Semantic Representations of Race and Class in Popular Culture to Literature and TV

Abstract

There has been a dialogue between anthropological and literary studies because literature falls within the scope of cultural anthropology. The literature of a people substantially reflects aspects of its culture and its worldview. This research project investigates the representations of race, class and race relations in “O Romance d’A Pedra e o Príncipe do Sangue do Vai-e-Volta”, a novel by the contemporary Brazilian author, Ariano Suassuna (1927). First, demonstrating how Suassun’s representation of popular culture reflects race, class and social race relations in a particular area of Brazil, the traditional, rural Northeast. Subsequently, investigating how mass communication, particularly the cultural vehicles of television and cinema, uses literature to attempt to change or to spread and perpetuate racist attitudes and forms of thinking. Even though studies in modern anthropology have shown the concept of “race” to be a cultural construction and a fallacy, literature and mass television culture exploit deliberate identites of ‘race’ based on received stereotypes. The linguistic and cultural debates of a culturally and racially hybrid country, such as Brazil, cannot help but consider the concepts of “race” and “ethnic groups”, since Brazil is a country that inherited the typologies of color, class and prejudice from patriarchal and agrarianbased Portuguese colonialism (Ribeiro, 1995). Those debates are reflected in popular culture in particular ways; are captured in learned forms of culture, such as literature; and are then appropriated by media and television, or so-called mass forms of culture. The works of Suassuna can be seen as a valuable resource of this debate, pointing to issues of assimilation or segregation of race and/or class, power and influence, good or bad, tolerance and prejudice. There was observation of the impact of his work not only through literature but also medias.