TROPICAL CIVILIZATION IN DANGER: CINEMA, THE ELITE AND THE MIDDLE CLASSES IN THE CARIOCA BELLE ÉPOQUE

Abstract

Situated between ethnography and history, this article analyzes a peculiar event that occurred in a Rio de Janeiro cinema in February of 1916: a discussion between spectators was resolved with a gunshot. The main question that guides this article is: how did these middle class and elite subjects project social tensions concerning the cinema industry onto the peculair event under analysis? As a subsidiary issue, I will investigate the meanings of the term "civilization" used in newspaper narratives about the event, and how these affected and effected interpretations of the conflict. My main hypothesis is that the facts under analysis involve two poles arranged in terms of class that structure the dynamic of its outcome, being a metonym for a series of conflicts between ways of seeing the world and of acting that are characteristic of these classes.

Key words:
Cinema; Rio de Janeiro; Belle Époque; middle class