Masks of an consecrated whiteness: to expose is to profane?

Abstract

This article is based on the analysis of an established Brazilian whiteness’ rhetorical game of masks to reveal, in the work Branco by Alexandre Dal Farra, a problematic sacred residue in the gesture of profanation of this whiteness. It discusses the placement of white people as listeners in the various fictional and non-fictional layers of the text, in relation to the work’s self-demand according to which white people cannot avoid answering for racism. We deliberate how this concern dislocates its central theme of racism towards the issue of “speaking for”. We detect and indicate as the force that structures the text, an attitude that exposes more than it profanes the secular sacred core of whiteness. Thus, despite the gesture of self-sacrifice of white figures, the text has a structure that does not communicate beyond white people themselves, which within the context of its debut at a film festival dedicated to black protagonism and considering the significant historical foundation of the issue of racism, reveals a paradoxical residue that reverses the work’s political gesture.