Note from BW of Brazil: Today’s
topic is a bit depressing and difficult to discuss. Of course, if you
live in Brazil, with Carnaval season long gone, this story is old. In
reality, that’s part of the reason for the timing of the post. 1) One
aim of this blog is feature thoughts, photos and stories of black
Brazilian women beyond Carnaval season, a time laden with stereotypical
images and the only time of year that their image is widely divulged in
the Brazilian media. 2) The topic speaks to the position of black women
in Brazilian society that goes far beyond only Carnaval season.
To avoid re-hashing previous material, we would direct you to check out a few of these articles to follow the subject matter, particularly here, here and here.
To get right to the point, as has been written on several posts on this
blog, the image of black women in Brazil is often connected to either
domestic service or Carnaval, images the media regularly presents, that
is, when they are featured at all. As one book recently revealed a fact
that previous studies had shown, some black women feel that domestic work and prostitution are the only areas of work that are open to them
in Brazil. As such, it is little wonder that the subject of today’s
post, Nayara Justino, revealed that winning a contest to be the new
Globeleza girl, in which she would shake and jiggle her naked body in
front of millions of viewers, was the fulfillment of a dream since she was a little girl.
As the opening to Carnaval gets closer every year, this is an image
shown on Brazil’s top TV network several times a day in 30-second
commercial clips until Carnaval officially starts continuing throughout
the week. (To get an idea, see the video below of the clip for the past
21 years featuring the two previous Globeleza women).
With this in mind, it should come as
no surprise that there are thousands of Afro-Brazilian women who also
compete for the stereotypical Carnaval dancer as it is one of the few
areas where whiteness is not a prerequisite. Actress Juliana Alves recently expressed her thoughts on this image
as she accepted a leading role in a Carnaval Samba School while proudly
representing black women. In the case of Nayara Justino, many black
women tuned into her crowning moment even as they as they often reject
what the image of black women during Carnaval represents, simply because
of the fact that this spotlight is so regularly denied to them. The
connection of black women with nudity and Carnaval is already blatantly
racist and sexist but as the image is so cemented in the public
imagination, it becomes a sort of “bitter acceptance” for some while
increasingly more women are rejecting it altogether (see here and here).
But what happens when the image that is already racist and sexist
becomes even more blatant and even humiliating? At what point does the
racist smile of entertainment become depreciating, dehumanizing laughter
and rejection? In the story below, the signs were not at all subtle…
Globeleza girl compared to Zé Pequeno from the Cidade de Deus (City of God) film
With rejection, word is that Globo has prohibited her from giving interviews
The truth is that the public did not like
the girl. Nayara was harshly criticized. The level of rejection was so
great that Globo TV does not know what to do with her. The girl is
expressly forbidden to give interviews. The order is to hide her as much
as possible.
Criticism
of Nayara Justino on the internet compared her to the Zé Pequeno
character immortalized in the 2002 film “Cidade de Deus (City of God)”
Nayara Justino, besides criticism, she
became a joke on the internet. They made a montage comparing her to Zé
Pequeno, the character in the movie Cidade de Deus (City of God), saying that the two looked alike.
News report: New Globeleza is reclusive and depressed after Carnival
Nayara Justino, the new Globeleza girl, went unnoticed in the Carnival of Rio de Janeiro. According to the newspaper Extra, she returned to her hometown of Volta Redonda in Rio de Janeiro state, is reclusive and depressed.
She was saddened by the lack of impact
that she had as she was barely seen during the parade in the Sapucaí
Carnaval stadium. Nayara was elected in a popular contest on Globo’s
TV’s Fantástico Sunday evening program and will continue in the post until next year.
Public complains that the Globeleza girl disappeared
Where happened to the new Globeleza girl?
A few days ago, the column received emails from readers saying that the
symbol of Globo Carnival programming disappeared.
For at least two weeks that the dancer
Nayara Justino, who currently holds the post immortalized by Valéria
Valenssa, has hardly appeared in the Globo commercials. Samba muisician
Arlindo Cruz, who is featured in the network’s Carnaval vignettes
Carnival seems to have more prominence than the mulata.
Previous Globeleza girls: Valéria Valenssa (left) and Aline Prado
Elected by the public in a Fantástico
contest in late 2013, the dancer has been heavily criticized on social
networks. There are those who claim that she is far from the
turbocharged visual of current “rainhas de bateria (queens of the
drumbeat). Others believe that the image of Globeleza, created in 1992
on the channel, is already outdated.
Levantamento da Controle da Concorrência,
the company that tracks commercial inserts on the market, shows that
from January 26 to February 24, Globo showed clips 297 times for
Carnival in São Paulo. In 2012, in which Carnival was on Feb. 21, the
network exhibited them 342 times.
Globo TV says that from February 7 to the 25th,
Globeleza appeared 36 times. And this volume of apparitions increased
in relation to previous years. The broadcaster did not provide
comparative data.
The Globeleza and representation of the black Brazilian woman
By Mirt’s Sants – Coletivo Negrada
Nayara Justino is a gorgeous 25 year old
woman, model and resident of Volta Redonda (state of Rio de Janeiro),
and in late 2013 she won the title of Globeleza Musa of Carnival 2014 in
a contest sponsored by (Globo TV’s) Fantástico “theoretically” chosen by the public.
But what’s wrong with that?
For now, nothing! Coming from a young
black woman, who came from the periphery, who has samba as culture at
the “tip of her toe”, but on the other hand, one only sees represented
in the Brazilian media as a “escrava da casa grande (slave of the big
house)” and, even in the world of Samba as “mulatas” of Carnival,
ie, the so-called “soft areas”. Soft areas? Yes! Areas or spaces where
being black doesn’t prevent and may even be a facilitating prerogative
for access, status and social prestige, like being: a maid, a gari, a passista
(dancer) in a Samba School, soccer player, among other tasks already
known to all of us, these when occupied by blacks doesn’t cause fear or
dispute, even considering that in such spaces blacks may also suffer
racism.
But this young woman, Nayara Justino is
the victim of a structured, cruel, silent racism that is Institutional
Racism, which constitutes in the public or private system articulating
itself to deny and/or restrict the presence and existence of a certain
group or person because of their physical, ethnic or cultural
characteristics. In the case of the media, racism emerged at the
institutional level and is also reflected in the public.
As muse Carnaval 2014, her image should
have be widely publicized in Globo TV Carnaval programming, however, it
was reduced, her performance in the vignette between the intervals of
the program almost omitted. Record TV, Globo TV’s competitor, spoke of
“rejection of the public” and therefore, Globo was “hiding” the girl,
forbidding her to give interviews.
Before making any judgment as to the
veracity of the news, I questioned Nayara Justino herself in a private
message in her Facebook page to know if this report had any foundation.
She replied only that “No, it’s not true.” From this, I realized that
the matter had a certain foundation, but also that someone was asking
for help saying: Stop it! I don’t wanna talk about it! I can’t! I’m
happy here in this place that they permitted me to be.
Photo shared by Nayara shows man wearing in blackface imitating her (1)
In this context I realize that, as a
black woman, the evil there is in being Globeleza in these conditions.
Well, one of the great struggles of black Brazilian woman is the
disassociation of her image as sexual object, the cheapest commodity in the market, of sexist dominion and exploitation and sexual tourism, increasingly sold abroad by the Brazilian media for the “gringo ver
(foreignor to see)”. Therefore, I reaffirm that “Globeleza in the way
that it is reproduced, does not represent us!” as black women because
this “permitted” place is not uniquely exclusive in the media and in the
society that we want to be. It’s not the space that we want to occupy,
it’s not the way we want to be represented and that would be
representation for our daughters and granddaughters.
We want to be in the “hard areas”, social spaces that blacks still are not “permitted” to be in,
or where few are represented and when they bother and destabilize the
social location made for us, as in universities, offices of public
services, politics, in positions of power or in management. For example,
in the management of our own home, where we are often mistaken for
“maids”, with all the due respect I have for this working class, being
“obliged” to call the “boss (lady of the house)” as we wouldn’t have the
(financial) conditions to get an apartment or home of our own!?! We
want to be represented in the media with roles that respect us as women,
that preserves our dignity, not by degrading stereotypes, such as that
seen in the new Globo novela (soap opera) entitled Em Família, where the only role “permitted” to a black woman, with highlight in the novela, is a victim of a gang rape. Roles like this reinforce the sexist, racist and discriminatory practices against women and against blacks in this country.
However, I emphasize here comrades, that
in spite of also not being pleased at all with the idea of being
represented by naked bodies in a media that uses them as commodities in
their way, we must defend this young, and beautiful black woman, indeed,
from this wave of racism that she is going through, because she is also
a social subject who was denied conditions for her survival, the same
one that claims a majority of our people, appearing to be a “dead end”.
And still she thinks that she’s experiencing “the best moment of her
career,” she is in an artistic career that allows you to be naked on
stage or screen, and therefore she needs all our support because this is
the place in which she chose to be.
Recently, still in February, Brazilian society fought vehemently and rigorously the explicit racism suffered by soccer player Tinga, in Peru, and against the “mistake” of the arrest of the young actor Vinicius Romão, a “standard suspicious element”
of the Brazilian prison system. But this same society, daily,
reproduces numerous forms of discrimination and prejudices of all kinds,
whether through racism, homophobia, xenofonia, sexism, ableism…Thus, as
the culture of the oppressor over the oppressed.
Until when are we “accomplices” of this
racist society? Until when do we permit/accept or collaborate with the
occurrence of these practices of racism? Even when do we cease to speak
out against veiled racism, fearing that it will become explicit and
public?
Racism exists in Brazil! Is it real, it’s
there, it’s constructed and reproduced by society and always will be
fed if society itself doesn’t repudiate the racist practices in their
daily lives. The responsibility of uprooting it from our country is the
whole society and not just the black population. And we feel that racism
up close daily, it’s fitting that we don’t falter, don’t suffer alone,
but rather “get on top” of racism and denounce the racists, as did the
young mother Thayná Trindade, who denounced employees of the Ponto Frio store in Rio de Janeiro a few weeks ago.
The cases and racist comments on this and
other matters are already “blowing up” on the web, comrades, and this
is when we should unite to combat the repeated practices of the Crime of
Racism and on duty racists, being in any sphere of public, private or
particular administration.
Finally, I direct to all those who wish
to build a more just and equal society for all, contributing to the
anti-racist struggle, to inform on the ways to denounce the Crime of
Racism, which can be made in person at a local precinct (take a
witness), or looking for the Prosecutor of Justice of the MP, or MPF of
your city/state.
Source: Paraíba, Terra, Elivaldo Ramos, Negro Belchior/Carta CapitalNotes
1. The usage of blackface (called “rosto
pintado de preto” in Brazil) is still very common in Brazil. Although it
was deemed racist on American television decades ago, in Brazil one
still sees the types of “entertainment” on television, as “jokes” in Brazil or even in even in promotional ads.
Although there is a segment of the population that finds this type of
humor/imitation offensive, as the the continued usage in the media and
the presence of the young black male in the photo above shows, it
clearly doesn’t provoke widespread outrage among the general black
population.
