Blog Assignment 7: Film Theory Analysis of "City of God"

I chose to analyze the Brazilian/French film “City of God” through a Marxist and Marx-influenced framework. This movie is not only critically acclaimed, but tells a typically Marxist story of the struggling lower classes giving into the intended framework society has placed upon them (Gray, 2010). The film is set in the 1970’s and 1980’s in the “City of God” also known as Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It tells the story of two young men, one of which avoids the typical life of a poor Brazilian, which is crime, and the other who is not as lucky (Meirelles, 2002). It is based on the true story and life experiences of one of the characters, and shows the brutal realities of the slum life in Rio (Meirelles, 2002).
Marx believed that human life was pretty well marked out for us (Gray, 2010). This life is based on capitalist society, which functions on economics (Gray, 2010). Marx did not like the world that he lived in, but he saw it for what it was, and saw how it functioned and wrote about it in a theoretical configuration. His world functioned through economics, and this is no different for the people in Brazil. These young men grew up in the poorest parts of Rio. They can do everything in their power to avoid the life that society intends them to live, but no matter what, they will, like many before them, end up living a life of crime in order to survive (Meirelles, 2002). This movie follows Marxist framework quite well, as it shows that there are particular orderings of society, a social hierarchy, which the upper classes especially want to maintain. Through ignoring the obvious fact that there are thousands of poor people on the outskirts of Rio, the rich remain rich, and the poor remain poor (Gray, 2010). Like Marx predicted, and like it is shown in this film, the people of the lower classes begin to accept their fate, and they even begin to use the same ideas the upper class used in order to try to oppress and exploit the weak (Meirelles, 2002). This is clearly shown throughout the movie, but particularly in the scene where the head drug dealer, L’il Ze, forces a young boy, who wants desperately to be part of the gang, to kill another young boy. L’il Ze knows deep down that children acting like this is not right, but he is trying to display his authority, like the rich do with the poor in their society, and he is showing his economic and social power by proving he could make anyone do whatever he wanted (Meirelles, 2002). His hunger for power and money is also shown in how he wants to control the cities drug trade. He knows that the only way of doing this is to kill the competition, and he does this without a worry (Meirelles, 2002).
Marx has obviously also influenced other people’s work, and this is seen through Althussers idea of interpellation (Gray, 2010). We can see that Althussers idea is very true in “City of God”, that an individual’s identity is definitely forged by society (Gray, 2010). Society in Rio de Janeiro has this hierarchical format, which in order to be maintained, needs to place certain individuals in these categories of higher to lower rankings. For these young men, they are looked at as though they are criminals from the day they are born, so the fact that the majority of them do become that way is not surprising, especially from a Marxist point of view (Meirelles, 2002). The societies ideologies form individual’s identities, but these so called ideologies are formed by society, media in particular. This is shown in the movie where the people of Rio think that the hood area is bad and that the people living there are bad, so they both become that way. Also, the only way that people come to realize the true issues lying at the core of this area is through media, through Rocket taking pictures and them being printed in the newspaper, and this was all by accident (Meirelles, 2002).
Marxist ideas are displayed in many forms throughout this movie. We see the class struggles that Marx furiously discussed in a lot of his papers, and we see that the societies ideologies frame the way that each individual’s life plays out (Gray, 2010).