Brazilian Carnival

Last edited Wed Mar 5, 2014, 01:25 PM - Edit history (2)

(I posted this in response to another thread but decided to develop it a bit further for an OP)

Someone asked whether carnival in Rio was just an opportunity to objectify women. I answered no, that is not its purpose or primary function.

It is a period in which people relinquish the restraints of daily life to dance, party, and sometimes do what they might not other times of the year. Some have described it, along with soccer, as a sort of opiate for the masses. You should know that the images you see of carnaval in Rio are all from the Sambadromo, a stadium that one must pay to enter. It is a competition by the various samba schools for who does the best presentation. It's a complex social phenomenon that has been written about in a number of books and articles. The queen of carnval is usually a woman of mixed race, what Brazilians call a mulata. The celebration of the mulata during Carnaval belies the ongoing racism (denied by most Brazilians) that elevates whiteness the rest of the year, as evident in telenovelas and magazines where white women represent beauty.

However, carnaval de rua (of the street) is different. That is how most cariocas (residents of Rio) experience carnival. People don't wear the expensive costumes and simply go out on the street to dance, drink, and have a good time.

I have never spent carnival in Rio, but I have in Salvador. There carnival is entirely street. Bands move through the main avenues and people listen and dance free to charge. One can pay some money (nothing like the cost of Rio carnival) to dance within a carnaval bloco (like Olodum, Ile Aye, Ara Ketu, Banda Eva, etc.) but you can enjoy carnival every bit as much if not more without paying.

The other thing to understand is that Brazil is far more sexually open that the US, and women are more empowered in many ways. Certainly objectification exists, but it's different. Women who dress in ways we might consider provocative in the US are not viewed negatively as they are here. Nor is there the kind of blame attached to women who have sex that there is here, at least in urban areas. I expect rural areas are far more traditional.

Videos from carnival in Salvador.

This is from an official tourism page. While it gives a good sense of what street carnival is like, it focuses on more white faces that one would typically see. Salvador da Bahia is a city where the great majority of the population are African in ancestral origin, as the city was the economic center of sugar production and slavery in the early period of Portuguese colonial rule.

This is a link to a YouTube channel with videos of this year's carnival, from this Sunday.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjtuvQ17A2DO3Lh-wqIGh853XCSXTkZiQ

Olodum, probably the best know of the Bahian blocos, from carnival 2012.



An interesting thing to observe is that recent videos show that women are now performing in Olodum, which was not the case when I was there in the 90s.

Now, one could certainly argue that the way Brazilian carnival is presented to foreign audiences objectifies women, but that is not the same as saying that is the purpose of carnival itself.