POWER, PAIN and PLEASURE
The word "grito" in Portuguese is translated into several different English words: cry,scream, yell, proclamation, scretch. In Portuguese it simply denotes a loud voice, not being directly associated to a cause or effect as in the English translations.
Acording to Aurélio B. Holland's dictionary, a GRITO is in its purist form an "inarticulate voice emitted by a person who feels pain, happiness, or fright.
The most famous Grito of the history of Brazil was given by D. Pedro I, when being coargido for its father, Dom João, demanding its immediate turn to Portugal. Tired of so much pressures and aware of the new political reality of the country, he/she screamed " Independence or Death "! Its scream was not totally innovative because half century before an American patriot, Patrick Henry, he/she had already made a similar proclamation, exclaiming " Give me liberty or give me death ". In both situations the screams are dissatisfaction manifestations and a proposal of solutions.
Many screams already went ecoados in to history, and many of these were good to mark time or to serve of chavões for sustentação of wars, or social movements. Being a Latin people, lovers of the in favor dialogue and of the inflamed rhetoric, Brazil certainly has a larger share of screams or " slogans " than perhaps it deserves, being a great part of these of political stamp. This way, we have " Brazil, love him or leave it ", a companha political for-government of the beginning of the decade of 70, accompanied by the movement " Gives gold for the good of Brazil ".
The opposition also had its chavões. Even in the considered moments harder of the dictatorship, the official censorship was unable to silence the opposition. In 1973, the military government's full time, Gianfrancesco Guarniere wrote A scream stopped in the air, portraying the beco well without exit in that the theater was entering because of the censorship. This piece is a protest scream, one is enough to the regime that impeded the freedom of theatrical expression. Four years later, in a time in that to the woman the participation was still denied the same to the man in the rights and civil benefits, Leilah Assunção wrote to the scream, a work that reflects the woman's mythology suffocated by the society Of the speech. She takes the position that the woman in Brazil is a to be incomplete, being just a simple life project, that didn't arrive expanding, for not enjoying of the right of taking place fully in a patriarchal society.
In the history of Brazil, before Dom Pedro I and of the intellectuals of left of the seventies, there was a Brazilian woman that, thanks to its talent and own efforts, he/she got to open a life space and to give a scream of freedom. Based on the a mulatto's of the century extraordinary life XVIII in Minas Gerais, João Felício from Santos, novelist, and Carlos Diegues, film director, they produced the history of Xica of Silva. Born slave, Xica got to dominate the nobleman, João Fernandes of Oliveira, a man of the Portuguese Crown, intellectual and very born. As Xica, João Fernades was also a slave. Without a doubt it was a slavery different from the African people, but he was forced to live inside of rigid patterns of behavior taxes for the society--tends to assume a posture of married man, and he/she didn't feel as such and finally being forced to leave its goods and its Brazilian passion on behalf of the origin country that called it turn. Only in the moments of intense sexual pleasure, lived with Xica, it is that was freed and he/she screamed the howl of the volúpia and he/she gives total.
The scream is predominant in the film from the initial scenes. The first owner of Xica, the sergeant-mor he/she appears shouting and launching curses on the mulatto: - black Xica! Bad junk! Shameless Moleca! Xica diaba! A priest's daughter! The pejorative adjectives not only they just seek to offend the slave but they get to reach the Catholic church, symbol of the moral authority of the Brazilian colonial society. They are not pleasure screams or euphoria, but rage and of displeasure for not having gotten to find its vestiments for himself. This inability of solving its own problems comes from the physical, psychic and sexual dependence that Xica, its slave, exercises on him, you of her.
In a liberation of pulses and tendencies, with the whole instinctive and unconscious load of the human, José, the son of the sergeant-mor he/she screams with whole the forces when Xica and he have a good time in diversified sacanagens. This scream represents the freedom that he divulges and it was not still reached in its political fights--with its Xica scream he/she not just has value occasional, or free, as he/she can appear to the first view. José represents, in an analysis more dialética, him man-nature, whose libertagem of the weight of the rigid society shows through a delivery to the natural and primitive instincts of the human nature--him sexual ecstasy--the scream of the pleasure. In Xica of Silva, the scream is a communication form. It can be of pleasure or of rage, of love or of hate, but it is always a vehicle of expression of the characters' feelings. In the film, the scream is always a I let off steam with synonymous multiples.
In the filmed work there is a resource of the Method of Stanislavski that determines the focus of the character's attention. In the scenes in that Xica is with its first owner, with his son, José, or with the representative of the Portuguese Crown, the scream given by them in scene focaliza the same point: the power that Xica exercises on them--the capacity of concentration of the attention in this detail as a whole, that can be maneuvered by the actor with the purpose of to stimulate and to exemplify the tactics of game of Xica, strong and certain woman. This representation type is own of Stanislavski. The circular structure of the film is clear: Xica appears provoking screams and it finishes in the same situation, proving that same having lost João Fernandes and the life luxosa provided by him, Xica didn't lose the happiness and by force of will of expiring in the life.