About other Walls - Belfast

The Falls' International Peace Wall

This month, the whole world celebrates the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. This event is considered by many as a symbol of the "triumph" of the capitalism over socialism. It was indeed an important step to democracy, families could be finally reunited and after almost a century of wars and dictatorship, Germany could finally say they were in peace.

However, while watching the coverage of the worldwide media one thing that came to mind (at least mine) was why did the media not take advantage of the exposure of this issue - the wall - and discussed about other walls that are still been built - such as the ones in Palestine - and the walls that have no prediction to be torn down - such as the ones in Belfast? So in the next two posts I will focus on both cases as much has already been said about the Berlin wall.

The "Peace lines" of Belfast

Exactly fourty years ago, Belfast saw the construction of several walls that later would be called ironically peace lines. Before discussing about them, I find important to give a brief explanation of the conflict named Troubles, that took place in Northern Ireland for almost 40 years.

The Troubles was a period of urban violence that assolated Northern Ireland for over three decades during the 20th century, leaving more than 3.500 dead, a considerable toll for a population of about 1.5 million inhabitants. The conflict can be seen as a violent expression of existing animosities and unresolved issues of nationality, religion, power and territorial rivalry between Catholics Republicans and Protestants Loyalists. Many scholars and the media consider its beginning the late 1960s with the Civil Rights Movement and its end in 1998, with the Good Friday Agreement.

However, both dates are arguable, since much of the animosities were built centuries ago since the British started the colonisation of the island of Ireland. In addition to that, after 1998 there were bombings and new political arrangements, such as the total disarmament of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 2005, and the election of former enemies Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness to the shared-power government in 2007. In March 2008, Paisley announced he would retire from political and religious life and Peter Robinson was elected the next month as his successor. Up to today, a few single acts of violence still take place in the region although in a smaller scale than during the Troubles.

The Peace lines

Throughout the Troubles, Belfast has seen the construction of walls. They were used along with check points and watch towers to keep the "peace" between both communities. They were first built in September 1969 by the British Army after a period of extreme sectarian rioting. The authorities justified its construction by saying they were built to protect the population, attending therefore their own demand. As Bardon puts it "...citizens found that their city had become a war zone; soldiers first blocked off the streets with knife-rests and concertina wire; later sensitive areas were separated more permanently by walls of corrugated iron bristling with barbed wire (Bardon 1982: 283*)". It is true though that before the walls were built, the very communities had already built some barricades to separate from each other. However, whether been their own demand or not, does the building of walls bring peace indeed? Or Does it bring more difference and hatre as instead of bringing communities together to try to sort their animosities they actually tear them apart and highlight their differences?

The walls of Belfast are quite impressive, I would say more than their Berlin counterparts. Some measure more than 8m high and from a few hundred meters to 5km length. Three layers were built in different periods in order to stop people throwing things over and these layers are highly visible (photo on the left). In one of them, The Falls' International Peace Wall, an open air galery was created similarly to the East Side Gallery of Berlin. In the Belfast one, the several works of art exposed not only re-tell the history of the Troubles, but also display their opinion about other worldwide conflicts, such as Palestine and Iraq. Along with the infamous murals painted on the outside houses and shops, the International Peace Wall is a true guide to understand what happened there and are definetely valuable works of art.

In 1994, with the first cease-fire and when everyone was celebrating the so-dreamt peace, there were 26 walls in Belfast. As shortly after the cease-fire the violence continued to take place, more walls were built totaling 80 and today the city has 40 distributed in 14 neighborhoods. Ironically, if the main reason to build them was to bring peace to the communities, why are they still there when all the politicians have been praising the Northern Ireland's peace process as an example to be followed by other nations in conflict? Maybe these walls are not that "peaceful"...or it's high time to bring them down.

* Bardon J Belfast An illustrated History 1982 Blackstaff Press, Belfast

The representation of the Others in Brazilian soap operas

In the past, the pillory was the stick and the whip. Today they are in the mass media. Our self-steem has been whipped every time. (Antônio Pitanga, actor)

For the first time in Brazilian television history a black actress was chosen for the leading role of a prime time soap opera in the main television network, Rede Globo. The very author and director of the 2009 soap opera Viver a Vida (Living Life) have been discoursing proudly about the choice and many consider it an important step in the black struggle in Brazil. However, if we go further and analyse the presence of other black in the soap opera, we can easily see their roles have kept up with the stereotyped view of the black in the Brazilian society – as inferior domestic workers, criminals or extremely sensual or sexual.

It is important, beforehand, to bear in mind that Brazil has a very mixed racial society, as there are descendants from European colonizers and immigrants - such as Portuguese and Italian - Asian immigrants - mainly from Japan and Lebanon - Native Indians and African slaves. According to the 2007 census, almost 50% of the population is white, 6,9% are black, less than 10% Indian and 42,6% consider themselves mixed. Another important fact is that the majority of the richest layer of the society is formed by white people as well as it is concentrated in the southern region of the country, where the majority of the population is white or at least mixed but descendent from Europeans and Asiatic.

Once having in mind the social characteristics of the Brazilian society it gets easier to identify the roles represented in the soap operas, as they are one of the most consumed product of the country’s media. Throughout the decades, Araújo (2000) identified an increase in the number of soap operas with black characters, from 25 in the 1960s to 72 in the 1990s. Still, it was observed that the roles they have represented have not changed considerably, restricting women to subaltern roles such as maids and attractive slaves and men to aggressive roles such as thieves and drug-dealers. In Viver a Vida, for instance, the character Bene is a black criminal while the black couple Matilda and Onofre are the domestic workers in the summer mansion of a white family.

In doing so, soap operas keep broadcasting a superiority of whites over black and Indians, and, consciously or not, contribute to the construction of a white identity, imposing the white and European aesthetics as the only beauty pattern (Araújo 2000). Richard Dyer goes further when he argues that whiteness generally colonises the stereotypical definition of all social categories other than those of race (Dyer 1997: p.12). The whiteness discourse in Brazilians soap operas thus not only reinforces racial stereotypes but also economical - white rich x black poor – and cultural – white is the pattern of beauty.

In addition to maids and criminals, another role generally played by black actors is the attractive and sensual black subaltern that arises sexual desires in his/her boss/colonizer. This stereotype was observed not only in soap operas that portray the colonial past but also the ones with contemporary scenario. This view of the sensual and sexual black is still similarly held by Europeans and it is widely reproduced by the Brazilian white media.

Not only blacks are portrayed as the “Others” by Rede Globo’s soap operas. The slums (favelas) have been drawing more attention in the national media recently. Since 2002, after the film City of God reached 3 million viewers in national cinema – which is considered a very high figure for national productions - and got notoriety in the international cinema, the slums have been the scenario of many attempts to represent this “other” part of the Brazilian society.

In 2008, Duas caras (Two Faces) had a neat and organised slum as the main scenario and made no reference whatsoever to the drug traffic and the war held inside by the drug dealers. Its author, Aguinaldo Silva, admitted that he wanted to get away from the frequent image of the slums as a dangerous and poor place, however in doing so, he ended up representing it through the point of view of the national white elite. Interestingly, in the same year, the British newspaper Financial Times published an article about the representation of the slums in Brazilian soap operas which summarises this elitist point of view.

They[soap operas] deal with issues of daily concern to viewers, such as crime, under-age sex and drug-taking -except that this is not quite Brazil, because everybody and everything is just a bit, often a lot, better-looking and less alarming than in real life. The poor, especially, do rather better in Globo's world than they do in the real one: they are better fed and clothed, get on better with their middle-class employers and live in favelas -Brazil's ubiquitous urban shanty-towns -that leave the real thing literally in the dust. (Wheathey, 2008)

Thus, it can be said that the “slumification” in Brazilian soap operas is a white elite fabrication which can be similarly compared to some issues of the Studies of Post-Colonialism. As Azzedine Haddout puts it, “negritude is nothing but a colonial fabrication, a Western mythology. Put simply, like a good orientalist who orientalises the Orient by fabricating, [Leopold Sedar] Senghor africanize the Africans (Haddout 2005: p.288)”.

More parallels can be drawn between Post-Colonialism studies and Media Studies having the Brazilian soap operas as the object of analysis of the concept of the “Other”. To summarize the discussion carried on above, the blacks and the slums are portrayed as the others by Rede Globo’s soap operas. They are, therefore, the Brazilian subalterns - term used by the Chakravorty Spivak, whose work Can the Subalterns speak is considered one of the most influent in Post-Colonialist Studies (Maggio 2007: p.419). They have no voice in the Brazilian media as the only space given to them is restricted to the white stereotyped view of them – the blacks are domestic workers, slaves, criminals and sexual objects; and the slums – a place that has no violence, only happy people living in an organised community. Hence, like the Western approach to the subaltern, the Brazilian white media either speak for or silently let them [the subalterns] speak for themselves. Both strategies silence the them because they ignore the positional relations of the dominant to the subaltern (Maggio 2007: p.422).

Furthermore, it is easily observed that while the white and rich characters “evolve” in every soap opera, black and poor seem to stop in time. The formers have their stories varied and occupy a highlighted importance in the plot while the latters are generally stuck in the same secondary and stereotyped roles. Once again, they can be compared to the Post-Colonial dichotomy West Colonizers x Colonies once the west – in the Brazilian case, the white elite - is defined by its differentiation between the present, past and future, as well as sense of the other. The colonial world – the black and poor in Brazil - has no such self identity, at least as the western viewers perceives it (Maggio 2007: p.424).

One aspect that must be recognised in the inclusion of black people in leading roles and slums in the main scenario is that they are bringing to some extent such discussions to the society, although in a very shy and biased way. Indeed, it is an important small step but still, it is not enough to shorten the (considerable) distance between “Us” and “Them” in Brazil.

Translation: Warning!Rede Clobo!Risk of damaging the brain

References

- Araújo, J. Z. (2000). A Negação do Brasil: O Negro na Telenovela Brasileira. SP: Senac.
- Dyer, Richard (1997): White, London: Routledge
- Haddour, Azzedine (2005): “Sartre and Fanon – On Negritúde and Political Participation” in Sartre Studies International, Vol 11, Issues 1 & 2, 2005, 286-301.
- Maggio, J (2007: “Can the Subaltern Be Heard? Political Theory, Translation, Representation, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak” in Alternatives 32 (2007), 419-443.
- Wheately, Jonathan. “Brazil's winning game-plan”. Financial Times, 6 de Junho de 2008.