Revisiting the realism of the cosmetics of hunger: Cidade de Deus and nibus 174

This article attempts to disentangle the seemingly contradictory set of terms of realism and sensationalism that characterize the marketing and reception of Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund's Cidade de Deus/City of God (2002). These terms, we contend, may be unpacked by analysing not so much what the film presents, but how it presents it and what it does not, and asking how a film's mode of address enables audiences to draw pleasure from images, the referent of which they understand to be unpleasurable. We compare the film with another one released in the same year, Jos Padilha's nibus 174/Bus 174, which addresses a similar subject from a different perspective, one that is unwilling to absolve the act of looking from the actions of that which is being looked at. In exploring the relationship of the films to the legal space of the Brazilian state, the article attempts to reconsider the implications of Cidade de Deus as a moment in the cultural and political economies of the international film circuit.