The Four Corners In The City Of God

The location in which City of God is based is very pivotal in the context of this paper because it connotes the experience that many black South Africans continue living in; Alexandre, Lenasia, New Lens, Mathole, Khayelitsha and many others. The story is set in what is well-known as the Favela. Vieira (2005: XIII) explains Favela as a “word that shares with ‘shantytown’ or ‘slum’ the meaning of squalid habitation, or the class reference with shantytown, namely, the depressed area where the very poor live”. In South Africa, this will be reminiscent of townships, kasi, and skwata camps. Four Corners is set in Cape Flats, one of the areas in the country that will perfectly resemble the Favela. The Cape Flats for years has been notorious for its gangsterism that literally exists on almost every street corner. The crimes include murder, rape, and armed robbery. The gang groups in Cape Flats consists of The Hard Livings, The Clever Kids, Thug Life, The Americans, with the most notorious being the 28s and the 26s. The Cape Flats is well known for its gang-life in the form of audacious daylight drug deals, …show more content…
This poetic exhibition of violence is interrogated by Brazilian critic Ivana Bentes. According to Bentes (cited in Vieira, 2005), this poetic exhibition should have remained closer to the aesthetics advanced by the exponent of the 1960s Cinema Novo. Hence, I agree with Bentes based on the fact that socio-political factors of Brazil of the 1960s are similar to the ones in which the film is based. In Four Corners I argue that the film builds on the gangsterism that was bred in the 1950s Sophiatown, but not entirely because Four Corners and Sophiatown of the 1950s operate at different spatial and temporal settings. Miramax (2003:1) website states this about City of