A Garganta do Diabo
(The Devil's Throat)
Dir. Tony Johnson
2007

6 mins


Short Synopsis

Shot on location at Iguaçu Falls in Brazil this short discusses the poetics of creation mythology and the ravenous tourist industry.

By integrating staged and documentary footage A Garganta do Diabo also calls into question the notion that reality can be faithfully and objectively represented through film and photography.


Long Synopsis

A Garganta do Diabo exposes modern tourism in all its bland, pre-packaged and ultimately unsatisfying glory. Rather than immediately showing the Brazilian waterfalls after which the film is titled, it follows the tourist’s anticlimactic path from the parking lot, to the souvenir shop, and then finally to the falls themselves. The main attraction here is the tourist, not the falls.

We first meet A Garganta do Diabo (Portuguese for “The Devil’s Throat”) through the abstracted representation of a souvenir.  In fitting reference to Baudrillard’s theory of simulacrum, the iconic, frozen image of the falls precedes the powerful cascade itself. Perhaps this is the awesome image that has led the tourist here? This might also be the picture they snap and take home, perpetuating the recognized image without ever experiencing or remembering its actuality.

A trusty tour guide underpins the film by retelling the waterfalls’ creation myth, providing a background in much the same way he would to a visitor. The Kaingang natives of the area believed that a serpent god ruled the world and created the gorge in a fit of jealousy over a beautiful woman who ran off with her lover. The legend echoes through an almost comical display of the waterfall today; the tale of the star-crossed lovers’ escape in a canoe is paired with images of tourists smooching lazily on the riverbanks or whizzing around in speedboats. The god’s whimsical transformation of the landscape parallels the disruptive changes to the area wrought by tourism. Yet the tourists are also the victims in this myth, akin to the poor lovers swallowed by the waterfall. Drawn here in pursuit of the authentic, they are sucked in by a watered-down version of reality.

Although A Garganta do Diabo gently criticizes the countless visitors as they enact a pre-established ritual – each in turn recording the same image – it also directs this criticism inward, on the viewer and even the filmmaker. Inevitably, no approach can fully capture a truthful perspective, as our visit is also carefully packaged to evoke a particular idea. We become tourists of modern tourism, glimpsing only a simulated representation of reality.

 – Laura Trethewey