Spectacles and Specters of Indigenous Peoples in How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman

Abstract

Nelson Pereira dos Santos's 1971 film How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman is a strategic allegory for colonial and imperialist resistance, as well as a metatextual declaration of Brazilian national cinema. In the spirit of Oswald de Andrade's “Manifesto Antropofago,” dos Santos uses European encounters with the Tupinambá as an allegory for neocolonial invasions, embracing cannibalism not only as subject matter, but also as an artistic sensibility. The film adapts various source materials, principally German adventurer Hans Staden's 1556 captivity narrative, and is generally celebrated for undermining the stability of historical narratives. However, this paper argues that How Tasty remains a re-vision of an illusion, one notably devoid of a Native referent.