Utterly machist. This series is a desperate attempt to attract audience. Specially male, heterosexual audiences. When we watch martial arts action movies of the 70's or the 60's, the scenes are not only in function of the action, or the blood, or the muscular bodies like we watch in the majority of the cinema works today. Here we are looking once again to the comtemporary problem of efficiency oriented aesthetics in order to satisfy some audience.
In King Hu's films like "A Touch of Zen" and other films that further inspired the now known as Action Genre the action scenes deviates the narrativity to keep extracting some plastic qualities of the movents of the relation bodies/space inside the shot. This plasticity is also in function of embody feelings and sensations related to characters.
Not only, films like "A Touch of Zen" and the really best of martial arts genre and action genre works in a way that leads us to revision some machists and irracional behaviors and ideas of a patriarchal society. If not that leads us to revision violence and fear/hate oriented behavior.
Rio Heroes doesn't succeed in operating any of that through its aesthetic. What we see is just tuff and strong men. With muscular bodies. Beating each other. It's like a Fight Club (1999) without its deconstruction of the masculity and the explicitation of a sick capitalist society. Rio Heroes doesn't even succeed in making a critical point of view of Brazil.
This series, in its final result, just shows its intention to satisfy those male and heterosexual men who are waiting to watch the next UFC, PFL, Bellator fight night. A sport which until nowadays doesn't seem like a sport to me. But an excuse to institutionalize barbarie. What makes me more sad is that people keep relating Brazil only with mma, jiu jitsu and Gracie clan. And this series just helps spread that vision of Brazil of a culture based on this kind of violence. Brazil is way more than mma, jiu jitsu and Gracie clan. Brazil's cultural roots are way more complex than series like Rio Heroes shows. And Brazil's cinema productions are way more rich than productions like Rio Heroes, Rinha and other Marcelo Galvão's pictures, Dom, Os Ausentes, and etc. We produce series that shows our political matters and our people and popular culture in a more interesting, more rich aesthetically and through a less sensationalist way... like "Corpo Eletrico", "Boi Neon", "Pacarrete", and others.
People... if you are reading this. Try to watch works of Laís Bodanzky, Walter Salles, Marcelo Gomes, Karin Ainöuz, Luís Fernando Carvalho, João Dumans & Affonso Uchôa, Marília Nogueira, Erik Rocha, Gregorio Graziosi...
