Soy Cuba... Yes, yes you are...

Soy Cuba (I Am Cuba) was filmed in 1964 and directed by Russian film director Mikhail Kalatozov in Cuba.  The film tells four different segments that depict the Cuban people’s suffering that ultimately leads to the revolutionary forces marching into Havana.  The film shows some suffering, but nothing that would drive a country’s people to revolt against their government.  Most of the suffering seems to come from Americans according to the film.  More specifically: Americans sleeping with Cuban women.  Also absent is the discussion of race and Cuban identity that was going on at the time according to the article by Alejandro de la Fuente.

While the film does feature some Afro-Cubans, it never explores the struggle they were going through to be acknowledged as Cubans, while retaining their African heritage without being seen as unpatriotic.  Fuente believed that this was a problem because: “Cubans have been trying to find unity and common ground for at least a century and have frequently perceived race as an obstacle to reaching this goal.” (43)  It is difficult to achieve because the Cubans have to “reconcile race and nation, two categories that the colonial authorities had successfully presented throughout the nineteenth century as incompatible.” (44)  The general population of Cuba seemed to ignore this problem and that is reflected in the film.  However, in the 1930s, there was the invention “of the Cuban race, a new national paradigm that celebrated as its own blacks' cultural contributions to Cubanness.” (57)  This made the Afro-Cubans equal with white Cubans, but still forced the to reject their African heritage.  Even during and after the revolution of 1959, in which Afro and white Cubans fought side by side, the discussion was still ignored:

Race did not figure prominently in the agenda of the revolutionary

leadership that took power in 1959, but their commitment to social justice would deeply affect relations between blacks and whites in the country.  (60)

While America’s interference was an important reason for the Cuban Revolution; those reasons are never explored in the film.  A huge reason was that the revolutionaries “believed US multinationals were only a new version of the Spanish and Portuguese empires” bleeding Latin America dry. (Chasteen 265)  Cuban nationalists focused almost all of their anti-imperialist rhetoric against the United States in the 50s. (266)  This led them to overthrow the government because they viewed it as little more than the puppet of the imperialistic United States.  It is true that Castro allied with Soviet Russia only after the United States tried to invade Cuba to stop the spread of communism.  Good job guys.  The movie ignores most of these reasons and substitutes its own.  They rebelled because American tourists and sailors were taking advantage of their women.  It makes sense if the director was trying to have the women represent the country like Eisenstein did in Que Viva Mexico.  It does not seem like they did though, so the film made the revolution feel completely unnecessary.

Comrade Judging Dog judges.  You are found GUILTY comrade.  Da.

The Mexican Revolution as Soviet Propaganda (and no sex)

Que Viva Mexico was filmed in 1931 and directed by Russian film director Sergei Eisenstein in Mexico.  The film consists of five vignettes, however it was supposed to contain six, but the fifth was never filmed.  This happened because the film’s main backer, Upton Sinclair, pulled Eisenstein’s funding and confiscated the film, because Sinclair believed that Eisenstein was abusing his funding to stay in Mexico and not return to Soviet Russia. (Robe 20) It is clear from early on in the film that Eisenstein is trying to create a film about the triumph of communism over capitalism.  The film was basically one large montage that was supposed to “show how revolution depends upon the collective will of the people to join forces and transcend the constraining patriarchal, capitalist ideologies of modern Mexico. The individual, although an important factor for revolution, must unite himself or herself with collective action for any significant structural change to take place.” (22)

Eisenstein used mainly ideational montage (that he supposedly invented) in which “two separate images are brought together and their juxtaposition gives rise to an idea which shows how they are linked, rather like the tenor and vehicle of a metaphor.”  (Hart 20)  That is what he creates in the film; a string of visual metaphors that show the audience what he wants them to see.  What he wants people to see is the peasants of Mexico win their freedom from their capitalist oppressors.  This is most vividly seen in the fourth vignette entitled “Maguey”, which focuses on a peon named Sebastian wanted revenge against plantation-owner boss who has Sebastian’s future wife raped.  The larger scope is seen when the landowner and his men are juxtaposed with the portrait of then capitalist dictator Porfirio Diaz. (21)  The metaphor is incomplete, however, because the fifth vignette entitled “Soldadera” could not be completed. 

Capitalism is not the only target of Eisenstein’s communist metaphor.  The Catholic Church is also set up in the film as another one of the main oppressors of the Mexican people.  According to Robe, however, Eisenstein seems to be both demonizes and “celebrates: the religion of the elite Catholic minority imposed upon the lower class and the religion of the people who appropriate Catholic iconography for their own purposes.”  (26)  Apparently “Eisenstein saw that Catholicism is harmful when controlled by the few but potentially liberatory when used by the masses.” (26)  The scene that best illustrates this takes place at the end of “Maguey” when Sebastian is executed for inciting a rebellion against the landowner.  Sebastian and two of his comrades stand atop a hill reminiscent of the crucifixion, with Sebastian standing in for Jesus.  The three a forced to dig chest-high holes which they are partially buried in and the trampled to death by the horses of the landowners men.  The epilogue could also reinforce this, because it shows the people celebrating the Day of the Dead and the “death” of their former oppressors.

Comrade Judging Dog finds you GUILTY! Da.

In the end Eisenstein envisioned what could have been an excellent propaganda film, which compared to the other films shown in class contains surprisingly no sex.  Unless you count the rape of Sebastian’s future bride of course.

 

Gabriela: Crimes of Passionate Sex

Gabriela takes place in Brazil in a time (1925) of great progress, also known as the neocolonial period, for a lot of Latin American countries.  The title character Gabriela comes to the Brazilian town, probably due to “droughts of the arid sertao lands of northeastern Brazil.”  (Chasteen 187)  She was also uneducated, because in rural Brazil “had almost no rural schools, [and] no more than two people in ten could read.” (Chasteen 191)  At this, wealthy landowners were still very much in control of the Brazilian government.  As the movie shows, the government was controlled by this landowner oligarchy.  The bar owner that she falls in love with is an Italian man who the locals refer to as a Turk.  This was apparently not uncommon because foreigners “owned retail businesses all over the continent.” (Chasteen 214)   

The movie also depicts a time in Brazil when crimes of passion were apparently running rampant in the streets. (Besse 653)  It is believed that this was due to either women winning more rights for themselves and men losing their power over them (656) or the urbanization of Brazil and the breaking down of the traditional family system. (658) An interesting thing not explored in the movie is the fact that women began responding to this violence by becoming violent themselves. (654) The movie showed many scenes showing the newly found freedom that women had gained and were still gaining.  One example is the fact that Gabriela runs around town with only a skimpy dress on.  Another is when she releases the bird that her husband, the Turk, bought for her from its cage.

The perceived violence against in Brazil became so bad that a group of lawyers formed the Brazilian Council on Social Hygiene (CBHS) to combat the violence. (654) The CBHS worked to change the Penal Code, so that it no longer allowed love or honor to be used as excuses for the killing of others.  They did finally succeed in 1940.  It can be argued now however, “the rising alarm over crimes of passion should be understood as an expression of the larger concern of the Brazilian middle classes - and especially of urban professionals - over the apparent breakdown of social order.” (657) It was the need that men had to keep and control social order that they fought so hard over a thing had only been a rather small issue.  This parallels the movie in that the movie begins with a man killing his adulterous wife and ends with him being punished for.

Judging Dog judges you.  He finds you GUILTY!

The movie is a pretty accurate rendition of history.  It condensed the 30-year period into an hour and a half, but is still accurate.  And filled it with sex, lots and lots of sex.

Traumatized

Dear readers, I have to inform you that I am far too traumatized by the death of the kittens at the beginning of the film to write about Camila.  See you next week.