Abstract
One way to approach the extraordinary burst of creative energy in late 1960s Brazil is to map the interplay between image, sound, text, and experience in a context of rapid modernization and the dramatic expansion of mass culture. Among artists and critics, a fascination with highly commodified cultural forms such as pop music coexisted with an aversion to the culture industry. At the same time, new imperatives regarding “participation” and “experience” came to the fore as artists sought ways to engage audiences in the production of meaning. These tensions came to a head in 1968 in association with Tropicália, a short-lived, but high-impact set of events and works that would have a profound impact on Brazilian culture. Within the vast constellation of cultural forms associated with the “global 1968,” Tropicália stands out as one of the most consequential adventures in multi-disciplinary cultural production.
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Notes
Flora Süssekind, “Chorus, Contraries, Masses: The Tropicalist Experience and Brazil in the Late Sixties,” in Tropicália: A Revolution in Brazilian Culture (São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2005), 31.
Caetano Veloso, Verdade Tropical (São Paulo: Companhia de Letras, 1998), 168.
José Ramos Tinhorão, História Social da Música Popular Brasileira (São Paulo: Editora 34, 1998), 326.
Roberto Schwarz, “Culture and Politics in Brazil,” in Misplaced Ideas: Essays on Brazilian Culture (New York: Verson, 1992), 139–40.
Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990), 4.
See Liv Sovik, “Vaca Profana: teoría pós-moderna e tropicália.” (PhD diss., Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, 1994). See also Roberto Schwarz, “Political Iridescence: The Changing Hues of Caetano Veloso,” New Left Review (May–June 2012): 102.
Robert Stam and Ella Shohat, Race in Translation: Culture Wars around the Postcolonial Atlantic (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 198.
Andreas Huyssen, After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 188.
Ismail Xavier, Allegories of Underdevelopment: Aesthetics and Politics in Modern Brazilian Cinema (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 144.
Randal Johnson, “Cinema Novo and Cannibalism: Macunaíma,” in Brazilian Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 189.
Oswald de Andrade. O rei da vela (São Paulo: Editora Globo; Secretaria de Estado da Cultura, 1991).
David George, The Modern Brazilian Stage (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992), 76–78.
Oswald de Andrade, “Manifesto Antropófago,” in Vanguarda européia e modernismo brasileiro, ed., Gilberto Mendonça Teles (Petrópolis: Editora Vozes, 1982), 353–360.
For a useful annotated translation, see Leslie Bary, “Oswald de Andrade’s Cannibalist Manifesto,” Latin American Literary Review 19, no. 38 (1991): 35–47.
Augusto de Campos, Balanço da bossa e outras bossas (São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1972), 60.
Ronaldo Brito, “As ideologias construtivas no ambiente cultural brasileiro,” in Críticade Arte no Brasil: Temáticas Contemporâneas, ed., Gloria Ferreira (Rio de Janeiro: Funarte, 2006), 77.
Ferreira Gullar, Vanguarda e Subdesenvolvimento: Ensaios sobre arte (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1969), 35.
Hélio Oiticica, “Notes on the parangolé,” Hélio Oiticica (Rio de Janeiro: Projeto Hélio Oiticica, 1992), 93.
Guy Brett, “Helio Oiticica: Reverie and Revolt” Art in America, 7, no. 1 (1989): 112.
Christopher Dunn, Brutality Garden: Tropicália and the Emergence of a Brazilian Counterculture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 88.
Christopher Dunn, “The Tropicalista Rebellion: A Conversation with Caetano Veloso,” Transition 70 (1996): 132.
Ligia Canongia, O legado dos anos 60 e 70 (Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar Editora, 2005), 49–50.
Lídia Santo, Tropical Kitsch: Mass Media in Latin American Art and Literature (Princeton, NJ: Marcus Weiner, 2006).
Christopher Dunn, “Experimentar o Experimental”: Avant-garde, Cultura Marginal, and Counterculture in Brazil, 1968–1972, Luso-Brazilian Review 50:1 (2013): 242–43.
Luciano Figueiredo, ed., Lygia Clark—Hélio Oiticica: Cartas, 1964–74 (Rio de Janeiro: Editora UFRJ, 1998), 81–82.
Tom Zé’s album Tropicália Lixo Lógico (2012) theorizes Tropicália as a residual by-product resulting from the clash of Aristotelian rationality and Arab culture that profoundly influenced the Iberian penninsula during the medieval period and was later brought to northeast Brazil by Portuguese colonizers. In his scheme, antropofagia and pop aesthetics are largely absent.
Silviano Santiago, “The Permanence of the Discourse of Tradition in Modernism,” in The Space In-Between: Essays on Latin American Culture (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 93–110.
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© 2014 Timothy Scott Brown and Andrew Lison
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Dunn, C. (2014). Mapping Tropicália. In: Brown, T.S., Lison, A. (eds) The Global Sixties in Sound and Vision. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137375230_3
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