Be an Outlaw, Be a Hero: Cinematic Figures of Transgression and Urban Banditry in Brazil, France, and the Maghreb

Abstract

The project is a transnational study of how filmic representations of urban criminals and marginal figures transformed as Brazil, France, and the Maghreb shifted from military governments to liberal democracies. Beyond ideological productions that simply produce positive or negative portrayals, I examine how films made under military regimes invite audiences to identify with anti-heroes while films made under liberal democracies invite admiration of institutional figures, turning standards of good and evil on their head. The anti-authoritarian potential of violence in earlier periods is construed as a failed redemption in later ones. The theoretical background of the project rests on the oppositional and constitutive relationship between the outlaw and the state, the relationship between urban space and criminal personification, and the historical specificity of the transgressive figure's embodiment of socially un/desirable traits. I establish a geographic and conceptual continuity through a comparative postulation of urban citizenship--who belongs to the city and who does not, who is marked in their transgression and who is not, who is laudable bandit and who is condemned. In delving into a face-to-face relationship between the outlaw and the state following an aesthetic and historical tracing of a highly iconic figure at the margins of the law, the project brings statecraft into focus through the use of visual and representational forms.