in the ‘city of gods’ in a whirl of frenetic camerawork and episodic storytelling we enter the world of a favela in rio de janeiro. here unemployment and poverty, coupled with a culture of testosterone fuelled and peer pressure fostered aggression, ensnare young men in an unending cycle of violence. is this the result of a particular form of urban renewal, shifting the poor to the periphery, making the relationship in between them and the rest of the city strained and strange? as weapons and ammunition are easily at hand for young men to cling to as crutches in a disintegrating society, they provide them with token symbols of self-worth.
simultaneous to this is the middle class denial of the violence within and the great retreat into thicker and more impenetrable shells. when a korean kid runs riot in an american university the big push in not towards ridding the streets of guns but towards making higher compound walls. maybe it’s a male thing. in the photographs that cho sends nbc, making himself into a freely distributable media image he dons military fatigues, a crew cut and stares into the camera like the hero of an action film. his glare towards the camera, the symmetrical frames, the gun pointing directly at you are carefully (re)constructed from remembered fragments of a heavily loaded visual culture. real life is dictated by the mythologies of live televised wars, computer games and film.
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