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Back in the 70′s, there was a musical movement in Brasil called ‘Iê-iê-iê’. This is the Portuguese version of ‘yeah, yeah, yeah’ and it – obviously – designated rock’n'roll. One of the most famous singers of this era was Vanusa, now a sixty-old lady that became famous with the song Manhãs de Setembro.
She was pretty much respected, if not for her music, at least for the impact she and her contemporaries had on the popular reaction to the military dictatorship. Until last week.
Vanusa was invited to sing the National Anthem at a public agents’ event. When she started singing, she was pretty much tuneless. Ok. Then, she made a small mistake on the lyrics. That was also ok – especially because I think only about 2% Brazilians can sing the Anthem correcly. 
But then she got completely tuneless and she pratically rewrote the lyrics. It was awkward. When Vanusa ended the first part, many people started to applaud in the hopes that she would stop there, but she just went on as if nothing happened until someone interrupted her.
It’s pretty obvious everyone in that place was embarrassed. No one knew how to react. There’s a feeling here we call ‘vergonha alheia’. It’s that shame feeling you have for someone else’s mistake. I guess that describes pretty much what everyone felt then.
All this happened in March, but the video was released on the internet only a few days ago. It spread like a virus and soon everybody was commenting about it – and still are. There were a lot of people insinuating that she was drunk. Vanusa denied the accusations and said that the cause of her grothesque errors was the medicine she was taking fo her labyrinthitis. Nobody cares, though. It’s all about the mockering.
I must confess that I laughed very much when I watched the video. There’s no way to avoid it. It was arkward.
You can watch the video below. I’ll also post the lyrics the way she sang them, marking the places where she made mistakes (considering only the lyrics, because the melody is ALL wrong). The original Anthem and lyrics can be found here.
Ouviram do Ipiranga as margens plácidas
De um novo heróico e brado retumbante,
E o sol da liberdade, em raios fúlgidos,
Brilhou no céu da pátria nesse instante.
Se o penhor dessa igualdade
Conseguimos conquistar com braços fortes,
Em teu seio, ó liberdade,
Desafia o nosso peito a própria morte!
Ó Pátria amada,
Idolatrada,
Salve! Salve!
Brasil, um sonho intenso, um raio vívido
De amor e de esperança à terra desce,
Se em teu formoso céu, risonho e límpido,
A imagem do Cruzeiro resplandece.
Gigante pela própria natureza,
És belo, és forte, és risonho e límpido.
A imagem do Cruzeiro…
Terra adorada,
Entre outras mil,
És tu, Brasil,
Ó Pátria amada!
Dos filhos deste solo és mãe gentil,
Pátria amada,
Brasil!
[End of the first part.]
Deitado eternamente em berço esplêndido,
Ao som do mar e à luz do céu profundo,
Fulguras, ó Brasil, florão da América,
Iluminado ao sol do Novo Mundo!
Do que a terra, mais garrida,
Teus risonhos, lindos campos têm mais flores;
“Nossos bosques têm mais vida”,
“Nossa vida, mais amores.”
Ó Pátria amada,
Idolatrada,
Salve! Salve!
[This is where she was interrupted. The Anthem has three more stanzas. You would say that there aren't that many mistakes, but if compare the video to the original song, you'll understand.]
Some time ago, I was quite shocked when I read this post about this article by Nicholas Carr that claimed Google is making us stupid. Carr (and also my teachers, actually) says that the internet has changed the way we read things. We now expect texts to be short and full of links, so that we can make a quick navegation through a lot of pages and issues.
I was quite offended, 1. because it didn’t make any sense for me, and I took it as an offense to my generation; and 2. because I’m a huge geek and if you mess with Google, you mess with me (lol). But then I saw a number of my friends not wanting to read too dense or long texts, and it got me thinking about it.
And then, something worse came out.
I’m gonna try to resume it all. Basically, Xuxa, a highly controversial Brazilian celebrity, opened a Twitter account a few weeks ago. Last Monday, her daughter, 11-year-old Sasha, decided to make a post. She wrote:
Sou eu Sasha. Estou aqui filmando e vai ser um ótimo filme. Tenho que ir… vou fazer uma sena com a cobra.
It’s me, Sasha. I’m here filming and it will be a great movie. I have to go… I’m going to shoot a scene with a snake.
The thing here is on the word ‘scene’, which in Portuguese is translated as ‘cena’. Notice that she wrote it with an ‘s’ instead of a ‘c’. This was enough reason for thousands of people to start sending them messages expressing their disapproval on the girl’s bad ortography. Now, ok, I can understand that it is quite shameful that the daughter of a millionaire star, who one would think would receive the best education possible, doesn’t know how to write basic words, but I think it’s very much ironic that Brazilians feel so annoyed by it considering the very low quality grammar I see everywhere. But ok.
So, it would be only another great day for the comedians everywhere – a very famous TV group, of which I’ve already talked about before, started a tag (#çaxaday, a very bad way of writing ‘Sasha Day’) on Twitter making fun of the whole thing -, if it wasn’t for a blog that makes up stories about celebrities. The author of the blog posted a joke saying that Xuxa would sue Twitter and try to ban its services in Brazil. But, you know, there was this red warning under the post saying that everything that is posted on the blog is a big bad joke.
But people don’t like to read. They couldn’t even read the whole post! And then, of course, the news spread like a virus, and everything that we, people who did see the red warning, did was useless. In the beginning of the afternoon, a friend said: “soon the papers will be publishing it”. She didn’t know then how right she was. Not only did the news websites publish the story, they published EXACTLY like it was posted on the blog. Without giving it the credits. Can’t believe it, huh? You can compare the links, and I’m going to publish some printscreens just in case they regret that and decide to leave you in a 404 alley.
The original post
The ‘Meio Norte’ news
I’m particularly annoyed by the paths Brazilian journalism is taking. It’s becoming completely amateur. It should be seriously discussed. And I think that this whole situation will give a lot of food for thought for specialists. It involves children’s (bad) education, premature stardom and public exposure, the internet as a trustworthy tool for news, our capacity of reading something with more than 500 characters, bad journalism, working ethics. But the main point here is that we don’t know how to deal with the internet yet. We are still lost in a huge mass of information and hyperlinks, and we don’t know what to do with them, we don’t know whether to trust them or not. We will need to change our habits to prevent getting dumber. After all, Carr was right.
Last saturday, Danilo Gentili, one of the guys who run ‘CQC’, a very well-known tv show in Brazil, made a polemic joke on Twitter. He said:
“King Kong, um macaco que, depois que vai para a cidade e fica famoso, pega uma loira. Quem ele acha que é? Jogador de futebol?”
Translating it, it would be something like:
“King Kong, a monkey that, after going to the city and getting famous, hits on* a blonde girl. Who does he think he is? A soccer player?”
*There’s a pun here in Portuguese. ‘Pegar’, which means ‘to get’, is also a slang for ‘date’.
Since it’s not a Portuguese language’s exclusive privilege to make racist jokes using the word ‘monkey’, you may well have already understood what happened. Off course, in a country where brown and black people make up for 50% of the population – statistically; although I think it might be way more -, and considering that Gentili has approximately 15.000 followers, there were A LOT of people feeling offended about what he said.
Since I don’t follow him on Twitter, I didn’t know about this mess until today, when someone sent me an article about it. At first, I didn’t understand. No, I didn’t see the racism in his joke. And I personally think he sincerely didn’t meant that as racist.
Later in that night he posted a tweet saying he wasn’t referring to one’s color, but to the fact that blondes always date famous soccer players for money – a typical steriotyped relationship in Brazil.
I see a – pardon my words – fucking lot of trouble in here. In his statement, in what people understood and in the way he tried to explain himself. First, no, I don’t think that it was racist. At least, at first, I got what he intended to say. And I think it would have gone like that if nobody told me about the problem. Maybe I don’t have a very good sense for this kind of thing, but I really think it wasn’t supposed to go that way.
Then there was the people reacting pretty disgusted. Ok. That’s good. You should always reject prejudice. The thing is, those are the same people that see no trouble on calling gays ‘veados’ (something like ‘fag’, but still felt as pretty offensive), or using the word ‘elephant’ to refer to fat people, as Gentili correctly pointed out on his blog today (27-07-09 – it doesn’t allow direct links, sorry). There’s a HUGE taboo in Brazil about racism. It’s a crime – and Gentili will be investigated – and people will always tell you how horrible that is. But they think it’s ok to be homophobes or bullies when it comes to anything else.
And last, but not least – and this is where I have to say I’m disappointed, though not shocked, about what Gentilli said – there was him talking about ‘the blondes’. On trying to get himself out of the racist accusations, he ended up acting in a terribly misogynistic way. Yes, it’s true that there are many women after good marriages with famous soccer players – and whoever is under the spotlight -, but saying that as a joke does not help combating such a behaviour. As associating monkeys with humans wouldn’t help on the fight against racism either.
I think Gentili has given a quite satisfactory explanation on his blog, and I’m looking forward to see what the Justice will conclude of all of this, but I really think we should calm down our nerves for now – or try to act on everything else that has been left behind.
Brazil scores 3x2 over USA and wins the Confederations Cup.
______
Editing:
We had this amazing thing on Twitter during the game. Ashton Kutcher commented all the time. After the game ended, the Brazilians started sending him the message ‘chupa’ (suck it), which is, right now, ranking #1 in the trending topics. Kutcher reacted pretty well and even contributed. Oh, and he posted IN PORTUGUESE! I lol’d!
Here’s what happened (if you can’t read Portuguese, you can still read Kutcher’s tweets).
HAPPY CHUPA DAY FOR YOU, GUYS!
Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman. This might be the coolest couple EVER!
Right at this moment, I’m having a great time voyeuring celebrities on Twitter. I’ve quite a few interesting situations, but I’d rather shut up; I honestly think my comments could be awful.
On the other hand, I got to know something that, apparently, I was the last person on Earth to know about: Ms. Palmer and Mr. Gaiman are dating! Whythehell nobody told me?!
I guess they are the coolest and geekiest couple that has ever existed! This is so, so cool.
Anyway, I only noticed that after I was able to watch them acting like girlfriend and boyfriend on Twitter:
Palmer and Gaiman tweeting.
NICE!
