Sensual gastronomy: symbolic analysis of <i>Babetes Fiest</i> and <i>Dona Flor e seus dois maridos</i>

Abstract

The text presents an analysis on the symbolic representation of women dramatized in the films Dona Flor e seus dois maridos (1976) and Babetes fiest (1987). Allocaed in different social and historical contexts, these films can be viewed as “ethnographies” which speak of religious imagery and the cultural ethos of Protestant Denmark at the end of the nineteenth century and the Afro-brazilian syncretism in the first half of the twentieth century. The point of view of symbolic anthropology, supported by the theoretical contributions of Clifford Geertz, Marcel Mauss, Victor Turner and Roberto DaMatta, guides the interpretation of films employing the cultural codes of cooking (food), the body (sexuality) and religiosity (puritanism and syncretism). These “film ethnographies” describe how the system of donation and carnivalization that structures the movies converge to the same field of meaning. The adopted methodological strategy aims to compare the films based on the conceptual structure of “social dramas”.