XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

Motherhood and Making Kin in Contemporary Brazilian Cinema

• In Event: Woman-Centered Brazilian Cinema

Abstract

Brazilian families have incorporated non-biological relatives since colonial times. Domestic servants have been a common presence in elite and middle-class families, often developing close emotional bonds with family members--especially the quasi-motherly relationship between nannies and children. Alternatively, children of domestic workers have sometimes been given the role of godchildren by their parents' employers—a paternalistic and often, but not always, more distant (and certainly more unequal) relationship. Donna Haraway's theory of making kin (2016) can help us to consider the development of these forms of kinship as they formed and have been represented in cinema in recent years. The evolving state of kinship ties between elite/middle class nuclear families and the families of their maids is understood, from this point of view, as a kinnovation in which new practices of becoming family with each other develop in contemporary Brazil. The Second Mother/Que horas ela volta? (MUYLAERT, 2015) and Campo Grande (KOGUT, 2015) are two films by skilled filmmakers with an acute sensitivity to the invention of kinship in today's São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The films follow two distinct trajectories of women and children making kin in the heterogeneous social context of employers and domestic servants. Rethinking the Nietzschean terminology of “becoming hard” and “becoming soft” can help us to theorize these processes in psychological-affective terms (BULL, 2014, p. 143-147). While Val (Regina Casé) in The Second Mother must “become tough” in a certain way to achieve a more empowered identity as a mother, Regina (Carla Ribas) from Campo Grande has to “become soft” in order to form kinship ties with the children who show up on her doorstep in need of her care. The general trend represented is a progression toward more egalitarian forms of kinship, even as the characters continue to struggle with the postcolonial legacy of Brazil's social class hierarchy.
--Jack A. Draper III, University of Missouri

Author

• Jack Draper III, University of Missouri