ENTRE A PRESA E O CAÇADOR: O INSTINTO DA RESISTÊNCIA EM BACURAU

Abstract

This article analyzes the film Bacurau (2019), directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles, from a historical-sociocultural perspective that connects the Brazilian backlands (sertão) to the imagery of cangaço and narratives of popular resistance. Drawing on regionalist literature – especially O Cabeleira (1876) by Franklin Távora – and on nineteenth-century racialist discourse typified by Arthur de Gobineau, as well as the Brazilian intellectual framing in Euclides da Cunha’s Os Sertões, the study examines how racialized and environmental-determinist representations of the sertão helped to naturalize violence and legitimize domination. The article also establishes an analogy between the hunt portrayed in Bacurau and contemporary imperialist practices, in which hegemonic powers (such as the United States) impose military and cultural force over peoples labelled “inferior.” This parallel is problematized through a comparison with the Vietnam War, where subordinated peoples reversed the logic of domination and transformed prey into hunters. To interpret the hunters’ sadistic pleasure and the collective dynamics of violence, the paper mobilizes psychological theories of instinct and drives – engaging William James’s reflections on habit and instinct, William McDougall’s emphasis on instinctual motivators, and Sigmund Freud’s formulations of drives (including the ambivalence between life- and death-drives). Together, these perspectives illuminate how individual dispositions, cultural narratives, and racialized ideologies converge in the film’s depiction of the hunt and of popular insurrection.