Female domestic work and social changes in a Brazilian fiction film: insights about the reflective dividend

This article aims to examine the reflexivity of the audience for the film The Second Mother, focusing on the social and gender relations constituted, in Brazil, around paid female domestic work. The methodology of this study articulates both filmic and audience discourses. It is based in a reception analysis and considers some films as part of what might be called the reflective dividend, a sector of leisure experience which enhances personal and social consciousness about society as an object, and politics as a means to achieve social change. The results of this audience study show the oppressions, either veiled or explicit, that are still practiced today by employers against domestic workers, and by men against women. This article can motivate scholars from different areas to deepen knowledge about the potential of leisure to provide learning, especially in the context of entertainment media. The article contributes more broadly to feminist media studies by examining how class and gender are problematized in a film about social relations and paid domestic work, highlighting the daily implications of this issue for power relations in unequal societies like Brazil.

Automated summary

This article examines the reflexivity of the audience for the film The Second Mother and focuses on the social and gender relations surrounding paid female domestic work in Brazil. The study shows the oppressions still practiced by employers against domestic workers and men against women. It emphasizes the importance of leisure in providing learning experiences and highlights the implications of class and gender in social relations and paid domestic work.