- De Sousa on Difference: A Mini-Symposium
- By the Reel American History class, Lehigh University, March 2012
In "Theatrics and Politics of Culture in Sixteenth-Century Brazil," Gerald de Sousa is one of the few critics who substantively compares Hans Staden's saga with the Nicholas Pereira dos Santos film. And his pivotal point is "The film shows Jean [the Frenchman] resigned to his fate, accepting a Tupinamba identity and the seductive ideology of assimilation. Hans Staden, however, vehemently resists assimilation into Tupinamba culture" (93)." Our class used De Sousa's claim to focus our own readings. Where is he strong, where weak? On what basis does he make that claim? Is there reason to disagree with him? Can the relationship between the two films be seen in a different, even contradictory way? What further questions need to be asked? Here... - Cinema Novo Gives the Answer
- By Olga Zhakova
What is so special about the How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman? What is it about? Why was it made? What did director Nelson Pereira dos Santos want to reveal telling the story of cannibal society? And why was it even nominated for the Golden Bear (Berlin Film Festival award)? To get the answers for these questions one should turn to the time and circumstances in which the film was made. It is not a movie that can be fully appreciated completely out of the historical context of its production. To understand this remarkable work of Pereira dos Santos one has to know the situation in which the film was made. And it can all be narrowed down and explained by the fact that How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman belongs to... - Cannibalism and Sex: A Justification and Condemnation
- By Brian Cohen, with comment by Eddie Strumfels
It is almost universally accepted in the modern world that cannibalism is “wrong.†Yet although western culture prides itself on its ability to discern between moral and immoral behavior, such an assumption is not only unfounded but shortsighted. In fact, when the western infatuation with sex is pitted against the Tupinambas’ cannibalistic behaviors in How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman, the sexual acts are much less substantiated than cannibalism.
