The concept of vicarious leisure in the film “The Second Mother”: Revisiting Thorstein Veblen in a perspective of socioeconomic phenomena

Abstract

The theoretical object of this study is the theoretical construction of the vicarious leisure of Veblen (1989), having Veblenian concepts as previous factors. The empirical object of this study is the Brazilian film The Second Mother by Brazilian writer and director Anna Muylaert (QUE HORAS, 2015), who won the Sundance Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival in 2015. In order to match Thorstein Veblen's interdisciplinary methodological proposal (1857-1929), this film was analyzed in a historicist perspective advocated by Kornis (1992). Using the categories "class division and its functions", "woman and property", "wealth and status", "work", "ceremony of honor", "conspicuous idleness and social distinction", "heredity and noble blood," "vicarious idleness," and "Brazilian sociocultural-cultural context," it is possible to see that the concepts of Veblen present an adherence to the current division of classes that could be more used to understand contemporary Brazilian phenomena. The issue of vicarious leisure and housework is a relevant economic and social issue and is a recent social debate, as seen in the discussion on the regulation of activity by the State. As the central point of Veblenian work, the transformations of the status quo of the form of consumption permeate the concept of conspicuous consumption for the distinction of status and honor of the Brazilian economic and social classes.