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Soares, Luis Eduardo, André Batista, and Rodrigo Pimentel. 2006. Elite da Tropa. Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva. Stavans, Ilan. 2010. Introduction. In Euclides da Cunha−Backlands: The Canudos Campaign, vii–xxiv. London: Penguin Books. Thomas, Daniela, and Walter Salles, dir. 1998. O Primeiro Dia. Midnight. Paris: Haut et Court. DVD. Tuan, Yi-Fu. 1979. Landscapes of Fear. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 1990. Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values. New York: Columbia University Press. Vásquez, María Mercedez. 2014. Brazil at a Socio-cinematic Crossroads: State Intervention on Screen. In Brazil in Twenty-First Century Popular Media, ed. Naomi Pueo Wood, 113–138. Lanham: Lexington Books. Vieira, Else R.P. 2005. Introduction: Is the Camera Mightier than the Word? In City of God in Several Voices: Brazilian Social Cinema as Action, ed. Else R.P. Vieira, v–xxviii. Nottingham: Critical, Cultural and Communications Press. Yúdice, George. 2003. The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era. Durham: Duke University Press.

CHAPTER 4

Corporeal Navigation of Carceral Spaces in Northern Ireland: The Sensorial Geography of Limitation in Maze and Silent Grace

Silence or Cell? I choose cell. My words were quiet But I was not silent. I did not want the cell; It came−because I could not bare the Silence. The Silence was imitation Not truth. Incomprehensible. (Roseleen Walsh) (This poem by Roseleen Walsh, an ex-internee in Armagh Gaol, is entitled “To My Silent Church” and is quoted in Contemporary Irish Republican Prison Writing and Resistance (2007, 122–123) by Lachlan Whalen)

The representation of carceral spaces in cinema within the context of the Troubles in Northern Ireland has manifested a disposition to understand the complexities of the claustrophobic space of prisons and their connections with the outside political context. Cell confinement, no-wash protests, and hunger strikes have been the focus of the narratives of such films, offering audiences what Alison Griffiths calls a “virtual access to the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K. M. Rosa, Conflict Cinemas in Northern Ireland and Brazil, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34698-9_4

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penitentiary” consequently creating a “carceral imaginary” (2016, 1) constructed with the collection of popular culture and media references. This carceral imaginary populates the perception of prison cinema and redirects knowledge gathered from genre memory to new narratives, at times working toward a deeper understanding of themes and at others hindering the perception of novel viewpoints in narratives that challenge preconceived notions of carceral representation. Kevin Kehrwald observes that “the enclosed world of the prison provides opportunities to tell stories about the opposition between power and oppression, and the maintenance of self” (2017, 10). The uniqueness of the carceral space lies in its combination of components belonging to inside and outside spaces, that is, the creation of confined microcosm societies where the bodies of the prisoners and staff navigate emotional, sensorial, and spatial limitations while directly linked to external factors of society that dictate the context in which they perceive their lives. Cinematic representations of these spaces embody the idea that “the tight quarters force characters and audiences alike to confront vexing issues of morality, as well as issues of race, class, gender and sexuality” (10). In this chapter I look into the representation of carceral perception in Northern Ireland in cinema, focusing on two particular films, Maze (Stephen Burke 2017) and Silent Grace (Maeve Murphy 2001), while looking at how the narratives provide an embodied and sensorial portrayal of the experience of imprisonment as well as the ways the geographies of carceral space revolve around violence and oppression, contributing to political developments regarding the outside context. In this chapter, the world of the prison is seen as a site of production of meanings connected to the outside socio-political sphere where the layers of life experience construct cinematic portrayals impacted by personal perceptions and previous conceptions. In a constant state of negotiation with violence, the bodies of the prisoners and warders in the films are immersed in situations of sensorial emphasis that highlight the status of corporeal navigation as a way to convey the conflict as more than a war of dichotomies, but a complex phenomenological battle taking place in corporeal and psychological terms. I take into consideration the idea of vicarious representation of carceral spaces in the films analyzed here by observing Vivian Sobchack’s remarks that “the moving picture makes itself sensuously and sensibly manifest as the expression of experience by experience” (1992, 3). The claustrophobia as well as the emotional and physical violence virtually witnessed by the audience is put together in the films of this chapter by foregrounding the embodied existence of the characters in the

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context of the Troubles. I also intend to acknowledge the images and sounds of carceral space in a similar process as mentioned by Dominique Moran, that is, “at an intensely personal level, tracing the ways in which the individual spaces of the prison elicit and facilitate different emotional expression” (2015, 29). By looking at the perception of carceral space and how it actively shapes the experience of the body in sensorial terms, there is the possibility of comprehending the prison facility as more than a passive stage for punishment. Instead, it signifies a pulsing entity that undergoes a continuous metamorphosis, reflecting an entire system of governmental choices and national conflicts. Since the films in this chapter elevate the body as the highlight of carceral experience, I also address the narratives through Moran’s considerations of “the ways in which the experience of incarceration is inscribed corporeally upon the imprisoned body, and the embodied strategies deployed by occupants of carceral spaces” (29) to navigate such tumultuous settings. The somatic nature of the confined experience steers the films toward a particular emphasis on the resistance of the bodies regarding oppressive forces within and beyond the correctional facility. In the context of violent conflicts, the act of imprisonment has a powerful and enduring effect on members of society as it engages with issues of human rights and domination. Paula Blair observes that “imprisonment is a prominent aspect of any conflict and becomes embedded in culture and society from which further social political and psychological issues emerge” (2014, 35). Particularly in the context of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, with a massive number of arrests followed by internment in the 1970s, incarceration became a staple of uncontrolled oppression, reverberating in ways that prompted a response from society, for instance, in the form of civil rights marches and protests. In this sense, the two facilities in Northern Ireland depicted in the films of this chapter, the Maze/ Long Kesh Prison and the Armagh Gaol, demonstrate how the restraint enforced by jails across the country reflects more than just the application of the judicial system on individual bodies but the implementation of a much larger political agenda of silence and control in national terms. Michel P. Roth mentions that “the way a society treats its prisoners can tell much about its culture” and “can convey whether or not a society respects human rights” (2006, xxv). The instances of corporeal and sensorial abuse and rebellion depicted in the films demonstrate the need to look further into the issue of cellular confinement in a highly volatile political context such as the Troubles in order to understand how these representations

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highlight the restrained body and its multiple connections with the outside conflict. This idea goes in line with Kehwald’s perception that “if it’s true that you can tell a great deal about a nation by the way it treats its prisoners, it’s also true that you can tell a great deal about a society by the way it portrays its prisoners on screen” (2017, 4). The relationship between historical events and their cinematic representations is one charged with issues of memory and trauma, and in the context of the Troubles, worth revisiting in order to reassess contemporary depictions of authority and rebellion. The physical and symbolic space of the prisons carries a significant connotation in the context of contemporary conflicts since its organization, layout, and daily functioning impact the living experience of not only those who are incarcerated but also those enforcing the confinement. According to Moran: prisons are sites in which a myriad of users and things come into contact with one another in numerous, complex, planned, spontaneous and unexpected ways, and where the encounters are both embodied and multi-­ sensory (haptic, visual, acoustic, kinaesthetic, thermal and so on), and resonant of the power structures which exist both within and outwith the prison building and which shape its inhabitation. (2015, 122)

The author’s focus on how the body perceives the environment is vital to the comprehension of its role in the carceral process in the films of this chapter and the ramifications the inside events have in the context of the streets and political arena outside jail. The senses play an important role as well since the sensuous awareness of an enclosed and restricted space such as a cell are augmented by its limited intensity and establish a world vision based on these impressions. Moran also explains that “the design of a prison reflects the penal philosophy of the prevailing social system, its ideas about what is ‘for’, and what it is considered to ‘do’, and the messages about the purpose of imprisonment that it wants to communicate” (114). The physical structure of the prison facility is a determinant factor in the idea of punishment, a notion that will be highlighted in the analysis of the films in the chapter, not only in terms of its layout but the active restriction or permission of certain areas of the buildings with the intention of obstructing the daily flow of life and causing physical or psychological distress in the prisoners. These processes of spatial regulation of

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prison facilities disclose a political agenda and an inadequate handling of the issue of human rights. The unit of the cell, a space where the prisoner spends much of their time in confinement, functions as a catalyst of experience, a place that due to its restrictive nature can either be a spatial and emotional confiner or, in some instances, offer a route of escape through dreams and communications with the outside world. Irene Marti points out that the prison cell should “not be reduced to a space in the sense of a (pre-defined) container that contains people” but should be “apprehended as a formally established set of arrangements of space and (clock) time that is used and appropriated and constantly (re)arranged by individuals through their everyday practices” (2020, 127). This perception of the cell as an active space being modified by experience can be connected to Henri Lefebvre’s triad notion mentioned in earlier chapters where space is the outcome of society in progress. The perceived, conceived, and lived spheres of spatial construction are all present in the daily involvement of embodied participants in the context of imprisonment, whether they are prisoners who interact on a deeper level with the material constraints of the cell, or warders who also have contact and reshape the carceral geography of the prison building through their behavior. The portrayal of the prison cell in cinemas from different countries, but particularly in Northern Ireland in this chapter, presents the segregated space linked with the outside as the political context remains a fundamental element in the design of the incarcerated experience. The cell, according to Elisabeth Fransson and Francesca Giofrè, “is both a concrete place experienced by physical bodies and an imagined room that we meet in fiction, films” (2020, 261). A place that is historically acknowledged in prisons all over the globe has its mirror counterpart in the multiple representations across literature and cinema. This particular component of a prison has been presented with characteristics that are ingrained in the genre memory of prison films as a private space where corporeal, sensorial, and psychological boundaries are pushed. Before delving deeper into the narratives and embodied representations of the two films highlighted in this chapter, it is interesting to draw attention to a project that deals precisely with the theme of imprisonment in Northern Ireland including the two prison facilities depicted in Maze and Silent Grace. The Prisons Memory Archive (PMA)1 was created by Cahal McLaughlin from Queen’s University Belfast and is a collection of  https://prisonsmemoryarchive.com/ Accessed 25 August 2022.

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recordings with those who had in any way a participation in the histories of the Maze and Long Kesh Prison and Armagh Gaol in Northern Ireland. The videos feature a return of those participants to these spaces now in a derelict state after public closure. Ex-prisoners, warders, educators, visitors, and religious figures populate the screen with their testimonies given in the empty and disordered places that were once platforms for a political battle. Blair points out that projects like the PMA that “facilitate testimony rather than ‘official truth’ are contributing to the current reshaping of cultural production in Northern Ireland through the emergence of these once-silenced oral histories into the public sphere” (2014, 64). The varied viewpoints of the experiences in the prisons provide a multi-faceted understanding of the context without the explicit concern of pinpointing righteousness or fault to any side while also leaving the audience with a certain amount of freedom in coming to conclusions after the testimonies due to the lack of editing of the footage. As Blair observes, “individual voices are liberated from the collective narratives and ‘official histories’ that have suppressed them” (64), providing a platform for the past experiences of those who interacted with the prison spaces. These personal histories, with their unique details and circumstances described to the audience by the participants, become demonstrations of the violent intensity of the Troubles in terms of leaving such vivid marks in the memories of those who experienced the conflict. One of the feature films produced with the PMA archival material is called Inside Stories (Cahal McLaughlin 2005) and records the experiences of a Republican ex-prisoner, a loyalist ex-prisoner, a prison officer, and two educators as they revisit and tell their stories from the Maze and Long Kesh Prison. Blair observes that “the act of returning to a location in which significant events happened generates the site-reactive recollection followed by the performative memory-telling” in the four segments of thirty minutes each. The Maze and Long Kesh Prison remains as a site of contested history as the testimonies in the PMA documentary and many other narratives attest. Moran explains that the place is an “example of a carceral cultural landscape with deep political and social significance” that can be understood “as a site of embodied political practice and perception” (2015, 131). Even though the place was closed in 2000, the prison facilities remain partially in place, both the Nissan huts comprising the Long Kesh and the H-Blocks of the Maze built adjacent to it. These two locations are part of the imaginary of the Troubles not just in Northern Ireland but in global terms, as blanket and no-wash protests as well as

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hunger strikes took place in the Maze. Written and visual representations of these historical moments remain part of the legacy of the conflict that particularly explored the body as an instrument of resistance and the target of oppression. Some of the segments of Inside Stories present moments of description, and even reenactment, of intense situations involving violence, both in psychological and physical terms. The heightened sense of corporeality in the prison environment, oftentimes in the form of embodied threat, brings a traumatic side to the memories being recollected as the senses of sight, smell, sound, and touch stimulate the participants to share their impressions. The materiality of the prison triggers the sensorial journey to the past in an attempt to initiate a recognition of the ordeals once experienced in those spaces from different viewpoints. One of the segments focuses on the memories of Desi Waterworth, an ex-officer in the H-Blocks of the Maze, who visits the deserted corridors demonstrating a body language that does not translate the tense situations described by his words. His stance is rigid while “he keeps his back to the wall and blocks doorways in the way he has been trained for personal safety” (Blair 2014, 50). Even after many years away from the premises of the Maze, Waterworth’s body moves through the corridors and gates in similar ways as if the prison was still populated and active. As he comes into one of the wings, his description of the threats made toward the warders shows signs of a daily agony overcome by an equally reactive violent response from him. He says, “Forty people who wanted to kill me. […] Some people don’t understand what you’re dealing with here” followed by “If someone takes a swing at me, I’ll take a swing back. […] You want to threaten me, I’ll threaten you.”2 The atmosphere of impending violence, in this case the possibility of direct corporeal confrontation, creates a sense of inhospitality that comes across through the emphasis given by Waterworth regarding the memories of psychological pressure. He eventually interacts more actively with the surroundings by demonstrating how the gates functioned, the ways prisoners were searched, and how a door was once used to assault a warder, in a particularly distressful description of how the prisoners held a warder’s head against the door frame and slammed it. Blair observes that “spontaneous re-enactment during memory-telling is indicative of the 2  The transcriptions of the participants’ words for this section were taken from the films in the PMA project: Inside Stories (Cahal McLaughlin 2005) and Armagh Stories: Voices from the Gaol (Cahal McLaughlin 2015).

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teller’s past physical experiences” and in this case “the violent acts that occur in Waterworth’s physical memories are likely to be externalization of the psychological effects of trigger events” (51). Body and memory are prompted to respond to the materiality of space with a peculiar attention to the sounds echoing in the once dynamic space. The emptiness of the corridors and cells enhances the reverberation of the metallic sounds of the gates and the heavy footsteps of the ex-officer, revealing that the space might be deserted but the past is very much alive in people’s memories. Violence and corporeal engagement are also the focus of another segment in Inside Stories in which Gerry Kelly, an ex-Republican prisoner, is the focal point. The initial seconds of his segment depict a very interesting image: an entrance gate swings back and forth with the wind. Once the instrument of spatial constraint, an obstacle to movement, is now devoid of purpose, rusty and inoperative. A phantasmagorical material trace of domination remains as a record of the existence of such a space that houses innumerable stories that linger in the memory and imaginary of those who had any form of contact with the context. Kelly adopts a versatile attitude as they move through the Maze, and as Blair observes, he seems to be a “well-presented tour guide and his speech has the rehearsed feel of a polished political performer” (2014, 45). It is toward the end of his visit, while Kelly is inside a cell, that the past violent episodes trigger a physical reenactment from him. Describing it almost like a curious episode of his life, Kelly reenacts a moment of intense interaction with warders as he says, “They have a system, they get you down on the floor and there’s actually five warders. […] One takes your head, one takes each arm and one takes each leg and they have a system. […] The last guy gets to hold your head, so he’s holding your head down against the floor.” There is a level of detail regarding the tactics employed by the warders to corporeally restrain the prisoners, an unemotional account of the violent moment that displays a different way of coping with brutality, as if there were levels of painful memories and this one was not the most distressing recollection. His tone becomes more serious as he looks back at how he was force fed during hunger strike, characterizing it as a traumatic experience. Kelly says “They pin you down, you’re trailed up over the back of a, it’s like these beds, except with a high hospital back. So they have to straighten you like, they put the tube down and they have to open your mouth.” The hand movements become more contained and generic, the description of the corporeal constraints have a distinguished tone of pain as he focuses on his own perception of agony throughout the process. The effects on the body and

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the psychological implications of a very personal experience in the space of the cell demonstrate the role of embodied perception in contexts of conflict and how these elements structure the way memories are accessed and transmitted. Films like Inside Stories delve into “the restorative capabilities of public domain storytelling and offe[r] opportunities for the voice of the ‘other’, whomsoever that may be, to be spoken and received” (Blair, 39). Inside Stories addresses how particular memories of the Maze are explored through oral storytelling and a physical return to the contested space characterizes the testimonies as a sensorial journey facilitated by the embodied immersion in the prison facilities that, although materially abandoned, are populated by the experiences and emotions of their former occupants. Another feature film from the PMA is entitled Armagh Stories: Voices from the Gaol (Cahal McLaughlin 2015) and shows an interweaved series of walk-and-talk videos of people who somehow played a part in the history of the Armagh Gaol in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. The facility housed mainly female prisoners and was closed in 1986 when the remaining prisoners were transferred to Maghaberry Prison. Cahal McLaughlin explains that the film “is an attempt to represent the experiences of prison staff, prisoners, tutors, a solicitor, chaplain and doctor in ways that are ethically inclusive and aesthetically relevant” (2020, 1). Similarly to Inside Stories, the fifty-eight-minute film strives to provide a platform for memories to be activated by revisiting the deserted Armagh Gaol and being immersed by sensorial cues of the environment. One of the ex-prisoners, Patricia Moore, describes a distressing strip-search procedure she went through by using words and gestures that crystalize a sense of corporeal degradation as she says, “There was times I was left standing with the blood running down on the side of my leg and formed a puddle. And one of the screws actually said to me one day: ‘look at the mess that you’re making’.”3 The emphasis on taking advantage of menstruation to shame the prisoner is pointed out by Jessica Scarlata who mentions that “a central aspect of the physical and psychological torture of female prisoners involved the screws calling attention to their bodies as specifically female ones” (2014, 162). The female body in this case is not only punished for political reasons but such abuse takes a new dimension by taking advantage of certain traits to incorporate another level of maltreatment. Moore complements her description by saying that “strip searching was designed to embarrass, humiliate and degrade political prisoners” and not for 3

 The word “screw” is a derogatory term used to refer to a prison warder.

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security reasons as they were told at the time. The complexity of such an act is commented by another participant of the film, the solicitor Elizabeth Woodcraft, who criticizes it by saying, “We all know taking people’s clothes off is weakening, can be demeaning, can be shaming, all those things. So, if you’re doing it in a prison like this, then it is necessarily a political act.” Unlike other participants in the film, Woodcraft does not look at the camera person when giving her opinion but at the camera itself, establishing a different bond of testimony with the viewer. The graphic descriptions in the film point toward the embodied politics of the Armagh Gaol and the moments of domination through the use of violence catered particularly to the female body. The stories of the women in Armagh Gaol, often left behind in the grand narrative of the Troubles, survive in the memory of the participants and are recollected in the deteriorated setting of the jail. The film takes time to focus on images of decay such as broken glass on the floor, peeled paint on the walls, rust on surfaces, and overgrown plants. The prison itself, modified by the passing of time and neglect, remains part of the heritage of the conflict and the storytelling format brings to life the trauma of the past. McLaughlin observes that the stories are to be received “in a society transitioning out of violence” and interrogate “how memory, place and gender combine to suggest ways of addressing the legacy of a conflicted past in a contested present” (1). The female voice is showcased in the film, shifting the role of women during the Troubles from the private world of the home to their role in public spaces and active political participation. In terms of contemporary cinematic depictions of the Troubles, Steve McQueen’s Hunger (2008) remains a divisive representation of Bobby Sands’ passage through the Maze where he participated in protests and eventually in the hunger strike. Scarlata associates the theme of hunger with colonialism in Irish history since the years of the famine and singles out the “political act of the hunger strike” as “a central weapon in the arsenal of republican prison protests since the 1910s” (2014, 91). The author comments on the corporeality and the sensorial emphasis of the film by saying that “Hunger mines urine, excrement, food, blood, and wounds for their audio-visual potential, foregrounding the assault on multiple senses that confronted both prisoners and prison personnel inside the Blocks and offering a cinematic study of bare life” (110–111). The use of close-up shots of prison spaces, objects, and body parts, and a focus on aural perceptions and embodied reactions to violence allow the film to highlight the presence and experience of the bodies of the participants in

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the restrictive space of the prison. Emilie Pine criticizes the film for reinforcing the male-dominated narrative of the Troubles that relinquishes female stories to oblivion and the attention given to Sands’ body as a martyr. She explains that “Hunger’s representation of the prisoner’s body shifts from its meaning as a political weapon, to its appearance as an aesthetically (and sympathetically) fascinating object” (2014, 163). In Pine’s view, the narrative structure and cinematic apparatus used to capture Sands’ corporeal ordeals as he is maltreated by the warders and suffers the effect of starvation construct an imagery of victimhood, depoliticizing the act and individualizing the seemingly heroic gesture of sacrifice. On the other hand, the embodied space of the Maze Prison in Hunger is interpreted by Clive James Nwonka as a platform for criticism against imperialism as he comments that “by locating the dramatic action within the prison space where paramilitary Republicanism and Thatcherism engage, The Maze becomes a politically oppressive character in its own right” (2016, 141). This analysis assigns space with an active role in the political battle and, as Nwonka acknowledges, through an emphasis on the cinematic details and haptic imagery that appeals to the sensorial perception of the audience “the political realism of Hunger is able to transcend the barriers of conventional film form and content via the auteur’s ingrained treatment of film not as commerce but discursive art form” (147). The disputed meaning of Hunger’s narrative and visual representation of the abuses in The Maze remain as a point of ongoing discussion in a debate that raises questions regarding gender representation and the fascination or disillusionment with the body in pain in the context of the Troubles. The incarcerated bodies, their symbolic meaning, and relationship with the outside world within the violent circumstances of the Troubles have “become vessels for text” (Whalen 2007, 60) literally in terms of smuggling messages in and out of prison as well as being signifiers of a much larger issue of domination. Allen Feldman explains that “the H-Blocks became the scene for the development of dramatic biological and semantic reorganizations of the human body, secret languages, ritualized temporalities, surreal ecosystems and unique technological adaptations” (1991, 166). Learned accommodations to violent surroundings lead to the body being reconfigured as an instrument of constant response in tune with purposes that seem not only connected with individual survival but with a larger political structure. The films in this chapter highlight that a navigation of the carceral surroundings relies on the use of embodied perception of those interacting with the enclosed spaces. As Feldman observes, “the

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H-Blocks teach us that within the ecologies of violence, knowledge, representation, and cultural genesis begin and end in the body” (166). In this regard, the focus on the sensorial apparatus in filmic portrayals of carceral spaces becomes a way of apprehending the world, an entrance to a more complex phenomenon of experience in terms of depicting cultural experiences that would be otherwise enclosed in the body in the subterranean layers of personal impression. The fusion between the body and the prison spaces due to their intimate and continuous interaction demonstrates how “the margins between prison and body were submerged and erased; the cell became the extended body of the prisoners, and their bodies became their temporary prison” (Feldman, 166). In this chapter, the embodied engagement of the characters, whether prisoners or staff, will be investigated in terms of understanding the relationship between the carceral geography, its limitations, and effects on the body. The somatic nature of the prison experience will be taken into account as the performance of the bodies alter the surroundings and vice versa. The representations of the sites of oppression, the Maze and Long Kesh Prison and the Armagh Gaol, offer opportunities of multi-sensory experiences that cinematically translate to an emphasis on a filmic language that relies on visible, audible, and haptic perceptions. Issues of identity, gender representation, and political ideology become central points in Maze and Silent Grace, expressing an essential need to review and reinterpret traumatic history.

4.1   “Eyes and ears”4: Corporeal Navigation of the Carceral Geography in Maze The significance of the structure and representative value of carceral spaces inhabited during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, particularly those no longer in use, is linked to a concern with the experiential past and unheard voices. PMA’s feature film Inside Stories shows the Maze and Long Kesh Prison of the present, its abandoned premises, caved-in roofs, overgrown exteriors, and echoing corridors. The film highlights “the past-present existence of the once imposing and now impotent Maze/Long Kesh structure lingering in Northern Ireland’s physical landscape and social psychology” (Blair 2014, 39). The deserted prison facility is revived in Maze, a film that focuses on the 1983 prison escape and offers a 4  The transcriptions of the characters’ lines for this section were taken from the film Maze (Stephen Burke 2017).

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representation of the once active and tumultuous space that survives as a catalyst of pain and segregation in national memory. The prison facility itself “was first utilized as an internment camp from 1971, as a direct result of the implementation of the controversial policy of internment of paramilitary suspects without trial, and was eventually closed almost bereft of prisoners, released as a condition of the 1998 Agreement, in 2000” (McAtackney 2014, 1). Within those years and beyond, the Maze and Long Kesh Prison became a symbol of political turmoil, a site where oppression and punishment surfaced as solutions to rebellion. The body became an instrument larger than its physicality in the national imaginary, performing ideology and questioning authority in the premises of the prison and outside its walls. Laura McAtackney points out that the prison was a core part of the conflict, originating and disseminating political standings that impacted the way violence was performed both inside and outside, including “the heated debates about the constitutional legalities of internment, disputes regarding the ‘political’ status of prisoners and nature of their crimes (and indeed the conflict), the legality of Diplock court convictions, the hunger strikes of 1980–1981, the prison escape of 1983, and the brokering of peace agreements in the late 1990s” (2). The potential for meanings within the representation of such a historically charged space is the focus of this analysis of the film Maze and how it depicts the carceral geography while placing the body and the limited use of sensorial navigation within the prison environment as key tools to construct a narrative based on perception. The film Maze tells the story of the escape that involved thirty-eight prisoners in 1983 by mainly focusing on the perspective of one particular character, Larry Marley (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), a Republican prisoner who after leaving the no-wash protest starts making arrangements to break out of the Maze. The no-wash protests have been called off along with the hunger strikes which leads Marley to a clear conviction that something must be done to honor the cause and display the Republican’s will to fight back. A supporting emphasis is given to a character representing the warders, Gordon Close (Barry Ward), whose life is taken over by the violence of the conflict inside and outside the prison facility. Throughout the narrative, these two characters’ perceptions foreground the role of the embodied experience in a restrictive space that functions in direct connection with the struggles beyond the walls. At times, their sensorial impressions are represented in the film as mapping the internal geographies of emotions in the carceral space, a notion developed by Crewe et al. that I

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will later on expand in the analysis. Senses and perceptions work alongside the materiality of the prison space to result in a depiction of experience that takes into consideration the everyday social relations in a context of oppression and abuse of authority. In the film, the use of sensorial abilities, especially sight and hearing, and the conveying of such impressions to the audience through filmic language construct a carceral experience that looks inwards focusing on the individual body as the major initiator of boundary subversion within a greater political scheme (Fig. 4.1). The initial minutes of the film display a sensorial emphasis concerning the images of the past as texture and sound become the highlight of the filmic experience. Grainy aerial footage of the H-Blocks is presented in gunmetal gray tones accompanied by radio statics and information about the no-wash protest from the news. These two elements, the invoking of a haptic perception of past imagery through texture and the disembodied voices that communicate political information, compose a structure of images and sounds that differ from the traditional perception of history and attempt to immerse the viewer into a sensorial world of multiple inputs. The sequence continues with a selection of still pictures whose texture appears to be scratched and worn out, touched by the effects of time and damaged by the violent circumstances from which they refer to.

Fig. 4.1  Maze (Stephen Burke 2017). Reproduced by permission of Jane Doolan of Mammoth Films. (Image courtesy of the Irish Film Institute)

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The images are hardly comprehensible, and the silhouettes of the people and objects are discernible after certain examination from the audience. Laura U. Marks’ idea of haptic imagery, already mentioned in previous chapters, comes to mind as the stills “refuse visual plenitude” (2000, 177) and “give the impression of seeing for the first time, gradually discovering what is in the image rather than coming to the image already knowing what it is” (178). The emphasis is on placing the audience in a position where a multi-sensorial approach to the input results in a comprehension of the knowledge that is not straightforwardly presented. The images are a collection of emblematic elements from the film itself, such as a cell, a warder, a map of the layout of the H-Blocks, guards escorting a prisoner, the HMP van, and the aerial view of one H-Block in particular. The eye of the camera, unable to see the images without any distortions caused by scratches and shadows, provides an unfocused portrayal of details, one that refers to how questionable the past can be remembered. The sensorial overload of this sequence is complemented by the layered sounds that accompany the images. A compilation of audios can be heard, ranging from news delivered in multiple accents, English and Northern Irish for instance, mentioning the no-wash protests as well as the beginning and end of the hunger strike and even the famous speech by Margaret Thatcher is included as she says, “there is no such thing as political murder, political bombing or political violence. There is only criminal murder, criminal bombing and criminal violence.” What is unique about this quick oral introduction to the political context in the North is the presence of audio layers comprised of different sounds. Although mainly disembodied since the voices have no corporeal reference, the audio suggests a strong embodied presence through the superimposition of shouting voices as if including the reaction of crowds to the events being mentioned. The detached voices that cheer and protest from an unknown place seem to belong to a collective memory, a reaction to the context that echoes in erratic ways as the multiple voices surface and eventually fade into radio static. The first introduction to the main character Marley is based on the combination of his body transformation with a claustrophobic way of portraying the prison experience. A traveling shot accompanies Marley from behind as he leaves the blanket protest but instead of focusing on his entire body, only his feet and ankles are visible. His bare feet and legs are shown as he walks along the corridors of the wing, keeping up with the pace with the warder who walks ahead of him. The blanket that envelops his body sways with the walking movement as the image only captures the

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borders closer to his legs. The camera then switches sides, standing in front of Marley and walking backwards to accompany him. Despite the fact that he is moving and the camera follows him, the tight frame and low camera position establish a sense of claustrophobia as if although his body is put in motion, there is no impression of mobility. This perception continues after he takes a shower and puts on clothes officially marking the end of the blanket protest for him. His body now fully clothed is still constricted by the carceral space as the shots remain restrictive in terms of depicting the surroundings. The focus is at times on his feet again, now with shoes on, and from behind his head, emulating a POV shot that emphasizes his embodied presence and blurs the background of the image. The impression here is based on the lack of horizon as the random ambient sounds and out-of-focus surroundings lead to the perception of this sequence as an individual and sensorial experience, an inward representation of a private moment. As Marley is being transferred to another block, the prison structure is emphasized through a series of stationary shots that refer to the immobile nature of the carceral framework. The van transporting Marley departs from tall, metallic gates outlined with thick barbed wire. The film then cuts to the image of the watch tower, a symbol of surveillance and authority in prison spaces. Moran observes that the Panopticon, a structure mentioned by Michel Foucault when discussing issues of discipline, with “its central observation tower from which the peripheral cells in a circular building could be viewed, enabled constant surveillance of inmates by an unseen observer, without direct awareness of being watched” (2015, 18). The inhospitable feeling of restraint and oppression is created by the watch tower but also assisted by the presence of barbed and razor wire on the top of the walls and barred windows. The van drives by the confined alleys between the buildings, reflecting the idea of a maze. The carceral space is represented as a site of maximum control designed to make the prisoners internalize a new mode of living according to the authority’s preferences. As the narrative develops, this colorless, sterile zone composed of rules intended to foster subjugation will suffer a change as the embodied and emotional aspects of living experience alter the perception and actions of those immersed in this geography. Although the audience is exposed to the aerial imagery of the H-Blocks since the start of the film, the layout of the prison complex is unknown to the prisoners in the narrative, a fact that sets off multiple scenes of spatial exploration. This is when the eye of the camera stands for Marley’s vision and awareness of the spaces around him in an attempt to piece together

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what the Maze structure looks like. Marley navigates the prisoner’s limited carceral geography by using his sensorial ability of sight and his embodied presence in order to make sense of the architecture and organization. For instance, as Marley is being transported by van to visit his wife, he exits the vehicle and immediately looks up. This action is followed by a POV shot that scans the building walls and acknowledges the massive presence of barbed wire. A high-angle shot shows the difference between Marley, who observes the building structure, and all the other people, prisoners, and warders, who maintain their eye-level perceptions. On the way back after the visit, Marley is sitting in the van, silently counting the seconds of the ride in order to account for the distance between the buildings. The placing of his body inside the van and the perception of time function as instruments of spatial awareness in the restricted carceral context. In his cell, by candlelight, Marley starts drawing a map with the information he has already acquired. This map is the result of his embodied navigation leading to a spatial perception of the prison compound. At this point in the narrative, Marley does not receive any input from the outside world to compose the map. He only makes use of his own bodily presence and sensorial impressions as the film demonstrates his engagement with the space. The materiality and organizational routines of the wing are also the target of his attention. As Marley volunteers to work, an attitude that is initially frowned upon by his Republican prison mates since this would categorize them as ordinary prisoners and not political ones, his intention is not to concede to prison authority. His plan is connected to a geographical understanding of the H-Block structure as the Circle, the central area from where the warders control the wings, is an important element for his escape plan. While Marley mops the floor, the audience is given access to his perception of space through a series of POV shots. The film goes back and forth between Marley’s image and his restricted and hurried view of space. He observes the warder’s office, the surveillance cameras, and the alarm switch in a construction of his mental notes of what the Circle looks like and the function of each space and object. The intimate nature of the shots leads to a somatic engagement of the audience with Marley’s embodied engagement with the surroundings, highlighting the film’s emphasis on the perception of space as a result of living experience, in this case, a restricted one. This is in line with Sobchack’s idea that cinema “transposes what would otherwise be the invisible, individual, and intrasubjective privacy of direct experience as it is embodied into the visible, public, and intersubjective sociality of a language of direct embodied experience”

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(1992, 11). Marley’s particular impression is conveyed through a sequence of images that depict his spatial constraint while also giving access to his needs and objectives regarding the escape plan. His embodied presence and sensorial engagement with the surroundings are the elements that lead to an understanding of space for the purpose of his escape. The experience of interaction in the various spaces of the carceral structure, for instance, the cell, the corridor, and the Circle, demands a constant rearrangement of behavior from the prisoners. Crewe et  al. explain that: accounts of prison life consistently describe a culture of mutual distrust, fear, aggression and barely submerged violence. Often too, they explain how prisoners adapt to this environment−in men’s prisons, at least− by putting on emotional ‘masks’ or ‘fronts’ of masculine bravado which hide their vulnerabilities and deter the aggression of their peers. (2014, 57)

These two facets of behavior, the “frontstage” or the “public aspect of identity presented in social engagement” and the “backstage” or “the restoration of the interior sense of self” (Moran 2015, 30), indicate an adaptation to the patterns of violence for the prisoners. This dual differentiation between the public and private is further developed by Crewe et al. as they present the notion of “emotion zones” as spaces “which cannot be characterized either as ‘frontstage’ or ‘backstage’ domains” but that “enable the display of a wider range of feelings than elsewhere in the prison” (57). The authors give as examples of emotion zones the visiting room, classrooms and the prison chapel where the prisoners react differently since they interact with people from outside the carceral space therefore facilitating a relaxed and affectionate behavior. Crewe et al. also point out that prison staff conduct themselves in less violent ways, opting to instruct rather than forcefully command the prisoners (69). This complex view of the carceral geography allows the particular spaces of the prison building to represent mental states of imprisonment not in a homogenous way, allowing the intricacies of confined living to be explored further. In Maze, the three spaces of the cell, the corridor, and the Circle are clearly demarcated by distinct behaviors and “masks” used by the prisoners. In Marley’s case, the first night he spends in his newly transferred cell illustrates a private sphere of experience with a tumultuous dream. The film sensorially conveys his agony by depicting Marley in bed, slightly contorting his body and facial muscles while the sounds of a loud crowd

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populate the cell. The aggressive voices are louder as the seconds go by but are interrupted when Marley opens his eyes. The sounds belong to his inner world of perception since after waking up the cell is in complete silence. He gasps for air and remains in his own world with no concern with controlling his reaction or facial expression. The personal space of the cell, initially understood as the uttermost place of confinement, is for a few seconds a safe haven, a material reality away from the painful dream world. The corridor is another space of its own since the narrative places a group of Republicans and Loyalists in the same wing which remains a source of constant turmoil. This volatile atmosphere is depicted in several moments of the film but there is one sequence that shows a peculiar sensorial point of entrance to Marley’s emotional world. The audience accompanies him returning from orderly duty to his cell and crossing the corridor lined up on both sides by Loyalist prisoners. The slow motion and muffled sounds indicate a different corridor experience: it is not only a return from a day’s work back to the confinement of the cell. The film clearly demarcates through the slowing down of the embodied movements and the eyeline match with a POV shot from Marley that this is his inner world of perception. This filmic apparatus operates as an invitation for the viewer to be immersed in this intimate space of impression. From his viewpoint, the Loyalist prisoners face him with antagonistic stares, creating an unsteady and aggressive environment of impending violence. The sounds of footsteps, so emblematic of the wing corridor, are no longer there and the ambient sounds all disappear under the cover of an ominous soundtrack. In this space, the public mask must be worn, one that does not demonstrate specific emotions in order to avoid conflict. Marley reacts differently in corporeal terms when inhabiting the corridor, a place that is part of a segregated environment in the carceral geography. It is in the space of the Circle that Maze illustrates an alternate depiction of emotional zones in carceral environments, one that explores the boundaries between public and personal masks. Marley’s objective when volunteering to work is to have access to certain areas of the prison so he can obtain information and as a result, his presence in the Circle modifies the social relations between prisoners and warders. Marley gradually and purposedly changes the emotional geography of the Circle by switching from a frontstage mask to a backstage mask when he interacts with Gordon. Instead of wearing his public façade of toughness and voicing his political opinions, he retreats to a fabricated personal cover, one that leads Gordon to trust and casually sympathize with him. This is progressively

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accomplished by a series of situations, for instance, in one sequence Marley enters Gordon’s office and spots fishing gear on the warder’s desk. Marley immediately initiates a conversation in a friendly tone and manufactures a personal mask, in what would traditionally be a frontstage situation of interaction with a warder, by talking about his own experiences. Gordon leaves immediately refusing any kind of chatter. As the film progresses, Marley not only uses his backstage mask to get emotionally close to Gordon by being kind and helpful, for example, helping the warder store boxes, but also constructs a political alter ego that denies Republican values. As Marley hands boxes to Gordon and they talk about the hunger strike, a dialogue exchange illustrates that effort to crystalize a change in the emotional zone of the Circle: Gordon: Marley:

Suicide by starvation, spare me. And for what? So they wouldn’t have to do prison work? You’re doing it, aren’t you? Big deal. Worth dying for, was it? Eh, was it? [pause] No, you’re right. They were fools.

As Gordon asks Marley if it was worth dying for, the camera focuses on Marley’s facial expression in a close-up shot and he pauses for a few seconds. The sense that Marley’s fabricated personal mask is at risk and must be maintained is explored in this image. His corporeal behavior and decision to hold on to a political alter ego influence the way space is inhabited in the Circle by both him as a prisoner and Gordon as a warder. The body symbolizes the instrument of social experience in the carceral geography of the Circle and its impressions of the world around it, whether in the form of Marley maneuvering his public and personal masks or Gordon being manipulated by this process, shape the perception of incarceration. Their relationship is further developed as Marley brings him coffee and a more intimate conversation takes place. Marley’s performance of the ordinary, as he sips the coffee casually looking around with his hand in his pocket, leads to Gordon offering him a seat. Marley quickly perceives the objects around him, in this case, Gordon’s family photos, and applies a further enforcement of intimacy by inquiring after his daughter and wife. When Gordon mentions that his wife has moved out to London, Marley responds “I’m sorry to hear that” in an attempt to increase the possibility of a compassionate relationship between the two. This interaction happens in very closed quarters in Gordon’s office and it is already an indication of the changed emotion zone of the Circle from a public to a personal nature.

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The peak of this transformation is signaled by a moment when Gordon throws his office keys to Marley and says, “Guard the fort with your life.” Gordon’s action of handing the keys to Marley takes a different symbolic meaning due to the space they inhabit. Gordon is behaving in an ordinary manner, by doing something a person would casually do in a civilian context, but in the incarcerated space which carries its own set of authoritative rules. This contradiction happens because Marley has slowly shifted the emotion zone of the Circle from hostile to amicable by using his inverted mask and political alter ego with the purpose of manipulation. Crewe et al. mention that “space and place are considered determinants of social practice and personal experience, rather than as empty theatres or neutral backcloths within and against which they occur” (2014, 60). This forced modification of the emotional geography of the Circle generated by the initial notion of that space as inhospitable, depicts the use of the body and the world of impressions to shape the carceral geography and navigate the environment of animosity for the purpose of observation and escape. As previously mentioned, Crewe et al. single out the visiting room as an emotional zone due to its direct connection to the outside context and also because prisoners display unusual “forms of warmth and tenderness” (2014, 67) toward those who come to visit. It is in this space, and the home, that Maze places most of the female presence in the film. Women in the narrative are restricted to the roles of wife and daughter, having no practical involvement with prison life or the outside conflict. Although the film does not break any stereotypes in relation to the participation of women in the context of the Troubles, remaining largely a male-centered dispute, the female characters channel a criticism to the heroic imagery of sacrifice. In one particular scene, Marley receives a visit from his deceased cellmate’s wife (Elva Trill) who went on the hunger strike. They sit facing each other and as Marley says he has a message to relay to her from her husband, she bitterly tries to guess: “Yeah? What was that? Keep up the struggle, love. Don’t give in. I’m starving myself to death for Ireland.” The sharp choice of her words containing representative vocabulary of the cause is used with resentment, indicating a criticism to the act of self-­ sacrifice. The sequence starts with this disenchanted view of heroism only to be challenged by Marley’s telling of a simple yet touching personal memory of his cellmate in relation to his wife. It is an anecdote of how his cellmate first saw her and fell in love with her immediately. This romantic story injects an enchantment to the situation, one that links directly to the remembrance of the deceased hunger striker. She wipes her tears and

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Marley pledges to do something for him and the hunger strikers so they will not be forgotten. This dialogue momentarily empowers the escape plan with a sense of higher objective, but this notion is debunked by her last words: “You can’t bring him back though, can you? You can never do that.” The woman’s unsupportive attitude toward the heroics of the hunger strike and embodied self-sacrifice characterizes this as adding a disenchanted view of the sacrificial actions of the protests. The emotion zone of the visiting room facilitates a contact with the outside world, enabling this interaction and the reception of input from home, broadening the horizon beyond the public sphere of politics. The intermingling of the politics of the conflict and the home life is visible in the portrayal of Gordon’s character, including his relationship with his wife Jill (Niamh McGrady) who also calls out the heroics of male performance. One of the moments of corporeal violence in the film happens when Gordon, Jill, and their daughter Janet (Ella Connolly) are ambushed by an armed man when leaving a shopping center. The image of the gunman approaching them is familiarly connected to assassinations in the context of the Troubles, for instance, in films like Alan Clarke’s Elephant (1989) where the moment of execution is the highlight of the narrative. The turning point in Maze is that Gordon intercepts the violent act by shooting the gunman himself although no heroic outcome derives from this situation as his marriage deteriorates after the attack. That is when the spatial configuration of Gordon’s house changes and becomes more similar to a prison facility than to a home. Gates are installed inside his house that resemble the prison bars at the Maze and his family is locked in their own residence. This suburban cage signifies the convoluted fusing of public and personal spaces, altering the fabric of family life and injecting a level of threat that culminates in a conversation between Gordon and Jill that establishes her viewpoint on heroism. She insists that Gordon should quit his job but he remains certain that they should not give in to intimidation. Similarly to Marley’s cellmate’s wife, Jill bitterly brings the memory of Gordon’s deceased brother who was also a warder and died in the service. She says, “Your brother was the hero, not you, and look what happened to him.” Her criticism regarding an insistence to take part in life-threatening situations establishes her viewpoint as defying the notion of heroism even if immersed in the political context. While given the position of voicing disenchantment concerning heroism and sacrifice in Maze, the female characters are not developed beyond the roles of wife and daughter who are restricted to a supporting status and the originators of

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emotional arcs in the narrative with no direct connection to the political and practical spheres of the conflict. The outside conflict is mirrored in the corridors of the wing as the film depicts a clash between Republicans and Loyalists while the latter gather for a symbolic march on the 12th July.5 This sequence foregrounds the use of the senses and embodied presence in the carceral space as part of the navigational tools in a segregated territory. Sound is registered differently in the incarcerated context, for instance, as the scene initiates with a tracking shot of the empty corridor in silence, it is soon interrupted by a faint drumming sound. A high-angle shot directly above Marley’s bed depicts his immediate awareness of the sound that turns more rhythmic as the seconds go by. Feldman comments on the particularities of the aural of aspect in prisons: Every sound had a diacritical relation to the sounds preceding and following it. The ear of the prisoner converted the prison routine into a schema of relational sounds and corresponding actions. The slightest alteration in the routine patterning of sounds signified acts of violence. (1991, 209)

The sound of the drums, so unique in its own militarized nature, is accompanied by the image of the Loyalist prisoners taking over the corridor wearing improvised orange sashes made of paper. They march toward the Republican prisoners who are out of their cells as well and face each other off. A dialogue exchange equals the wing corridor to the streets of Northern Ireland as Kenny (Stefan Dunbar), a Loyalist prisoner, exclaims, “It’s the 12th of July and today we march where we please in our own country.” The Republican response comes from Joe (Aaron Monaghan) who says, “From here on is Republican area.” The demarcation of territory and the sense of segregation from the outside context are emulated in the constraints of the carceral geography that although distant from the actual streets and under strict control reflects the political concerns that led to the prisoners’ presence in jail. The formation of this microcosm of political embattlement between Republicans and Loyalists in the corridor 5  The 12th of July is “the most important date in the Ulster unionist calendar, involving marches by the Orange Order in celebration of William of Orange’s defeat of Jacobite forces at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Within the divided political landscape of Northern Ireland, these celebrations are, inevitably, highly controversial. While defended by unionists as traditional ‘pageant’, the events surrounding the Twelfth are nonetheless regarded by nationalists as sectarian, and ‘triumphalist’, in character” (Hill 2006, 225).

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demonstrates how their corporeal interaction constructs the environment of the prison beyond its traditional structure, acquiring a unique touch due to the specific social practices and experiences of the prisoners. The face-off turns violent as Marley instigates the fight with the hidden purpose of eventually having the Loyalists prisoners out of the wing and facilitating the escape plans. Right before the prisons engage in fighting, a momentary silence sets in as they look at each other, contrasting with the soundscape of violence that follows: the aggressive shouts, a siren, and eventually the sound of the riot officers and their batons. The uncontrolled display of violence is depicted closely, representing an immersive way of experiencing the clash. The violent physical encounter refers directly to the outside context but through the prism of Marley’s calculated use of animosity. He uses his own body and those of the Republicans, Loyalists, and warders to enact part of his escape plan and takes advantage of the deep-rooted antagonism between the parties. In his faux performance of violence, Marley manipulates the participants by navigating the carceral geography to his own benefit. After all the prisoners are locked in their cells, the film emphasizes the aural and spatial elements of the corridor that even though is unpopulated, still carries the aftereffects of violence. A slow tracking shot moving backwards depicts a half-lit corridor littered with orange sashes and an ominous soundtrack is heard alongside a disembodied voice. The voice says, “Game over, lads. You have until tomorrow to get out or one of you won’t be seeing your next birthday.” This voice without a body, with no apparent point of reference but one of the several cells, echoes in the corridor, adding to the aggressiveness of the environment. Even in its disembodied format, the warning carries a high level of corporeal pressure and corresponds to Crewe et al.’s observation that “it is this insidious sense of threat that means that most prisoners describe the atmosphere of most prisons as tense and enervating” (2014, 57). The psychological warfare leads to the Loyalist prisoners being transferred to a different wing, segregating the prison geography even further and optimizing Marley’s plan. The escape itself happens when the prisoners take over the food van that delivers the meals to the prison everyday and the process of figuring out this plan is depicted in the film places the body and spatial perception as vital elements. Marley volunteers to help unload the food from the van to have a chance to inspect the size of the vehicle. So far the van has been filmed from outside as it comes and goes inside the Maze but as Marley finds himself alone next to the van with its back doors open, he looks

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inside and the audience is privy to a POV shot of the interior of the vehicle from behind Marley. For a few seconds, the yellow interior of the van can be observed and when Marley climbs on the back, the viewer experiences being in the vehicle with Marley. He stands and observes the space, taking one step forward. The editing cuts directly to Marley reproducing the number of steps he took inside the van in a cramped room with his fellow Republicans. He uses his own corporeal impressions to calculate the number of people who can fit in the back of the van for the escape. The audience is invited to follow not only his spatial awareness but his thought process of figuring out a way to measure an area using solely his body as instrument with very little dialogue explaining the development of this idea. The narrative eventually focuses on the escape of the prisoners, but Marley decides not to take part of the outbreak. He stays behind, choosing to prioritize his family life since he has only a few years left in prison. Gordon quits his job as a warder or, in his words, “I’m granting myself parole.” They both choose the personal over the political in the end but Marley’s last words in the film are far from depoliticized. After the escape attempt, Gordon confronts Marley who says, “Ten of my friends died in this prison on hunger strike. They thought they’d broken us but now the world knows they haven’t. A debt’s been repaid to those men. I don’t expect you to understand that, Gordon.” Differently from his ideological stance earlier in the film while attempting to manipulate the emotion zone of the Circle, Marley speaks about heroism and honor when referring to the hunger strike and the recent escape and associates the memory of the recent escape with an enchanted aura of nobility. Gordon’s reply crystalizes the disintegration of the emotion zone as he says, “Prisoner Marley, in future you will address me only as Warder or Sir.” The film emphasizes this dissolution and returns to the assigned carceral geography of emotions, marking the experiential factor as an imperative in social relations in the prison. The film Maze constantly reminds the viewer of the prison’s imagery of security by means of a collage of images of varied spaces of the Maze complex that visually exude the sense of confinement and restraint. Layers of barbed and razor wire repeatedly occupy the screen, an excess of protective texture for the audience to take in. The tactile danger of such surfaces comes across the image in a static way as if waiting for a prisoner’s intervention in the form of escape to release its intended capacity. The stillness of these images recalls Inside Stories, the PMA film that shows the various eerily inactive spaces of the Maze Prison after closure. The Maze

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represents the same space in a similarly stationary way but evokes a sense of lethal capability that should not be forgotten. Although the spaces are abandoned in contemporary times, the film is a reminder of the oppressive functionality of the correctional geography of the Maze Prison. Such carceral spaces in the film are recognized by the direct experience of the bodies of prisoners and warders and their sensorial impressions, particularly through their sight and hearing. This leads to an understanding of these locations in the context of experience in a personalized way, distancing itself from the notion of prisons as simply material sites without any dynamic possibilities of interaction. Violence and animosity are constant emotions in the spectrum of the carceral geography in the film and are navigated in different ways according to the specific location, such as the cell, the corridor, and the Circle. The perception of the surroundings is manifested especially in Marley’s character whose hidden political agenda leads to a manipulation of the emotion zones, particularly in the Circle and toward Gordon. Marley’s spatial impressions, represented in cinematic ways in order to provide a sensuous association with the audience, guide the understanding of space as a collection of details generated by sensorial immersion. The political tension of the outside world is intensely linked to the social experiences of the prisoners and warders in the incarcerated environment and comes across in the narrative through issues of territorial segregation as well as the frustrated attempt to separate personal and public spaces. Female representation remains in the realm of the family and the home although some of the characters argue against the commendation of the heroics of sacrifice. Maze places the embodied and multi-­ sensory representation of interaction in the prison site as the primordial way of perceiving the inner conflict of carceral institutions in an attempt to reflect its struggles and afflictions while also identifying with the outside world. The political act of escaping can be connected with an effort to challenge the authority of the incarcerating institution and the national oppressive system by putting into question the manner and reasons why the State punishes and confines their citizens in times of conflict.

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4.2   “We’re prisoners of war. We’re looking for political status not a bloody bar of chocolate”6: Bodies, Incarcerated Spaces, and Sensorial Experience in Silent Grace To discuss the active participation of women in the political struggles of the Troubles is to disclose a historical tendency of silencing female presence in affairs other than the domestic and the personal. In the context of incarceration and embodied protests in Northern Ireland, the same is true. Lachlan Whalen remarks that “throughout Irish history prisons have been sites where identity and political legitimacy have been tested” (2007, 20) and Armagh Gaol is a fitting example of this idea on many complex levels, not just regarding the political struggle that was simultaneously happening in the Maze and the streets of Northern Ireland, but also the effort to secure a voice and place for female representation in the conflict and beyond. The restrictions of domesticity are challenged in Silent Grace as the story of paramilitary women becomes the focus of the film, sidelining the traditional male character and recognizing the rebellious potential of the female body. Ruth Barton explains that the film’s uniqueness lies in the fact that “it is the only film made in this period with female protagonists and one of the few fictions even to acknowledge the part played by female Republican prisoners in the protest, a situation mirrored in Republican discourse at the time of the hunger strikes and since” (2019, 148). Silent Grace places the body of the female characters in a patriarchal carceral system while also highlighting the dominant male ideologies of the political framework the women are inserted in. Murphy’s movie brings a sense of nonconformity as it “challenges the existing cinematic language for representing political violence and resistance in the North. The film reverses the gender dynamics of films about the prison protests, placing women at the center of the story and in the middle of the frame” (Scarlata 2014, 173). By immersing the women in the inescapability of the carceral geography, Silent Grace foregrounds how the female body behaves and grasps sensorial input away from the familiar sphere of the home during the Troubles, demonstrating the effects of violence and the ties of sisterhood in peculiar and unexplored ways in film.

6  The transcriptions of the characters’ lines for this section were taken from the film Silent Grace (Maeve Murphy 2001).

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The significance of looking closely at how Silent Grace represents the female body during incarceration, no-wash protests, and hunger strike lies in the break from the male perspective concerning decisive historical moments. The poem in this chapter’s epigraph by Roseleen Walsh is a platform for the experience of a woman under imprisonment who ponders between silence or cell, that is, the choice of being voiceless and omitted from the course of history or choosing to physically remove herself from the outside society by being restricted to a prison cell while still in possession of a belief. As the poet mentions that “The Silence was imitation,” the idea of succumbing to a prearranged set of conducts, whether in terms of fitting into a patriarchal model of living or the dominance of colonialism, removes the genuine qualities that make each reaction and experience unique. In the carceral setting, the perception of the body and space in a violent context being approached from the frame of reference of a woman confronts standard notions of prison living and interaction that derived solely from the male experience. Whalen observes that female activists−and especially female paramilitaries−doubly challenge the norms that both the state and its carceral system attempt to enforce: in the North of Ireland dissent is threatening, female dissent even more so because of its transgressive repudiation of an expected passive domesticity. (2007, 109)

As Silent Grace focuses on the living conditions of paramilitary women in Armagh Gaol during crucial moments of protest, it reinforces the need to represent female life outside the constraints of the home and the contribution of women to the shaping of political moments in the country’s history. The film approaches confinement by foregrounding the cellular experience and the corporeal challenges that come along with the violence of the surroundings and the highly embodied no-wash protest and hunger strike. The representation of the senses plays a major role in the depiction of an environment where the body endeavors to articulate a feminist and political stance. The cinematic reference to sight, hearing, touch, and smell becomes the way the carceral space is confronted and defined within the boundaries of the prison geography as well as societal constraints. The film’s initial seconds feature the alternation between two important female voices, signaling to the audience not only an emphasis on their sensorial perception of hearing but a shift regarding the gender of the participants of this Troubles narrative. The first voice to be heard is

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Margaret Thatcher’s famous speech saying, “There can be no question of political status for someone who is serving a sentence for crime” and “crime is crime is crime.” Her voice takes turns with Eileen’s (Orla Brady), a prisoner at Armagh Gaol in 1980, as the latter shouts military commands of “And march” followed by “About turn, march.” Their disembodied presence comes across through the fierceness of their intonation as these two women belong to oppositional political stances. The texture of these two voices also varies since the audience experiences different levels of intimacy caused by their impressions when hearing the audio. The viewer hears Eileen’s voice in an unmediated form, as if she was physically closer, whereas Thatcher’s voice possesses a radio effect that evokes a perception of distance, highlighting that the audio did not originate from a personal and intimate dialogue but a media event. The first image shows a close-up shot of Eileen dressed in black clothes indicating paramilitary uniform and the film deepens the chasm between the two voices by overlapping them but still leaving Thatcher’s audio in disembodied form while Eileen remains on the screen, taking possession of her words. The overlapping dialogue takes the form of a subtle struggle for the audience’s attention, reflecting an overarching issue of representation and oppression in terms of political positioning and female participation in the conflict. Scarlata comments that Silent Grace’s opening “immediately rejects the polarization that aligns men with war and women with peace and the home in troubles narratives” (2014, 175). This refusal to comply with customary traits of the stories taking place during the Troubles is achieved by prioritizing the complexity of the characters’ voices regarding their texture as well as symbolic meaning, and the sensorial perception of the audience who experiences the relationship between audio waves and the embodied filmic space. The display of militarized clothing by Eileen and her fellow prisoners also advances the idea of the active role of women in the political process. Whalen points out that for women “the paramilitary uniform’s foregrounding of the subject position of ‘soldier’ refuses the subordination to the domestic, to the unquestioned demands of the individual nuclear family on which capitalist patriarchy traditionally depends” (2007, 128). In the prison yard, Eileen pays tribute to the memory of the comrade Michael O’Sullivan, but the mourning is done through a moment of silence in military fashion, denying any display of sentimentality and including themselves as equals in the acknowledgment of male casualties in the military context. This is followed by Eileen’s embodied demarcation of

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territory as she looks up at governor Cunningham’s (Conor Mullen) office window. Her fierce gaze meets Cunningham’s eyes who retreats further into his office, being himself framed by the heavily barred window. Eileen’s defiant attitude, in displaying the paramilitary outfits and directly facing Cunningham’s remote inspection, indicates the sensorial ability of sight as a powerful instrument in the carceral daily life. David Sibley and Bettina van Hoven observe that in the prison context, “vision is important in the sense that looking at others and being looked at contribute to the formation of interpersonal relations” (2009, 201) and creates pockets of space where prisoners can act with more or less freedom of movement. Eileen not only produces her own space in terms of a female soldierly group who is active in the military framework linked to the outside world, but also as conscious prisoners in the carceral geography of the Armagh Gaol. Eileen’s introduction in the film, as she battles Thatcher’s speech and Cunningham’s gaze, positions her as corporeally present and sensorially active by engaging her militarized body, voice, and eyes with the inhibiting forces around her. The reverberation of Eileen’s militarized display in the courtyard takes form in Cunningham’s cell search for illegal items, a violent event that is indicated by the aftereffects shown in the ravaged cell space and the hurt bodies of the prisoners. The audience has only access to the soundscape of chaos and material destruction that takes over as the film, portraying a group of male riot officers descending the stairs toward the prisoners. Sounds of breaking objects, aggressive male voices, and the voices of the female prisoners protesting against the search construct an offscreen scenario of brutal treatment, not visibly accessible to the audience, perhaps as a way to point out the lack of public awareness to these situations. Through the sounds and the desperate tone of voice of the prisoners, the film conveys an atmosphere of devastation that alludes to moments in Armagh Gaol’s history when such treatment was imposed to female prisoners. In Nell McCafferty’s book The Armagh Women, descriptions of a major cell search on 7 February 1980 illuminate the corporeal violation during these procedures. Eilis O’Connor, a prisoner in Armagh, writes in a letter addressed to her relatives: Two of [the officers] and four female officers lifted me by the legs and arms and trailed me from the cell down the stairs. One of them gave me a punch in the stomach. I thought I was going to vomit and cried out. At that the

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other male officer was twisting my arm up my back. I thought he was going to break it. (1981, 27)

Such descriptions, and many others by women who were active in the context of the Troubles in McCafferty’s book, help shape the silenced experiences inside the carceral institution by highlighting their embodied presence and the impact of violence on the female body. Silent Grace represents this sentiment by providing a POV shot of Eileen and her cellmate Margaret (Cara Seymour) entering their cell after inspection. The image shows a disarray of objects and furniture as if hardly anything had been left untouched by the riot officers. The mattress, sheets, clothes, table, chair, and personal objects such as pictures are spread on the floor. The camera pans to the right and shows a picture of a child that has been torn. A two shot discloses Eileen and Margaret’s reaction as they take in the situation in a precarious state themselves: their hair is disheveled and Margaret’s nose is bleeding. The effects of the violent oppression they just suffered are clear by the state of their cell and their bodies that function as vehicles of historical testimony of the abuse. The spatial perception of incarceration in Silent Grace is particularly noticeable when the prisoners are confined to the cells for a lengthy period, with a sensorial emphasis on the elaborate composition of voices. The film provides images that accentuate the restrictive area of the cell and their lack of movement. One scene frames Margaret and Eileen from outside the cell door through the small, barred opening on top. The movement of the two characters between the two main layers of distance in this sequence, the foreground and the background, devise a spatial formula that allows the audience to experience the small size of the cell. For instance, as Margaret is close to the door, Eileen is shown in the back lying down on her bed. Soon, they switch positions and it takes Eileen four small steps to reach the door, demonstrating the limited spatial extension of the cell and the level of confinement of the prisoners. The restrained living conditions are also shaped by the distance between the prisoners’ voices and the audience. While Eileen and Margaret’s voices are clearly understood as they repeatedly ask to be let out of the cell, the remaining voices set a tone of communal indignation. Multiple voices from the other unseen cells reach the viewer with muffled tones, demanding to be released from the extreme lockdown, showing an escalation of anxiety. One of the issues stated by the prisoners is the need to empty the chamber pots, a circumstance that will later mark the beginning of the no-wash protest. The film constructs a

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collective sense of tension by uniting the multiplicity of disembodied voices that remain imprisoned and out of sight with the images of empty spaces in the prison, such as stairs, corridors, and main areas. The editing of a sequence inside Eileen and Margaret’s cell also helps in the creation of a carceral environment that is physically and psychologically demanding. A series of images of the two prisoners pacing back and forth and looking out the door opening fade into one another, demonstrating the slow passing of time and the apprehension of the circumstances. The audience has access to how time and space seem to be experienced differently in the carceral setting, especially under the threat of violence and abuse. The denial to have access to bathroom facilities charges the cell space with a punitive essence beyond the rules of lawful incarceration, displaying how the structure of the prison itself can be used as a form of oppression. The transformation of the cellular space from a place of complete institutional domination to a site of protest begins with the appropriation of its sensorial and embodied properties by the prisoners. Silent Grace represents the moment when the female prisoners enter a no-wash protest at Armagh Gaol by smearing excrement on the walls of their cells. This comes during the protracted lockdown experience as a way to claim their voice in the silencing isolation of extreme confinement. In an explicit scene, Eileen removes excrement from the chamber pot in the cell and slowly smears the wall not necessarily as a practical act of emptying the pot but as a symbol of defiance. Feldman explains the process of domination attached to the no-wash protests for the male prisoners at the Maze as he comments that “the prison regime attempted to colonize the digestive and waste elimination function of the prisoners’ bodies” (1991, 199) so this kind of protest was an attempt to reclaim authority. This discourse of body autonomy can also be applied to the prisoners at Armagh Gaol who solidify an image of politically active participants in the carceral context and beyond. The other major character in the film, Aine Quinn (Cathleen Bradley), represents another facet of corporeal appropriation of the cell space. Initially portrayed as a non-politically inclined character, Aine declares she wants to be imprisoned with the paramilitary prisoners although she is not affiliated to any group. The administration sought to unbalance the Republican prisoners by placing Aine and her rebellious nature amongst them in the effort to change the emotional geography, but as the narrative eventually shows, she becomes an asset to the community. Aine’s initial moments in the carceral space are marked by her unapologetic touch of femininity as make-up becomes a focal point of

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representation and discussion with her cellmate Geraldine (Dawn Bradfield). Applying lipstick and eyeliner and talking about hairstyles might be initially seen as stereotypical female interests, but a closer examination reveals an effort to demasculinize the bodies of the female prisoners, as if they would only be taken seriously if they adapted to masculine behavior, interests, and conversation. Narratives that deal with war and violent conflicts in general tend to classify the male viewpoint and regular interests, such as banal conversation topics and banter, as the standard through which the environment of warfare can be understood whereas female interests fall under the category of superficial and inadequate to the tension of conflict. Silent Grace breaks away from this stereotype by fleshing out characters who bring outside interests to the carceral space in order to claim their own space by retrieving and embodying identity traits and habits that do not conform to the expected genre design of prison films (Fig. 4.2). Issues of female expression are displayed in Silent Grace as the narrative shows the particular struggles of women and their attempt to manage their own legacy in the conflict. Eileen is often portrayed in serious conversations with figures of authority, such as the priest, the prison governor, and a Republican representative, in a constant battle to convince these men of the valor of female participation in the conflict. The pressure of being subordinate and compared to the male prisoners at the Maze raises questions of underrepresentation and silencing of the female experience at Armagh and the outside context. The necessity to fit in with the standards of female expressionless behavior in the carceral and political environment in order to be closer to the male model of living is demonstrated in Geraldine’s relationship with her own body. Serving the second year of a nine-year sentence, she is initially portrayed firmly into the no-wash protest in her cell. Her first encounter with Aine aims at representing a full immersion into the sense of smell as Aine’s impressions of the place are conveyed to the audience through a POV sequence that shows Geraldine casually lying in bed and pans to disclose the rest of the cell. Leftover food, walls smeared with excrement and a messy chamber pot with toilet paper constitute the visual scenario but the sensorial perception is amplified to the audience by Aine’s reaction of disgust as she wretches and vomits. The images indicate the probability of an unpleasant odor in the cell but it is through Aine’s embodied response that the sense of smell is consolidated as a somatic perception for the audience. Geraldine’s response, on the other hand, is impassionate as she does not flinch or even respond to the

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Fig. 4.2  Silent Grace (Maeve Murphy 2001). Reproduced by permission of Maeve Murphy

situation. After the two prisoners spend time getting to know one another, Aine offers her lipstick to Geraldine who shyly applies it. Alone in her cell after Aine leaves for a visitation, Geraldine smacks her lips and tastes the lipstick, touching her mouth with one finger. This corporeal assessment of femininity on her own body is interrupted when she suddenly rubs the lipstick off her lips and wraps herself with a blanket in a visual association with the Blanketmen. She immediately dismisses any connection with a possible frivolous behavior that could highlight her body as female and less capable. By trying to fit in a militarized context that is overtly masculine and that tends to connect feminine traits with weakness or powerlessness, Geraldine expresses a mode of embodied adaptation to a male perspective. The inclusion of this type of characterization in the film narrative highlights a gendered struggle within a large political struggle for

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women Republicans, addressing a subject that is hardly the focus of Troubles cinema. The expression of sisterhood, also a theme largely absent from filmic narratives of the Troubles and military conflicts in general, finds its articulation through a very unique mode of sensorial perception: the sounds of voices connected by a makeshift pipe. This particular communication system links the cells in the film and enables the prisoners to orally exchange information without control from the carceral structure. In one specific scene, Aine returns from a visit with her mother where she is given the news that her boyfriend was murdered by the PIRA. In an emotional crisis, Aine thrashes the cell and loudly screams her disaffect with the situation. From an adjacent cell, Eileen picks up the pipe and enquires after the noise, proceeding to comfort Aine by saying that she has also lost someone while in jail. Their disembodied voices are connected through the tube as they exchange experiences of corporeal violence and the feeling of impotence caused by the inability to act upon the outside world. There is no physical contact, only the reception of the voice that takes on an intimate texture as they hold the pipes close to their faces. Whereas examples of brotherhood under conditions of violence are well established in the filmic imaginary through an abundance of portrayals in the male military and warfare context, female comraderie in the face of violent situations with women as combatants and not relinquished to the roles of wives, daughters, mothers, and nurses, lacks representations that single out the unique possibilities of sisterhood under distress. Silent Grace further illustrates this by displaying the interaction between Eileen and Aine in terms of learning information about Irish history. Eileen lends Aine books and quizzes her on important historical events, aiming at a personalization of the carceral space moved by their individual interests. Eileen and Aine’s opposing personalities lead the scene toward a mixture of scholarly education and informal conversation about private matters. Eileen talks about how discipline and knowledge are imperative in one’s life while Aine wonders about other facets of life like laughing and sex. The exploration of these distinct viewpoints establishes the representation of their sisterly bond as three-dimensional, comprised of pauses, disagreements, smiles, provocation, and humor, distancing itself from a homogenous and motherly interaction among women. Their relationship in the film also highlights corporeally intimate moments of comfort as they often touch one another tenderly in situations of affliction. By affectionally touching or hugging one another without any concern of demonstrating feelings, an

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issue that most surely appears in displays of brotherhood in combat, female comradeship in the film elevates the interaction between bodies as a source of relief in violent circumstances without the constraints of male uneasiness in the prison setting. The presence of the pipe, mentioned previously as an instrument that made possible the affectionate connection between the prisoners, indicates a much larger role of autonomy in the carceral space. By creating a network of oral communication among the cells, the prisoners have the opportunity to transform sites designed for maximum oppression into spaces that fit their own conventions although still under restricted circumstances. Whalen comments on how the male prisoners at the Maze found a system to produce moonshine from inside the carceral structure. He explains that this is an “example of the subversive potential of (and the possibility of agency through) seemingly commonplace acts” (2007, 22), making it possible to retain some semblance of command over the attempts of complete subjection that the prison system entails. Whalen adds that “by its very nature the inescapable fact of imprisonment constrains the POWs; however, in exercising their will whenever possible the incarcerated Republicans reclaim a portion of themselves. Choice itself, however limited, becomes an act of rebellion” (22). Although the author comments on the situations the male prisoners went through at the Maze, the women at Armagh in the film also make use of mundane acts to challenge authority and establish their own territory in spatial and emotional ways. One example is the entertainment program “University Challenge” they host by using the pipe. The sense of community as all the prisoners join in trying to answer the quiz is palpable in the film. They are somatically connected in their minds as they have to press an imaginary buzzer to answer the question and aurally linked through their flowing voices in the pipe. Although spatially separate they strengthen their emotional sisterhood by sharing games and actively bringing knowledge and interests from the outside in order to shape the geography of their carceral spaces in their own way. It is through the pipe that Eileen speaks a few words in Gaelic, solidifying their exclusive manner of communication and separating it from carceral interference. Once again speaking about the male prisoners at the Maze, Feldman points out that “speaking Gaelic inserted the stigmatized and isolated prisoner into a historical lineage that endowed him with a crucial cultural identity, an identity that rectified his loss of self in the total institution” (1991, 215). The act of speaking Gaelic in Silent Grace, even if just a few expressions, refers to the use of language and

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sound to reaffirm a sense of command over individuality and a break from the oppressing forces that silence not only the roots of Irish expression but, in this particular case, female Irish expression. Feldman acknowledges that “sound was a crucial medium that granted the prisoners a communicative mobility and sociation capacity denied to their bodies” (215). Even though the prisoners are spatially segregated in their cellular confinement, the film represents ways that show how sensorially connected they were by speaking and listening through the pipe and how this aural display comes through to the audience in the echoing texture of their voices as they cry, sing, complain, comfort each other, and laugh over the hardships of prison life. Another form of authority subversion is displayed in the film with the no-wash protest and the augmentation of the sense of smell to the audience. By smearing their excrement on the cell walls since early scenes in the film, the prisoners create a sensorial ambience that breaks away from the rules of the carceral structure. Their choice in constructing an environment where is upsetting to the sense of smell becomes a territorial statement, one that is meant to demarcate their free will under restricted conditions. Feldman comments that “in its soiled condition the cell was no longer a unidimensional and totally transparent optical stage. The stained walls and the stench endowed the cells with a sensory opacity, resistant depth, and blackness within which the prisoners could shelter” (1991, 175). Since the sense of smell can be challenging in terms of cinematic depiction, the smellscape in the film is conveyed to the audience through reaction shots of varied characters whose physical responses gradually intensify. Aine, as previously mentioned, has a hard time adjusting to the sensorial overload of the cell space during the no-wash protest while the initial reaction of the warders who enter the cells is to plug their noses. While the prisoners are eventually depicted in a steady adaptation of living in the distressing smellscape, the outsiders represent the olfactory impact to the viewer. One warder in particular is standing guard outside the cell and says, “the smell’s making me wanna puke.” This reaction to the sensorial attack illustrates the scope of the smell coming from inside the cells and how it reverberates in the prison structure. Scarlata points out that in this circumstance, the prisoners produced “a protective force field of odor that made their presence palpable even when they were invisible behind locked doors” (2014, 118). Silent Grace accentuates this sensorial perception when toward the end of the film, Father McGarry (Rob Newman), whose presence had been of a relaxed and fraternal nature, uncomfortably

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paces back and forth Eileen’s cell with a handkerchief covering his nose. The embodied protest envelops the sensorial perception of the characters and is conveyed cinematically by the corporeal reaction to those in contact with the cell space, signaling a demarcation of territory in the restricted carceral geography of Armagh. Although the prisoners attempt to create an environment that promotes a certain status of self-rule, by controlling their cells’ smellscape and vocally interacting via the pipes, the level of violence and oppression from the carceral institution prevails in several instances. During the “University Challenge” game, the auditory perception of the audience is bombarded by three layers of sound that together construct the turbulent impression of the carceral space. As Eileen and Aine conduct the games, an image of their cell wall next to the window is singled out. An orange light flickers on the concrete wall, a visual representation that is accompanied seconds later by a chant coming from outside. This aural cue indicates the presence of two warders standing next to a bonfire drunkenly celebrating the Twelfth. In this shot, the fire burns on the foreground of the image while the warders sing in the background, their attention turned to the cells as an act of provocation. This is when the auditory texture of the film becomes a mixture of the warders’ voices with Margaret singing a folk song through the pipe and the tense soundtrack. This audio overlap, similar to the technique employed in the opening of the film, highlights the convoluted articulation of opinions and the sensorial confusion of experiencing a state of animosity while also addressing the acts of psychological aggression and the heritage of abuse linked to the celebrations of 12th July. Minutes later, the uncontrolled behavior of the warders by the bonfire is extended in the form of a violent assault toward Geraldine. Silent Grace rarely represents acts of violence being perpetrated on screen and this scene in particular has a sensorial approach to the perception of the violent act. Geraldine’s screams and Margaret’s pleas are heard through the pipe in Eileen’s cell while the physical sounds of the warder’s brutality can also be heard. The unseen body is violated and the sensorial perception of hearing, both from the prisoners and the audience, is activated as a form of putting together an impression of the violent act. The sensorial overload comprised of the prisoners’ screams, the warder’s abusive vocabulary, and the corporeal sounds of aggression contrast with Eileen’s calm tone as she prays over the pipe. The perception of incarceration has never been so concrete in the film as in this scene. Segregated by the walls of the cell and left with no other resort but the communication over the pipe,

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Eileen uses prayer as an element in common to draw in the sisterhood and provide relief under the extremely constrained situation. The prayer does not signify passivity but an instrument of coping with violence and the need for its use signals clear evidence of the oppressive confinement and abuse of human rights. Although forcibly restricted to certain spaces such as the cells and the yard for most of the film, the prisoners’ bodies inhabit spaces of in-­ betweenness when occupying the physical location of the visiting room and the more subjective sphere of the imagination. Both places are portrayed in the film as ways to rupture the boundaries of the carceral space and keep in touch with the ordinariness of outside life. Moran (2015) mentions that the liminality of the visiting room lies in the combination of elements that belong to the inside and outside, a place where prisoners and visitors have restricted encounters and soon return to their respective experiential locales. In Silent Grace, the visiting room features moments of family reunion, but the majority of these encounters demonstrate the disintegrating effects of prison life on the relationship with relatives living outside. When Aine receives her first visit from her mother, the scene has an intimate and casual tone as they talk about news from people they know until her mother mentions the death of her boyfriend, an event that causes unbalance to Aine in prison. Another visit later on in the film has an opposite atmosphere as Aine has a more politicized stance due to her integration with the Republican prisoners and refuses her mother’s pleading request to sign the document declaring she is a criminal. Both scenes demonstrate how the inside and outside experiences feed into each other and how people’s lives are affected by the carceral circumstances. Margaret is also a character whose family, in this case her daughter, suffers the impact of her incarceration. During a visit, the little girl addresses Margaret’s sister as mother which prompts Margaret to ask her sister to stop bringing her daughter to visits. What could be seen as a source of relief, the contact with the outside world and the comfort of family during visits, is problematized in Silent Grace by depicting the issues that arise from the separation that imprisonment entails. Another liminal space portrayed in the film has a distinct effect and a more abstract nature: the journey to the outside world via the prisoners’ imagination. I consider the instances in the film where the characters imagine themselves interacting outside to be semi-­ concrete places since the bodies are materialized in the scenes shown to the audience and based on details of lived experiences. Their minds are liminal spaces that produce a temporary break from the cellular

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incarceration and provide a respite from the trauma of violence. In one particular sequence, Eileen comforts Aine following Geraldine’s assault by creating a story taking place at a pub. The film fades from the cell to the representation of the fantasy where Aine is the main character in an inversion of standards of male and female portrayal. Eileen imagines Aine as a tough motorcycle rider who is in command of the pub and rides off into the sunset with a man she chooses at the bar. Eileen’s imagination and Aine’s active posture in the story place the female body in a position of agency that includes much more than breaching the carceral space but overthrowing expectations for the role of women in society. Although corporeally stationed in the cell, the two prisoners challenge the stereotypes of female representation as the audience is given access to the specific embodied situations of their imagination. The film also approaches the role of female prisoners in the hunger strike movement predominantly navigated by male prisoners at the Maze and their rejection of a subordinate position for women in the political domain and beyond. As Eileen decides to go on a hunger strike, she receives a message from outside advising her to take a supportive role. She has a meeting with an Army Council representative and claims, “we need a woman on this, we have to be seen to be equal.” Her pleas for female representation are effective and she stops taking food. The film conveys the process of embodied starvation through a montage of images, similarly to the previously mentioned sequence that portrayed the anxiety of incarceration and the notion of time slowing down. Firstly, the camera focuses on the concrete cell wall and as it pans to the left, discloses a motionless Eileen breathing in and out with her eyes wide open. This shot fades into the image of the cell window that fades into the image of the same space but with Eileen standing by the window, her restricted movements indicating the weight of confinement. The montage displays the process of waiting, and in this case, a morbid wait for the physical collapse of the body. As Eileen feels the effects of starvation on her body, her scenes are confined to the bed and she describes her physical condition with a sensorial emphasis by saying that her sight has been compromised. Her corporeal deterioration leads to her being kept in a medical ward and the portrayal of her body is done in such a way that accentuates her withering condition. These scenes represent how female prisoners also made use of their bodies as instruments of protest including the fact that their corporeal choices reached far beyond a political positioning or a jail issue. They were related to the role of women in society and the autonomy of

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decisions of an embodied nature in the traditional historical record of narratives led primarily by male experiences of oppression and abuse during the Troubles. In both films discussed in this chapter, Maze and Silent Grace, the carceral space is recreated as an active structure that brings resounding effects on the bodies of those who somehow inhabit the space, whether they are prisoners, warders, religious figures, or visitors. The impression of confinement is enhanced in the films as the images and sounds foreground the locked body and its sensorial perceptions, conducting the audience to an intimate exploration of the carceral geography of the Maze Prison and Armagh Gaol. By constructing a narrative based on spatial perception through the senses, Maze focuses on a corpographical mapping of incarceration where the body and its impressions are represented cinematically to the audience by highlighting sound as an instrument of awareness as well as by using shots that facilitate the characters’ viewpoints. This immersive approach displays the transformation of emotional geographies in the prison structure while expanding the notion that experiences are the basis of the construction of spatial perception. The film also highlights the act of challenging authority and the ties between the inside and outside contexts, how the microsociety formed behind the prison walls has a direct connection with the violence enacted on the streets and vice versa. Such details are the result of a story that relies on personal portrayals of historical moments as the body and its sensorial sensibilities reflect the struggles of those involved in the conflict. Silent Grace also emphasizes the need to look into individual stories by turning the spotlight of cinematic representations of the Troubles to the silenced voices of female prisoners. The portrayal of immediate emotional and physical pain in the confined spaces of the carceral environment is aligned with political struggles and a search for autonomy both within the jail structure and the outside context. Communication based on sensorial perception becomes a way to challenge authority as the voices spoken via the pipe that connects the cells also provide an outlet for a deeper approach to sisterhood during times of conflict. The legacy of the Troubles is challenged through the singling out of stereotypes related to femininity and the acknowledgment of the hardships of conforming to male expectations in the military environment. The carceral spaces of the Maze and Armagh Gaol are portrayed in the films as settings that prioritize embodied and intimate depictions of violent confinement, broadening the discussion of how society attempts to contain and manage prisoners within a jail structure while also taking into

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consideration their relationship with the world outside. Escape plans, no-­ wash protests, and hunger strikes are the focal points of these narratives located in Northern Ireland, expressing a need for a process of constant reassessment of embodied violence and authority abuse in the country’s history.

References Barton, Ruth. 2019. Irish Cinema in the Twenty-First Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Blair, Paula. 2014. Old Borders, New Technologies: Reframing Film and Visual Culture in Contemporary Northern Ireland. Oxford: Peter Lang. Burke, Stephen, dir. 2017. Maze. Dublin: Mammoth Films. DVD. Clarke, Alan, dir. 1989. Elephant. Belfast: BBC Northern Ireland. Aired January 25, 1989 on BBC2. Crewe, Ben, Jason Warr, Peter Bennett, and Alan Smith. 2014. The Emotional Geography of Prison Life. Theoretical Criminology 18 (1): 56–74. Feldman, Allen. 1991. Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Fransson, Elisabeth, and Francesca Giofrè. 2020. Prison Cell Spaces, Bodies and Touch. In The Prison Cell: Embodied and Everyday Spaces of Incarceration, ed. Jennifer Turner and Victoria Knight, 261–282. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Griffiths, Alison. 2016. Carceral Fantasies: Cinema and Prison in Early Twentieth-­ Century America. New York: Columbia University Press. Hill, John. 2006. Cinema and Northern Ireland: Film, Culture and Politics. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kehrwald, Kevin. 2017. Prison Movies: Cinema Behind Bars. London: Wallflower. Marks, Laura U. 2000. The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham: Duke University Press. Marti, Irene. 2020. A ‘Home or ‘a Place to Be, But Not to Live’: Arranging the Prison Cell. In The Prison Cell: Embodied and Everyday Spaces of Incarceration, ed. Jennifer Turner and Victoria Knight, 121–142. London: Palgrave Macmillan. McAtackney, Laura. 2014. An Archeology of the Troubles: The Dark Heritage of Long Kesh/Maze Prison. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McCafferty, Nell. 1981. The Armagh Women. Dublin: Co-op Books. McLaughlin, Cahal, dir. 2005. Inside Stories. Prisons Memory Archive. Accessed 25 August 2022. https://www.prisonsmemoryarchive.com/feature_films/ inside-­stories/.

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———, dir. 2015. Armagh Stories. Prisons Memory Archive. Accessed 25 August 2022. https://www.prisonsmemoryarchive.com/feature_films/armagh-­ stories/. ———. 2020. Memory, Place and Gender: Armagh Stories: Voices from the Gaol. Memory Studies 13 (4): 1–14. McQueen, Steve, dir. 2008. Hunger. London: Film4. DVD. Moran, Dominique. 2015. Carceral Geography: Spaces and Practices of Incarceration. Surrey: Ashgate. Murphy, Maeve, dir. 2001. Silent Grace. Galway: The Irish Film Board. DVD. Nwonka, Clive James. 2016. Hunger as Political Epistemology. Studies in European Cinema 13 (2): 134–148. Pine, Emilie. 2014. Body of Evidence: Performing Hunger. In Masculinity and Irish Popular Culture: Tiger’s Tales, ed. Conn Holohan and Tony Tracy, 159–170. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Roth, Mitchel P. 2006. Prison and Prison Systems: A Global Encyclopedia. Westport: Greenwood Press. Scarlata, Jessica. 2014. Rethinking Occupied Ireland: Gender and Incarceration in Contemporary Irish Film. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Sibley, David, and Bettina van Hoven. 2009. The Contamination of Personal Space: Boundary Construction in a Prison Environment. Area 41 (2, June): 198–206. Sobchack, Vivian. 1992. The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Whalen, Lachlan. 2007. Contemporary Irish Republican Prison Writing: Writing and Resistance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

CHAPTER 5

Marginalized Bodies and Violated Senses: Representations of Inhumane Confinement in Carandiru and Quase Dois Irmãos

The smell and air that predominate in the prison facilities in Brazil are indescribable, one cannot imagine it is possible to live there. (Luís Francisco Carvalho Filho) (This quote was taken from the book A Prisão (2002, 11) by Luís Francisco Carvalho Filho. It was translated by the author from Portuguese: “O cheiro e o ar que dominam as carceragens do Brasil são indescritíveis, e não se imagina que nelas é possível viver.” All the quotes from Portuguese to English in this chapter are translated by the author.)

The state of emergency in the Brazilian penitentiaries, with their gruesome living conditions and disregard for basic human rights, has prompted various literary and audiovisual representations that attempt to bring to light unheard stories and call attention to the abuses of a national carceral system that distances itself from any sort of rehabilitation process. Directly affected by the country’s history of slavery and dictatorship, the violence perpetrated in these spaces mirrors society’s own shortcomings and prejudices as racial and gender discrimination as well as class division feature heavily in the carceral experiences. Luís Francisco Carvalho Filho explains that “Brazilian prisons are unsanitary, corrupted, overcrowded, forgotten. Most of their inhabitants do not actively seek their defense rights. Millions

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of inmates live in unsuitable conditions”1 (2002, 10). Such scenario embodies a lack of visibility and expression of those who are incarcerated, highlighting the conditions of imbalance within and beyond the prison space. Karina Eugenia Fioravante highlights that the carceral environment in Brazil “contributes to the reproduction of inequality, reinforcing a troublesome culture of exclusion of impoverished social groups”2 (2011, 44). Literary works, documentaries, and films that approach the Brazilian incarcerated experience in its multiple variations of confinement and geographical regions face the task of addressing a systematic condition of violence on a national level that not only foregrounds memories of historical oppression but displays corporeal violation at its maximum. Narratives of imprisonment are inevitably inserted in this tumultuous context since “Brazil was founded under extreme and structural violence that shaped the social and political relations as well as the pattern of dominance that prevails in the country, one that condemns most of the impoverished population to pay—in a revengeful way—for the problems that are not social. The prison facilities are extensions of this historical brutality”3 (Rovai and Lima 2016, 102). The two films analyzed in this chapter, Carandiru (Hector Babenco 2003) and Quase Dois Irmãos (Almost Brothers, Lucia Murat 2004), offer representations of the Brazilian carceral system that are embedded in the environment of segregation and violence that reflects the country’s social panorama while also foregrounding abuse of power from government and military figures as one of the main denominators of the issues experienced in the jails of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The films disclose the negligence with human rights by focusing on the embodied and sensorial experiences of the inmates and their processes of dehumanization that contributes to a continuous cycle of violence inside and outside prison.

1  “As prisões brasileiras são insalubres, corrompidas, superlotadas, esquecidas. A maioria de seus habitantes não exerce o direito da defesa. Milhares de condenados cumprem penas em locais impróprios.” 2  “Sua forma corresponde às funções de uma sociedade Desigual, e o espaço carcerário contribui para a reprodução das desigualdades, reforçando uma cultura perversa de exclusão de grupos sociais empobrecidos.” 3  “O Brasil foi fundado sobre a violência extrema, estruturante, que ajudou a moldar as relações sociais e políticas, assim como o padrão de dominação que permanece no país, condenando pobres, em sua maioria, a pagar—de forma vingativa—pelos problemas que são sociais. Os presídios são extensões dessa brutalidade histórica.”

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The spaces of the correction facilities in the Brazilian films of this chapter are seen as dynamic environments that, although bound by a set of governmental rules, demonstrate a much more complex experiential scenario when looked at in detail. Doreen Massey develops the notion that spatiality can be re-imagined in a fluid way and according to three propositions. First, she acknowledges that the constantly changing configuration of identity is integral to the construction of space by observing that “we recognize space as the product of interrelations; as constituted through interactions, from the immensity of the global to the intimately tiny” (2008, 9). The space of the prison in the films is initially seen as an entity itself, a part of a supposedly rehabilitation process, but as the people who inhabit these places become the focus of the narratives, a more individualized perspective becomes available and the interconnections and relationships between them shape the environment of confinement. Second, Massey explains that there is an idea of recognition of multiple stories that together compose a layered existence of intricate paths in a given space. The author points out that “we understand space as the sphere of the possibility of the existence of multiplicity in the sense of contemporaneous plurality; as the sphere in which distinct trajectories coexist; as the sphere therefore of coexisting heterogeneity” (9). In both Carandiru and Quase Dois Irmãos, the figure of the outcast, the one who inhabits the periphery for issues of race, class, gender, or politics, becomes the focus of the films. The multitude of stories touched by violence collide in the space of the prison and portray life experiences that denounce inequality and negligence in the country. Lastly, Massey brings the proposition that space should be seen as a work in progress by avoiding a closed end to the interrelations. She refers to space as “always under construction” because it is “a product of relations-between, relations which are necessarily embedded material practices which have to be carried out, it is always in the process of being made” (9). By looking closely at the narratives, the shifting relationships in the films, the constant change in the way inmates deal with violence and establish a chain of command inside the prisons can be connected to Massey’s idea of constructing space. In addition to that, this notion of “open interactional space” that provides “connections yet to be made, juxtapositions yet to flower into interaction” (11) can also be understood in terms of an openness to look into different directions in the choice of protagonists for the films. By focusing on unheard stories and viewpoints that are rarely visible in Brazilian society, the films embrace this idea of avoiding grand narratives and giving a platform for the intricacies

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of the outcast whose story is yet to unfold. In this chapter, Massey’s interpretation of space as a product of interrelations, multiplicity, and openness will be taken into account in the filmic analysis as the highly corporeal and sensorial environment of the prisons is constructed. I intend to investigate how charged of meaning the representations of prison spaces and the sensorial experiences can be in the films by taking into consideration Laura U. Marks’ idea of “recollection-object” (2000, 77). This notion is linked to how audiovisual depictions are able to associate objects with memories, in this case, as Marks explains, “an irreducibly material object that encodes collective memories” (2000, 77). The remembrance of a variety of pasts through the image of an object on screen is capable of excavating meanings across time and space. The prison facilities portrayed in the two films, which will be presented later in this chapter, have in common a history of extreme oppression and massacre and have both been partially destroyed by controlled implosions. Their material structure of bricks and cement, iron, and glass have been the stage for the violent events as silent witnesses to the abuses. Marks observes that “as a recollection-object breaks down, through the engagement with memory, memory generates sensations in the body” (2000, 110), linking the perception of living experience and the senses, that is, highlighting the role of time and spatial awareness in terms of assigning the surroundings with a pivotal role in the memory-making process. She points out that “the memory of the senses may call forth […] histories that have been lost on route” (2000, 110). In this respect, by focusing on the sensorial experiences of the characters while being imprisoned in carceral spaces that contain memories of violence, alternative ways of understanding the traditional structures of correction facilities in Brazil may be highlighted. Marks’ notion will help take into account the forgotten stories that took place behind walls and bars that have now turned into rubble by the explosions but remain in the memories of the inhabitants of the prison spaces. The fleeting sensorial impressions of confinement and pain are represented in the films as a way to corporeally respond to the historical silence regarding the massacre and acts of violence perpetrated in these spaces. The two penitentiaries that feature in the films Carandiru and Quase Dois Irmãos, the Carandiru prison complex in São Paulo and the Ilha Grande prison in Rio de Janeiro, respectively, have a track record of violence and abuse that reverberates beyond their demolition. Carvalho Filho describes the Carandiru prison, also known as Casa de Detenção de São Paulo, as an “enclosed and Dantesque city that was globally known for its

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miserable interior and extensive collection of mutinies, escapes and episodes of chaos and violence, and above all the massacre of 111 inmates in 1992 by the Military Police”4 (2002, 44). The massacre was defined by Ismail Xavier as “true state terrorism” (2005, 104) when it took the lives of more than one hundred prisoners but no police officers, characterizing it as a one-way attack. The Ilha Grande prison, also known as Instituto Penal Cândido Mendes, was located on an island off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state and received the nickname of “Caldeirão do Diabo,” that is, “Devil’s Caldron,” due to the gruesome conditions and mistreatment of the inmates. Political prisoners were also sent to Ilha Grande prior and during the military dictatorship in Brazil (1964–1985). The Brazilian writer Graciliano Ramos5 was a prisoner there in the 1930s and so was the journalist and writer Fernando Gabeira during the 1970s (Araújo 2010, 3). Both the Carandiru and the Ilha Grande prison were partially demolished in 2002 and 1994, respectively, marking the importance of representing the stories buried under the rubble as a way of reaching out to the country’s conflicted past in order to make sense of it. Jaime Ginzburg reflects on Renato Janine Ribeiro’s explanation that the historical violence in Brazil has originated from two traumas: “the first one is associated with the historic impact of centuries of colonial exploitation, forged in a violent way, from the initial moments to the independence in the early nineteenth century. The second is connected to the cruelty inherent to slavery”6 (2012, 473). These traumatic events have shaped and defined social interrelations in the country for centuries, as aggression became a staple of interaction and disregard for impoverished classes as well as a prevalent perspective in society. The degrading state of prison facilities in Brazil and their connections to the outside world are the product of a progressive condition of indifference and oppression that those in the periphery of society have inherited from their ancestors, a condition of neglect that

4  “Cidade murada e dantesca, ficou mundialmente conhecida pela miséria de seu interior e pela extensa coleção de motins, fugas e espisódios de desmando e violência, sobretudo o massacre dos 111 presos em 1992, pela Polícia Militar.” 5  Graciliano Ramos, the author of the celebrated 1938 book Vidas Secas (Barren Lives), registered his experiences in the memoir Memórias do Cárcere (Prison Memories) published in 1953 and that was adapted into film in 1984 by Nelson Pereira dos Santos. 6  “O primeiro está associado ao impacto histórico de séculos de exploração colonial, forjada de modo violento, dos momentos iniciais à independência no início do século XIX. O segundo está vinculado à crueldade inerente à escravidão.”

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now takes place in an urbanized setting surrounded by a built-up circumstance of animosity. Cinema has tackled the issue of poverty and abuse of power in the violent setting of prison spaces in Brazil in ways that turn the spotlight in the direction of the unwanted citizens, those that have fallen through the cracks of the system and remain mostly unheard and unseen by mainstream media. One of the directors who attempts to shed light on these matters is the Argentine-Brazilian director Hector Babenco whose movies in the prison trilogy, Pixote: a lei do mais fraco (Pixote 1980), O Beijo da Mulher Aranha (Kiss of the Spider Woman 1985), and Carandiru, “develop as a sequel that establishes a connection with the evolution of human rights narratives in Latin America in the final decades of the twentieth century when a number of South American countries were still under the control of aggressive dictatorships” (Silva 2018, 72). The political context in Babenco’s films remain as a backbone of his narratives, foregrounding the setting of the prison as a space of undoing in society. Pixote follows the lives of homeless children and the first half “is set in a microcosmic detention center, a ritualized universe of authoritarian power trips and sordid sexual humiliations” (Johnson and Stam 1995, 413). The children are exposed to the carceral structure for minors that mimics that of adults, enveloping them in acts of aggression and the fostering of violence as the only plausible choice. Antônio Márcio da Silva observes that “the film explores the reality of life under a military dictatorship regime and the consequences this brought to society. It suggests that such institutions for minors are a laboratory for criminal activities, and indeed the creation of the criminals of the future” (76). Randal Johnson and Robert Stam refer to Pixote’s imprisonment of children as portraying a “school for crime” (413) and this becomes clear as the children use their bodies to re-enact, as a game, situations embedded in violence. They act out a bank robbery with guns made out of wooden boards, and at one time, they role-play a scene of torture where one of the children is bound to a chair with his hands under his knees while another child paces around, electrocuting the victim now and then. The connection with the political context is clear as Silva acknowledges by saying that “among the many acts of violence the youngsters engage with, an interrogation role-play scene they perform is a striking reference to one of the most violent practices used by the military dictators to force confessions out of political prisoners during the darkest and most violent years within the twenty-one-year Brazilian dictatorship” (77). Pixote emphasizes the interweaving of the abandonment of the

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young outcasts by the Brazilian society and the future consequences to the growth of criminality in the country as they integrate society in an atmosphere of violence. Babenco concentrates on the issue of embodied imprisonment in O Beijo da Mulher Aranha by clashing politically and non-politically inclined characters in the confined space of the prison cell. The transnational approach of the film, placing the protagonists in a carceral setting that could be anywhere in Latin America, “reflects the rise of human rights narratives that aimed to denounce State abuses perpetrated during dictatorial regimes in Latin America” (Silva 2018, 81). The references to torture are directed toward the character of Valentin, played by Raul Julia, a leftist political prisoner whose body is subjugated by the violence of those who are in command in the prison. The other main character, Molina, played by William Hurt, is a homosexual who fantasizes his way out of the prison cell through recollecting film plots. Although the aftereffects of torture are seen on Valentin’s body, Molina’s death at the end of the film remains as the most visually graphic violent act in the narrative, that is, “the State’s destruction of the queer body by its murder that is the most violent scene the audience witnesses in the film” (Silva 82). The juxtaposition of these two bodies, the hyper male politicized body and the queer outcast, expands the network of unwanted figures in the carceral system, demonstrating how violence is used to magnify political and gender divisions and silence those who defy the values of the center. Both Valentin and Molina break from the patterns of expectation in terms of ideology and behavior set by dictatorial systems that enveloped societies all over Latin America during decades. The film “discusses the relationships of power and the places of the oppressed and the oppressor, which can be that of the political prisoner as well as the queer subjects” (Silva 82). By foregrounding their bodies as in conflict with society and each other, O Beijo da Mulher Aranha constructs the restricted space of the prison cell as a reflection of a much larger intercontinental question, one that has as its roots the negligence toward basic human rights. Babenco’s following film in the prison trilogy, Carandiru, which will be the focus of analysis further in this chapter, maximizes the role of violence in the carceral space by intimately portraying a series of inmates that took part in the 1992 massacre. The underprivileged once again take central stage and are corporeally depicted at the mercy of overwhelmingly violent decisions made by State authorities.

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Documentaries about the carceral conditions in Brazil have also disclosed an isolated world kept behind walls and individualized the mass of inmates in the overcrowded context of imprisonment. The documentary entitled O Prisioneiro da Grade de Ferro (The Prisoner of the Iron Bars, Paulo Sacramento 2003) depicts the daily life of inmates in the Carandiru prison but uses a different approach to obtain footage: the prisoners themselves are responsible for portions of the shooting and capture their insider perspective. Ismail Xavier observes that “in this way, cinema does not simply register the cloistered life with its threats and dramas, but also sums up the things that go towards inventing the day-to-day, towards establishing a routine of varying practices” (2005, 105). The footage inside the prison was shot one year before the Carandiru complex was demolished, but the documentary’s stunning initial seconds portray the image of the imploded building coming back to life as the image rewinds from dust to the intact building structure. The phantasmagoric nature of this effect shows the walls reintegrating themselves from rubble to their original state as if an illusion. Drauzio Varella, a doctor who has worked in the Brazilian carceral health system including the Carandiru prison and is the author of a number of books about his experiences, describes watching the demolition: “in seconds, the pavilions swayed and buckled clumsily as if enormous hands had knocked their legs out from under them. An orange cloud of thick dust spewed from the entrails of the twisted metal and concrete monster and trailed away over the city” (2012b, 358). His comparison of the Carandiru structure with the corporeality of a defeated monster hints at the enormity of the explosion but mainly connects to the idea that the prison was an organism itself with its body now being exposed and mutilated, a reflection of the internal daily life of violence. By turning back time and portraying the Carandiru prison in its untouched format, the documentary O Prisoneiro highlights the revival of the Carandiru complex and the retrieval of memories that should be accessed regardless of the demolition of the carceral space. Xavier points out that “the incursion into day-­ to-­day life is given precedence, and the prisoners are given the word and the perspective to create a self-portrait, in contrast to the impersonal numbers and codes imposed by the institution” (106). Among many daily activities, such as the inmates making music, playing sports, studying, attending religious services, and so on, one of the most striking passages relates to a photographer called Nal who has been in prison for six years and tasked to take pictures of the inmates and their families during visiting days. The documentary switches from this gentle task to the somber

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counterpart of his profession, that of taking pictures of the inmates’ dead bodies. Nal confesses that in some cases the same inmate that was photographed with his family in the courtyard is then photographed hours later on top of a stretcher in a mutilated state. Pictures containing highly graphic embodied injuries, such as knife lacerations, bruises, and bloodied faces and bodies, are included in the documentary that abruptly swings from a peaceful situation to a deadly resolution, reflecting the rhythm of the Carandiru prison. The intimate nature of the documentary foregrounds the embodied living experience under gruesome conditions of trauma. Another documentary entitled Encarcerados (Jailed), directed by Fernando Grostein Andrade, Pedro Bial, and Claudia Calabi in 2019, also details the daily lives of the inhabitants of the Carandiru prison but interviews the warders and staff. By placing the feeling of fear as one of the main characteristics of the carceral system in Brazil, the documentary discusses the volatile climate of violence for both the prisoners and officers. One of the warders called Domingos explains that “jail is like a glass of water on top of a table with a broken leg. It can stay all day without moving but a slight push, a puff, anything, really, and it topples.”7 His vision of an unstable ambience is accompanied by the television footage of rebellions and warders being taken hostages. The moment the prisoners overpower the staff in a rebellion is equated by another officer as “an earthquake” when the ground shakes and the screaming of the inmates is deafening. The sensorial emphasis connected to the living experiences inside the prison facilities becomes the focus of the documentary as a warder named Roney describes the unforgettable sounds that have traumatized him for life: “there are sounds that will never leave my memory. The knife hitting the ribs, coming in and out, like a saw.”8 The description of a grotesque knife attack places the body and its sensorial perception as the vehicle of apprehension of the violent act, a conduit of trauma to the victim and witness. The warder Mavi highlights the sense of smell as the most poignant impression of the carceral space as he points out that “the smell of blood is strong, blood stinks too much, it stays in the nose for a

7  “Cadeia é um copo de água em cima de uma mesa com a perna quebrada. Ele pode passar o dia inteiro quietinho ali e às vezes um encostão, um soprão, qualquer coisa a mais, já virou.” 8  “Tem sons que não vão sair da minha cabeça nunca mais. Da faca batendo na costela, entrando e saindo, tipo de serra.”

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week until it’s gone.”9 The ordeal of meticulously remembering the details of the acts of violence and their aftereffects denounces the absurdity of a dehumanized daily life for both inmates and warders who are exposed to such a level of aggression inside a governmental institution. In the documentary, Drauzio Varella explains how the 1992 massacre ignited the creation of the criminal organization PCC, Primeiro Comando da Capital or First Command of the Capital, one of the largest criminal groups in Brazil. Varella observes that “the PCC appeared as a response to the massacre, to end the oppression in the carceral system and revenge the death of one hundred and eleven inmates in the massacre.”10 As the documentary informs, in 2006, the PCC was responsible for 293 attacks in the span of 6 days in the state of São Paulo where 152 people died. The PCC organized rebellions, set buses on fire, and attacked police stations, among other acts of violence. The documentary highlights the embodied domination of PCC as Varella describes the conditions of a dead body found in one of the Carandiru pavilions: “this man had a gash on the neck that started behind the neck all the way to the front, exposing the trachea and the base of the skull. Then one staff member said, ‘this is the mark of the PCC’.”11 In this case the body is being used, particularly the dead body, not only to demarcate the territory of dominance inside the jail but to create a hostile culture of fear that sends a message of extreme corporeal destructiveness to society beyond the carceral space. The significance of unearthing the memories of violence and massacre related to imprisonment is the focus of the digital archive entitled Memória Massacre Carandiru12 (Memory Massacre Carandiru) with an online collection of photographs, newspapers, documentaries, films, legal documents, and oral testimonies related to the 1992 Carandiru massacre. The concern with including neglected viewpoints of the event is observed by Marta Gouveia Rovai and Rafael de Lima as they highlight that the archive 9  “O cheiro de sangue é forte, o sangue fede demais, aquilo fica impregnado uma semana no nariz, até sair.” 10  “O PCC surgiu como repressão ao massacre, surgiu para acabar com a opressão no sistema penitenciário e vingar a morte dos cento e onze presos no massacre.” 11  “Esse rapaz tinha um corte no pescoço aqui, começava aqui atrás do pescoço e vinha até a parte anterior expunha a traquéia e a base do crânio lá em cima. E aí diz esse funcionário, ‘é a marca do PCC’.” 12  “Memória Massacre Carandiru,” Núcleo de Estudos sobre o Crime a Pena of FGV Direito SP and Associação Nacional de Direitos Humanos, Pesquisa e Pós-Graduação (Andhep), accessed July 3rd, 2022, https://www.massacrecarandiru.org.br/.

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“intends to keep alive the memories that are not confined to the past but are recollected by the present through the wounds that are still open” while also being a platform to “listen to the voices of those who could not present their versions, revealing a flawed carceral structure immersed in strategies of stigmatization and dehumanization that are still present to this day”13 (2016, 96–97). The documents containing the oral testimonies from inmates who survived the massacre and officers who were working at Carandiru form a database of historical versions, a set of living descriptions that call attention to the particularities of the event from the point of view of a witness. The archive contains pictures taken one day after the massacre by Marlene Bergamo as a visual record of the effects of violence. In one of the photographs, two inmates hold a white sheet covered in blood while another picture graphically exposes the dead bodies lined up side by side in wooden coffins, naked, with identification numbers written by pen on their skin. The importance of such embodied register as an open access collection lies in the public visibility of the process of inhuman oppression and the insistence that the past must not be kept silent since the ripples of violence can still be felt in Brazil. The two films of this chapter will be analyzed with this idea in mind, looking at the representation of the body and sensorial perception as an outlet of comprehension of the acts of violence and their continuous effects. The focus on the “painful and necessary confrontation of the collective past” (Rovai and Lima 94) portrayed in the prison films is perceptible as violence and trauma are addressed in the narratives and remain as a way to approach issues of dominance and abuse of rights embedded in Brazilian history.

13  “Pretende manter vivas memórias que não se reduzem ao passado, mas lembram ao presente que as feridas ainda estão abertas.”; “Ouvirmos as vozes daqueles que não puderam apresentar as suas versões, revelando uma estrutura prisional repleta de falhas e de estratégias de estigmatização e desumanização ainda persistentes.”

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5.1   “Rebelião no 9, tranquei, a casa é nossa!”14: The Violated Body in Carandiru’s Merciless Carceral Space Based on the memoir book written by the Brazilian doctor Drauzio Varella entitled Lockdown: inside Brazil’s most dangerous prison (2012b), in which Varella details his experiences while working as a doctor in the carceral institution, the film Carandiru discloses the uncomfortable and unsightly condition of prisons in the country by drawing the viewer into the ultra-­ intimate world of the inmates, each with a complex backstory, all culminating in the moment of massacre. María Mercedez Vásquez observes that the film “successfully managed to portray the profound discontent of contemporary Brazilian society with the inability of the State to tackle persistent social problems, in particular extreme poverty and the ‘medieval’ conditions in which many Brazilians subsist” (2014, 134). It is by addressing a variety of themes that concern social difficulties in the country, such as “gender violence, racial prejudice, HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment in prison, illiteracy and State violence” (Silva 2018, 83), that the film manages to establish a bridge between the issues experienced inside the very particular setting of the prison and the outside world of Brazilian cities. The territory of the Carandiru pavilions become a reflection of a society that mishandles peripheral citizens in a continuous context of inequality that feeds into the cycle of criminality in direct connection with the elevated number of imprisoned people and the overcrowding situation in the jails. The film’s narrative is filtered through the doctor’s (Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos) perspective who acts as a conduit to the inmates’ experiences in the carceral environment. His entrance in the prison complex provides opportunities of conversations with the prisoners during medical appointments as a way of gently assessing their personalities. Vásquez mentions that “the figure of the doctor serves to establish a mechanism whereby we can hear the inmates relate their past and express their inner feelings in the first person” (124). By constantly dealing with their corporeal constitution, since prisoners were prone to diseases while living in such unsanitary conditions, the doctor has the critical function of being an embodied point of connection in the narrative. His presence elevates the body of the 14  “Rebellion on  pavilion 9, we’re locked in, the  place is ours!” The  transcriptions of  the  characters’ lines for  this section were taken from  the  film Carandiru (Hector Babenco 2003).

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inmates as a visible and meaningful part of the carceral experience which leads to a greater impact when such bodies are ruthlessly violated during the massacre. The portrayal of the prison system in Brazil challenges any traditional representation of carceral spaces crystalized from Western countries and cinema, Carandiru being a crucial example. The classic idea of Jeremy Bentham’s “panopticon” mentioned by Michel Foucault, with the carceral units constructed around an all-seeing tower in the center, has been the foundational rationale behind prison structures worldwide and “arranges spatial units that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately” (1995, 200). This type of strict control functions when “each individual, in his place, is securely confined to a cell from which he is seen from the front by the supervisor; but the side walls prevent him from coming into contact with his companions. He is seen, but he does not see” (Foucault 200). In the Brazilian context, the overcrowding situation and inhumane living conditions in the prisons rule out the idea of the panopticon which is replaced by the formation of a powerful society within the walls where the prisoners become the rule makers of the institution. Silva points out that, as Babenco’s films have demonstrated, including Carandiru, “the panopticon is not an option in the geography of the Brazilian incarceration institutions they portray, which have conditions that disrespect many basic human rights, starting with the high levels of violence that take place within” (2018, 74). The structures of crime in the outside world impact the daily life and experiences inside the prison, with the creation of hierarchies and rules of conduct that must be adhered by both the prisoners and warders. Varella comments that there is an “unwritten penal code” inside the Carandiru prison which consists in “paying one’s debts, not informing on fellow inmates, respecting other people’s visitors, not coveting the neighbour’s wife, and exercising solidarity and altruism” (2012b, 3). These rules are part of an oral tradition, a set of conventions that helps keep a sense of social structure inside the prison. The penalty for breaking the guidelines, Varella explains, is also outlined in this set of rules since “failure to observe the above was punished with social ostracism, physical punishment and even the death penalty” (3). Carandiru vividly demonstrates the creation of a mirrored society inside the pavilions, one that generates and lives by its own laws, at times overpowering the carceral system itself. As Seu Pires (Antônio Grassi), the governor of the Carandiru prison, refers to the inmates in the film, “they are the owners of the prison,

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doctor. It doesn’t explode because they don’t want it to.”15 The interrelations among the multiple imprisoned characters construct the environment of the carceral space as a process governed by this rule of conduct that ultimately embodies violence as its core principle. The introduction of the Carandiru prison in the initial seconds of the film cinematographically evolves from a distanced view to a zoomed-in perspective. The first image is an extreme long shot of the city of São Paulo from above, an aerial view of the city that resembles a complex but contained map. A maze of buildings is interconnected by streets that resemble veins of a living organism. Slowly, the bird’s eye view starts descending on a specific location, a structure with large buildings placed in the middle of the city, the Carandiru prison. The camera then abruptly approaches this complex of buildings as if in a free fall. The audience is thrust into the location by crashing into a black hole in the middle of one of the pavilions, a blunt and violent movement in itself. After the intertitle, the screen remains black and the only sound that can be heard is the metallic clanking of the prison gates. This juxtaposition of an image that represents the prison from a distance, inserted in the daily life of the city, and the close perspective manifest a certain level of desired immersion of the viewer with the context of the carceral space. It hints at how the narrative will enforce an intimate journey by representing the ones who inhabit the place, a viewpoint from the ground level. The film quickly plunges the audience into an internal altercation but limits the field of vision by making use of the metallic door of the cells and the small window at the bottom. The sensorial ability of seeing is restricted to the viewer who needs to comprehend the spatial structure and relationships based on the images that are seen through the confined window on the door. There is no establishing shot to give an idea of location or number of people present in the scene. Initially, a communication between the inmate Moacir (Ivan de Almeida), who goes by the nickname Nego, in the pavilion corridor and two inmates inside the cell is framed in such a way that their faces occupy the entire space of the small window. When they back away from the porthole and the camera captures the situation inside the cell, still through the window on the door, the viewer can see the overcrowded state of the cell as the prisoners complain that there is not enough space to live. They push each other in a display of aggressiveness, threatening each other with knives. By initially restricting the viewer’s sensorial  “Eles são os donos da cadeia, doutor. Isso aqui só não explode porque eles não querem.”

15

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ability to contemplate the space altogether, the film illustrates the general feeling of confinement and highlights the precarious living conditions for those in jail. The sequence continues as the focus becomes the corridor populated by prisoners in a display of free movement in and out of the cells and the establishment of their own societal rules. Nego is characterized as the inmate who holds the authority and reinforces the rules of conduct. He makes an effort to settle an argument between two prisoners, Peixeira (Milhem Cortaz) and Lula (Dionísio Neto), who are on the edge of engaging in a violent confrontation. Outside jail, Peixeira killed Lula’s father and the latter prisoner is seeking revenge but learns that his own mother hired Peixeira to commit murder. While Nego tries to make sense of the details, the prison governor Seu Pires and the doctor arrive. Nego calmly explains, “good morning, Seu Pires, I apologize for the disagreement from the outside that the destiny brought to our house today.”16 He describes the prison space as their house, not part of the institution, but a place owned by the prisoners themselves. And this fact is reassured by Seu Pires’ attitude of agreement as Nego rules over the situation and settles the matter. Nego reprimands Lula’s impulsive ways by saying, “you’ve put me to shame, and on the day of the doctor’s visit,”17 demonstrating an internal relationship dynamic, almost mirroring a family affiliation, with Nego acting as the figure of the strict father. This sequence continues by Nego alerting the other inmates that there is a knife missing from his kitchen, a utensil frequently used in the carceral space by the prisoners for violent purposes, as well as asking the culprit to voluntarily throw it out of the cell. But before that, he asks a favor to Seu Pires and the doctor by saying, “I’m going to ask our visitors to turn around since there’s a shy crook here.”18 Both characters, categorized as visitors in the place they work at, abide by Nego’s rules, indicating the level of acceptance of the unspoken law and the hierarchical rank among the prisoners. Although the situation is resolved without resorting to violence, Varella mentions in Lockdown that “when the inmates were settling matters among themselves and a group decided to finish someone off, the warders had orders not to 16  “Bom dia, Seu Pires. Eu peço desculpa pela desavença da rua que hoje o destino deu de trazer aqui pra dentro da nossa casa.” 17  “Muito me envergonha essa atitude, no dia que o doutor vem visitar nós aqui.” 18  “Eu vou pedir pras nossas visitas o favor de virar de costas porque tem ladrão envergonhado aqui.”

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interfere. Those who had to lie would die. They couldn’t intervene, as they worked unarmed” (2012b, 130). This scenario is represented in the film as the staff remain detached from internal decisions, losing cell ownership and proving the high level of autonomy within the Carandiru community. The issue of overcrowding is further developed as Seu Pires takes the doctor to the “yellow wing,” a name derived from the sickly skin color of its inhabitants. Seu Pires classifies the place as “a jail within a jail”19 since the inmates are kept there for their own safety against revengeful acts from other inmates. He explains that they are “professional assassins, rapists, informants, indebted people” and that the “prisoners never forgive”20 in Carandiru. Space is once again visually created in the film through the restriction of the sensorial ability to see. Seu Pires and the doctor walk in a dark corridor and open the porthole on the cell door. Their faces are framed as looking inside the small square that barely encompasses the two together. The editing cuts to inside the badly lit cell, a single source of light coming from a small window in the back. There is enough light only to recognize parts of the inmates as some of them remain seated and others standing up, a representation of an overcrowded cell. Motionless, silent, unresponsive, the prisoners seem paralyzed by the extreme conditions of living. The doctor questions the lack of sun and the presence of mold, creating a spatial awareness that is based on his perception of an undesirable environment. Varella, in Lockdown, describes a similar place for unwanted prisoners in pavilion four called “the dungeon” where “the cell windows were sealed with a sheet of iron with tiny holes in it, stopping light from coming in. Due to the lack of ventilation, there was a strong stench of people crowded together and a phantasmagorical fog of cigarette smoke hung in the cell” (2012b, 19). The description of acute sensorial connection with the inhospitable elements of the cell space calls attention to how profoundly embodied the experience of interaction in a carceral environment can be. In his book Carcereiros, Varella draws a comparison between a cell in Carandiru and a description of hell provided by James Joyce in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Hell is a strait and dark and foul smelling prison, an abode of demons and lost souls, filled with fire and smoke. […] There, by reason of the great  “Isso aqui é uma cadeia dentro da cadeia.”  “Justiceiros, estuprador, dedo duro, gente com dívida.”; “Presos não perdoam.”

19 20

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number of the damned, the prisoners are heaped together in their awful prison, the walls of which are said to be four thousand miles thick: and the damned are so utterly bound and helpless that […] they are not even able to remove from the eye a worm that gnaws it. (2004, 105)

Joyce characterizes hell as a prison and singles out corporeal immobility as a kind of punishment and result of the overpopulated mingling of bodies. Varella draws a connection by saying that “if it were not for the fire and the thickness of the walls, the description would fit like a glove for the overcrowded jails in the districts and prisons of the 1990s, a situation that still persists in many of them. There were so many locked up in these unsanitary cubicles that there was no space for everybody to lie down at the same time”21 (2012a, 128). The film Carandiru visually alludes to a paralysis of the body and the construction of an environment that is an unpleasant sensorial overload. Not only this description of an overpopulated and precarious cell can be associated with Joyce’s hell, but it can also be connected to the abuses enforced during the slavery period in Brazilian history. The calabouços (dungeons) were gruesome places inside carceral institutions during the nineteenth century that “housed slaves that had escaped and were turned in by their owners to the public authorities to be locked away or whipped”22 (Carvalho Filho 2002, 39). The French painter Jean-Baptiste Debret captured the ordeals of the slaves in his lithographs during a journey to Brazil and describes the calabouços as abusive and unsanitary spaces, designed for extreme punishment and humiliation23 (1835, 179). There are visual and thematic echoes between the context of slavery and the inhumane imprisonment in Brazil that range from the disrespect for the physical and psychological well-being of those inhabiting the carceral spaces to the oppression and careless disregard for issues of freedom and justice.

21  “Não fossem o fogo e a espessura das paredes, a descrição cairia como uma luva para os xadrezes superlotados dos distritos e das cadeiras dos anos 1990, situação que ainda persiste em muitas delas. Tantos eram trancafiados nesses cubículos insalubres que não havia espaço para deitar ao mesmo tempo.” 22  “abrigar escravos fugitivos e entregues pelos proprietários à autoridade pública, em depósito, ou para que recebessem a pena de açoite.” 23  Debret mentions that after multiple instances of public whipping, the slaves were returned to the calabouços for the sadistic ritual of pouring spicy vinegar on the wounds. Many died of tetanus infection due to unsanitary conditions.

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Carandiru constructs the prison space based on the multiplicity of its inhabitants and their numerous criminal stories of violence. The doctor and his medical consultations provide opportunities for an exchange of life experiences, a moment of personal storytelling that fleshes out the particular traits of several characters. Massey’s proposition that “without space, no multiplicity; without multiplicity, no space” (2008, 9) remains valid in the film that highlights the plurality of the population in the Brazilian carceral system as a reflection of the country’s society. As the doctor tests the prisoners for HIV, he listens to the individual stories in a sequence that creates a catalogue of personal experiences. A transvestite speaks about affectionate relationships inside the prison: “I listen, give advice and a little tenderness, hold them tight. And then they always give us something in return, you know doctor, a pack of cigarettes, some candy, a slice of cheese. There are too many men locked up in here, doctor, without our feminine support.”24 Another story offers a sharp contrast to the previous one: “I’m an addict and a dealer. In my business, if a guy doesn’t pay up, I can’t take what I sold back. The bastard has already smoked it, snorted it. Who knows? I take whatever he’s got, and if he’s got nothing, I kill him.”25 The inmates face the camera when they speak, explaining their motives and trajectories as the film offers a platform for the underdogs to voice their life experiences. As Massey proposes, the narrative of encounters should not be limited to the exploration of classic figures seen for too long as the universal story of humankind (10) but should offer opportunities for the plural voices to express themselves. Carandiru deepens this portrayal by weaving a thread of flashbacks in its narrative that detail the inmates’ lives outside the carceral space and prior to their imprisonment. Fiovarante explains that in the film, the prisoners’ “daily life in the outside is an element that influences and interferes in the construction of spatiality experienced by the characters, meddling with their position of

24  “Eu escuto, dou conselho, faço carinho, ponho no colo. Aí depois eles sempre fazem um agrado pra nós, sabe doutor, assim um maço de cigarro, um docinho, um pedaço de queijo. Sabe doutor, é muito homem fechado aqui, sabe, sem aquela nossa coisa feminina de dar apoio.” 25  “Eu sou viciado e traficante. No meu negócio, se um cara não paga, eu não posso pegar o que eu vendi pra ele. O desgraçado já fumou, já cheirou. Vai saber? Eu pego tudo que ele tiver, se não tiver nada, eu mato ele.”

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greater or less power inside the prison”26 (2011, 45). The flashbacks that vary from moments of happiness with family and friends to point-blank murders not only explain the position of the inmates in the hierarchy of the prison according to the ruthlessness of their acts but shape their main characteristics in the eyes of the audience who receives more backstory information and is able to have a more detailed understanding of their motives and inclinations. Space is then constructed based on prior affiliations and types of crime mentioned in the conversations and flashbacks, for instance, a rapist is violated and ostracized by the general group of inmates. The sensorial engagement of the audience with the daily life of the prisoners is augmented by the doctor’s presence and voyeuristic tendencies. In one sequence, the doctor leaves his office late at night on his own and walks the silent and shadowy corridors. The shadows of the cell bars cover the floor of the corridor, indicating the expansion of the confined space even to this transitory passage. He looks around, taking in the details of the place until a sound calls his attention. It is a convoluted sound, as if several things were happening simultaneously: some voices speak, others laugh and scream, overlapping one another. He approaches a door cell, slowly opens the circular porthole and looks inside. The audience is given access to what he sees and the tangle of voices is demystified by showing a total of seven small television sets spread all over a cramped cell. The prisoners are sitting or lying down on their beds, each watching a different channel on the tv while the cacophony of sounds creates a messy sensorial environment. The close-up of the doctor’s eyes carefully looking through the porthole ignites a voyeuristic feeling. Vásquez explains that in the film itself, there is an explicit link in the doctor’s inner thoughts between the prison and the movies that the doctor used to watch at the cinema when he was a child. At one point, the doctor says that his feelings when crossing the detention center’s door are similar to the ones he felt when going to the cinema. And we actually see him peeping through the cell’s holes. (2014, 123)

The close-up shot of the doctor’s eye shows the flickering of the lights coming from the tv screens, almost like a film projector. The exhilaration 26  “Suas vivências cotidianas da exterioridade é um elemento que influencia e interfere na construção da espacialidade vivenciada pelos personagens, interferindo até mesmo em sua posição de maior ou menor poder no cárcere.”

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and sensorial empathy of watching other people’s private life in film is evoked in this sequence since the doctor’s own voyeuristic desire is linked to the audience’s experience of witnessing moments of disclosure of such a segregated and practically unknown place by designated social classes in Brazil. Vásquez points out that the viewer “can also peep through the hole of the cinema screen in a sort of mise en abyme operation and assume the doctor’s position.” (123). By immersing the audience into a sensorial moment of intense observance that relies on sight and hearing as conduits of experience, the film brings a level of connection with the incarcerated bodies in terms of recognizing their existence and living conditions that expresses a commitment with inclusion and visibility. The film provides access to the cells and represents some of these spaces as extensions of the prisoners’ homes that emulate a sense of normalcy through decorative choices. The issue of personal space in the carceral environment is raised by Dominique Moran who explains that “this quotidian lack of privacy can include forced exposure (such as in communal showers); forced spectatorship (exposure to others’ lack of privacy), and violation of collective privacy (through imposed and exposed intimacies)” (2015, 31–32). In Carandiru, cells that are inhabited by a great number of inmates subject them to all three types of exposure, making it more susceptible to an ambiance of animosity and prompting violent behaviors. Varella in Lockdown describes that “privacy in bed was obtained with colourful curtains that slid along wires attached to the bunk above or the ceiling itself” (2012b, 38) and that “in particularly well cared for cells, the little curtains, embroidered rugs, patchwork quilts and saints gave them the feel of a house in the country” (42). These cases are represented in the film, for instance, in Ezequiel’s (Lázaro Ramos) cell which is decorated with the theme of surfing. The back wall is artistically painted with a gigantic wave and coconut trees while Ezequiel pretends to surf on a surfboard balancing on top of two stools. His bleached hair and rock music add to the tropical ambience and establishes the cell as a space connected to his own personality. Another example from the film is Lady Di (Rodrigo Santoro) and Sem Chance’s (Gero Camilo) cell. Lady Di, a transvestite, marries Sem Chance inside the jail and their communal cell is the closest to Varella’s description. Carefully cutout pictures of celebrities on the walls, a record player, an embroidered lamp, delicate curtains with flower patterns, pink bed linen, and cushions adorn their cell, giving it a homelike appearance. Richard E. Wener observes that the “primary territories” in jail are the ones “clearly designated and owned” by the prisoners. He

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explains that “the space in a jail or prison that most closely resembles the bedroom is the cell, but there are important differences. Because this place is likely to be shared, and because staff always have the ability to view in and enter, inmates’ means of controlling access and personalization is limited no matter how much time they spend there” (2012, 125). Although this is only partially true in Carandiru, since the inmates are the ones who have a more decisive power in terms of controlling the movement in and out of the cells, the massacre at the end of the film rules out the idea of a private space. In the case of Lady Di and Sem Chance, the police officer gains access to the pavilion and abruptly enters their cell but decides not to shoot. The two inmates are holding each other in bed and later on Lady Di undoubtably affirms that their intimate relationship and love, reflected in their decorated sanctuary, saved their lives (Fig. 5.1). Prior to the massacre, the film portrays extreme acts of embodied violence among the inmates that establish the space of Carandiru prison as a territory governed by the internal unspoken rules. The narrative makes it

Fig. 5.1  Still from Carandiru (Hector Babenco 2003) appears courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics Inc

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clear that killing without permission from the commanders is punishable with death. And this is the case with the inmate Zico (Wagner Moura) who pours boiling water on his friend Deusdete (Caio Blat) after a hallucinatory episode triggered by drug abuse. In the sequence that portrays Zico’s assassination, three inmates hold him and cover his head and bare torso with a white pillowcase while the other prisoners take turns stabbing him. His body is denied any sort of identification in the moment of his death except for his shrieking cries and the sound of the knives ripping through his flesh. This is staged in the form of a veiled murder as if part of a secretive and internal geography, part of a society that is off limits to the outside world. The only inmate who is not able to stab Zico is Peixeira, a seasoned killer, as he uncovers the victim’s face and freezes with the knife close to his body. Fioravante explains that “these punishing practices that happen among prisoners clearly demonstrate that the prison space is before everything constructed by the people who live in it, as the official administration is in a peripheral position”27 (2011, 47). This dynamic space is shaped by the interrelations among the prisoners, following Massey’s proposition of the interactional nature of spatiality. Zico’s body is examined by the doctor and the scene depicts a grotesque view of corporeal violation. His bare chest shows all the knife punctures and the bloodied sheet covers the rest of his body as he sits lifeless in the corner of the laundry room. The exposure of his cuts highlights how the body becomes the vehicle through which an internal justice system functions, a punitive outlet to keep power structures intact after unruly attitudes from certain prisoners. The aftermath of the violence enacted to the body or the hesitation to practice such an act becomes the focus of the narrative as Carandiru relies on the representation of the psychological toll of aggression. A nightmare sequence demonstrates Peixeira’s anguish as he processes the feeling of guilt for having taken people’s lives in his journey as a killer. A bloodied hand knocks on a metallic door and the sound echoes much louder and for longer than usual. As the door opens, Zico stands there with his punctured torso and behind him stands Deusdete, crying with a stocking over his head, in a constant state of suffering. Peixeira stares at both dead inmates and enquires after spiritual matters, that is, if they have come across the figure of God in heaven. Peixeira then proceeds to hug 27  “Essas práticas de punição ocorridas entre detentos demonstram, claramente, que a espacialidade do cárcere é antes de tudo construída a partir dos sujeitos que a vivenciam, estando a administração em posição periférica.”

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Zico’s ghost and as he steps back, Zico’s knife wounds transfer to Peixeira’s body. Blood drips profusely from his wounds and as he touches his torso, his hands become red which triggers a crying outburst. Peixeira wakes up from the nightmare and eventually seeks religion to soothe his conscience. Guilt for past aggression is turned into a corporeal reaction for Peixeira whose body adorned with tattoos is, after his religious conversion, covered by a buttoned-up shirt that signals his distancing from the world of crime. His embodied transformation is prompted initially by his conscience and the punitive nature of his nightmare while his death during the massacre is augmented by the disenchanted depiction of the bullets staining his white shirt with blood when he passively stands still with his arms wide open, ready to receive the shots from the police officers. The sequence could be interpreted as a redeeming act from Peixeira were it not for a wider shot that depicts six more bodies beneath him, carelessly piled up on top of each other, contextualizing his death not as an individual sacrifice but as part of the wider massacre. The last and most pivotal part of the film, the massacre sequence, highlights the extreme abuse of rights and the uncontrolled use of violence by authorities in a montage of scenes that reinforce the fragility of the outcast bodies and the immersion into a sensorial world of horror. In the film, the police officers forcefully enter the Carandiru prison because the prisoners start a rebellion in pavilion nine after an internal fight. A large group of inmates removes the warders from the premises and start setting fires and throwing furniture out of the cell windows in a chaotic and turbulent process. As the military police officers gather in front of the main gate, they stand in formation in full riot gear. The soundscape becomes a significant aspect of the apprehension of the upcoming violent moment when they rhythmically start hitting their shields, stomping their feet, and loudly vocalizing short sounds in a military fashion, as part of a process of aural intimidation. Seu Pires’ voice, intensified by the megaphone, tries to sooth the situation by asking the prisoners to return to their cells. This is when the audience is given access not to individualized faces but to disembodied voices of inmates who claim their rights, a representation of the countless numbers of people suffering abuses in the Brazilian carceral system. Framed in a long shot, they shout their demands from the cell windows: justice for people who have been forgotten by the system but remain in prison and improvement of living conditions. White sheets hanging from the windows request the acknowledgment of the law and the pursuit of human rights. When Seu Pires asks them to surrender their weapons, the

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film provides multiple sounds of falling metallic knives as the prisoners dispose of them out the windows. The sound continues for seconds to demonstrate the thorough disarmament which is complemented by the white flags being hoisted from the windows. The film’s sensorial immersion through the use of sound subverts the expectation of clanking metal which is usually associated with a violent attempt. Here the lengthy period of time as the knives fall from the windows is an act of truce which is utterly violated by the military police as they enter the pavilion regardless of the reconciliatory step. The portrayal of the violence enacted by the military police as they invade the prison is graphically represented in the film in a display of power abuse that “is crucial regarding the violations of human rights that were committed” (Silva 2018, 87). As the officers go up the stairs, the prisoners run into the cells and close the doors. A few inmates do not manage to enter the cells and remain in the corridor littered with rubble and fire while the incessant screaming and desperation intensifies. The officers spot the unarmed prisoners out of the cells and shoot them point-blank range. The editing goes back and forth between a close-up of the bodies being hit and the military police incessantly discharging their automatic weapons. The bodies fall one by one on top of each other, the sound of the shots inundating the senses. In another corridor, the prisoners run away from the direction of the police but are mercilessly shot in the back by the officers. This time the injuries are shown in a tighter close-up, the ceaseless soundscape of bullets continues although the bodies are all on the floor. The deliberate excess of aggression by the military police indicates the positioning of the film in constructing the decision from the authorities to invade as a tyrannical act, one that aimed at suppressing the voices from the Carandiru prison. The sadism of the massacre is encapsulated in the scene where an officer enters a cell and indiscriminately shoots with his machine gun. The aftermath is revealed as several bodies are hit except for Ezequiel who survives while hiding behind a sofa. He slowly rises and faces the officer who says, “You’re going to live to tell the tale,”28 exiting the cell. Six seconds later, the officer returns, cynically exclaims “I’ve changed my mind”29 and shoots Ezequiel multiple times in a spraying motion. What is significant about this scene is that as the police officer shoots Ezequiel in a close-up, he points his gun toward the camera and the  “Você vai ficar vivo pra contar a história.”  “Mudei de ideia.”

28 29

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flashes of the gun muzzle assault the viewer’s perception. By shooting in the direction of the audience, the film constructs a participatory perspective that claims that such massacre determined and enacted by the authorities is an assault concerning the whole population, not only Ezequiel, and should fundamentally be part of a wider discussion regarding human rights in Brazil. The attempt to exterminate the witnesses of violence, exemplified in the cruel dialogue of the police officer, also hints at the issue of different versions of history, that of the survivors and the mainstream media, and the importance of keeping alive the complex memory of a place that although demolished, does not belong to the past. One of the most sensorial and entrancing sequences of the massacre happens when the inmates are shown in a state of madness as the level of violence reaches its peak. The scene starts with a prisoner rubbing his face covered in blood. With an unbalanced posture and disconcerted look, he walks backwards with his hands in the air as if surrendering. There is no police officer present which clearly demonstrates the level of trauma caused by the extreme aggression. As he enters a cell, the lighting comes from the background in an unusual way, through bullet holes on the window. The space of the cell is barely recognizable as the several beams of light are the only source of luminosity. An inmate stands there, paralyzed, while another prisoner, with his clothes soiled with blood and apparently unable to see, touches the wall as he tries to find his way around. The space of corridor, lit up from behind, turns all the prisoners’ bodies into silhouettes. One inmate attempts to run away and slams himself against the tall iron gate, gets shot and stays there, with his hands clutching the bars, causing his body to hang almost as if crucified. Behind him, another prisoner frenetically runs from left to right in the corridor, endlessly smashing his body against the cell doors. Smoke fills the entire space of the cells and corridor accompanied by a dramatic soundtrack and disembodied screams in the background that seem to come from the very core of the Carandiru prison. There is a certain theatricality in this sequence that highlights the Dantesque ambience during the massacre in contrast with the more realistic take of previous scenes. It adopts the concept of looking into the immersive perception of the massacre by relying on the fragmentation of facts and images. The coherence of the narrative flow is replaced by the activation of the viewers’ senses through an alternative use of lighting and cinematography, providing an embodied way of grasping the apocalyptic situation of violence. As if deeply involved in a nightmare, the film makes use of the audience’s perception to awake from the state of hallucination.

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A haptic image, that avoids visual accuracy by “bring[ing] the image closer to the body and the other senses” (Marks 2000, 152), makes that transition as a dark room is suddenly brightened by a strong light source coming from a door that is violently propped open. For a few seconds the audience does not have enough visual information to make sense of what is happening and even where that action is specifically taking place. The haptic nature of the image “forces the viewer to contemplate the image itself instead of being pulled into narrative” (Marks 2000, 163). It is as soon as the police officers’ silhouettes, in their full riot gear, are more visible and their commanding voices are heard that the film returns to the previous narrative flow and detailed events of the massacre. After the shooting subsides, the film portrays the corporeal outcome of the massacre as the police officers oversee the removal of the bodies. One scene in specific, through the use of deep focus cinematography,30 highlights the extension of the aggressive behavior by the police and alludes to the role of the eyewitness. A survivor, Dadá (Robson Nunes), observes from a distance the work of fellow prisoners who place the bodies side by side in a long corridor. The deep focus shot shows Dadá in the foreground, hidden in the shadows, watching the police officers in the background violently push two prisoners off frame. The middle ground is overflowing with dead bodies deposited on pools of blood, eerily placed next to one another in a gruesome sight of the aftermath. The police officers proceed to shoot the prisoners off screen while Dadá on the foreground runs to lie down among the corpses. Soon the officers walk toward the foreground and leave the frame without realizing that Dadá is there. The silence is only interrupted by the splashing of the boots in the pools of blood. By placing the bodies of the witness, perpetrators, and victims in the same shot, the deep focus cinematography allows the process of testimony to be intensified as the violent act is observed and experienced in the same space. Dadá’s degrading struggle to remain alive, by joining the roll of dead bodies, is depicted with a tone of horror by the menacing presence of the police. As Dadá pretends to be a corpse, he inhabits a liminal embodied space between victim and witness, a phantasmagoric place for the survivor in the traumatic episode. In Lockdown, Varella includes Dadá’s testimony of the hours after the massacre as he says, “we couldn’t sleep in the cell. First ‘cause we were all perturbed, and second ‘cause there was a strong 30  A deep focus shot is defined by Louis Giannetti as the “type of shot that captures objects at close, medium, and long ranges simultaneously, all of them in sharp focus” (2002, 13).

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smell of death. The floor was awash with blood” (2012b, 354). Dadá’s sensorial description of the odor, associating the smell with the act of dying, and the sight of overflowing blood point out the damaging conditions for the survivors whose living conditions became unbearable. The film depicts the abundant presence of blood on the floor in the final minutes of the narrative, making a connection with the act of washing away the marks of the massacre. Previously in the film, the routine of cleaning the floor and stairs with copious amount of water and foam is portrayed as a communal act with several prisoners in rubber boots pushing the water and the white foam around. The cascade tumbles down the stairs with a feeling of cleanliness, an attempt to improve the environment of the prison. Contrarily to this impression, the scene toward the end shows the blood heavily falling down the stairs in a consistent stream that mixes with the pink-colored foam. There are no inmates present in this scene, a seemingly unmanned task of washing away the traces of the massacre which can significantly be connected to the struggles of keeping the complex memories of this event alive in the Brazilian imaginary. The Carandiru prison itself, seen as Marks’ recollection-object in the film, houses stories of internal violence and State aggression that are not necessarily forgotten after its demolition. The last seconds of Carandiru show the footage of the implosion and the credits run against the background of the rubble, the ruins of the place that is so alive with memories from those who experienced its carceral life. The twisted iron bars and damaged cement blocks are brought back to its original state during the film, in a similar approach of O Prisioneiro da Grade de Ferro, as the narrative “excavate[s] memories from objects” (Marks 2000, 77). The living experiences of abuse and violence are represented in the film as a sensorial and embodied immersion into the carceral space that, although demonstrating the peculiarities of imprisonment, reflects the societal structures of the outside world. Class, race, and gender oppression become apparent in the interrelations among the inmates while the staff is peripherally depicted in the narrative, enhancing the creation of a microsociety within the prison with its own set of rules and punishments. The violation of the bodies points toward the abuse of human rights as the living conditions are depicted as below acceptable and damaging to not only the physicality of the prisoners but their psychological state during the narrative. The massacre itself is represented with a mixture of graphic imagery depicting the corporeal toll and scenes of sensorial engagement with an enhanced theatrically that mirror the atmosphere of madness. In the book Carcereiros,

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Varella, as a physician, comments that “violence is a contagious disease” and he exemplifies it by saying that “during the filming of Carandiru, shot in the space of the Casa de Detenção, the extras that played the rebellious inmates had a complaint to director Hector Babenco during the making of the massacre scenes: they were actually being beaten by their cast members who played the military police officers in charge of oppressing them” (2012a, 146–147). The environment of violence, even seeping into the actual making of the film, is depicted in Carandiru as a reflection of the cyclical nature of violence, one that is part of a greater issue in Brazilian society regarding the massive social invisibility of marginal classes and the indifference of the authorities how life is experienced inside and outside carceral institutions.

5.2   “Nós somos praticamente o último foco de resistência do país”31: Political Oppression and Embodied Disruption in Quase Dois Irmãos The carceral narrative of Quase Dois Irmãos features a tripartite structure that takes place in the 1950s, 1970s, and 2004, constructing a generational story that is linked by the hardships of the Brazilian population whether in terms of class division, dictatorial oppression, or the growth of organized crime. The film strives to intertwine the prison space with the outside world through constant juxtaposition of both contexts in its editing, creating mirrors of society inside the jail and providing a criticism to the state of disarray in the Brazilian streets that lead to imprisonment. The main protagonists of the film, Miguel and Jorginho, are each portrayed by three different actors in the tri-temporal narrative and their racial differences, as Miguel is white and Jorginho is black, signify one of the crucial themes of the film, that is, racial inequality in Brazil. The conflict of races that entails the historical heritage of domination that accompanies Afro-­ Brazilians adds another level of interpretation and detail when it comes to the filmic representation of the political context of the dictatorship presented in the 1970s in the Ilha Grande prison. Both slavery and racial prejudice as well as political dictatorship stand as traumatic elements of Brazilian history and are part of what Michael Pollack calls “subterranean memories” in the sense that the voices of the marginalized and oppressed 31  “We’re essentially the last resistance in the country.” The transcriptions of the characters’ lines for this section were taken from the film Quase Dois Irmãos (Lucia Murat 2004).

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come to the surface and challenge the traditional interpretations of history (1989, 4). Pollack mentions that “the frontier between the communicable and the unspeakable, between what can and cannot be confessed separates […] a subterranean collective memory of the dominated civil society or of specific groups from an organized collective memory that summarizes the image that a majoritarian society or State want to create and impose”32 (8). By highlighting the struggles of racial inequality inside and outside prison, particularly focusing on the images of embodied differences related to color, and the processes of persecution and censorship enforced by dictatorial powers in Brazil, the film portrays a past that gets in touch with peripheral actors in the flow of history that are given a platform of expression. As Rovai and Lima point out, such memories “never disappear even when stifled by oppressive mechanisms and replaced by attempts of erasure”33 (2016, 99). Quase Dois Irmãos displays the interrelations of the characters’ corporeal presence within carceral spaces and beyond as a form of resistance and a way to foreground silenced stories that are permeated with the complexities of Brazilian society, demonstrating how the generational narrative apprehends the transformation of a culture that strives to remember and assess its own past. The space of the Ilha Grande prison in Rio de Janeiro has been the stage of another carceral story that is directly connected to the theme of political oppression. As already mentioned in this chapter, the Brazilian writer Graciliano Ramos was sentenced to the Ilha Grande prison and wrote his memories of life as an inmate. His 1953 book Prison Memories denounces the physical and psychological torture while detailing the encounters and daily relationships among the inmates. Hermenegildo Bastos observes that the book is about “living together with several political prisoners and also many common criminals, the persecution, the violence, the torture. The inhumanity, the humanity”34 (1998, 11). Ramos’ descriptions of the carceral life focuses at times in the sensorial perceptions related to the crowded and confined space, the smell and sounds of eating 32  “A fronteira entre o dizível e o indizível, o confessável e o inconfessável, separa […] uma memória coletiva subterrânea da sociedade civil dominada ou de grupos específicos, de uma memória coletiva organizada que resume a imagem que uma sociedade majoritária ou o Estado desejam passar e impor.” 33  “Nunca desaparecem, mesmo que sofram processos de opressão e sejam substituídas por tentativas de apagamento.” 34  “A convivência com vários presos políticos e também com muitos presos comuns, a perseguição, a violência, a tortura. A desumanidade, a humanidade.”

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the precarious prison food, the lack of privacy when witnessing the suffering of others, and the effects of embodied violence. The author was “arrested without explanation as part of an antileftist sweep” (Johnson and Stam 1995, 426) in 1936 in the wave of “the systematic incarceration of political adversaries” (Scaraggi 2019, 38) of the authoritative and former Brazilian president Getúlio Vargas. By registering his hardships at the Ilha Grande prison, Ramos carved a space of resistance and autonomy that concentrates on describing the abuse of human rights done to himself and many other prisoners whose voices would not be heard otherwise. Nelson Pereira dos Santos’ filmic adaptation in 1984 aims at incorporating the contemporary political context into the narrative which was the end of the military dictatorship. According to Johnson and Stam, the main character Ramos suffers a major transformation in the film since “with each new body blow aimed at systematic dehumanization, Ramos gains character and humanity. Ramos, whom we have seen as a complex, proud, and somewhat solitary man with an intense interior life, turns incarceration into a springboard for liberation” (Johnson and Stam 426). This representation translates the political climate of the early 1980s and the film stands as “allegorical in the sense that it uses one set of events, which transpired in the 1930s, to speak about another set of events” (Johnson and Stam 427). The state of the country’s redemocratization suffuses the narrative but the instances of human rights abuse and dehumanization in the film still chronicle a problematic Brazilian society in the process of coming to terms with its history. One of the elements of Brazilian culture that Quase Dois Irmãos displays in order to put together the tripartite narrative structure is popular music. The film starts with the juxtaposition of Cinderella’s fairytale with two iconic dance figures of an escola de samba (samba school) during the Carnaval parades: mestre-sala and porta-bandeira.35 In the 1950s, Helena (Sílvia Buarque) reads the traditional story to her young son, Miguel (Brunno Abrahão), but the film, instead of representing the conventional 35  These parades, especially in Rio’s Carnaval, are divided in alas (units) and one of them consists of the mestre-sala and porta-bandeira. As Oliver N. Greene, Jr. explains, men and women who master samba steps are called “passistas” and “the mestre-sala (master of ceremonies) is a key passista who performs intricate, energetic samba steps as he escorts the porta-bandeira (flag-bearer), a woman who swirls and floats as she carries the escola’s flag. These characters made their first appearances with the nineteenth-century sociedades. Dancing elegantly, the porta-bandeira carries the escola flag, while the mestre-sala dances around her, providing symbolic protection” (2020, 55).

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imagery associated with the tale, shows the two samba dancers that somehow embody an adapted version of the story for a Brazilian audience. She says: “Everyone was watching in awe and wondering who that beautiful and well-dressed woman could be, the one who danced and danced and danced with the king’s son.”36 Cinderella’s image is substituted by a porta-­ bandeira who spins around holding a flag to the sound of the word “danced” being repeated until the moment when the little boy asks, “but mother, what is the samba they were dancing?”37 This initial sequence adapts the classic story to the Brazilian context by accessing the heritage of the samba and Carnaval therefore replacing the traditional imagery of the embellished balls in Cinderella with the visual of the parade in Rio and the popular music genre of samba, with its Afro-Brazilian roots embedded in the culture of slaves and former slaves. The film cuts to 2004, showing the monumental size of the Rio Carnaval parade in contemporary years, its colorful and glittery costumes, and the massive presence of Afro-­ Brazilian dancers in the units. The unit of the baianas,38 older women with ornamented dresses, are shown in the film and represent deep ties with historical appreciation of black culture. Popular music, especially samba, will play a very distinct part in the film, a backbone of culture in the narrative that attempts to dissolve boundaries and unite characters from different walks of life. George Yúdice observes that samba has a “propensity to appropriate and mix everything in its way, thus undermining, it is argued, hierarchies of all kinds” (2003, 120). As it will be noticed in the forthcoming analysis, in Quase Dois Irmãos, the two main characters Miguel and Jorginho are united by samba but struggle to find a common ground when it comes to racial and political issues, problematizing the notion that samba is a healing and harmonious force. 36  “Todo mundo olhava espantado, sem saber quem poderia ser aquela moça tão bonita e bem vestida que dançava e dançava e dançava com o filho do rei.” 37  “Mas mãe, qual era o samba que eles dançavam?” 38  The baianas in the Carnaval parade are a traditional unit and their figure has its roots in the end of the nineteenth century: “In Rio de Janeiro, some black women, known as ‘baianas aunts’, would become central figures in the process of appreciation and organization of popular groups, undertaking relevant roles in society by uniting in their houses the representatives of elite and lower classes in activities where black culture was a significant element, such as samba circles” (Araújo and Ferreira 2012, 303). “No Rio de Janeiro, algumas mulheres negras, conhecidas como ‘tias baianas’, se tornariam figuras centrais no processo de valorização e organização das camadas populares, assumindo papéis relevantes na sociedade ao reunir em suas casas representantes da elite e da população mais carente em torno de manifestações em que o traço negro era elemento preponderante, como as rodas de samba.”

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Miguel and Jorginho’s journey together is initially presented in the film by contrasting the early and later years of their friendship, that is, the events in 1957 followed by the ones in 2004. In 1957, in the favela Santa Maria in Rio de Janeiro, their fathers sing together in a roda de samba (samba circle), where everyone gathers to enjoy music. Seu Jorge (Luiz Melodia), Jorginho’s (Pablo Ricardo Belo) father, is a struggling samba composer who befriends Miguel’s father (Fernando Eiras), a journalist and a samba enthusiast. The two boys accompany their fathers in the roda de samba but are reprehended by their mothers who criticize the fathers’ lack of commitment with the family and the decline of their financial situation. Samba is represented as an escape from reality, an idyllic situation where problems are not palpable, a status exemplified by the children and their fathers’ lively attitude in the roda de samba which is shattered when in contact with reality. This gap between the idealized samba environment and the distressing daily life becomes clearer as the film cuts to 2004 when a gray-haired Miguel (Werner Schünemann) visits Jorginho (Antônio Pompêo) in the Bangu prison in Rio de Janeiro. Miguel, now a politician, faces Jorginho, a commander of a criminal group in the Rio favelas, and their interaction is entirely framed with prison bars blurred in the foreground as a sign of confinement, an unmistakable contrast to the joyous ambience of the last scene. The film demonstrates how Miguel and Jorginho’s connection through samba that once existed has receded and their life choices and opportunities, an issue directly connected to racial prejudice in Brazilian society, have led them to opposite paths. The film’s title, which translated word by word means “almost two brothers,” implies a duality that according to Pedro Lapera has roots in racial issues (2007, 9), a clashing of the white and black characters of Miguel and Jorginho, respectively. Although they spent certain moments together in their childhood, the class differences and racial background prevent them from fully being brothers, characterizing them as “almost sons of the same mother— the Brazilian nation” (8). These two characters embody a larger problem of discrimination in the country’s society and especially in the carceral system that will be portrayed in the Ilha Grande prison in the 1970s during the years of the dictatorship. It is during the narrative that takes place in Ilha Grande that the political circumstance of dictatorial oppression is developed in the context of imprisonment. A younger Miguel (Caco Ciocler) is depicted in the carceral institution of Ilha Grande, a place surrounded by nature as an initial shot portrays trees and mountains around the prison in direct contrast, for example, with Carandiru prison which is located in the middle of the city. The remoteness of the location already hints at the idea of exile for the

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unwanted during the dictatorship in Brazil, a practice that became common for those who found themselves out of place with the authoritative forces. Miguel enters his cell with Peninha (Fernando Alves Pinto), his cellmate, and they read a clipping from a newspaper smuggled into the prison. The cell itself, differently from the carceral spaces portrayed in the film Carandiru, does not present any personal touches apart from four small pictures on the wall. A personal space has not been created in material terms which leads to the avoidance of constructing the cell as a home since Miguel’s presence in the prison is seen as a political act of resistance. David Sibley and Bettina van Hoven mention that “in the process of building a personal space, inmates utilise a number of objects that constitute a ‘prosthetic of the self’” such as “clothes, a piece of furniture, posters or postcards—things that become extensions of the self and contribute to the making of a space” (2009, 202). In Quase Dois Irmãos, the lack of personal objects indicates that the prosthetic self being constructed is that of resistance to the space as political prisoners, an attempt to reject the obligation to be spatially restrained. By depicting a bare cell, the film demonstrates how Miguel and the political prisoners renounce the traditional way of adapting to prison life and make an effort to partially take back control over their time in Ilha Grande. The gray walls exposing the cold cemented surface without any personal touch are not represented as a passive background for imprisonment but a carceral space that speaks loudly precisely because of its lack of embellishment, resonating with Massey’s notion that space is created by the coming together of identities, in this case, of a political position. Miguel and Peninha proceed to read the newspaper clipping and the headline “Government: there are no political prisoners in the country”39 initiates a clear point of connection with the context of dictatorship in the film. Quase Dois Irmãos portrays political prisoners who are involved in the historical context of the dictatorial regime in Brazil responsible for purges and extreme censorship. Rebecca J.  Atencio explains that “on April 1, 1964, Brazilians awoke to discover that the military had taken over the country, deposing President João (Jango) Goulart in a bloodless coup. With backing from key sectors of civil society, a group of military leaders moved to consolidate their rule by arresting or purging thousands of people deemed a threat to the new order” (2014, 9). Miguel and the rest of the political prisoners would be considered as part of the “subversives” whose conduct and ideological position differed from the imposing regime. In the film, the newspaper headline itself already demonstrates an  “Governo: não há presos políticos no país.”

39

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attempt to erase their voices by refusing to acknowledge the existence of political prisoners in any carceral institution of the country. As they read the clipping, Peninha says “you don’t exist, I don’t exist,”40 magnifying their struggle to have their opinions heard and status of resistance recognized amid the human rights abuse context of the carceral space. As Maud Chirio comments, “the systematic, widespread, and professional use of torture in Brazilian prisons, the thousands of political detentions, the hurdles placed in the paths of undesirable government employees, the reactionary propaganda, and the weight of censorship, clearly designate the military regime as fundamentally distinct from a democracy and the rule of law” (2018, 7). A following scene makes a reference to the issue of censorship in the country that was historically worsened by the creation of the Fifth Institutional Act called AI-5. Atencio describes that in 1968 there was “a repressive and ultimately violent turn: on December 13, [the regime] announced the draconian Fifth Institutional Act (Ato Institucional Número Cinco, AI-5), which drastically expanded presidential powers and entailed the temporary closing of Congress, the suspension of habeas corpus, and further purges” (9). With the AI-5 already in use, the film depicts a group of prisoners being transported to a police precinct and demanding political treatment, such as being treated according to the Geneva convention and not wearing prison uniforms. They are forcefully taken into the precinct by the police, but a photographer captures the turbulent occasion. A military officer approaches the photographer and bluntly demands “the camera or the film”41 in an authoritative tone. This example of forced silencing, in this case related to the press, illustrates Chirio’s opinion about the “the burden of censorship” when “the population found itself not only robbed of participation in decision-making processes but also of any information about them. Power was now debated, organized, and exercised behind closed doors” (138). The embodied presence of the prisoners and their platform to express their voices are suppressed as the photograph, the material proof of their resistance, is confiscated in the film in an attempt to control forces that go against the regime. In the Ilha Grande prison, the body and the voice, the instruments of ideological articulation, are confined to a remote location and the political prisoners struggle to react and resist in exile. The visiting room in the film is constructed as an in-between place that connects the carceral space with the outside world for the exiled prisoners. Early in the narrative, Miguel and the political prisoners interact with their  “Você não existe, eu não existo.”  “A máquina ou o filme.”

40 41

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family members in a busy communal room, a space of communication but also of secretive activism where they exchange messages. Moran explains that visiting rooms are characterized as liminal spaces “overlapping and coterminous with the ‘inside’, but sharing characteristics with the outside” (2015, 89). In the film, although the prisoners and visitors are inside the carceral institution and must abide to certain behavioral rules, the level of embodied closeness demonstrates the dissolving of boundaries between the interior and exterior spaces where the severity of regulations are overlooked to a certain extent. Moran observes that “prison visiting spaces represent a liminal indistinction between inside and outside, in which both the physical space and the experience of it are reflexively interrelated” (2013, 182). As Miguel talks to his mother Helena, their close proximity invites an intimate conversation, almost whispered, and she gladly mentions how she is selling handmade craft bags to raise money to help those in prison and that she brought a piece of his favorite cheese. For a moment, Miguel is not portrayed as a political activist since the mundane activities of daily life are the topic of conversation. The visiting room allows this homely facet to be displayed and, as Moran acknowledges, “the actual spaces of visiting are intensely significant both for the nature of contact and intimacy which can take place, and for the ways in which the spaces themselves are socially constructed and reconstructed by those who occupy them” (2013, 182). Through the liminality of the visiting room, Helena modifies the carceral space according to her own life context and interests. Another character who also imprints her own living experience in the visiting room therefore constructing the space through political interaction is Ana (Cristina Aché), Miguel’s wife. She receives a small plastic package from Miguel containing a message to the outside world and smuggles it inside her own body, in her vagina. Besides the portrayal of this corporeal engagement with the cause, Ana is described by Helena as an engaged activist who has recently been released from prison and while she is characterized as Miguel’s partner, she has a certain level of agency in her political commitment, being a former prisoner herself. Women are depicted as the link to both home and politics from the outside world in the meeting point of the visiting room. This transient border between the inside and outside spaces should be understood as “a series of bordering practices which are embodied, multisensory, mobile, emotionally charged, and both spatially fixed and despatialized” (Moran 2015, 102) in order to better grasp the experiential and fluid elements of these spaces that are fundamentally an extension of one another. Due to an argument with the warders during the visit, Miguel and Peninha are sent to solitary confinement, a sequence that combines an

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emphasis on the haptic nature of imprisonment and the idea of resistance that can be found in samba songs. In this scene, they are forcibly taken in their underwear into two separate cells. The camera inside Miguel’s cell accompanies his circular movement as he walks around the cell. Miguel’s body motion is what gives the audience an idea of the cramped space as only a few steps are necessary to achieve a full circle while a high-pitched sound, similar to an ambulance siren, creates an unpleasant aural environment. Peninha’s sight is foregrounded as a close-up depicts him squinting his eyes followed by a panning motion that takes no longer than a few seconds to circle the cell and show his face one more time. Once again, it is through the combination of the prisoner’s body and the camera rotation that the film constructs a perception of constricted space in the cell, representing the precarious conditions of the inmates. The next shot highlights the haptic facet of imprisonment as Miguel’s hands are shown in a close­up. Appearing from under a brown blanket, Miguel claps his hands and the contained sound does not propagate in the cell. At first, it seems like he is casually clapping but as the moments go by, a sense of rhythm can be felt, and he finally rubs his hands in a traditional tempo of a samba rhythm. The film shows Miguel’s body relented to a corner, covered with a worn-­ out blanket while he hums the lyrics to a samba song with his eyes closed. The sound becomes increasingly more refined, as other classic samba instruments can be heard and the audience can see a flashback to his childhood days, clearly showing that Miguel’s song is transcending the walls of the cell into his memory. The sensorial immersion of this scene is based on the fact that Miguel abandons the sense of vision, in this case the gray and restrictive walls of the cell, and delves into the tactile emphasis of making music with his own hands accompanied by his voice. He uses his body and sensorial perception to produce music and escape the carceral confinement, especially when the theme of resistance in lyrics of the samba song are more thoroughly investigated. As Miguel sings, the lights are turned off which only makes him sing louder the lyrics of the 1969 theme song of the Rio de Janeiro escola de samba Império Serrano: Day in, day out The blood of the negro ran daily From lament to lament From agony to agony They pleaded for the end of the tyranny

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This breeze that the youth cherish This fire that hatred does not put out The universe is the evolution In its legitimate reason Samba, my samba Pays homage To the heroes of freedom42

The newspaper Jornal do Brasil explains that the theme song, entitled “Heróis da Liberdade” (“Heroes of Freedom”), was composed by Silas de Oliveira, Mano Décio da Viola, and Manuel Ferreira and its words were targeted by the Brazilian military forces during the dictatorship due to their poetic and revolutionary nature (“‘Essa Chama que o Ódio não Apaga’: 50 anos de Heróis da Liberdade,” October 11, 2019).43 Making references to slavery and the desire for abolition, the tone of resistance is noticeable in the theme song. By approaching past issues of racial oppression in Brazilian history during the years of dictatorship, the lyrics are part of a mechanism of protest to the state of persecution and the words indicate a much greater context of domination in the country’s society. Miguel sings this song as a way to escape the confinement of his current situation but also as an embodied protest in opposition to the dictatorial rule that keeps him in prison. The song ends as the dark screen is perforated by a strong beam of light coming from an opening door. Initially, this image sensorially confuses the audience’s vision, the disconcerting glow disorienting a sense of spatial awareness. As the audience is exposed to this image, Marks’ notion of haptic imagery comes to mind as she explains that “haptic looking tends to move over the surface of its object rather than plunge into illusionistic depth, not to distinguish form so mush as to discern texture” (2000, 162). It is only after Miguel stands up in the foreground and his silhouette is visible that a greater recognition of the surroundings is possible. The idea of sensorial confusion after a certain 42  Passava a noite, vinha dia / O sangue do negro corria dia a dia / De lamento em lamento / De agonia em agonia / Ele pedia o fim da tirania Esta brisa que a juventude afaga / Esta chama que o ódio não apaga / Pelo universo é a evolução / Em sua legítima razão Samba, meu samba / Presta esta homenagem / Aos heróis da liberdade 43  https://www.jb.com.br/rio/2019/10/1018196%2D%2Dessa-chama-que-o-odionao-apaga%2D%2D-50-anos-de-herois-da-liberdade.html. Accessed 18 July 2022.

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amount of time in confinement is constructed in the film by employing a haptic and visual overload that refers to the exhaustion of the imprisoned body. It is when Jorginho (Flávio Bauraqui) is arrested during the 1970s and transferred to the Ilha Grande prison that the theme of racial inequality takes central stage in the carceral space. There is a very distinct reference to the history of slavery in the way that the film represents the process of transporting Jorginho from the Rio de Janeiro mainland to Ilha Grande. As previously portrayed in the film with the visiting families, the access to the island is by boat but the prisoners are taken in a way that is visually associated with slave ships. Jorginho and a group of prisoners board a boat and are taken downstairs to a locked hold. Sitting on the floor, close to each other in the dark and surrounded by chains and large ropes, the atmosphere is of carelessness from the authorities. This idea becomes clear when, on the way to the island, a storm makes the boat swing uncomfortably and water pours down into the hold in great quantities, leaving all the prisoners drenched. The space where the film portrays the prisoners being transported to Ilha Grande, bellow the deck in a hold and often in subhuman conditions, carries a heritage in Brazilian history linked to slavery as the hold of the slave ship is traditionally associated with the forced trade from Africa to the Americas, a visual reference that can be perceived in paintings and illustrations of various artists.44 The film visually alludes to this space and time by placing the main black character aboard the ship in such circumstances. The extreme conditions that the bodies of the prisoners in the film go through refer to the ways in which the bodies of the 44  Among the artists who captured the precarious traveling conditions of slaves as part of the trade from Africa to Brazil is the German painter Johann Moritz Rugendas. His painting of the hold of a slave ship in 1835 has become a traditional depiction of such a space and his description demonstrates the problematic living circumstances: the slaves “are huddled up in a compartment whose height is no more than five feet [1.5 meters]. This prison occupies the height and length of the ship’s hold: they are assembled in groups from two hundred to three hundred […]. Most of the time there is a wooden shelf halfway on the wall where a second layer of bodies can be found. All of them, especially in the early days of trade, have their feet and hands handcuffed and are linked together by a long chain” (quoted in Rodrigues 2018, 365). “Amontoados num compartimento cuja altura raramente ultrapassa cinco pés [1,5 metro]. Esse cárcere ocupa todo o comprimento e a largura do porão do navio: aí são reunidos em número de duzentos a trezentos […]. As mais das vezes as paredes comportam, a meia altura, uma espécie de prateleira de madeira sobre a qual jaz uma segunda camada de corpos humanos. Todos, principalmente nos primeiros tempos da travessia, têm algemas nos pés e nas mãos e são presos uns aos outros por uma comprida corrente.”

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slaves were mistreated in the intercontinental voyage of enslavement. Flávio Gomes and Lilia Schwarcz comment that “the African mercantile slavery of the modern period is a system that has cruel and deep roots in Brazilian history and that stores profound scars in our daily life” (2018, 18). The ingrained racial prejudice present in today’s society is one of these consequences and is also represented in the film through the relationship dynamics between Jorginho and Miguel in prison. In historical terms, Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery and the one that forcibly brought the greatest number of slaves from Africa, around 4.8 million people (Gomes and Schwarcz 18), suggesting a prolonged process of coming to terms with the multiplicity of races and cultures and the complexities of economic and social disparity in centuries to come. Quase Dois Irmãos alludes to the roots of slave traffic in Brazil and points out the similarities of such traumatic moment in the country’s history with contemporary times when the black and minority populations are still experiencing the misfortunes of a system based on inequality and disregard for basic human rights, such as, in this case, appropriate transportation conditions. Simultaneously to Jorginho’s arrival in the Ilha Grande prison, Miguel and his fellow inmates start a hunger strike in order to demand better living conditions for the political prisoners. They have specific conditions, such as the prison gallery being open allowing free circulation of the prisoners instead of constant confinement to the cells, the banishing of prison uniforms, and the right to read newspapers. In a voice over, Miguel reads the demands written on a manifesto delivered to the prison’s authorities: We will not accept this situation any longer since it represents a reaffirmation of the repressive treatment by the police which is largely facilitated by the socio-geographical isolation of Ilha Grande. Having unsuccessfully claimed our demands, we have been compelled to go on a hunger strike until our fundamental rights have been guaranteed and our dignity as political prisoners has been respected.45

45  “Não aceitamos mais essa situação visto que representa uma reafirmação do tratamento policial repressivo o que é amplamente facilitado pelo isolamento geográfico-social da Ilha Grande. Tendo esgotadas todas as outras formas de conseguirmos as nossas reinvindicações, fomos impelidos a entrar em greve de fome até que sejam garantidos os direitos fundamentais e respeitada a nossa dignidade de presos políticos.”

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This letter is read as a warder walks the empty gallery in front the cells with the bars of a gate in the foreground of the image and his body walking away from the camera showing his small figure fitting perfectly between two bars. The editing cuts to a closer distance to his body and the cell bars are blurred in the foreground, followed by another cut of an even closer distance where the bars become unrecognizable gray blurs on the screen, vertically framing the warder’s body from the waist up. This sequence demonstrates the considerable size of the gallery, as the warder continuously walks in front of the various cells as the letter is read, hinting at the large number of prisoners and their communal wishes being represented by Miguel’s voice. When the camera gets closer, the bars fundamentally disappear as if the prisoners’ attempt of using their bodies to demand agency slowly disintegrates the strictness of the oppressive carceral system. Even though Jorginho is sent to Ilha Grande, he is not a political prisoner but is invited to join the hunger strike when he receives a letter detailing the rules of the protest. The set of rules has a very corporeal nature since it is by using the body and its limits that pressure will be made on authorities. Jorginho slowly reads the letter, struggling with a few words in a clear depiction of his lack of formal education: “number one, do not exert yourself needlessly; number two, […] sleep as much as you can, number three, drink water mixed with salt several times a day.”46 The embodied rules are met by Jorginho with humor as he jokes around in a playful manner, not in defiance of the political cause but as a demonstration of his detachment with activism. He represents the depiction of a group of inmates, called common criminals, who share the carceral space with the political prisoners and will be part of a discussion raised by the film regarding racial inequality and socio-economic clashes in Brazilian society (Fig. 5.2). The first display of explicit violence in the carceral space is targeted toward Jorginho who is punished by the warders for joining the hunger strike. The warders do not use violence against the white political prisoners who started the strike but promptly abuse the black prisoner who recently arrived by using racial slurs and wondering why a black man like himself would join the strike. Besides belittling Jorginho with insulting words of a prejudiced nature, the three warders violently push him around until one of the warders asks him, “where are you going, blondie?,”47 as if 46  “Número um, não fazer esforço desnecessário; número dois, […] dormir o máximo possível, número três, tomar água com sal várias vezes ao dia.” 47  “Vai aonde, loirinho?”

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Fig. 5.2  Quase Dois Irmãos (Almost Two Brothers, Lucia Murat 2004). Reproduced by permission of Taiga Filmes. (Photo by Estevan Avelar)

implying that Jorginho is trying to embody a different color and meddle into matters that belong to white people. The film portrays how the color of the prisoners’ bodies is a pivotal element in the way they fit into the carceral geography and beyond in society. The abuse is heard by the other prisoners who are locked in their cells and Miguel readily uses his cup to make an alerting sound by hitting it against the metal door and waking the rest of the inmates. A series of close-ups of cups rattling against the cell doors creates a united metallic sound, a communal form of protest. They use the cup sounds and their vocal declarations of disapproval to create a collective voice from segregated carceral spaces. Disembodied sounds unite the common cause as the film pans over the empty gallery with all the cell doors closed. Although the prisoners are not corporeally present, their sensorial display of unity through their voices and clattering cups demonstrates the articulation of an ideal that at this moment surpasses racial inequality since they do not know the color of who is being punished. The actual beating happens in a detached space in the film as two warders hold Jorginho’s arms while another one hits him. The characters

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are depicted in a black void as if representing a space that does not necessarily belong to the carceral structure, implying a greater connection with the outside world and the racial abuses that are prone to happen in society. Jorginho’s bare torso shows the marks of blood dripping from his face as he repeatedly takes the blows from the warder’s baton. While physically abusing him, the warder continues to use racial slurs and finally says that a subversive black man does not exist, disconnecting any possibility of Jorginho’s commitment with political causes due to his skin color, a comment arising from a deep-seated opinion on racial prejudice. Jorginho is eventually dragged out to solitary confinement, or as the warder calls “surda,” which literally translates as “deaf” in a possible connection to how the prisoners are sensorially depraved when confined to this spatially segregated cell. After physically succumbing to intense corporeal violence, the camera shows the image of Jorginho’s body being dragged across a room accompanied by the uncomfortable sound of his skin scraping against the floor tiles. Instead of following him, the camera lingers on the blood marks on the floor, a reminder of the corporeality of the past moment and proof of the abusive ways implemented by the carceral authorities. The space of the prison in the film demonstrates its multiple nature as a large number of common criminals arrive and are placed side by side with the political prisoners. Massey’s notion that “multiplicity and space are co-constitutive” (2008, 9) can be applied to this point of the narrative since the arrival of the new prisoners, with a new set of standards and characteristics, changes the dynamics of the carceral space. Massey explains that “if space is indeed the product of interrelations, then it must be predicated upon the existence of plurality” (9). The newly arrived voices add tension to the carceral situation, especially in terms of racial and class differences, and this is exemplified in the scene where the political prisoners introduce themselves to the common prisoners. Framed on opposite sides of the screen, the two groups are characteristically distinct in relation to their race: the majority of the political prisoners are white while the common prisoners are dark skinned. Miguel and the political prisoners explain that the rules of the prison are distinct from the traditional carceral space and that the new group must abide to them. In this carceral setting constructed by the political prisoners, differently from the usual prison context where drug use and extreme violence are prevalent, there is no stealing or drug trafficking while group decisions are made by voting and everyone is seen as an equal individual. This laying down of rules by the political

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prisoners is discussed by Lapera in terms of the role of whiteness in the film. He observes that “whiteness can be perceived in terms of the social rules that are formulated and must be accepted by the black people. Therefore, the film’s past has its ‘referentiality’ in the power in which whiteness is based to construct reality and formulate rules inside and outside the microcosm of the prison”48 (2007, 9). The common prisoners are not comfortable with the situation and the set of norms established by the political prisoners, and although Jorginho tries to bridge these two carceral ideologies, as he is friends with the political and newly arrived prisoners, the tension builds up while rules are broken. The tone of social and racial estrangement reverberates to a scene taking place in 2004 when Miguel visits Jorginho in prison and they are framed side by side having a conversation about their differences. They are physically close to one another, standing shoulder to shoulder, but the immense gap separating their life circumstances is represented by an unfocused prison bar in the foreground that splits the image in half. By portraying their bodies close to one another in the carceral space and framing them in a certain way that expresses distance, the film shows the result of the several incidents that have happened are about to take place in the narrative that deepen the gap between the two characters that share the same space but in distinct ways due to social and racial complexities. The process of territorial segregation of the carceral space between the political and common prisoners is firstly depicted in a conversation among Miguel and his inmates as they struggle to reconcile the ideology of equality that stems from their political beliefs and the struggle to survive in an environment of change in the prison. In this scene, the exchange of dialogue raises the issue of social disparity in the country as the micro-society created in the carceral environment becomes a reflection of a larger context. Aluísio (Bruce Gomlevsky) raises the issue of physically separating political and criminal prisoners since the former is a minority and will soon be overpowered while Miguel claims that they are the only resistance group left in the country and must endure. In opposition to their opinion, João (Paulo Hamilton) rejects this change by claiming that segregation is a mirror of class inequality in society and will be an undoing of their 48  “A branquidade aparece como o campo em que as regras sociais são formuladas, cabendo ao negro o papel de se adequar a elas. Sendo assim, o passado do filme teria sua ‘referencialidade’ no poder em que a branquidade se apóia para nomear a realidade e formular regras dentro e fora do microcosmo do presídio.”

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political ideology. One episode in specific becomes the watershed event for this dilemma: the stealing of Miguel’s watch. The political prisoners eventually figure out who stole the watch, a common prisoner named Tota (Edson Correia), lure him into a cell and hit him in the head as revenge for the theft. The violence happens offscreen, but the aftereffects of the act are demonstrated as Tota’s body is depicted on the screen with blood pouring down from the top of his head. Although the violence itself is not shown, the reaction shots of the three political prisoners facing each other after the brutality demonstrate the loss of control. Their eyes are portrayed in close-ups as the editing moves from one face to another in a realization of the extremity of the act that approximates them from the attitude generally associated with common prisoners. In the middle of the violent chaos, the audience is given a moment of reflection to gaze into the characters’ eyes, pausing for a few seconds to contemplate on the significance of the transgression. In their struggle to physically separate the prisoners due the possibility of embodied danger, they cross the legal threshold and violate Tota’s body in opposition to their initial beliefs. This causes both groups to face off in the gallery as they are placed on opposite sides of the frame and the camera pans and cuts from right and left while the prisoners fiercely argue. The resolution comes as the decision to segregate the two groups is voiced out loud by the political prisoners, an outcome that disintegrates Jorginho and Miguel’s friendship. Jorginho expresses his disagreement by saying: So, everyone is the same, right? We have to come together. My son will study in the same school as your son. Our destiny is the same. We’re going to live in the same way that you’ll live. Damn, brother, you don’t even want to live with us inside this place. You’re a bunch of bastards. When you need something from us, then everyone is equal, right? Now you’re sending a letter to the director to separate us. Rich people this way, poor people that way. White people this way, black people that way.49

49  “Quer dizer que nós somo tudo igual, né? A gente tem que se unir. O meu filho vai estudar na mesma escola que o teu. Que o nosso destino é o mesmo. Que nós vamo viver da mesma forma que vocês. Porra, meu irmão, se nem aqui dentro vocês querem morar com a gente, porra. São uns safado, isso sim. Quando tão precisando de alguma coisa aí da gente, aí todo mundo é igual, né? Agora vem mandar carta pro diretor pra separar. Rico pra lá, pobre pra cá. Branco pra lá, preto pra cá.”

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With this dialogue, the film crystalizes the layers of complexity of not only the Brazilian carceral system but the country’s society by juxtaposing the struggle against the oppressions of dictatorship and racial discrimination. Although the story takes place in the 1970s, at the height of the military suppression, the core issue of race and its history of violation surfaces in the narrative by placing the two bodies in close contact, as Miguel and Jorginho’s relationship becomes a canvas for a greater Brazilian context. The spatial demarcation between the political and common prisoners comes in the form of a wall with central gate that is built separating the carceral landscape in two sides. The film depicts the making of the wall composed of bricks and cement as the workers slowly but continuously set a brick on top of the other, the sounds of the tools in action filling the space of the gallery. The moist sound of the cement as it hits the surface is contrasted with the hollow and sharp sound of the construction tool as it knocks the brick in place, a symphony composed by the dexterity of the bricklayers. The atmosphere speaks to the audience’s sense of hearing as witnesses of the upcoming transformation in the human geography of the prison. The next sequence portrays a brush sliding down and painting the rough surface of a wall in red followed by a close-up of Jorginho’s eyes. For a few seconds, the audience only accompanies his focused eyes as the sound of the brush continues. This sensorial initiation to his actions is marked by an idea of mystery since the viewer is not aware of the message that is being written. The content of his brush work is finally disclosed and it reads “políticos proletariados” as a reference to his half of the gallery belonging to proletarian politic prisoners. This denomination alludes to the common prisoners’ roots in a working-class background but is also seen as a form of mockery to Miguel’s resolute political beliefs as he watches the scene from behind the newly installed gate between the two spaces. This demarcation can be connected to Wener’s idea of territoriality in carceral spaces that refers to the way in which we behave vis-à-vis a specific piece of space—a geographical entity—rather than the relative distance between people. It is reflected in concepts like identification, marking, personalization, defense, and ownership, which have meaning to the individual and also affect how people think about and act towards others. (2012, 124)

Even without the wall, the separation between the two groups of prisoners was already a palpable situation and the physical barrier only accelerated a

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process of spatial segregation that was very much ingrained in their behavior. The words painted on the wall function beyond its informative nature since they signify an act of spatial ownership by flagging the ideology of its occupants. As Jorginho becomes more active, both in his own convictions and in terms of corporeal movements inside his half of the gallery, Miguel’s body loses vitality and is depicted in a more paralyzed way, static as he observes his surroundings. The prison landscape and its internal segregation impact directly on the embodied everyday life of the prisoners and reverberate into acts of corporeal aggression that dictate the environment of violence in the newly established micro-societies. The wall with the metal gate stands for a space of transition, one that separates two ideologically different places in the prison gallery, a type of threshold dividing two worlds constructed as a mirror of the outside society. Elisabeth Fransson and Francesca Giofrè explain that in the environment of incarceration, the threshold “allows the transition from one zone to another. Therefore, threshold is a part of the boundary of the prison cell that sometimes can be perceived as a barrier and in other times perceived as an element that opens up spaces” (2020, 267). The threshold in Quase Dois Irmãos has an added meaning besides limiting the movement of the prisoners’ bodies since it segregates them in racial and social terms: by crossing that threshold, the prisoner lives under different beliefs and rules. That wall with a gate symbolizes the partition in society, similarly to Tuca Vieira’s photograph mentioned in Chap. 1 where the wealthy areas and the favelas have a clear material division. As in the photograph and in the film, both sides can see one another and possibly interact but they still do not share the same space and living conditions. In Jorginho’s side, a struggle for power takes place as Pingão (Babu Santana) attempts to enforce the traditional ways of the prison in terms of hierarchy and bullying by humiliating and being violent toward certain prisoners. Jorginho disagrees with this situation but fails to convince Pingão to give up his ways. The following scene depicts Jorginho’s calculated murder of Pingão and his fellow inmates, an act that cements Jorginho’s status in the world of crime. This sequence relies on a sensorial representation of the preparation and the actual moment of violence as the sense of hearing leads the perception of murder. Initially, the close-up image of a knife being sharpened and its grinding sound are included between lines of dialogue but soon this preparatory ritual becomes the main action of the film. As Jorginho is about to face off Pingão, the soundtrack comes in with instruments that emulate the sound of a knife being sharpened and in a series of

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close-ups of body parts, the killings take place. At this point, there is no graphic display of violence, only the painful screams and viscous sound of the knife penetrating the flesh. Instead of focusing on the violated bodies, the film chooses a type of haptic aesthetic that oscillates from blurred to unblurred images of the prison and back to their unfocused state as if on a rollercoaster effect of perception. By focusing on an approach that relies on the sensorial impression of the audience as they react to a combination of intense aural and unfocused visuals, this sequence can be linked to Marks’s comment on the fact that “rather than making the object fully available to view, haptic cinema puts the object into question, calling on the viewer to engage in its imaginative construction” (2002, 16). There is no concern with representing the graphic details of the act of killing, only an invitation for the audience to construct a perception of pain and violation by engaging the senses with an immersive overload of traces of corporeal violence. The aftermath of the attack intensifies the somatic consequences as the lifeless bodies of Pingão and his gang are on the floor. The audience is not given access to Jorginho’s side since all the images are depicted from behind the bars on Miguel’s side of the gallery. The camera pulls back from the image of the bodies by walking backwards and disclosing the political prisoners who slowly approach the gate to see the bodies. A panning shot of the bodies portrays a closer look at the knife injuries, the violated skin of the prisoners and the pools of blood that accumulate on the floor. Behind the pile of bodies, Jorginho and his gang stand motionless, arms folded showing a fierce stance and a sense of pride for the violent deed. This performance of violence is staged as a fear-inducing spectacle, an intimidating act in the process of carceral territorialization. The display of dead bodies expresses a larger context that encompasses the outside world as the warder exclaims, “Call the director to see what the guys from the Red Phalanx have just done.”50 Historically speaking, the Falange Vermelha, or Red Phalanx, was a criminal organization created in the 1970s in the Ilha Grande prison and later developed into one the most powerful criminal organizations in the country, the Comando Vermelho (Red Command). Responsible for countless illegal actions, the Comando Vermelho and PCC, previously mentioned in this chapter, have established links of criminality between Brazilian prisons and violent areas in cities all over the country, including favelas. After characterizing Jorginho as the  “Vai chamar a chefia pra ver o que o pessoal da Falange Vermelha acabou de fazer.”

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precursor of an upcoming destabilizing wave of lawlessness in Brazil, the film portrays him looking directly at Miguel from behind the bars of the gate, breathless with excitement as he shows his power move to Miguel who looks at him helplessly. Although Miguel does not speak on the screen, his voice is heard narrating a confession by saying that he does not wish death to be the final solution while the two look at each other, almost as if communicating without speaking out loud. Jorginho’s eyes disclose a kind of madness as he smiles in a threatening way. The separation between the two is now physical and ideological, a gap augmented by their racial and social differences and a reflection of the situation in the outside context. The narrative does not attempt to bring a happy ending to their relationship and they fail to achieve a sense of brotherhood, remaining “almost brothers” even while living under the same roof of the carceral institution. Quase Dois Irmãos brings to the surface parts of Brazilian history and contemporary society that have shaped the process of self-awareness and understanding of its problematic past and present. By raising issues concerning the years of dictatorship and making references to slavery, the film juxtaposes two characters from different social and racial backgrounds that eventually call attention to how oppression has been an underlying element in the formation of Brazilian identity, particularly for those in minority groups. It is by foregrounding the perception of the body and the senses in active interaction inside the carceral institution that the Ilha Grande prison becomes an example of Marks’ recollection-object. According to the author, the significance of these objects lies in the fact that “they condense time within themselves, and that in excavating them we expand outward in time” (2000, 77). The Ilha Grande prison, currently in partial ruins, is dug out from its own past in the film and becomes once again the active platform of narratives that are intrinsically connected to moments of absolute repression in the country’s history and the birth of an imminent criminal wave that would reverberate beyond the walls of the prison. The film ends with a panning shot of the city of Rio as it initially shows the urban center, but as the seconds go by, the camera discloses the favela houses built closely to the buildings, echoing once again Tuca Vieira’s photograph and the proximity between the two distinct realities. The juxtaposition of the context of the carceral space and the outside world is crystalized in Jorginho and Miguel’s relationship, whose lives are mostly in physical proximity but hardly equal in terms of societal perception. The last sentence spoken in the film is by Miguel in voice over

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who says, “We all have two lives: the one we dream of and the one we live in.”51 This duality is the center of the film since Jorginho and Miguel’s attempt to remain side by side during their lives is in the end seen as a utopic effort interrupted by the atmosphere of socio-racial inequality as well as unbalanced opportunities and eventually their own choices seal the segregated lives they lead in Brazil as almost brothers. The carceral landscape of the country is represented in Carandiru and Quase Dois Irmãos as spaces of contested encounters in a formation of micro-societies that although are self-contained in terms of rules and organization, constitute bridges with the outside context, embodying the social and racial structures in direct connection with issues of criminality and inequality. Both the Carandiru complex and Ilha Grande prison have been deactivated in real life and sidelined by mainstream media, but the films highlight these prison spaces as locations that are worth revisiting since they possess a painful but meaningful history of incarceration in Brazil. The voices of prisoners and warders come to life once again to represent moments in the country’s history that affect directly the way incarceration, crime, and human rights are dealt in society. Both films present a corporeal focus on the perception of confinement, placing the bodies of the prisoners, and oftentimes warders, in situations where the overwhelming experiences of violence are depicted through an engagement with the sensorial apparatus of the characters and audience. Moments of intense emotional conflicts, whether of a physical or psychological nature, rely on cinematic tools that appeal to the senses, framing such encounters as vivid perceptions of life and memories in the making. Carandiru focuses on bringing to the surface the massacre of 1992 but also the gruesome living conditions for the prisoners in terms of overcrowding and lack of sanitation. The narrative displays the creation of a society with its own rules inside a governmental institution and how the prisoners mirror the outside world in their cells, even decorating living spaces like an extension of their home, making it clear the process of territorial ownership. The massacre itself is represented by an overload of graphic images of the corporeal violation enacted by the authorities while also relying on a more subjective approach to the trauma of the event. By including dream-like sequences with a sensorial emphasis to the perception of extreme violence, the film indicates the need of engagement with the audience in somatic ways to construct a more comprehensive experience of the massacre. In Quase  “Temos todos duas vidas: uma a que sonhamos, outra a que vivemos.”

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Dois Irmãos, the need to look at the body in order to make sense of the carceral environment is also present as the prisoners’ racial differences ignite situations of tension that are connected to the context beyond the prison walls. Problematic moments of Brazilian history underline the narrative as the effects of slavery and the military dictatorship become the focal point regarding inequality and freedom of expression. The performance of violence by the prisoners and warders is given a haptic quality in the use of images and sound in the film while registering the experiences of pain on a level that requires the participation of the audience’s sensorial apparatus in apprehending the transient nature of such moments, following the Marks’ notion that “what does not register in the orders of the seeable and sayable may resonate in the order of the sensible” (2000, 111). The representation of the somatic experiences of the body confined in the Brazilian carceral spaces becomes an instrument of comprehension of violence in the country as its socio-politic particularities delineate a segregated territory, inside and outside the prisons. Both films demonstrate a craving to look further into the effects of silenced voices from the past and an effort to make sense of the present in its ever-changing state of plurality of Brazilian trajectories.

References Andrade, Fernando Grostein, Pedro Bial, and Claudia Calabi, dir. 2019. Encarcerados. Rio de Janeiro: Globo Filmes. https://itunes.apple.com/br/ movie/encarcerados/id1589559385. Araújo, Carolina Dutra de. 2010. A invenção da Ilha Grande: A influência do Instituto Penal Cândido Mendes na turistificação local. Caderno Virtual de Turismo 10 (2): 1–12. Araújo, Vânia Maria Mourão, and Luiz Felipe Ferreira. 2012. Tradição e modernidade no traje da baiana de escola de samba. Visualidades 10 (1): 301–315. Atencio, Rebecca J. 2014. Memory’s Turn: Reckoning with Dictatorship in Brazil. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. Babenco, Hector, dir. 1980. Pixote: A lei do mais fraco. Rio de Janeiro: Embrafilme. DVD. ———, dir. 1985. O beijo da mulher aranha. São Paulo: HB Filmes. DVD. ———, dir. 2003. Carandiru. New York: Sony Pictures Classics. DVD. Bastos, Hermenegildo. 1998. Memórias do cárcere: Literatura e testemunho. Brasília: Editora UNB. Carvalho Filho, Luís Francisco. 2002. A prisão. São Paulo: Publifolha.

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Chirio, Maud. 2018. Politics in Uniform: Military Officers and Dictatorship in Brazil, 1960–1980. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Debret, Jean-Baptiste. 1835. Voyage Pittoresque et Historique au Brésil vol. 2. Paris: Firmin Didot Frères. Fiovarante, Karina Eugenia. 2011. Geografia e cenários fílmicos: Uma discussão acerca da espacialidade carcerária a partir do filme Carandiru (2003). Revista Eletrônica Geoaraguaia 1 (1): 34–55. Foucault, Michel. 1995. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books. Fransson, Elisabeth, and Francesca Giofrè. 2020. Prison Cell Spaces, Bodies and Touch. In The Prison Cell: Embodied and Everyday Spaces of Incarceration, ed. Jennifer Turner and Victoria Knight, 261–282. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Giannetti, Louis. 2002. Understanding Movies. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Ginzburg, Jaime. 2012. Crítica em tempos de violência. São Paulo: EDUSP. Gomes, Flávio, and Lilia M.  Schwarcz. 2018. Introdução. In Dicionário da escravidão e liberdade: 50 textos críticos, ed. Lilia M.  Schwarcz and Flávio Gomes, 18–41. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Greene, Oliver N., Jr. 2020. Comparative Music Cultures—Carnival in Trinidad and Brazil. San Diego: Cognella. Johnson, Randal, and Robert Stam. 1995. Brazilian Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press. Joyce, James. 2004. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners. New York: Barnes & Noble. Lapera, Pedro. 2007. A politização das categorias raciais no cinema brasileiro contemporâneo. Ciberlegenda 19 (October): 1–16. Marks, Laura U. 2000. The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham: Duke University Press. ———. 2002. Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Massey, Doreen. 2008. For Space. London: Sage. Moran, Dominique. 2013. Carceral Geography and Spatialities of Prison Visiting: Visitation, Recidivism, and Hyperincarceration. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 31: 174–190. https://doi.org/10.1068/d18811. ———. 2015. Carceral Geography: Spaces and Practices of Incarceration. Farnham: Ashgate. Murat, Lucia, dir. 2004. Quase dois irmãos. Rio de Janeiro: Taiga Filmes. DVD. Pollack, Michael. 1989. Memória, esquecimento, silêncio. Estudos Históricos 2 (3): 3–15. Rodrigues, Jaime. 2018. Navio negreiro. In Dicionário da escravidão e liberdade: 50 textos críticos, ed. Lilia M. Schwarcz and Flávio Gomes, 362–368. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Rovai, Marta Gouveia de Oliveira, and Rafael Flores de Lima. 2016. Memória Massacre Carandiru: A história pública digital contra o esquecimento. Revista

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Observatório 2 (1): 92–117. https://doi.org/10.20873/uft.2447-­426 6.2016v2n1p92. Sacramento, Paulo, dir. 2003. O prisioneiro da grade de ferro. São Paulo: Olhos de Cão Produções Cinematográficas. DVD. Santos, Nelson Pereira dos, dir. 1984. Memórias do cárcere. Rio de Janeiro: Embrafilme. DVD. Scaraggi, Elisa. 2019. Witness narratives in context: analysing the political prison writings of Graciliano Ramos and José Luandino Vieira. In Context in Literary and Cultural Studies, ed. Jakob Ladegaard and Jakob Gaardbo Nielsen, 37–54. London: UCL Press. Sibley, David, and Bettina van Hoven. 2009. The Contamination of Personal Space: Boundary Construction in a Prison Environment. Area 41 (2 June): 198–206. Silva, Antônio Márcio da. 2018. Human Rights Abuses and State Violence in Prison Films by Hector Babenco. In Human Rights, Social Movements and Activism in Contemporary Latin American Cinema, ed. Mariana Cunha and Antônio Márcio da Silva, 71–93. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Varella, Drauzio. 2012a. Carcereiros. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. ———. 2012b. Lockdown: Inside Brazil’s Most Dangerous Prison. London: Simon & Schuster. Vásquez, María Mercedez. 2014. Brazil at a Socio-cinematic Crossroads: State Intervention on Screen. In Brazil in Twenty-First Century Popular Media, ed. Naomi Pueo Wood, 113–138. Plymouth: Lexington Books. Wener, Richard E. 2012. The Environmental Psychology of Prisons and Jails: Creating Humane Spaces in Secure Settings. New  York: Cambridge University Press. Xavier, Ismail. 2005. Humanisers of the Inevitable: Brazilian Film against Barbarism. In City of God in Several Voices: Brazilian Social Cinema as Action, ed. Else R.P.  Vieira, 97–111. Nottingham: Critical, Cultural and Communications Press. Yúdice, George. 2003. The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era. Durham: Duke University Press.

CHAPTER 6

Final Thoughts

A film is an act of seeing that makes itself seen, an act of hearing that makes itself heard, an act of physical and reflective movement that makes itself reflexively felt and understood. (Vivian Sobchack) (This quotation was taken from Vivian Sobchack’s book The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience (1992, 3–4))

Whether in Derry, Belfast, Rio de Janeiro, or São Paulo, the eight films analyzed in this book raise questions regarding the significance of portraying multiple bodies as they inhabit problematic spaces such as city streets immersed in ongoing and violent clashes as well as carceral spaces enveloped in political turmoil and socioeconomic inequalities. The visual representation of the violated body in circumstances of confrontation offers possibilities to examine and assess the role of corporeal engagement in terms of sensorial identification in the films that take place in both Northern Ireland and Brazil. As the eight films are considered individually and not homogeneously, they weave a panorama of the ways in which each territory is spatially experienced and sensorially perceived. The bodies of the characters in direct interaction with situations of risk exemplify the significance of a corpographical approach to conflict cinemas, that is, a focus on the affective and somatic mode of comprehending space, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K. M. Rosa, Conflict Cinemas in Northern Ireland and Brazil, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34698-9_6

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particularly in moments of extreme violence. Eileen Rositzka comments that “with regard to film, corpography is a mode of generating and communicating a subjective perspective of physical space which can be contextualized within a distinct cultural and historical framework” (2020, 175). This idea reinforces the intimate and sensorial bond between the immersive moments in the films and the perception of the audiences, and in the case of the several films in this book, within peculiar national contexts in Northern Ireland and Brazil. The choice of pairing Northern Irish and Brazilian territories in this filmic analysis was inspired by the similarities in geographical and historical terms while also observing how these cinemas display an inclination to delve into intricate subjects of their past and their reverberations in the present. Geographically speaking, Northern Ireland and Brazil demonstrate examples of a segregated landscape that is palpable in the filmic representations, an urban separation, whether by the use of physical or symbolic walls, that affects the living conditions and subsequently installs a regime of fear and aggressiveness. In Bloody Sunday (Paul Greengrass 2002)  and ’71 (Yann Demange 2014), the streets of Derry and Belfast signal such configuration as the Nationalist and Unionist areas are firmly demarcated and portrayed as zones of danger if crossed. In terms of urban design, Tropa de Elite (José Padilha 2007) and A Divisão (Vicente Amorim 2020) represent a similar structure with the Rio city center and the favelas being segregated territories characterized by profound inequality and crime growth. As demonstrated in Tuca Vieira’s photograph mentioned in the Chap. 1, sometimes only a cement wall visually separates these two substantially large areas, but in reality, the segregation runs deep in daily life and interactions, similarly to the Northern Irish context where relationships are affected and restrictions applied to everyday activities. With or without separation walls in a physical format, the situation in both territories indicate a need for closer revision and the films dealt with in this book raise issues that question the level of violence present in the social fabric of these cities. Such separations are also visible in the prison films that take place in both Northern Ireland and Brazil, as the prison space becomes an extension of the outside world, for instance, in Maze (Stephen Burke 2017), the corridor that houses the cells of Republicans and Loyalists is similarly segregated and the violent tension repeatedly takes over the wing. In Quase Dois Irmãos (Lucia Murat 2004) a physical wall is literally built with bricks and cement in order to separate the prisoner groups based on political affiliation and racial issues. The carceral space also demonstrates the division that ruptures both Northern Irish and

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Brazilian urban territories, establishing a constant state of violence represented in the films. Another point of connection between Northern Ireland and Brazil that can be found in the films of this book is the heritage of conquest and the historical repercussions of this circumstance. In particular, the corporeal oppression of dominant forces, the military or police in this case, becomes an element in common, one that is noticed in practical terms as these forces make use of extreme violence in the situations represented in the narratives. Carandiru (Hector Babenco 2003) is a clear example of such case as the police massacres 111 prisoners, most of them black and/or belonging to a lower social class, and transforms the already highly inadequate carceral space into an infernal environment of death and brutality. Bloody Sunday also offers a perspective on the massacre of civilians during a civil rights march while emphasizing the rampant behavior of the British military and hinting at the problematic colonial relationship that is ongoing for centuries. Both massacres demonstrate the use of abusive power by military and police forces that unveils a legacy of dominance based on political and economic disputes. In Quase Dois Irmãos, the historical issue of the military dictatorship in Brazil is featured alongside slavery, offering an overview of modes of oppression in racial and political ways. The repercussion of such dark heritage is deeply felt in the behavior of the police officers in Tropa de Elite as they attempt to normalize a hyper aggressive attitude, including a return to the legacy of torture, portrayed in A Divisão as well, a method famously present during the dictatorship in Brazil. The issue of silencing of minorities is also displayed in Silent Grace (Maeve Murphy 2001)  as the position of women during the Troubles is questioned and resignified through a representation that includes their voices and experiences that were suppressed by the usually male-centered narrative of the conflict. The nature of the issues portrayed in the films taking place in both Northern Ireland and Brazil feature a deeply ingrained relationship of inequality and abuse involving powerful forces and minority groups, ranging from political, racial, and religious concerns to matters related to gender and social standing. In the films analyzed in this book, definitions of nation and identity are challenged and reconfigured based on the construction of memories of the events, some of them well known for the public as part of a larger collective memory and others more thoroughly fictionalized, by means of filmic reconstruction of previously abandoned or demolished places and forgotten voices. The characters’ bodies once again channel the convoluted issues in search for a corporeal connection with the audience, one

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that triggers a contemporary understanding of the past. Marita Sturken develops the idea of cultural memory in the sense that it is a “memory that is shared outside the avenues of formal historical discourse yet is entangled with cultural products and imbued with cultural meaning” (1997, 3). Films are indeed producers of cultural memory since they have the possibility of representing the past in varied ways, from different perspectives and contexts depending, for instance, on several factors of film production and distribution. As Sturken comments that “memory is a narrative rather than a replica of an experience that can be retrieved and relived” (7), hence the prospect of distinct viewpoints of the events portrayed in a narrative. For example, Carandiru and Bloody Sunday are based on books that are filled with testimonies from eyewitnesses of the massacres and their memories. The books have created a platform that channels otherwise forgotten voices, and the films remain as canvases that represent a version of such testimonies inserted in a larger narrative frame. Sturken explains that “it is the tension between the representation of memory and the experience of an event […] that inspires artistic engagement with a notion of the past” (9). This artistic engagement can ignite a process of search for a cultural identity that takes into consideration not only the present moments but a heritage of past experiences, with the possibility of including lesser-known voices. Therefore, Sturken points out that “camera images, whether photograph, films, or television footage, whether documentary, docudrama or fiction, are central to the interpretation of the past” (11). The photographs originated in both Northern Ireland and Brazil discussed in the first chapter and the documentaries from both countries mentioned throughout the book demonstrate the powerful possibilities of engagement with the past in different formats and how they establish a greater collective imaginary with different nuances regarding the events they portray. Previously mentioned projects such as the Prisons Memory Archive (PMA) in Northern Ireland and Memória Massacre Carandiru in Brazil offer a confrontation of the past through the examination of experience and memory by keeping personal and group recollections alive that otherwise would be kept from public knowledge. These experiences on screen form a dynamic outlet for the past that is consequently confronted with contemporary perspectives and viewpoints. Vivian Sobchack mentions that “our experiences are mediated and qualified not only through the various transformative technologies of perception and expression but also by historical and cultural systems that constrain both the inner limits of our perception and the outer limits of our world”

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(2004, 4). The particular experiences represented in the films of this book are embedded in their own cultural and historical contexts but strive to bring a new facet of the circumstances by, in many instances, unearthing stories and vantage points that construct a fresh and sometimes controversial perspective of the events. Sobchack continues by exploring further into the issue of embodied experience by saying that “our experience is not only always mediated by the lived bodies that we are, but our lived bodies (and our experience of them) is always also mediated and qualified by our engagements with other bodies and things” (2004, 4). The varied interactions and exchanges of experiences represented in the films, not only among characters but between humans and material structures such as the prisons in Northern Ireland and Brazil, display the extreme level of sensorial responsiveness that is manifested in the film apparatus through the use of strategies that enhance the sensual perception of the audience. Immersive camera angles and movements, flexibility of image speed, and changes in the nature of the audio to emulate certain sensations are only some of the sophisticated elements that configurate these films as attempts to reach beyond the historical facts and into an engaging and personalized way to experience the representation of the past in film. The responsive body of the film characters, portrayed through the cinematic sensorial approach to the events around them, and the perceptive body of the audience that sees, hears, and engages, create together a unique response to the film event immersed in a particular geographical and contemporary context. The sensorial experience of violence is constructed in the films also through an emphasis on the texture of the image and what Laura U. Marks calls haptic imagery, a concept widely explored in the chapters of this book. Marks explains that “haptic images do not invite identification with a figure so much as they encourage a bodily relationship between the viewer and the image” (2002, 3). Both contexts of Northern Ireland and Brazil are cinematically experienced in scenes that appeal to a somatic and corporeal engagement with the initially unknown and unrecognizable image or sound coming from the screen. In Maze, the initial minutes of the film display images whose textures are not fully discernible to the audience but soon become perceivable as prison elements that will be vital in the narrative. A Divisão makes use of the style of haptic nature to disclose spaces suffused in an aura of danger and violence such as a place where a man is killed and a corridor in a favela during an intensive shootout. The surroundings are not recognizable for a few seconds which leads the

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audience to engage and respond to the image in a more sensorial and organic way. Marks comments that “cinematic perception is not merely (audio) visual but synesthetic, an act in which the senses and the intellect are not conceived as separate” (13). These images provide ways to experience the Northern Irish and Brazilian territories as active stages where perceptions of segregation and oppression are similarly enhanced in order to tell stories that push boundaries of historical representation in contemporary times. These instances of the immersion into the world of the senses highlight how “haptic images invite the viewer to dissolve hir or her subjectivity in the close and bodily contact with the image” (Marks 2002, 13). In Carandiru, when the police officers enter the prison complex and start shooting indiscriminately, the film turns the chronological narrative into a hallucinatory pace, one that displays the level of madness of such a brutal event. It is through the haptic imagery in a mixture of light and shadow that the chaos of the massacre becomes sensorially palpable to the audience as opposed to a detached and rational approach. Marks observes that in this case, “the viewer is called on to fill in the gaps in the image, engage with the traces the image leaves” (13). This becomes apparent, for instance, in Quase Dois Irmãos, when Miguel is released from solitary confinement and the cell door opens but the audience is not given any explanation regarding the nature of this image. A very strong light disorients the viewer and the shadowy spaces around it carry no information of the whereabouts. By at first limiting the amount of input included in the image and soundtrack, the film compels the audience to perceive what is on the screen in a combination of embodied and intellectual experience, constructing it imaginatively and sensorially. The historical events foregrounded in the films of this book remain as portrayals of situations that frame the body at risk, that is, the corporeality of those exposed to violent conditions, signifying values that reach beyond the realm of cinematic narration and imprinting a sensorial and perceptual layer of understanding of the significance of such representations in remembering the past. The partitioned cities and carceral spaces in Northern Ireland and Brazil are portrayed in such ways that the heritage of oppression and colonization are discernable and become a point of connection between these two territories. The focus on the multisensory possibilities that each film brings to the discussion adds the notion that embodied perception and cinema are interconnected and important to the engagement with the matters brought up by the narratives. Questions of

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race, gender, politics, religion, and socio-economic standing are critically addressed in the films in juxtaposition with situations of deep-seated inequalities and extreme use of violence as well as abuse of human rights. These issues are present in both contexts and remain as problematic topics in contemporary times, hence the significance of examining such representations of the past and their reverberations into our present moment. In Chap. 1, a quote by Charles Simic was mentioned in which he highlights the need to look closely at the individual suffering in contexts of violent conflicts and not necessarily at the general statistics that tend to dilute the personal suffering of those affected. The focus of this book was in line with Simic’s idea in terms of being very particular about each cinematic moment of corporeal devastation, from the civilians massacred on the streets, the little boy who is caught up in an explosion at the pub, the people who were tortured with plastic bags and ruthlessly killed by the police, to the men and women kept in carceral confinement and often under subhuman conditions. These examples were analyzed, hopefully, under the promise of Chap. 1, that is, by hitting the pause button and looking closely at the details, the sounds, the reactions, the senses, and the importance of such portrayals in Northern Ireland and Brazil. These two countries, that at first sight are so distant and disconnected, are linked by a sad and traumatic similar past of abuse and oppression, segregated spaces, and silenced voices, but that look back at their own history with critical eyes through narratives that push boundaries and consider the acts of seeing, hearing, smelling, and touching as fundamental elements in the multisensory and multifaceted process of watching films.

References Amorim, Vicente, dir. 2020. A Divisão. Rio de Janeiro: AfroReggae Audiovisual. DVD. Babenco, Hector, dir. 2003. Carandiru. New York: Sony Pictures Classics. DVD. Burke, Stephen, dir. 2017. Maze. Dublin: Mammoth Films. DVD. Demange, Yann, dir. 2014. ‘71. Sheffield: Warp Films. DVD. Greengrass, Paul, dir. 2002. Bloody Sunday. Galway: Screen Ireland. DVD. Marks, Laura U. 2002. Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Murat, Lúcia, dir. 2004. Quase Dois Irmãos. Rio de Janeiro: Taiga Filmes. DVD. Murphy, Maeve, dir. 2001. Silent Grace. Galway: The Irish Film Board. DVD. Padilha, José, dir. 2007. Tropa de Elite. Rio de Janeiro: Zazen Produções. DVD.

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Rositzka, Eileen. 2020. Cinematic Corpographies: Re-mapping the War Film through the Body. Berlin: De Gruyter. Sobchack, Vivian. 1992. The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 2004. Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and the Moving Image Culture. Berkley: University of California Press. Sturken, Marita. 1997. Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering. Berkley: University of California Press.

Index1

A Amorim, Vicente, 18, 62, 88n22 Apocalypse Now (1979), 44 Araújo, Carolina Dutra de, 155 Armagh Stories (2015), 113n2, 115 Armed conflicts, 1–4 Asphalt people, 62 Atencio, Rebecca J., 183, 184 B Babenco, Hector, 10, 20, 152, 156, 157, 162n14, 163, 178 Bachelard, Gaston, 76 Bacurau (2019), 7 Baile funk, 72–74, 72n9 Band of Brothers (2001), 45, 46 Barker, Jennifer, 15, 16, 41, 50 Barricade, 33, 36, 48, 50, 52, 96 Barton, Ruth, 32, 35, 44, 45, 55, 56, 133

Bastos, Hermenegildo, 179 Belfast, 2, 9, 18, 27, 42–57, 203, 204 Bentes, Ivana, 69 Berg, Peter, 46 Bigelow, Kathryn, 44 Bird’s eye view, 8, 44, 47, 52, 164 Blair, Paula, 27–29, 109, 112–115, 118 Blaney, Aileen, 33, 34 Bleibleh, Sahera, 49, 52 Bloody Sunday, 4, 5, 8, 29, 32, 37, 40, 42 Bloody Sunday (2002), 4, 17, 18, 25–57, 204–206 Bomb, 44, 45, 53, 54 The Boxer (1997), 27 Brazilian chanchadas, 66 Bullet holes, 93, 175 Burke, Stephen, 19, 108, 118n4

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K. M. Rosa, Conflict Cinemas in Northern Ireland and Brazil, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34698-9

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212 

INDEX

C Caldeira, Teresa, 70, 78, 97 Carandiru (2003), 10, 20, 151–200, 205, 206, 208 Carceral geography, 111, 118–133, 136, 144, 147, 191 Carceral institution, 132, 137, 144, 162, 167, 178, 182, 184, 185, 198 Carnaval, 65n3, 66, 73, 180, 180n35, 181, 181n38 Carvalho Filho, Luís Francisco, 151, 154, 167 Cellmate, 127, 128, 137, 139, 183 Chauí, Marilena, 69 Chirio, Maud, 184 Cidade de Deus (2002), 7, 68–70 Cinema Novo, 6, 7, 65, 67, 69 Cinematic tactility, 15, 16, 50, 81 The Circle, 62, 123–127, 131, 132 Civil Rights Association, 40 Civil rights march, 32, 109, 205 Clarke, Alan, 28, 128 Claustrophobia, 27, 108, 122 Cole, Sarah, 18, 26, 38, 39, 51–53, 57 Colonialism, 6, 32, 116, 134 Conceived space, 11 Conflict cinema, 15, 30, 31, 203 Contemporary warfare, 2, 3, 41, 43, 44 Coppola, Francis Ford, 44 Corpographical, 36, 45, 53, 55, 92, 95, 147, 203 Corporeal abuse, 70–87 Corporeality, 3, 8, 44, 89, 95, 113, 116, 158, 192, 208 Corporeal violation, 1, 2, 19, 26, 31, 39, 54, 57, 93, 136, 152, 172, 199 Corruption, 18, 19, 62, 69–72, 78, 102 Crewe, Ben, 119, 124, 127, 130

CS gas, 36 Cultural memory, 21, 31, 206 Cunha, Euclides da, 64n2 D D’Angelo, Sandra, 72n9, 73, 74 Das, Santanu, 39, 41, 93, 99 Dehumanization, 86, 152, 161, 180 Demange, Yann, 18, 26, 44 Derry, 2, 4, 9, 18, 28, 32–42, 57, 203, 204 Diegues, Carlos, 68 Dillane, Fionnuala, 5, 27, 31 Disease, 162, 178 Disenchanted violence, 18, 26, 38 Disorientation, 35–37, 44, 45, 49, 52, 54, 96 A Divisão (2020), 18, 19, 61, 204, 205, 207 Divis Flats, 47, 55 Doherty, Willie, 28, 29 Dos Santos, Nelson Pereira, 7, 67, 155n5, 180 Drug abuse, 172 Drug dealers, 64, 89, 92–94 Duddy, Jack, 4, 5 E Edwards, Aaron, 25 Elephant (1989), 28, 128 Embodiment, 3, 14, 15, 17, 25–57, 102 Emotion zone, 124, 126–128, 131, 132 Encarcerados (2019), 159 Evans, Marc, 27 F Father Daly, 4, 5 Favela dos Meus Amores (1935), 66

 INDEX 

Feldman, Allen, 117, 118, 129, 138, 142, 143 Fiovarante, Karina Eugenia, 168 Forbidden space, 49, 52 Foucault, Michel, 122, 163 Fransson, Elisabeth, 111, 196 Full Metal Jacket (1987), 46 Funari, Pedro Paulo, 63n1 G Gaelic, 142 Gates, 113, 114, 122, 128, 164, 173, 175, 190, 195–198 Giannetti, Louis, 176n30 Gibbons, Luke, 6 Ginzburg, Jaime, 155 Giofrè, Francesca, 111, 196 Good Friday agreement, 26 Greene, Oliver N., Jr., 180n35 Greengrass, Paul, 4, 17, 26, 32, 32n1 Gregory, Derek, 13, 18, 35, 36, 43, 44, 47, 76 Griffiths, Alison, 107 Grimaldi, Fulvio, 4, 5, 8 Grosz, Elizabeth, 8, 9 Ground level, 1, 32, 54, 70, 75, 164 Guerilla warfare, 44 H Haptic images/imagery, 16, 80, 117, 121, 176, 187, 207, 208 Harrington, Louise, 30, 46, 52 H-Blocks, 19, 112, 113, 117, 118, 120–123 Hill, John, 4, 25, 26, 30, 43, 129n5 Hockey, John, 46 Human geography, 13, 195 Human rights, 10, 20, 102, 109, 111, 145, 151, 152, 156, 157, 163, 173–175, 177, 180, 184, 189, 199, 209

213

Hunger (2008), 27, 116, 117 Hunger strike, 10, 19, 20, 107, 113, 114, 116, 119, 121, 126–128, 131, 133, 134, 146, 148, 189, 190 The Hurt Locker (2008), 44, 45 I Imagery/images of violence, 26, 27, 30, 69, 102 Immersive approach, 6, 35, 147 Incarcerated bodies, 117, 170 Incarceration, 10, 109, 126, 133, 134, 137, 138, 144–147, 163, 180, 196, 199 Inside Stories (2005), 112–115, 113n2, 118, 131 Internment, 4, 109, 119 IRA, 42, 45, 47, 51, 53, 55, 56 J Johnson, Randal, 6, 66n6, 67, 156, 180 Joyce, James, 166, 167 K Kehrwald, Kevin, 108 Kidnapping, 19, 88–90, 93–97, 99–102 Knight, Victoria, 10 Knives, 75, 164, 172, 174 Kubrick, Stanley, 46 L Landscape, 2, 3, 18, 28, 35, 45, 54, 63, 65, 66, 76, 77, 85, 90, 96, 102, 112, 118, 129n5, 195, 196, 199, 204 Landscape of fear, 77, 84, 96

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INDEX

Lapera, Pedro, 182, 193 Late twentieth century, 2, 17 Lefebvre, Henri, 11, 12, 26, 43, 62, 76, 111 Leite, Márcia Pereira, 65, 67 Lima, Rafael de, 152, 160, 161, 179 Lived body, 14, 15, 41, 207 Lived space, 11, 12, 30 Lone Survivor (2013), 46 Loyalists, 45, 53, 54, 56, 112, 125, 129, 130, 204 Lund, Kátia, 68, 87 M Madden, Lori, 64n2 Map, 17, 33, 34, 37, 47, 48, 52, 75, 76, 121, 123, 164 Marginal spaces, 61, 65 Marks, Laura U., 16, 17, 54, 62, 92, 95, 121, 154, 176, 177, 187, 197, 198, 200, 207, 208 Marques, Ângela Cristina Salgueiro, 79 Marti, Irene, 111 Massey, Doreen, 153, 154, 168, 172, 183, 192 Mauro, Humberto, 66 Maze (2017), 19, 107–148, 204, 207 McAreavey, Naomi, 1 McAtackney, Laura, 119 McCafferty, Nell, 136, 137 McClennen, Sophia, 7 McDonald, Kevin, 30 McLaughlin, Cahal, 111, 112, 113n2, 115, 116 McLoone, Martin, 6, 27, 30 McQueen, Steve, 27, 116 McSorley, Kevin, 1 Meirelles, Fernando, 7, 68 Memória Massacre Carandiru, 160, 160n12, 206

Mendonça Filho, Kleber, 7 Military dictatorship, 19, 78, 102, 156, 180, 200, 205 Military Reaction Force (MRF), 53, 56 Moisés, José Álvaro, 68 Moran, Dominique, 109, 110, 112, 122, 124, 145, 170, 185 Morumbi, 8 Mullan, Don, 32, 37, 39, 40 Multi-sensory experience, 5, 118 Murat, Lucia, 20, 152, 178n31 Murphy, Maeve, 19, 108, 133, 133n6 N Nagib, Lúcia, 61, 63, 68 Napolitano, Marcos, 66 National identity, 2, 6, 18, 31, 65, 66, 68, 72–74, 103 National imaginary, 2, 21, 119 Nichols-Pethick, Jonathan, 88 Nothing Personal (1995), 27 Notícias de uma Guerra Particular (1999), 87 No-wash protest, 107, 112, 119–121, 134, 137–139, 143, 148 Nwonka, Clive James, 117 O O Beijo da Mulher Aranha (1985), 156, 157 Odd Man Out (1947), 45 O Primeiro Dia (1998), 67 Orfeu (1999), 67, 70 Oricchio, Luiz Zanin, 69 O’Sullivan, Thaddeus, 27 Overcrowding, 162, 163, 166, 199

 INDEX 

215

P Padilha, José, 18, 62, 70n7 Pain, 5, 6, 16, 17, 19, 21, 29, 31, 41, 46, 55, 63, 78, 80–82, 84, 86, 87, 97–99, 102, 103, 114, 117, 119, 147, 154, 197, 200 Panopticon, 122, 163 Paraisópolis, 7–9 PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital), 160, 197 Perceived space, 11, 12, 43 Phenomenological approach, 14, 76 Pine, Emilie, 19, 27, 117 Pipe, 141–144, 147 Pixote: A Lei do mais Fraco, 156 Plastic bag, 81, 82, 86, 102, 209 Podalsky, Laura, 74 Point-blank range, 38, 51, 174 Point Break (1991), 44 Political prisoners, 20, 79, 115, 155–157, 179, 183, 184, 189, 190, 192–194, 197 Pollack, Michael, 178, 179 Pope John Paul II, 72, 75 Poverty, 8, 30, 63, 65, 67, 68, 78, 101, 156, 162 Power abuse, 32, 38, 42, 46, 62, 64n2, 78, 79, 84, 86, 174 Prayer, 145 Primary territories, 170 Prince, Stephen, 53 Prison cell, 10, 111, 134, 157, 196 Prisons Memory Archive (PMA), 111, 112, 113n2, 115, 118, 131, 206 Prosthetic of the self, 183

R Racial prejudice, 162, 178, 182, 189, 192 Ramos, Fernão Pessoa, 69, 89, 100, 101 Ramos, Graciliano, 155, 155n5, 179, 180 Rap das Armas, 73 Rebellion, 19, 39, 64, 109, 110, 119, 142, 159, 160, 162n14, 173 Recollection-object, 154, 177 Reed, Carol, 45 Rêgo, Cacilda, 2n1, 63–65 Republicans, 10, 50, 64n2, 112, 116, 119, 123, 125, 126, 129–131, 133, 138, 139, 141, 142, 145, 204 Resurrection Man (1998), 27 Rio (de Janeiro), 2, 9, 18, 20, 61, 63–68, 70, 72–75, 84–90, 94, 101, 152, 154, 155, 179, 180n35, 181, 181n38, 182, 186, 188, 198, 203, 204 Rio 40 Graus (1955), 67 Rio Zona Norte (1957), 67 Rocha, Carolina, 65 Rocha, Glauber, 7 Rodaway, Paul, 36, 49, 50, 91, 92, 95 Rodrigues, Jaime, 78, 84, 188n44 Rositzka, Eileen, 13, 204 Roth, Mitchel P., 109 Rovai, Marta Gouveia, 152, 160, 161, 179 Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), 49, 49n4, 50

Q Quase Dois Irmãos (2004), 20, 151–200, 178n31, 204, 205, 208 Quilombo of Palmares, 63, 63n1

S Salles, Walter, 64, 65, 67 Samba, 65–67, 65n3, 72, 180–182, 180n35, 181n38, 186, 187 Samba composer, 67, 182

216 

INDEX

São Paulo, 2, 7, 9, 20, 152, 154, 160, 164, 203 Saving Private Ryan (1998), 45 Scaraggi, Elisa, 180 Scarlata, Jessica, 10, 27, 115, 116, 133, 135, 143 Scarry, Elaine, 2, 18, 19, 63, 80, 82, 84, 86, 97, 98, 103 Schmid, Christian, 11, 12 Sectarian geography, 3, 27, 30, 42 Segregation, 20, 21, 67, 119, 129, 132, 152, 193, 196, 204, 208 Sensorial perception, 12, 17, 19, 90, 117, 134, 135, 139, 141, 143, 144, 147, 159, 161, 179, 186 ’71 (2014), 18, 25–57, 204 Sheridan, Jim, 27 Sight, 13, 28, 35–37, 45, 54, 75, 86, 93–95, 113, 120, 123, 132, 134, 136, 138, 146, 170, 176, 177, 186, 209 Silent Grace (2001), 19, 107–148, 205 Silva, Antônio Márcio da, 10, 20, 156, 157, 162, 163, 174 Simic, Charles, 2, 3, 21, 209 Slavery, 6, 19, 63, 78, 151, 155, 167, 178, 187–189, 198, 200, 205 Smell, 5, 12, 13, 29, 35, 53, 88n22, 98, 113, 134, 139, 143, 159, 177, 179 Smellscape, 54, 143, 144 Sobchack, Vivian, 14, 15, 26, 108, 123, 206, 207 Social fabric, 9, 48, 61, 85, 204 Somatic, 2, 13, 14, 18, 35, 44–46, 54, 83, 98, 99, 103, 109, 118, 123, 139, 197, 199, 200, 203, 207 Soundscape, 28, 36, 37, 40, 49, 50, 91, 92, 98, 99, 130, 136, 173, 174

Space of resistance, 50, 180 Spielberg, Steven, 45 Stam, Robert, 6, 66n6, 67, 156, 180 Strange Days (1995), 44 Sturken, Marita, 21, 31, 206 Subterranean memories, 178 Surveillance, 27, 122, 123 T Tactile behavior, 41, 86 Taste, 5, 12, 140 Territory, 3, 8, 18, 47, 55, 62, 68, 70, 77, 84, 85, 88, 90, 95–97, 129, 136, 142, 144, 160, 162, 170, 171, 200, 203–205, 208 Thatcher, Margaret, 121, 135, 136 Third World memory, 6 Thomas, Daniela, 67 Torture scenes, 18, 97 Touch, 12, 13, 15, 28, 35, 39, 41, 50, 51, 54, 80, 89, 93, 96, 99, 113, 130, 134, 138, 141, 145, 173, 175, 179, 183 Trauma, 2, 6, 13, 17, 29, 57, 110, 116, 146, 155, 159, 161, 175, 199 Triad notion, 111 Tropa de Elite (2007), 18, 19, 61–103, 204, 205 Tuan, Yi-Fu, 12, 13, 41, 48, 77, 96–98 Turner, Jennifer, 10 V Varella, Drauzio, 158, 160, 162, 163, 165–167, 170, 176, 178 Vásquez, María Mercedez, 71, 74, 162, 169, 170 Vieira, Else R. P., 62

 INDEX 

Vieira, Tuca, 7–9, 68, 69, 196, 198, 204 Vulnerability, 2, 9, 20, 27, 55, 96, 99, 124 W Walsh, Rosaleen, 134 Warfare, 1–3, 28, 30, 41, 43, 44, 70, 76, 83, 103, 130, 139, 141 War films, 13, 30, 44–46 Weitzer, Ronald, 49n4 Wener, Richard E., 170, 195

217

Whalen, Lachlan, 117, 133–135, 142 Winter, Jane, 35 X Xavier, Ismail, 155, 158 Y Yúdice, George, 72, 73, 181 Z Zones of conflict, 5, 8, 18