Representation of age is central in
City of God - the film focuses largely on young people trapped in, and shaped by, their lives of poverty in the favelas.
City of God is, in many ways a film about a youth underclass (much like
Trainspotting and
This is England) and, despite its stylistic aesthetic, can be described as social realism, helping audiences understand and appreciate a social demographic often ignored or sidelined in conventional, mainstream Hollywood cinema.
The rival gangs and the Runts are largely comprised of children (or, at least, young people) which enables the audience to appreciate the ways in which the favelas, with their violence and crime, and their poverty and social deprivation, stunt young people's development and destroy their innocence. The reality for most young people in the favelas is arrest or, more likely death. Either way young people are trapped, and their lives destroyed, by the social deprivation and crime that is endemic in the favelas. Many of the rival gangs (and the Runts) contain nameless characters - particularly towards the end of the narrative when the conflict between the gangs reaches its violent peak - which reinforces the idea that the socially deprived young are unimportant; they are nothing more than cannon-fodder in a war that they cannot escape. The fact that we learn very little about most of these characters' backgrounds, suggests that they are insignificant and disposable (reinforcing the idea that the government in Brazil cares little about the plight of children, particularly if they are from socially deprived backgrounds). Young people in the film have little in the way of stable, positive role models, so there is little wonder that they look up to those with power and influence, such as gang leaders like Lil Ze and Carrot (in the same way that Bene and Lil Ze looked up to the tender trio and other gang leaders earlier in the narrative). There are no stable family influences presented in the movie; the only families we really see are those of Rocket and Knockout Ned (who is not a child) and we only glimpse them briefly.
There is a great deal to discuss with regards to the representation of gender in City of
God, a film that foregrounds an aggressive definition of masculinity. Male characters dominate the film (which is perhaps unsurprising if we consider the film's genre - crime/gangster/'hood' movie) and the female characters have passive and peripheral roles (again, a typical convention of the genre(s) the film belongs to). The women in
City of God - Shorty’s wife, Dona Zelia (the mother seen at the beginning of the story of the apartment, who sells drugs in order to bring up her children as a result of the poverty she experiences in the favelas), Blacky’s unseen girlfriend and Ned’s girlfriend are there to be the recipients of male violence and are attacked, murdered and raped. Berenice (Shaggy's girlfriend in the sixties) and Angélica (initially the object of Rocket's desire, before becoming Bene's girlfriend) may reject this violence but they are sucked into it as observers and mourners (Berenice, for example, initially tells Shaggy she wants no part of a gangster's life, though appears to have succumbed to it when we see her later in the film on the arm of another gangster). They “disappear” from the narrative and what happens to them afterwards is of no consequence. Angélica, threatened by Lil Zé, leaves Bene’s body, after he is shot by Blacky at the disco, and is not seen again. Berenice, who was given the gun by Shaggy just before he is gunned down by the police (a scene that begins the transition from the sixties to the seventies), is seen fleetingly as a gangster’s moll. Marina’s function (the female journalist who prints Rocket's pictures of Lil Ze and his gang, before letting Rocket stay at her apartment) is to provide the bridge to Rocket’s entry into manhood and the outside world, which he manages to 'escape' to at the film's climax.
Brazil was colonised by Portugal in the 16th century resulting in almost genocidal subjection of the indigenous people. Struggled for independence, which was then gained in the 19th century. Economy partly founded on the transport of huge numbers of slaves from the west coast of Africa, a practise abolished in the second half of the 19th century. Their multi-ethnic communities are today made of the descendants of these slaves, together with immigrants from all over the world.
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