Isolde Rexhäuser S2206986 Dr. Sara Brandellero Remapping the City in Modern Literature and Visual Cultures 9th of January, 2023 Class Relations in Fortified Enclaves in Neighbouring Sounds (2012) Introduction My project will focus on the key question "What aesthetic and narrative strategies are employed to convey the divisions, and the simultaneously symbiotic relationships, between the communities within and around the fortified enclaves portrayed in Neighbouring Sounds (2012)? To reach the answer to this question, I will first explore the concept of "fortified conclaves", as described by Teresa Caldeira in her 1996 article "Fortified Enclaves: The New Urban Segregation". This will be the theoretical base from which I will analyse the class and race divisions portrayed in both films. I will use Tiago de Luca's article "’Casa Grande & Senzala’: Domestic Space and Class Conflict in Casa Granda and Que Horas Ela Volta" as an additional source for the changing social fabric of Brazil in the early 21st century. My analysis will be supported by insights gained from Leslie Marsh's "Reordering (social) sensibilities: Balancing realisms in Neighbouring Sounds", which outlines the historical references in the opening scenes, and also discusses visual perception and spatial boundaries as depicted by the cinematography in the film. In addition to Marsh, I have also used an article by Jack Draper III, which explains the ways in which the fears of the middle- and upper classes in the neighbourhood are expressed through imagery and techniques frequently employed by the horror genre. Isolde Rexhäuser S2206986 Dr. Sara Brandellero Remapping the City in Modern Literature and Visual Cultures 9th of January, 2023 For Neighbouring Sounds, I will first analyse the opening sequence, with the reel of black and white photos that allude to Recife's past. After that, I will continue looking at Brazil's past class and power hierarchies and how they resurface in the film by analysing João’s visit to his father's plantation with Sofia at the start of the third act of the film, and their excursion to the waterfall that eventually turns blood-red. Following this, I will examine the strong dependence of the higher class characters (Like João, Seu Francisco and Dinho) on the lower class characters by looking at a selection of scenes; the sequence of scenes with João, Dinho and Dinho's maid and the scenes where the building association is considering firing the night porter. Subsequently, I will evaluate how Neighbouring Sounds (2012) portrays its middle class character's fear of crime and violence by looking at the scene with the boy in the mango tree. Theoretical Background: Fortified Enclaves Caldeira starts her exploration of fortified enclaves in Sao Paulo and Los Angeles by explaining some historical context. From the 1940s to 1980s large distances separated social groups: high- and middle-class residents used to live in neighbourhoods central to the city, and the lower classes lived in what Caldeira calls "the hinterland" of Sao Paulo. From the 1980s to the 1990s, however, Sao Paulo changed significantly. As Caldeira says "the physical distances separating rich and poor have decreased at the same time that the mechanisms to keep them apart have become more obvious and more complex" (304). Caldeira identifies four reasons for these changes: The first one is the economic recession of the 80s and 90s: inflation and increasing poverty; exacerbated discrepancies between rich and poor in Sao Paulo. "The periphery of the city became unaffordable for the poorest", Caldeira explains, "the poorest population had to move either to favelas and corticos in the central areas of town, or to distant municipalities in the metropolitan region" (305). Secondly, in the 1980s, Brazil's military Isolde Rexhäuser S2206986 Dr. Sara Brandellero Remapping the City in Modern Literature and Visual Cultures 9th of January, 2023 government consolidated power to a democratic government, which meant free elections for the people. This meant that trade unions and other social movements brought the working class and marginalised groups under attention, through which, as Caldeira concludes, "transforming the relationship between politicians and citizens." (306). This resulted in pressure put onto local governments by homeowner associations and because of a change of political climate that brought changes to administrations, the periphery of Sao Paulo became sought after sites for investment in urban infrastructure. In addition, Caldeira explains that "social movements forced municipal governments to offer various amnesties to illegal developers, which resulted in the regularization of lots and their insertion into the formal land market." (306). However, because of the rise in legal housing development, and an improvement in infrastructure, the lower classes were increasingly confined to favelas and curticos, since the prices of these new neighbourhoods were unaffordable for them. Thirdly, also during the 1980s, a re-structuring of Sao Paulo's economic activities started to take place. The city became a "a center of finance, commerce, and the coordination of productive activities and specialized services" (Caldeira, 306), instead of the industrial centre it used to be. However, this caused the decline and gentrification of old industrial areas. Because of improvements of urban infrastructure in the eastern zone of Sao Paulo, the middle class increasingly moved into new apartment buildings that were constructed there. In addition to this, services and places of employment have been moving to peripheral zones. As a last reason, Caldeira points to the fact that there has been a rise in crime in the city, especially violent crime, since the mid-80s. Caldeira describes this as "the justifying rhetoric" for "the new pattern of an urban residential segregation" (307), but she brings up police violence as the "most serious element in the increase of violence in Sao Paulo", quoting murder rates higher than 35 per 100,000 inhabitants of the city. She cites this increase in police violence and violent crime as strategies that are changing not just the landscape of Sao Paulo, but "all types of public interactions" (307). Isolde Rexhäuser S2206986 Dr. Sara Brandellero Remapping the City in Modern Literature and Visual Cultures 9th of January, 2023 These four changes have caused Sao Paulo to become a "city of walls" (Caldeira, 307), full of walls, fences and security guards. One of these divisions in space takes the form of what Caldeira calls "fortified enclaves". She explains the basic characteristics of these enclaves as following: - Private property, for collective use - physically isolated: these seperations from other spaces can be walls, empty spaces or "other design devices" (Caldeira, 308). - these spaces are "turned inwards"; there are strict rules around in- and exclusion, enforced by armed security. - the enclaves are flexible arrangements; they can be placed anywhere, and they contain "all that is needed within a private and autonomous space" (308) Caldeira's "fortified enclaves" present what she calls "a new alternative for the urban life of these middle and upper classes." This causes the divisions of public and private space along these lines to be seen as status symbols. However, as Caldeira explains, this causes even more social distance between upper- and middle classes and the lower classes. Caldeira came to this conclusion by analysing how these enclaves are advertised to the target demographic. Advertisements of these closed apartment buildings reveal they promise a complete alternative to participation in Sao Paulo's city life. Because they are so removed from services, they have to be as "independent and complete as possible", Caldeira concludes. Advertisements stress the common facilities which include, but are surely not limited to, bars, libraries, swimming pools, stores, child- and pet care, and domestic services. These fortified enclaves offer escape from the intermingling of classes in city life, and the drag of domestic tasks, by depending on the services of lower class workers. As Caldeira points out, Isolde Rexhäuser S2206986 Dr. Sara Brandellero Remapping the City in Modern Literature and Visual Cultures 9th of January, 2023 this seems incompatible with the aforementioned fear of violent crime projected on the lower classes by the very inhabitants of these condominiums, which shapes interactions between these groups: "They [the upper and middle classes] can only be anxious about creating the most effective way of controlling these servants, with whom they have such ambiguous relationships of dependency and avoidance, intimacy and distrust" (309). The biggest difference between fortified enclaves in Brazil and in the US, is, according to Caldeira, the attitude around barriers of separation. In Brazil, these barriers, such as fences, walls, armed security personnel, are emphasized. Workers are expected to show their identification papers at the gates, and every "suspect" person (read: poor) without an explicit reason to be in these neighbourhoods or around these apartment buildings, are stopped and searched by armed guards. In America, by contrast, these barriers and the explicit guarding of those, are hidden from the public, like the inhabitants of these very enclaves. Segregationist intentions of these enclaves can be identified by four characteristics: - Physical dividers like gates, walls and fences. Large empty spaces create additional distance and "discourage pedestrian circulation" (Caldeira, 314) - private security systems, including guards and cameras, are used to what Caldeira describes as "homogeneity and isolation" (314) - The enclaves are inwardly focused, "making no gestures towards the street" (314) - Fortified enclaves have practically turned their backs on public life in the city in which they exist; they exist for and within themselves. We can find a more practical example of how fortified enclaves and their barriers work in Filho's 2012 film Neighbouring Sounds. Isolde Rexhäuser S2206986 Dr. Sara Brandellero Remapping the City in Modern Literature and Visual Cultures 9th of January, 2023 Fortified Enclaves in Neighbouring Sounds (2012) The inhabitants of the neighbourhood we follow in Neighbouring Sounds live in a fortified enclave, according to Caldeira's criteria: - Fortified enclaves are private property, for collective use - they are physically isolated: these seperations from other spaces can be walls, empty spaces or "other design devices" (Caldeira, 308). - these spaces are "turned inwards"; there are strict rules around in- and exclusion, enforced by armed security. - the enclaves are flexible arrangements; they can be placed anywhere, and they contain "all that is needed within a private and autonomous space" (308) These criteria are visible all throughout the movie; the way the neighbourhood is sequestered from outsiders, the walls and fences which are as much a part of the shot as the characters who are separated from the world by them. We can view the neighbourhood association in the meeting where they discuss firing the night guard as evidence for the fact that these are private spaces, for the collective use of whoever owns an apartment, and the scene also shows the measure in which the space and its inhabitants are turned inwards, towards themselves; they prefer to solve matters by themselves. This is also why the neighbourhood prefers to hire a private security company over interacting with and asking the assistance of the local police; events that take place between their fences and their walls need to stay private. Again, the community is turned inwards, self-focused. The opening of Neighbouring Sounds (2012) consists of two parts (Marsh, 144): the black and white photo sequence and the first live-action scene of the film, where the camera shows Isolde Rexhäuser S2206986 Dr. Sara Brandellero Remapping the City in Modern Literature and Visual Cultures 9th of January, 2023 "modern-day Recife" (Draper, 129). Leslie Marsh describes the photos shown in the opening as follows [in her article]; "images of farm landscapes, farm labourers and their families, humble homes and a plantation mansion. A man in a suit sits in front of an older woman in the middle of a dirt road. School-aged children and older women holding white pieces of paper – some sort of documentation – smile directly at the camera taking their photograph." (144) As Marsh explains, these photos appear to reference Eduardo Coutinho’s Cabra Marcado Para Morrer/Twenty Years Later (1985), which "call upon a long history of violence and exploitation of farm labourers and land in the north-east of Brazil" (Marsh, 144). She also sees a "loose citation" (144) of Glauber Rocha’s Terra em Transe/Entranced Earth (1967), which she says "elicits notions concerning a place in crisis" (144). There are certainly crises in Neighbouring Sounds, amongst which a past of violence and exploitation that looms over João and his grandfather, Seu Francisco, concerning the place of their family at the top of Recife's past and present social hierarchy. Jack Draper III, in his article "‘Materialist horror’ and the portrayal of middle-class fear in recent Brazilian film drama: Adrift (2009) and Neighbouring Sounds (2012)" explains this hierarchy further by noting that the images show "the so-called ‘big house’ of the landowner (formerly slave master) as well as images of the rural working-class (formerly slaves) labouring in the fields" (129), and "one image in a city (presumably Recife) of working-class women holding up papers that appear to be voter registration cards or worker identity cards indicating formal employment." (129). These images are snapshots of Recife's past, and foreshadow certain call-backs to that past which take place in the film, amongst which the red waterfall scene. Draper also notes that "many of the workers depicted in these photographs are Afro-Brazilian or of mixed racial descent" (129), which hints at Charles Wagner's ideas about social-class hierarchy based on race in Brazil. Isolde Rexhäuser S2206986 Dr. Sara Brandellero Remapping the City in Modern Literature and Visual Cultures 9th of January, 2023 The second part of the opening (2:28-3:42) consists of the first action scene of the movie. It is separated from the photo sequence with a sharp cut. This is where we see the first physical barriers of the neighbourhood; the walls of the parking garage, a steel door with iron lattice separating the football field, where the children of the neighbourhood play, from the parking garage, their entrance to the outside world. Even the football field is lined with fences, also covered in iron lattice. We hear the buzzing of a drill; the diegetic sound increases in volume while the children peek through the lattice at the workman on the other side. The worker is separated from the children by another fence, and he is finishing up with the instalment, or maybe a repair of, iron bars at the outside of the window of one of the houses. Harking back to Caldeira's characteristics of fortified enclaves, this space is certainly marked as private property, clearly created for serving a specific community. Recife's past rears its ugly head again at the beginning of the third act, when João and Sofia visit the old sugar mill. Francisco's house appears to be the old "big house" (Draper, 129) referenced in the photo sequence at the opening of the movie. However, the house is not in the same state as it was in on the pictures, almost suggesting the social relationships and hierarchies from Recife's past have also fallen into ruin, like Francisco's house. As Marsh explains, "This visit to the plantation frames the traditional north-eastern elites and their rural redoubts as ghostly holdovers from an earlier era that continue to haunt the region" (131). We can see this "haunting" when the two walk past areas of the estate that have fallen into disrepair: the ground floor of the plantation house, old farming equipment and the cinema. The cinema, even in its ruinous state, is a testament to the riches and status once part of the life enjoyed by João's forefathers. More sinister allusions to Francisco's, and by extension João's, past appear in the waterfall scene. Draper describes that scene as follows: Isolde Rexhäuser S2206986 Dr. Sara Brandellero Remapping the City in Modern Literature and Visual Cultures 9th of January, 2023 "Francisco, Sofia and João are all ‘showering’ beneath a roaring waterfall, presumably somewhere on or near the family’s extensive plantation property. João and Francisco begin screaming at the top of their lungs, just for fun. Since this scene closely follows on the scene in which a Gothic horror scream was ironically reproduced on the sound track, we are reminded of the typical audience reaction to horror movies (especially an audience of real aficionados). Next, the camera cuts to a medium close-up of João, and after a few seconds the water suddenly turns dark red and João appears to be engulfed by a waterfall of blood." (132) It is one of the clear uses of horror imagery in the film, in addition to the boy in the mango tree and João's and Francesca's dreams. Marsh describes the red waterfall as "a warning of impending doom" (153), which in the context of the film appears to be clever foreshadowing to Seu Francisco's fate at the end. In addition to this, however, the red waterfall also seems to carry a more nuanced reference to the blood spilled during the era of slavery, where estates like that of Seu Franscisco would have been filled with unwillingly imported African human beings, made to carry out the dirty work of the family (Draper, 132). There is an echo of this old system in a later scene, where Mariá's granddaughter sings at João; his domestic servant is an Afro-Brazillian woman, and her granddaughter also works for him and his family. As Draper says; "A history of violence between races and classes is recalled here that finds its legacy in the present day in the fact that EuroBrazilian João, grandson of landowner Francisco, is the owner of the apartment and heir to a fortune while Afro-Brazilian Mariá and her family are domestic servants in the household or low wage workers in the service economy" (133). However, these low wage workers are not completely powerless, and certainly not discardable. The film is filled with maids, handymen, night porters and security guards, who are all paid by either Seu Francisco or the residents of the building they work in or for. For example, when Isolde Rexhäuser S2206986 Dr. Sara Brandellero Remapping the City in Modern Literature and Visual Cultures 9th of January, 2023 João's cousin Dinho is discovered to be the one who has been stealing car radios, his maid Cleide eventually returns Sofia's stolen car radio to João. This is a significant moment, because, as Marsh explains; "Dinho, a diminutive form in Portuguese meaning ‘little one’, is less suggestive of affection and more indicative of being a smaller version of past generations of entitlement and privilege. As if empowered to take freely from what he finds on the street (i.e., radios from parked cars) that his grandfather once owned, Dinho re-enacts the exploitation of the local territory by past oligarchs." (148). This young man, who feels entitled to unearned long-gone familial privilege, has to have his honour restored by his own maid. This speaks to the dependence of the higher classes on the lower classes for services, manual work and most importantly, discretion. Another incident such as Cleide returning the car radio for Dinho is the scene where the neighbourhood association come together to fire Seu Ageor, the night porter (56:08-1:02:00). The man who leads the meeting concludes he's been having "fatigue issues", which he chalks up to Ageor's age (56:37). The man asks whether they should fire him, or "let him go". A woman answers that Ageor has been "asking for it" (56:54). She claims he has been falling asleep on purpose, to get fired, and that he has been reading her magazines. The entitlement and privilege of the middle- to high-class inhabitants of the building is palpable in this scene. "He never says hello, with that meanlooking face" (57:10). She does not only demand a night porter, but one who will do their job without slipping into sleep (even late at night), and will greet her with a smiling face and hand her her mail without so much of a frown. People around her nod in agreement. We see him eavesdropping on the meeting, where someone shows they have filmed Ageor while he was asleep during his shift. João here functions as Cleide; he is the one who says they cannot fire Seu Ageor for negligence after all these years; he deserves severance pay and benefits. However, he is quickly interrupted by the father of the boy who filmed Ageor while asleep with the message that a lot of Isolde Rexhäuser S2206986 Dr. Sara Brandellero Remapping the City in Modern Literature and Visual Cultures 9th of January, 2023 employees try and "set up a scheme" when they get "lazy" (59:54). We again see how self-focused the community is, since each tenant has to pay for Ageor's severance pay and social security. Seu Ageor is listening to the whole meeting (1:02:59). We almost do not see him, in the dark, but he suddenly appears from behind a wall-one of the many spatial separations in *Neighbouring Sounds* (2012), which once again shows how the lower class operates in service of the higher classes; invisible, noiseless. The physical separation between Ageor and the neighbourhood association also functions as an additional reminder of the different worlds in which they, as representatives of their class, operate. It serves as a reminder of the class and power hierarchy in the building, but, as Marsh explains: "That he is present, lurking behind the scenes and aware of the group’s plans recalibrates the economy of power in which knowledge of the other is the greatest currency...Ageor’s gaze strikes a particularly menacing tone especially since he, like the hired security agents and car attendants, possesses a unique perspective on the private details of residents’ lives." (149) We see how this "economy of power" plays out when Ageor enters a room where we see João and Sofia embrace in the elevator. Ageor is seen from his profile, the doorpost almost framing him, while simultaneously framing the building complex, showing again the physical barriers of walls to show how separated João and Ageor are by class. It does not matter that João defended him at the neighbourhood's association meeting, or that he worked as a bartender during his time in Germany; their worlds are still completely separate. The colonial legacy of Brazil's class and power hierarchies are visible throughout the film. However, in the 21st century, these old systems were rapidly changing. President Silva de Lula had helped lift 30 million people out of poverty. The maid profession became formalized, with working hours, sick days and pension (De Luca, 2017). We see the anxiety this social mobility causes in the Isolde Rexhäuser S2206986 Dr. Sara Brandellero Remapping the City in Modern Literature and Visual Cultures 9th of January, 2023 middle- and high classes in the dreams of both João and Fernanda, and the boy in the mango tree. As Draper says; "film elements such as nightmares, hauntings, eerie sounds and terrifying hallucinations are seamlessly integrated into the everyday experience of various characters to reproduce the collective middle-class affect of fear" (121). We see one instance of this materialized fear in the boy in the mango tree. We encounter the boy in the mango tree when Clodoaldo and Seu Francisco's maid break into one of the apartment units to sleep together. Suddenly we hear the sounds of footsteps, without seeing their producer. The fact that we do not see him yet is significant, because as Draper explains; "Neighbouring Sounds ultimately questions the importance of ‘careful observation’ and, in fact, highlights the failures of visual perception. For instance, vigilance and paying close attention are significant, recurring motifs in the film as aesthetic and narrative devices that appear to offer a representation of upper-middle class life in Recife." (142) This boy's invisibility is important, because first of all, he is there to portray a fear pronounced by the high/middle class characters in the film; trespassing on private property and other unnamed "crimes". They are so afraid of these phenomena that they literally lock themselves away behind walls, behind big doors and iron fences, so afraid that they let themselves and their properties be patrolled by guards who they do not even know (as becomes apparent at the ending of the film). We see this through the constant reminder of the physical barriers that frame the scenes playing out in Neighbouring Sounds, in long shots such as Bea smoking a joint on her balcony (1:07:40-1:08:00), and the shots of the empty streets, framed with thick concrete walls and on top of them even more protection in the form of iron latticed fences. Draper describes this aptly when he says "What we have here are not primarily spectacular depictions of crime and visceral violence associated with Isolde Rexhäuser S2206986 Dr. Sara Brandellero Remapping the City in Modern Literature and Visual Cultures 9th of January, 2023 lower- and working-class citizens, but rather the psychological and affective repercussions for a middle-class entrenched in an atmosphere of violence and fear" (121). Draper continues with describing the cultural significance behind the appearance of the boy, who sprints out of the apartment where Clodoaldo and Seu Francisco's maid are having fun behind closed doors, runs outside and eventually is chased up a tree at the sight of the security guards camping out on the streets of Recife. Recife, as "one of the oldest Brazilian settlements" has no shortage of legends and myths concerning "strange and horrible animal and human apparitions that haunt its oldest neighbourhoods," (Draper, 123). The boy, who is by no coincidence portrayed as being from Afro-Brazilian descent, could be a reference to legends about "souls of the dead [taking] their refuge" in dark, tree-lined streets, such as the ones that we see in Neighbouring Sounds (2012). But he is not safe in the trees: "When two of the security guards find the young, shirtless and shoeless black boy in the trees, they force him to come down and punch him in the face in order to scare him away from this middle-class neighbourhood. Again, the emphasis on the dispossessed who are most likely to haunt the city is very much in keeping with the most common ghosts of Recife legend noted by Freyre." (Draper, 123) This "haunting" again echoes the class divisions which are strengthened by the spatial design of the urban environment which Cladeira calls "fortified enclaves". He is chased away by his lower-class brethren, forbidden to enter a space which is not designed nor destined for him to use. The lower class is dependent on the high- and middle classes for employment, and thus money, which means sustenance and shelter; the cost of this, however, as we can see in the scenes with the mango tree boy, is a decrease in inter-class relationships and a decrease of class solidarity. Even though the security guards are not much better off than the boy, they still enact physical violence on him to Isolde Rexhäuser S2206986 Dr. Sara Brandellero Remapping the City in Modern Literature and Visual Cultures 9th of January, 2023 chase him away from a neighbourhood in which they will never live, surrounded by wealth and privilege they will never attain. Isolde Rexhäuser S2206986 Dr. Sara Brandellero Remapping the City in Modern Literature and Visual Cultures 9th of January, 2023 Bibliography Caldeira, TPR. ‘Fortified Enclaves: The New Urban Segregation’. Public Culture, vol. 8, no. 2, 1996, pp. 303–28. Draper III, Jack A. ‘“Materialist Horror” and the Portrayal of Middle-Class Fear in Recent Brazilian Film Drama: Adrift (2009) and Neighbouring Sounds (2012)’. Studies in Spanish & Latin-American Cinemas, vol. 13, no. 2, June 2016, pp. 119–35. Luca, Tiago de. "‘Casa Grande & Senzala’: Domestic Space and Class Conflict in Casa Grande and Que Horas Ela Volta?." Space and Subjectivity in Contemporary Brazilian Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2017. 203-219. Marsh, Leslie L. ‘Reordering (Social) Sensibilities: Balancing Realisms in Neighbouring Sounds’. Studies in Spanish & Latin American Cinemas, vol. 12, no. 2, 2015, pp. 139–57.
