December 5, 2022

11:12

Mencius Melo – From Amazon Agency

MANAUS – Another Netflix hit, the series “Wandinha” (Wednesday, Netflix, 2022), directed by the genius Tim Burton and starring the already iconic Jenna Ortega, is gaining ground and advancing in audience by touching wounds in an acidic way. The ball of the hour was colonization in the Amazon.

In a scene in the third episode, Wandinha offers products in a shop and says: “Enjoy your “authentic” pilgrim fudge, made with cocoa beans grown by the oppressed peoples of the Amazon. What? Sales support the whitewashing of American history. And fudge was only invented 258 years later. anyone want it? No.” she says, causing disgust in the audience who then boycott the delicacy.

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In the scene, customers enter the lounge of the shop and Wandinha dressed in a costume that refers to the North American colonial period, begins to explain about the delicacy that will offer the public. In a sarcastic tone, she talks about the geographic origin and oppression of the product. Astonished by the information, the public not only rejects the sweet, but leaves the establishment at once.

The character’s speech refers to the past and the present of the most debated region in the contemporary world. In a single sentence, the text touches on the agrarian issue (monoculture cultivation), which has much to do with deforestation carried out by agribusiness, and the anthropological vein of slavery past that sacrificed so much people in Brazil and especially in the Amazon. The repulsion of the shop’s customers is a clear semiotic message that the world (Tim Burton’s, particularly) does not accept such reality.

“Only geniuses know and master the exact dose of criticism. That is the case of Tim Burton. He, by far, is one of the best filmmakers today,” declared sociologist Luiz Antônio. “Cinema is entertainment and fantasy, but, the DC and Marvel eras have made cinema a bit boring and, then, when you watch something that combines acid and harsh criticism, it’s very interesting”, observed the social scientist.

Considerations

For Luiz Antônio, it is necessary to consider the destination of Brazilian exports. “Hollywood cinema has a jargon that says “follow the money” and when we ask ourselves who is deforesting and where is this wood going? Part of the wood taken from the Amazon is going into the construction industry and it is not for building low-cost houses. They are high standard houses in Brazil and in the world. They are houses in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Paris…”, he accused.

The filmmaker Sérgio Andrade detested the context and the proposal of the scene. “Images like these reveal the centuries-old ignorance of the Northern Hemisphere towards the so-called developing countries. I find this Wandinha series mistaken in many aspects. It is regrettable”, he criticized. “I think this ‘criticism’ is very rickety and dull, this is to please an elite that thinks it is engaged. I’m the kind of person who doesn’t let myself be carried away by the success of films that this Instagrammable generation uses to appear politicised”, he said.

Agribusiness

Responsible for the richness of the national balance of trade, agribusiness has also become the villain of the environment, especially in Amazon deforestation. Among the most exported products is soybean, with 29.9% of total sales, with a revenue of US$ 3.1 billion, according to the Agriculture and Livestock Confederation (CNA). Beef comes in second place with US$ 889.5 million. In Mato Grosso, a state that is part of the Legal Amazon, the conflicts between ranchers, indigenous people, field workers and quilombolas (descendants of escaped slaves) are intensifying because of the advance over the land and, consequently, the forest.

According to the Dom Tomás Balduino Documentation Centre, of the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), there were 1,608 “Land Conflict Occurrences” in Brazil in 2020 alone. The number was the highest number recorded since 1985, when the report began to be published. That number is also 25% higher than 2019 and 57.6% higher than 2018. These conflicts involved 171,968 families. The “Occurrences of Land Conflict” refer to cases of pistolisation, expulsion, eviction, threat of expulsion, threat of eviction, invasion, destruction of plantations, houses, property.

Cocoa, mentioned in Wandinha’s text, was first introduced in the Amazon by the Portuguese, in Pará, in 1679. Currently, Bahia, a state in the Brazilian Northeast, is the largest exporter of cocoa. But, contrary to what Wandinha ironically says, cocoa is not a villain for the forest. “On the contrary, the best cocoa produced in the Amazon is the cocoa planted in the agroforestry system, because it adapts very well to the region”, concluded Luiz Antônio.