Se correr o bicho pega, se ficar o bicho come – Cidade de Deus e a identidade brasileira de inferioridade

Abstract

DAMNED IF YOU DO, DAMNED IF YOU DON’T – "CITY OF GOD" AND THE BRAZILIAN IDENTITY OF INFERIORITY This article proposes a reflection on contemporary Brazilian identity under the framework of the multidisciplinary studies of ‘cultural trauma’ (Alexander, 2004), that revises and expands the original concept of psychic trauma to reflect on identity and social changes, and their representations such as cinema and literature. The opening of “City of God” (2002), film by Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund, adaptation of Paulo Lins’ homonymous novel (1997), is seen here as a synthetic representation of a Brazilian identity of precariousness and inferiority, an outcome of the traumatic colonial slave past.

Keywords

• Brazilian cinema
• cultural trauma
• inferiority
• identity
• violence