Garrincha: Joy of the People

It was 2006 when the artists Philippe Parreno and Douglas Gordon, accompanied by the Scottish band Mogwai, introduced us to their Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait. A work of art brought to life on film and centred on the charismatic figure of the footballer Zidane, then at the peak of his powers. What interests us here, beyond the quality of the work, is its title: a portrait, that is to say, an image.

The 21st century is completely immersed in the logic of the spectacle foretold many years earlier, in a prescient manner, by Guy Debord in his 1967 book The Society of the Spectacle. In its pages, the sociologist set out a series of theses in an attempt to characterise the changes then taking place in society. Two of them are crucial to our discussion. The French Situationist author states: ‘The whole life of societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation’ and ‘The spectacle is capital at such a degree of accumulation that it becomes an image’.

A few years earlier, in 1962, the Brazilian film Garrincha: Joy of the People was released. This is also a documentary, centred on a footballer. A creative phenomenon who gradually attracted a huge following, until he won over an entire country with his performances for the Brazilian national team. A huge wave of collective adoration surrounding a figure who, as is often the case, came from the most disadvantaged backgrounds and gradually rose to fame. The son of factory workers and one of 15 siblings, he worked in a textile factory for years, combining his job with playing football for the company’s club.

Let us return, then, to the film about Zidane, to understand the differences. In this case, it is an image that has been turned into a commodity (this is true of all modern-day footballers: images/commodities traded at unimaginable prices). With Garrincha, as the film’s title tells us, it is not an image we are dealing with, but a life. A life that brings joy to the people.

The 1960s in Brazil were a period of significant political change that coincided with the player’s career. Some of these changes were particularly important in ensuring that the ‘joy of the people’ was not confined (as it was here at the time) to men alone. The film’s images frequently show us the presence of women in the stadiums cheering with the same joy as the men—the ‘joy’ was universal. The pluralistic nature of society was reflected in this collective joy, free from male exclusivity. Life as lived, as Debord notes, had not yet been transformed into its representation. It is, indeed, pure alienation, yet absolutely rooted in reality. Garrincha fostered joy, yet was simultaneously part of it. His integration into the whole known as ‘the people’ was evident in his presence outside the stadiums; in the close relationship he maintained with the people to whom he brought joy as a sporting idol and with whom he mingled without prejudice—for example, as the film puts it, ‘in a friendly game’ with colleagues from the textile factory where he had once worked. The embodiment of this reality known as lived life—that is, life outside the spectacle—is fundamental to understanding the difference with the present, in which idols are never fully embodied. Before, they were images; now, they are dematerialised into algorithms scattered across small blocks of images, seeking the famous ‘likes’ from their new ‘friends’, who are themselves virtual. Garrincha was ‘one of us’; today, football idols are merely a kind of charisma-less hybrid being who pass by and soon disappear. Tradable images/commodities that will never become ‘one of us’, perhaps not because they do not want to, but because they cannot.

These mass phenomena always attract the attention of those in power. The temptation to manipulate minor idols is strong. In Portugal, the dictatorship used the figure of Eusébio at will, both to win over a people who felt ‘joy’ at his sporting achievements, and also for political whitewashing and an attempt at symbolic appeasement of the horrendous colonial rule, which at the time was facing three ongoing wars of liberation. In Garrincha’s Brazil, the dictatorship that came to power during his career, on the other hand, persecuted the player for his connection to the singer Elza Soares, known for her links to the resistance against Brazilian fascism. Perhaps the people’s joy only deepened further. After all, he was ‘one of us’.

The film is an interesting sociological study, as it introduces many elements that strike a chord with the viewer. But above all—and this is what matters—it is a fine example of a cinema that sought to connect with people, that sought to assert its own language as a means of conveying meaning. It sought to be modern in the deepest sense of the word: to break with convention and innovate within its own language. From the choice of black and white, which distances it from chromatic reality, affirming it as a deliberately constructed work, to the many sequences of still images which, taken together, offer a radical vision of what ultimately characterises cinema: the so-called moving images. A cinematic object to be viewed with the necessary time and attention to detail, and which, in its different layers, reveals much more than one might initially expect. Such are obsolete objects. They do not embody the present and yet assert their importance by making their presence felt through their very irrelevance.

We just need to pay attention.