Fitting In, Rio Funk culture~Background: My personal vision for modern cinema is to test the viewer’s suspension of disbelief. When you watch a movie, you know it’s a movie, however you are willing to forget that it’s just a movie, and you allow the story to compel you. Some things people are willing to suspend their disbelief about—like seeing the same actors in various films. And some things people are not willing to suspend their disbelief about. For example, if a white American guy played a Chinese emperor in a movie, everyone would say ‘why is he American? Was he born in China? Was he discovered as a baby abandoned by the river?’ I want to push the limits of cultural suspension of disbelief. This is a brief synopsis of ‘Fitting In, Rio Funk culture’.I’m a documentary maker doing a series called ‘Fitting In’, in which I give myself 6 months to fit in in any culture. Learn the language, learn the music, and generally fit into the community. I’m sitting with an elderly Chinese man discussing mountain poetry, speaking Chinese and having tea. Shooting wraps up, and I’ve completed a successful 6 months of Fitting In. Back in America the episode is edited, and we celebrate. At the party we decide to make Rio De Janeiro’s Copacabana the subject of the next season. I’m approached by my girlfriend who expresses concern about how deeply I immerse myself in what I do, and she fears one day I might not come back. I assure her I’ll be safe. We go to Rio, meet some of Brazilian high society on the beach, and I begin to fit in with them. One day in a bar I hear a kind of music that sounds like 90’s rap, but with boisterous Portuguese on it. I ask the bartender what it is. ‘Funk Carioca’ he says. I ask my high class friends if they are familiar with it, and they say they hate it, it is low class, ‘baixaria’, ‘depravado’, depraved. I meet a young guy in the same bar and ask him if he knows about it. He says yes, and that his friends on the hill make some of this very music. He invites us to visit their makeshift studio, but warns that it is a dangerous place. We cautiously agree, and meet him the next day. In the studio we meet some grimey doods, but they’re cool. They begin to record and I start singing along. Our guide is amused that the ‘gringo’ caught the hook, and suggests a phrase for me to sing. It is discovered that I have a knack for it. I’m invited to contribute to a track, and subsequently to further recording sessions. I then graduate to performing live at a baile, of which the audience is initially skeptical, but soon enjoys. At that point I become one of the biggest names in the Favela. Montage scene: records coming of the press, songs being finished, performances rock, money hand over fist. Until my best friend, and rap partner is gunned down by a rival gang in front of the studio. My cameraman is like fuck this, I’m out, but I stay. I’ve snapped. My passion for culture has mutated into desire for revenge. All ties to my American life are cut at that moment. We find the two goons that killed my friend, and take them to a gravel lot. ‘So you are the two that killed Diogo?’ They try to act hard. ‘One of you will die, and the other will go back to your favela, and tell everyone what happens when you fuck with us from this Rocinha Favela!’ I do the Brazilian version of eeny meeny miney mo, and say..’Traz a microonda!’ Bring the microwave! Two of my goons drag a tire to him and kick him to his knees. They put the tire around his neck and douse it with gasoline. I finish my cigarette as he begs for his life, and let it fall onto his head. That night my performance is noticeably darker, as word spreads about what I have done. I become the most feared and ruthless person in the favela. All drugs go through me, all orders go through me. My camera man calls America and tells the rest of our team that I have lost it, and will die soon if nothing is done. They tell him that they are going to come there, and that they will physically remove me from the favela. One early morning I walk out of my house in the favela, shirt off, AK 47 resting on my shoulder, and I see a friend in his second floor window across the street. ‘Qual e’ meu?’ What’s the deal. ‘E ai seu filho da puta!’ What’s up you son of a bitch, I give him the finger, and he fires two shots in my direction, ricocheting off the bricks behind me. I don’t flinch, and yell, ‘filho da puta!! Haha’ and rapid fire my AK into the air. That’s how lawless it is. There is a war pending, against the rival favela. The rival boss’s girlfriend’s interest in me was the straw that broke the camel’s back. On the morning of the war, the streets are empty. No children playing, no guy selling sugar cane water on the corner. Only people posted up in the windows, and doods ready to strike. I awaken and prepare my AK. I think to myself, ‘Acordei esta manha, sabendo que vou morrer hoje’. I woke up this morning knowing that today I am going to die. As both factions near each other, we all prepare for the bloodiest battle the favela has ever seen. A van pulls up next to me. My American friends jump out and grab me, we struggle, I fight them, kicking, punching. They throw me into the back and I continue to fight and swear and cry and breakdown. My friend holds out a picture of my girlfriend, and I calm down some. I begin to remember who I was before. On the plane I look out of the window, and violent scenes of shooting and dying flash before my eyes, until I’m snapped out of it by a clean cut Brazilian flight attendant serving me my Antarctica Guarana. I look out the window and watch the sun go down over the Atlantic Ocean. Back in North Carolina my mom offers me some more iced tea, and asked me how the filming went down in Brazil. My brother says, ‘pretty tough life you got man, sipping drinks on the beach…I’d hate to have your job’. I smile, they have no idea. That night on the porch I sit in silence with my girlfriend on the porch swing. She knows everything that happened. Her hand reaches for mine and I hold it. Then she rests her head on my shoulder. We continue to rock gently on the swing under a blanket of shining stars in the southern sky.
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