“Licenciosidade dos cinematographos” in testing: Clashes between the press, police, and cinema exhibitors in São Paulo during the First RepublicABSTRACT
This article intends to analyze the series Licenciosidade dos cinematographos, published by the newspaper A Gazeta, from São Paulo, in 1917. Its main question is to observe the relationship between film consumption and the actioning of fears from the perspective of the “middle class”. Our main argument sustains the establishment of an ideal model of child who needed to be protected for the material and symbolic reproduction of the “middle class” itself. The supporting argument infers the ways that going to the cinema could constitute a form of affirmation and maintenance of a class repertoire mobilized to differentiate themselves from the popular segments; and the responses reveal a racial rhetoric of affirmation of the ideal of whitening. The methodology used is the evidentiary paradigm. The sources are the periodicals and laws of the period regarding the police competence over the inspection and censorship against cinema. As a result, we observe that the newspaper A Gazeta helped to perpetuate an exclusionary logic in terms of gender, race and class.
Keywords:
Cinema; press; modernity; First Republic