Intergenerational memories of the 1964 dictatorship on TikTok based on the film I’m Still Here (2024)

Abstract

In 2024, the 60th anniversary of the civil-military coup in Brazil was marked by the spread of discourses denying the dictatorship, also reproduced on social media, highlighting the permanence of memory disputes about the period in the country. At the same time, the anniversary was also marked by the success of the feature film “I’m Still Here,” which ended up winning the Oscar for best international film for addressing state terrorism from the perspective of family stories. In this context, this article critically analyzes the production and sharing of intergenerational memories about the political repression of the dictatorship based on posts on the social media TikTok motivated by the film. The analysis focuses on four specific videos of young women, as well as their characteristics (number of views, comments, likes, etc.). Different comments are also analyzed, since we intend to identify the main themes, affects, forms of denial and gendering generated by users who interacted with the videos. To this end, theoretical and methodological contributions from historiographical work with social media are considered, such as Prado (2021); Costa Silva (2022) and Wolff, Schmitt (2024). We also discuss the concepts of “memory-prosthesis” (Landsberg, 2003) and “post-memory” (Hirsch, 2008) as pertinent instruments for the Brazilian reflection on the intergenerational transmission of traumatic memories of the 1964 military dictatorship. We hope to contribute to the expansion of research that problematizes disputes over memory of violence in the recent past, considering the forms of representation and subjectivation through the internet.