City of God, this is a world that has long been forgotten by Rio de Janeiro. In the film, people will say "God bless" when evading the police, and they will draw crosses on their chests with guns. But it still cannot change the fact that this is a city that God has no time to take care of. Boys there may have witnessed violence at the age of four or five. They started killing, robbery, drug-trafficking at the age of seven or eight. At the age of nine or ten, they were shot off their toes by a "handling" because of a robbery on someone else's site. He was slaughtered on the streets when he was in his teens and 20s. Anyone who heard the sound of firecrackers like firecrackers day and night would be afraid of this place. However, it’s strange that I didn’t see even a man with a sad face or depression or death in the "City of God". The people living in that place have that kind of face and blood in their faces. ——A kind of vigorous vitality that I rarely see in the streets in the peaceful and quiet society on this side of the earth. However, on this side of the earth, I can only glimpse the inside of Brazil from this "City of God". It's just a spot of this leopard in the slum to guess the life on the other side.
I have to say that the unity of all the residents of the slums in the film surprised me, a person who grew up under a collectivist culture. As soon as the shooting and robbery of the brothel and hotel occurred, hundreds of people in the slums were able to unify their caliber for three months. Let the police not catch people; Vinono looks like a loser, but the protagonist Rocket has an impressive tenaciousness, bravely pursuing the girl she likes, and bravely pursuing her own photography dream, even if that girl's dream is so far out of reach , Even if you fail many times, even if you risk your life, don’t give up; bloodthirsty, ruthless and unrighteous like Xiaobawang Ze, and cherish the friendship with Denny, this is a feeling stronger than love (even "I love you, but I have had enough.” It is said that this is by no means the friendship of ordinary revolutionary comrades, which led me to even suspect that the director was trying to portray Ze as gay); and the enthusiasm and unrestrainedness of the entire slum group Excited, all these characteristics are things that we, who are the toiling people of the third world countries, cannot have. Of course, what we cannot have is their freedom. Indeed, the city of God gathers people who are rejected by the city. They are abandoned by the mainstream society and have no education. Just like in the movie, we can't see the hard-working adults or the hard-studying children in the slums. Not to mention the factory schools, only the long, twists and turns of the tattered neighborhoods and the tall buildings faintly visible in the distance outside the slums, as well as the children who should have been licking lollipops but licking blood from the muzzle. The first friends people here make after they are born may be the gangsters of a certain street gang, and the only school they go to may be the melting pot of slum society that was shot and killed like firecrackers. The first one they meet is willing to have sex with you. The woman of may actually be a Deise Lane, and the first job she got might be the delivery boy at the bottom of the drug trafficking chain. However, what cannot be ignored is that under the infiltration of this street culture neglected by mainstream social culture, Brazil’s slums are not only exporting killer drug lords. I don’t know how many stars come from here. Their superb skills are with their friends. I don’t know how many literati and entertainers came out of the narrow streets and dusty flat ground because they are nourished by the multicultural people here, let alone how many girls from other parts of the city admire the slums. The girl in Ba Wu school twisted her big buttocks, which seemed to be more dynamic.
To understand Brazil’s slums (favela), another concept must be involved—"sertão". The hinterland "refers to the inland zone in the northeast and central part of Brazil. The natural conditions in this large area are extremely harsh. , Is periodically attacked by droughts, both the colonial era and the modernization process after independence have progressed very slowly here. Therefore, until now, the hinterland is still synonymous with poor rural areas." 1 As mentioned in the beard class. The slum is the "extension of the hinterland in the city". From the etymological point of view, the relationship between the slum and the hinterland can be seen: favela originally refers to a drought-tolerant plant in the hinterland. After the Battle of Canudos, veterans and refugees, because they did not receive the government's salary and supplies, and did not want to return to their hometowns in the hinterland, they imitated this tough hinterland grass favela and settled on the hills of Rio de Janeiro. Later, the poor who came to Rio from the hinterland to make a living and the black slaves from the coffee plantations along the southeast coast also joined the slums. Only the newcomers entered, but the slums that did not see the old people left gradually expanded like double-bedded houses (also in the movie. Seeing that the neat and orderly houses in the City of God in the 1960s became crowded and disorderly after the 1970s) gradually became self-contained, self-organized, and since then solidified2, even able to issue their own internal circulation currency with the head of a drug dealer. As Da Cunha wrote in the "Hinterland", although the hinterland is poor and weak, it "is the root of Brazilian folk culture. Indians, blacks, mixed races, and whites have been thrown out of poverty by the accelerator of history." On the land, another cultural form completely different from the European civilization in the coastal areas was slowly and fully integrated. Therefore, da Cunha believes that “the real Brazil is in the hinterland”. This view has even profoundly affected Brazil’s History of Thought and Culture 3.
I think, as da Cunha wrote, perhaps the people in the slums are the most representative of the Brazilian spirit. They are adventurous, exciting, and crazy, pursuing the revelry of life. They dance samba and kick. Football, lackeys fighting cock, having sex. It is with such an unstoppable vitality that they can survive in the turbulent land of Latin America where the laws of the jungle prevail. Living in slums, they are not as inferior and vulgar as we take for granted. They have no personality but a symbol. On some levels, they are even more vivid people than us, just like the final conclusion of Discovery’s Brazil. What it said: In this country, it seems that everything can be changed. Fighters turn dance into martial arts. Engineers turn tropical jungles into the most ultra-modern city in the world. The descendants of slaves have mastered the skills of survival, and happiness can be seen everywhere. . The so-called American dream is that you can be whoever you want to be. Obviously Brazil also shares this dream, but for Brazilians, this transition may be a momentary thing. A perfect moment is better than a lifetime. They live in the present, which is also the essence of their carnival: night becomes day, poverty can also be rich, mediocrity becomes beauty, this change is the core of the story we want to tell, hopeless life becomes endless This is a country where a little shoe-shining boy can grow into a president. This is the Brazilian spirit. Yeah, they live in the present, yeah, they have dreams and passion.
Even if I can go to the town of samba to see all the things described in the class, I may still not dare to go deep into the city of God like Hue was in the past, but I will not be indifferent. , I can see them, I envy them. I think of reading the "Selected Poems of Brazil" a few days ago when I saw this song O ASSINALADO4 written by Cruz e Sousa, attached below, this is the most appropriate thought in my heart for that hot land:
You are a crazy and immortal madman
The noble and crazy
land of the madman is always your black fetters and
the great catastrophe on the ground restrains you.
But it is this painful shackles,
but it is this huge disaster
that causes your soul to
burst into countless tender stars because of the desire to sprout .
You are a poet, great and remarkable
, sprinkling an uninhabited world
bit by bit with eternal beauty. All the courage radiated
in the magical and vast nature proves the immortal wonder of your madman! Reference 1, Zhao Zhenjiang, Teng Wei, Hu Xudong. "Latin American Literature Garden", Wuhan: Hubei Education Press, 2007, pages 235-236. 2. Li Yuting. (2007) The Causes of Slums in Brazil. Page 2. 3. Zhang Yang. (2009). "Slum Aesthetics" since the "Film Renaissance" in Brazil. Page 10. 4. Selected by Antonio Carlos Secqin, preface and annotation, translated by Zhao Demin. "Selected Poems of Brazil", Beijing: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1994, p. 59.
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