This essay examines the romantic comedies S.O.S. mulheres ao mar (2014) and Meu passado me condena (2013), which repeat several tropes of the chanchada—a film comedy genre with its beginnings in early twentieth-century Brazil. Both offer a negotiation of changing class status in Brazil during a period of increasing international attention and economic growth (2002 to 2014). Although these films promote new notions of Brazilian cultural identity, they also sustain established hierarchies (of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality) in favor of promoting neoliberal values and ways of being. In particular they promote consumerism, self-improvement, and the cultivation of personal happiness. Unlike Brazilian popular comedy of the mid-twentieth century, these films do not offer self-deprecating critiques of modernity or the failings of capitalism. Rather, S.O.S. mulheres ao mar and Meu passado me condena celebrate and promote the idea of a new emergent Brazil, making gender and sexuality frameworks for thinking about contemporary Brazilian cultural identity.
Women, Gender and Romantic Comedy in Brazil: Love on the High Seas in Meu pasado me condena (2013) and S.O.S. mulheres ao mar (2014) Available to Purchase
Leslie L. Marsh is an associate professor in the Department of World Languages and Cultures and director of the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at Georgia State University in Atlanta. She specializes in Latin American film and media studies, focusing on Brazil and questions of citizenship. She is the author of Brazilian Women's Filmmaking: From Dictatorship to Democracy (University of Illinois Press, 2012) and coeditor with Hongmei Li of The Middle Class in Emerging Societies: Consumers, Lifestyles and Markets (Routledge, 2016). She is currently working on a project that examines contemporary nation branding and Brazil.
Leslie L. Marsh; Women, Gender and Romantic Comedy in Brazil: Love on the High Seas in Meu pasado me condena (2013) and S.O.S. mulheres ao mar (2014). Feminist Media Histories 1 April 2017; 3 (2): 98–120. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2017.3.2.98
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