Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Brazil aiming to refine Carnaval
most evident in this year’s controversy over the glittercoated woman who dances across Brazilian TV screens this time of year.
For decades, the telltale sign that Carnaval season had begun was the appearance of the “Globeleza” dancer during commercial breaks on Brazil’s major TV network, Globo.
“Globeleza” is a portmanteau of Globo and the Portuguese word for beauty. Clothed only in sparkly glitter and body paint, this performer — always a mixed-race woman — samba-dances for about 30 seconds with a broad smile while her body parts jiggle and the camera zooms.
The idea is to get Brazilians excited for Carnaval, but an increasing number of Brazilians see the Globeleza as a symbol of the objectification of women — women of color in particular.
“This is an old colonial symbol that doesn’t represent the multiplicity of Brazilian culture — or Brazilian blackness — at all,” said Juliana Luna, a writer for the Brazilian magazine AzMina.
She sees the Globeleza as an example of using black women as a form of entertainment, “a body displayed in a window.”
This year things are different. For the first time since 1991, the Globeleza danced across TV screens in actual clothing — a crop top. Luna was admittedly shocked but thrilled by the change.
The covering up of the Globeleza is not the only cultural shift afoot. Many of the most beloved Carnaval songs were written in the 1930s and ’40s and use language that might now be considered controversial at best and racist at worst.
This year, a cluster of Carnaval parade groups chose to exclude the mulata song and other anthems from their repertoires. Headlines in Brazil blared that the songs were now “banned” from Carnaval in general — they were not — which set off an outraged response on social media.
“If a black woman feels uncomfortable playing the song, I don’t see a reason to play it,” said Debora Thome, founder of the feminist Carnaval group Mulheres Rodadas. “There are so many songs we can play, why play that one?”
The pushback is a sign of the growing influence of Brazil’s progressive social movements, which have gained traction and visibility over the past year.
But at the same time, political power in Brazil has shifted to social conservatives.
That shift can be attributed in large part to the increasing power, both cultural and political, of the evangelical church in Brazil.
Today, nearly a quarter of Brazilians identify as evangelical, up from 5 percent in 1970.
When it comes to the extremity of Carnaval, some evangelical leaders encourage their followers to simply sit out the party.
But some evangelicals know Carnaval can be impossible to avoid. So, like the social progressives, they are attempting to transform the festival into one they can endorse. In the city of Salvador, a group called Salt of the Earth will parade to Brazilian funk tunes — one of Brazil’s most salacious music genres — adapted to include lyrics referencing the Bible.
Still, for the majority of Carnaval revelers and organizers, these changes are missing the point.
Pedro Ernesto Marinho, the president of the oldest street parade in Rio de Janeiro, said his group is “radically against” eliminating traditional Carnaval songs. He said that while the makeup of each Carnaval group’s playlist is a decision for the group to make, he thinks the old-school songs “don’t cause a problem for anyone.”