Stephanie Dennison

Blonde Bombshell: Xuxa and Notions of Whiteness in Brazil

This article analyses the construction of whiteness in Xuxas star text. It will consider not only Xuxas role in television, for which she is best known, and her relationship with the sexually conservative and predominantly white TV Globo, but also her filmic output: Xuxa has appeared in twenty films to date, most of which were box-office smash hits. The article thus takes as its main focus the development of the promotion of Xuxa as an ideal of whiteness. It reveals in particular the uses made of notions of whiteness in the construction of her star text and the maintenance of her massive appeal in her native Brazil.

Debunking neo-imperialism or reaffirming neo-colonialism? The representation of Latin America in recent co-productions

ABSTRACT In this article I examine recent (post-2000) Latin American co-productions that deal either literally or metaphorically with the issue of twenty-first-century neo-colonialism. I will concentrate my discussion on Paul Leducs 2006 ‘network narrative’ Cobrador: In God We Trust, a six-way co-production between Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, France and the United Kingdom, but reference will also be made to Icíar Bollaíns 2010 También la lluvia/Even the Rain, a 2010 co-production (Spain/Mexico/France) set in Bolivia. The purpose of the article is, via an examination of the production contexts and close readings of two films, to consider the extent to which twenty-first-century Euro-Latin American co-productions which purport to critique neo-imperialism in the region, are contributing to a more nuanced discussion of the transnational in the context of the ‘Hispanic’ world, or whether they are simply rehashing, albeit unwittingly, old colonialist views of an essentialized and exoticized Latin America.

Intimacy and cordiality in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Aquarius

ABSTRACT Taking as its point of departure Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s theorising of O homem cordial (cordial man) and Gilberto Freyre’s foundational text Casa-grande & senzala (The Masters and the Slaves), this article will present a reading of Kleber Mendonça Filho’s second feature film Aquarius (2016) as a contemporary revision of the well-worn myths of intimacy and cordiality in Brazilian culture. It will focus on the complex relationship between maids and mistresses in Brazilian, and by extension, South American cultural history, and in particular the points at which unequal power relationships, superficially cordial and intimate, are dramatically undone.

From Superwoman to Fake Blonde: the representation of blondness on the Brazilian big screen

This article examines the various representations of Brazilian blonds on cinema screens, ranging from the ‘uber-blonde’, strongly associated with Brazil’s southernmost states, where large numbers of northern Europeans (Germans, mostly) emigrated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to male and female film personas and celebrities who adopt the blond look, either by bleaching their hair or by donning blond wigs. The aim is to reflect on the status afforded blondness in Brazilian culture and the extent to which this status is affected by the characters’ gender, racial and social background. While the article will dwell more on screen representations of blond men and women than on ‘star texts’ in the wider sense of the term, it draws analogies with blond stars and the press and public reaction to them, with a view to reflecting on how blondness and its different manifestations are interpreted in the contemporary Brazilian context.