Brazilian cordiality: The Friendly beast as a metaphor for contemporary Brazil

Abstract

This paper aims to deepen a culturalist possibility of symbolic reading, through the analysis of characters and scenes, from the horror thriller Friendly beast (2017), by Gabriela Amaral Almeida. This symbolic reading works as a metaphor for contemporary Brazil: a country split by social tensions of different matrices ? race, gender, color, social class, regional rivalries ? that have been gradually breaking apart in a plot of fear and hate. In the feature film, due to the unusual event that links the gears of the plot, these tensions end up exploding in a series of acts of violence, which allude in multiple and different ways to the concept of “cordial man”, elaborated in 1936 by historian Sergio Buarque de Holanda.

Keywords
cordial man; social horror; film genre; Jair Bolsonaro; slasher