I have from time to time posted suggestions and comments from readers who have contacted me via e-mail. Narayan Acharya came across an old post while browsing through A.B. recently. The article evoked a certain interesting correlation in his mind and he shared the following thoughts with me. I am publishing them with his permission. (Thanks, Narayan)
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Mug Shot As Museum Fare
Mark Michaelson: "A mug shot captures people at their lowest or most vulnerable. We look hard at their faces, calculating guilt or innocence. And then look harder."
Ruchira Paul: "I was fascinated by the striking quality of the black and white pictures and the expressions on the faces of the subjects. Needless to say, none of them appeared to be saying "cheese" – the solemn and stony faces surely hid numerous grim tales of passions, failings, treacheries and tragedies. But one can only wonder. Michaelson’s crooks were small time, petty criminals. Not much is known about them, nor why they chose the crooked path to infamy."
Chico’s Take
This immediately brings to mind the album "Paratodos" (RCA / BMG Ariola, 1993) by the great Brazilian singer-songwriter-playwright-poet-novelist and soccer fiend Chico Buarque. The booklet accompanying the CD is sprinkled throughout with head shots of people an anthropologist might recognize as Brazilian, black and white and of all ages. Most of these are frontal photos of people who were obviously relaxed at the instant of the shot. And then there is this pair of shots of Chico himself, front and profile, that stands in sharp contrast to the others. The frontal shot has an identifying number below it, and the circumstances are revealed inside by a reproduction of the document that places the portraits in context. "SECÇÃO DE IDENTIFICAÇÃO J.V.P.M." the card says on top, and if I take the last two letters to signify "Policial Militar", this is definitely an arrest record. The obverse carries the two photographs stapled to the right half of the card and bears a thumb print on the lower left. The document is dated 29-12-61; the 17 year old Chico had apparently been up to some felonious post-Noël hi-jinks. The eyes stare out and the mood is somber. It is unlike any other face of Chico that I have seen over the years.
The lyrics on the facing page are of the last song of the CD, "A Foto Da Capa" — the photo from the cover. Here is my translation from the Portuguese, made unreliable by my meager grasp of the literary and the colloquial.
O retrato do artista quando moço (The portrait of the artist as a young man )
Não é promissora, cândida pintura (Is not a promising candid painting)
É a figura do larápio rastaqüera (It is the figure of a parvenu petty thief)
Numa foto que não era para capa (In a photo that was not for cover)
Uma pose para câmera tão dura (A pose for camera so harsh)
Cujo foco toda lírica solapa (Whose focus disguises all that’s lyrical.)
Era rala a luz naquele calabouço (It was grating – the light in that calaboose)
Do talento a clarabóia se tampara (With a muscularity of a shuttered skylight)
E o poeta que ele sempre se soubera (And the poet that he always knew he was)
Claramente não mirava algum futuro (Clearly was not seeing some future)
Via o tira da sinistra que rosnara (He was looking at the snarling cop to the left)
E o fotógrafo frontal batendo a chapa (And the photographer in front taking the shot.)
É uma foto que não era para capa (It was a photo not meant for a cover)
Era a mera contracara, a face obscura (It was the mere contra-face, the face obscure)
O retrato da paúra quando o cara (The portrait of fear while the dude)
Se prepara para dar a cara a tapa (Was preparing to give a shot to the face)
Chico is an acknowledged master of wordplay and it is impossible to convey the multiple meanings of his lyrics in translation. Is he singing about the cover photo or of the cover-up he presents to the camera? His focus or the camera’s? Is it the future he is not seeing or it’s not his fiancee that he is looking at? Is it the cop who is snarling or is he? Merely the obverse, the face covered? A face to the shot or a shot to the face? Chico has the upper hand on me, and I claim the license of a journeyman translator.
Still, in the space of sixteen lines the erudite Chico manages to personalize the experience and address the ambiguities of the painful situation, echoing the sentiments of Michaelson and Ruchira. To quote from a famous book on contemporary Brazilian song, "Buarque’s mature songs are notable for ingenious structurings, for variety of personae, and for ambiguity and plurisignification, especially as strategies for making social commentaries". I couldn’t have said it worse; I hope I said it better!
You have to hear the original for the unfailing rhymes and the tongue-twister of a final line which brings an abrupt end to the song.
There are many songs by Chico on YouTube, unfortunately, this one isn’t among them. You can see a version of the title song, "Paratodos" / "For Everyone", which is his tribute to all the people he is indebted to — ancestors, musical mentors and contemporaries
The audio version of A Foto Da Capa here: Download 12_A_foto_da_capa.mp3
Accidental Blogger 
3 responses to “A Foto Da Capa: Mugshot As Album Cover”
Buarque is a longtime favorite of mine, as well, dating back to an interest in Brazilian music that started when I was in high school. An achingly beautiful Buarque song that also captures multiple “personae” and “plurisignification” (oof) is Joana Francesa.
The song, written for the actress Jeanne Moreau, has lyrics in an overlapping combination of French and in Portuguese; the double entendres and sweet confusion the linguistic overlap creates has always seemed to me to capture something of the feeling of romantic love. When I lived in Paris some ten years ago, one of my roommates, Pierre, a selfish and also apparently a lovestruck young man, would play Joana Francesa loudly, on repeat, late into the night (he’d, less frequently, also play the rest of the excellent “Uma Palavra” album on which it appeared, which had just been released). It’s a testament to the ambiguity and complexity of the fairly simple lyrics that I didn’t grow sick of the song, but instead would lie in my room, puzzling over the competing images and meanings, connotations and denotations. There’s a version on Youtube that’s too heavily orchestrated for my taste, but still lovely.
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Anna : Conhece a filme de Joana Francesca? The YouTube entries all seem to leave out the ‘c’. A Greek tragedy set in a Brazilian fazenda, I saw it in the 80s and it sent chills up my spine. Far from the romantic, the film is about decadence, depravity, and obsessive love culminating in nasty revenge. I have been looking for it on the Internet with no success.
If you have access to the NYTimes on line you will find a review of the movie (again misspelt I think) at
http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F60F12FE3E5F0C7B8EDDAD0894D9484D81
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Narayan:
I was thinking of the song, though it’s no doubt connected to the film of the same name, for which Buarque apparently co-wrote the soundtrack. The spelling “francesa,” which means “french” or “frenchwoman,” rather than “Francesca,” the name, is correct. The film may well be “depraved”; I’ve never seen it. That makes the lyrics of the song, which are not, particularly, deparaved (though definitely obsessive) even more interesting. That said, my use of the terms “sweet” and “romantic love” are probably misleading, since I associate the latter term with a destructive passion that’s not necessarily inconsistent with decadence, depravity, or obsessive love, and not with the “love is gentle love is kind” filia and treacley sentiment with which our culture commonly defines romantic love. That “madness and lethargy” (locura e torpor) and “pleasure and terror” (prazer e de pavor) capture something of romantic love for me may be my problem. I’m not some sourpuss grinch, for the record; I have less ambivalently positive feelings about other kinds of love.
I tried Netflix, and am surprised to find that they don’t seem to have the film, though it does come up as having played at the MoMA in New York, and at some other film festivals. I’d be interested to see it– thanks for calling it to my attention!
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