Where Is the Carnivalesque in Rio's Carnaval? Samba, Mulatas and Modernity

Where Is the Carnivalesque in Rio’s Carnaval?Samba, Mulatas and Modernity

Natasha Pravaz

This article chronicles the historical normalization of carnaval parades and sambaperformances in Rio de Janeiro, by looking at the progressive standardization ofaudiovisual imagery fueled by a nationalistic project based on cultural appropri-ation. Afro–Brazilian performance traditions have come to stand for Braziliannational identity since at least the 1930s, and practices of visual consumption suchas shows de mulata (spectacles where Afro–Brazilian women dance the samba) haveelevated ‘‘mixed-race’’ women to be icons of Brazilianness. While these practiceshave de-emphasized grotesque excess in order to fit scopophilic drives, they havefailed to secure a firm grip over performers’ experiences.

BACK TO SCHOOL

It is summertime in Rio and I am here pursuing fieldwork on the staging of Afro–Brazilian cultural performance and its role in the formation of modern nationalidentity. Every year before Lent, Rio is witness to several consecutive days ofrevelry, including massive carnaval parade spectacles involving some 30,000performers each evening. These parades are put on by local crews known asescolas de samba (samba schools). Each school, in turn, is subdivided into wings,each with its own special costumes.

In exchange for getting a costume free, the director of my school, Unidos daCereja (Cherry Union), asked the members of my wing to produce a special per-formance and run for the estandarte de ouro (gold banner), a special prize given tocertain categories in the parade, in this case for best wing choreography.1 Theschool’s carnavalesco (parade coordinator) created special choreography for us,incorporating into the parade a giant facial portrait of a local musician beingcelebrated in the school’s enredo (central theme or plot).2

Accordingly, my wing has exactly 165 members, and each of us carries a 30-by-40-inch plastic plaque with a small part of the giant picture stamped on one side,and the full picture of one of the senior members of the school on the other. Dur-ing the parade, the members are positioned geometrically to form a giant humanrectangle composed of 15 rows of 11 people each. Taking our cue from the chorus

NATASHA PRAVAZ is assistant professor of anthropology at Wilfrid Laurier University, whereshe teaches courses on performance practices and on popular culture in Latin America. Her researchfocuses on gender, national identity, and processes of racialization in Brazil. E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]

Visual Anthropology, 21: 95–111, 2008

Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 0894-9468 print=1545-5920 online

DOI: 10.1080/08949460701688775

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in the theme song, each member of the wing lifts the plaque with her piece of thepuzzle facing up, in a movement of precise synchronicity, and carefully puts theplaques side by side, forming what is seen from above as a flawless image. Thegroup then evolui, that is, walk forward at the same pace, one step at a time, mak-ing sure there are no gaps at any given moment. In between these picture-perfectweight-lifting exercises, participants are free to dance around, but always movingforward, just like the other 5,000 members of the school [Figure 1].

While in the past schools took six or seven hours to parade in the old setting,the Barao do Rio Branco Ave., the new TV-oriented samb�oodromo (samba stadium)imposes a strict 80 minutes for each school to cross the entire length of theMarques de Sapucaı Ave.3 On carnaval Monday we obey written and unwrittenrules and follow a highly codified sequence of movements. The sensation of beingin a rush and having to worry all the time about not deixar or fazer branco (leaving awide empty space on the road) dominates the experience of the parade and is inten-sified by the already militarized structure imposed by our wing’s choreography.

What is wrong with this picture? Far from being a contestatory ritual of rever-sal, Rio de Janeiro’s carnaval has become increasingly regimented and predict-able. My carnaval friends and I left the parade feeling very disappointed. Itcame and went in a flash, and we did not enjoy it. Stressed over the difficultyof our dance, conscious about its importance for the public gaze, our experienceof the carnaval parade had a bittersweet taste. It was not until the following weekthat I finally felt the exhilaration of revelry, when we paraded in the desfile dascampeas (parade of the winning schools).

Figure 1 Rehearsal of wing choreography at Unidos da Cereja (Photo by author).

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Our school was scheduled to make its appearance on Saturday at 5 A.M. As westarted dancing down the Marques de Sapucaı, the sun began to rise, bathing usin a soft pink and purple light, creating a magical, dreamlike atmosphere. Onlythen did everyday reality feel suspended. Our parade was not strictly controlled,and we could dance our samba leisurely at last. Curiously, it was past AshWednesday—it wasn’t carnaval time anymore. Outside the constrained spaceof the ritual, now restricted by new rules and regulations, a taste of the carnival-esque reemerged.

The normalization of samba performances needs to be understood within thecontext of a progressive standardization of audiovisual imagery, the effect of newtechniques of mechanical reproduction brought about by modernization pro-cesses. This article inspects the impact of communicative and scopic technologieson samba performances in the context of carnaval. The focus is on how commo-dification and staging have meant for samba practitioners both the amplificationof their sphere of influence and the disciplining of their art. At the same time, Iexplore the cracks in this regimentation by paying attention to the narratives ofperformers themselves.

Since the 1930s, the modernizing efforts of nationalist=populist governmentswere underscored by a dominant discourse that equated mesticagem (racial andcultural hybridity) with Brazilian identity. I focus first on both the historicalimpact of populist policies in the production of samba and carnaval as nationalsymbols, and the subsequent gentrification of carnaval spaces. Then, I move onto look at the symbolic treatment of geographical space and the body in thecontext of carnaval as boundaries rarely transgressed, transgressive, or carnival-esque. Lastly, I analyze spectacles performed by mulatas (women of mixedAfrican and European descent who dance the samba) in the context of carnaval,by looking at how these shows stage mesticagem as national identity and turnbrown-skinned female bodies into objects of a disciplining gaze. Ultimately,however, the progressive disciplining, staging, and surveillance of Afro–Brazilian samba performances have failed to secure a firm grip over performers’experiences. Performers present an alternative picture to this totalizing scenarioby emphasizing the personal meaning and heightened emotions associated withcarnaval and polyrhythmic sounds. Not only does the carnivalesque reemerge atthe gaps of surveillance, ocularcentrism itself makes possible specific forms ofpleasure. Furthermore, Afro–Brazilian ritual traditions have not completely losttheir ability to invoke the embodiment of ecstasy. Therefore, I end on an opennote that points to the interstices within which staging and normalization canbe ‘‘played with.’’

BRAZILIAN POPULISM AND THE STAGING OF NATIONAL IDENTITY

Normalization, more than being a mere effect of technological changes, isinscribed within larger processes of social transformation through which obser-vers are subjected to new disciplinary mechanisms. Challenging Foucault’s[1979] and Debord’s [1977] opposition between surveillance and spectacle,Jonathan Crary has demonstrated how the effects of these two regimes of power

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can coincide [Crary 1990; Jay 1993: 383]. He analyzes how new optical devices,regulations of activity, and the deployment of individual bodies developed atthe onset of the nineteenth century in Europe, codified and normalized observerswithin rigidly defined systems of visual consumption [Crary 1990: 17–18].

In relation to Brazilian samba, these processes acquired their fully blowncharacteristics during the 1960s and 1970s. The construction of the first blea-chers in 1962 led first to the commercialization of carnaval parades and laterto the institution of televised transmissions, new practices of seeing that disci-plined audiences and performers alike. We can trace the prehistory of thesetransformations to the 1930s. Contests between carnaval groups taking placesince the early 1900s acquired new significance under the governmental regu-lation of bodies and activities, and were subjected to a specifically ‘‘Brazilian’’project.

In his work on samba’s transformation from local practice to national icon,Vianna [1995: 26] indicates that, from the 1930s on, Brazilians began to recognizeRio de Janeiro’s culture as source and emblem of their ‘‘sambista’’ identity. Theauthor points out that the historical development of this cultural phenomenonwas closely tied to the formulation of Gilberto Freyre’s [1933] theories on mesti-cagem as symbol of Brazilian identity, and to the appropriation of Freyre’s ideasunder Getulio Vargas’s rule [1930–1945]. Mesticagem became a powerful socialdiscourse that exalted Brazil’s heritage as racially and culturally mixed, and usedAfro–Brazilian traditions as its icons. Black expression-turned-mestico culture,samba became the best indication of the hybrid character of the nation, andmulatas were the quintessential symbol of Brazil [Chasteen 1996; Fry 1982;Martınez-Etchaz�aabal 1996; and Sheriff 1999, among others].4

The process of institutionalization of carnaval parades, therefore, involved thesubjection of observers to new forms of exhibiting culture that radically trans-formed the permissible, the desirable, and the national. Among these importantchanges, for example, were the requirement that Afro–Brazilian participantsparade in front of the (white) elites at public parties (such as the one in tributeto Major Pedro Ernesto in 1934 [RIOTUR 1991: 186]) the increased circulationof samba music nationwide; and the newspaper sponsorship of carnaval events,thus enframing culture under an exhibitionary logic [Mitchell 1991].

Getulio Vargas was thrown out of office in 1945 by a military coup. However,his idea that the nation transcends race and class differences continued to growand develop throughout the 1950s. At the time, development-oriented govern-ments took it upon themselves to overcome the great obstacle to the achievementof nationhood—namely, under-development [Ortiz 1985; Rowe and Schelling1991]. While the new regimes did not address significant social problems, theywere not as repressive and controlling toward popular culture as the govern-ments that came before and after. Aside from recent history, the years between1945 and 1964 were the only period in Brazilian politics that encouraged a systemof mass political participation [Schwartzman 1982: 115]. For the schools of thatperiod, this translated into liberation from the iron fist of Vargas’s Departmentof Press and Propaganda, which controlled the topics of samba lyrics and enredosof escolas de samba [Moura 1986: 12]. Given the commodification of culture (stimu-lated by governments of the period) and the development of the entertainment

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industry, this political liberalization also meant the increasing professionalizationof schools as business enterprises with internal mandates and political struggles.

In 1952 the two existing entities representing schools at the time merged,formed the Associacao das Escolas de Samba (Samba Schools Association), andinstituted a new book of rules and regulations. Among other things, new rulesdetermined that every wing had to wear costumes and that samba lyrics hadto coincide with the overall enredo of the year. These practices contributed tothe homogenizing of heterogeneous cultural forms, which needed to fit intothe requirements of staging and its associated modern technological advances.Slowly, a folklorized version of samba became central to a mass ‘‘national’’ cul-ture, and which Brazilians oriented to as a main object of cultural consumption.

FROM NATIONAL CULTURE TO CULTURAL INDUSTRY

Many authors have identified further consequences to the modernization ofcarnaval parades since the late 1970s. Judy Taylor [1982], for example, discussesthe impact of middle-class values on the pre-Lenten celebration, expressed in theoutsider tastes of state officials, parade judges, and carnavalescos, and in the pro-selytizing, populist interests of bicheiros (illegal-gambling lords). Bicheiros, inparticular, have a vested interest in attracting large numbers of participants tothe school of their patronage.

Taylor’s argument hinges around a model of class struggle played on theaesthetic field, in which middle- and upper-class taste promotes a ‘‘spectacle ofmere visual effect’’ [1982: 306], while the popular classes struggle to preservetheir samba no pe (literally, ‘‘samba in the foot’’).5 While Taylor gives centralimportance to the role of parade judges in explaining the recent visual emphasisin carnaval, she also pays attention to the role of mass media in this phenomenon.In fact, the impact of communicative technologies such as television on carnival-esque celebrations cannot be overemphasized [Figure 2].

In her work on Cariocas’ carnaval (carnaval from Rio), Robin Sheriff [1999]stresses that the cooptation and repackaging of samba by Rio de Janeiro’s whitemiddle and upper classes has limiting effects on blacks’ participation. The authorpays close attention to the impact of television networks and their sponsors onsamb�oodromo politics. The samb�oodromo is described by her research participantsas ‘‘the final straw that broke the back of authentic samba and the Rio carnaval’’[1999: 16].

My own fieldwork experience confirms the dramatic impact of new practicesof exhibiting culture on the way that carnaval is currently celebrated in Rio deJaneiro. Several events, conversations, and casual strolls along the main streetsof the city during the festivities made me question deep-seated ideas about whatI romantically thought of as the major ritual of reversal in Brazilian society. Whencarnaval came about, I had spent a significant amount of time hanging aroundthe school of Unidos da Cereja and been involved for several months gettingto know its ins and outs, participating in the exhausting yet exciting organizationof my wing. Mine was one of the few wings whose costumes were paid for by theschool’s management. That year, the school provided about 600 costumes for alas

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da comunidade (community wings), giving low-income families of the Cereja com-munity a chance to participate in the parade. Most people could not afford to payseveral hundred reais (the local currency) to purchase a new, mass-produced out-fit, complete with faux feathers, plastic head props, and sequins, although manystruggled to save their money throughout the year to do so.

Since the mid-1970s, the aesthetics of carnaval costumes changed radically dueto their standardization. Previously, each component of the school would sewand embroider their own outfits, leaving room for personal creativity, imagin-ation, and Afro–Brazilian aesthetic expression. Nowadays all of the fabrics,materials, and frills are bought in bulk by the school’s management (composedof upwardly mobile members of the local community), which then contractsout to working-class seamstresses for the production of costumes designed bythe carnavalesco and his or her assistants (members of the middle class). Thecostumes within each wing are exactly the same and play a role in the largerpicture by representing a specific character in the school’s enredo. Moreover,given the current emphasis on visual impact for television, the sort producedby thousands of people carrying headsets with feathers of the same color, cos-tumes tend to be uncomfortable and very ‘‘abstract.’’ That is, you cannot reallytell what you are dressed as if you do not know the name of your costume.

The new trend toward mass production and shiny waves of colorful patternsfurther alienates members of the local community by taking away the aura ofmystery dominant in previous years. Janinha, one of the directors of Unidosda Cereja, talks about how one of the most exciting things about carnaval used

Figure 2 Members of an escola de samba performing on the set of a very popular TV show,Planeta Xuxa (Photo by author).

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to be getting her costume ready, one carefully embroidered with sequins anddesigned with patterns chosen by her. She and her friends would organize rafflesand sell tickets across the community to collect money for the expensive fabricsand materials, which had to be of the best quality. It was not until the very lastminute that everybody could actually see their costumes, but Janinha and herfriends would always try to sneak a peek at each other’s works of art.

Today, potential componentes de ala (escola de samba parade-goers) are able to seetheir potential costumes in advance by looking either at the etchings posted in thequadra (court) or at the pictures of someone dressed in a prototype.6 The experi-ence of anticipating the costumes is now more like browsing through a clothescatalog, a consequence of the uniformity involved in their production.

Since most inhabitants of Morro da Cereja (Cereja Hill) cannot participate inthe carnaval parade due to the high cost of costumes, it is not surprising thatthe majority of parade-goers are recruited among the middle and upper classes.Several wing directors themselves are members of the middle class, living andworking in the rich neighborhoods where they have ample opportunities forgathering participants. Yet the middle class began to attend school rehearsalsonly a few decades ago. According to Janinha, up to the mid-1950s almost allmembers of the parade were Cerejenses, not only in terms of their school of pref-erence but also regarding their place of residence.

Until 1955, 1956, everybody who paraded with our school was black, there were hardlyany whites around here. It was in the 1960s that people from the rich neighborhoodsstarted visiting the quadra, showing up for rehearsals, that kind of thing.

It was then that schools amassed enough financial resources to create a middle-class-friendly environment, and that samba became fully established as a legit-imate object of consumption for the middle class [Goldwasser 1975].

The development of a visual and staged carnaval is not only part of the inten-tional aim of the middle and upper classes to modernize [Taylor 1982: 303] orsteal [Sheriff 1999: 15–22] the celebration, but also a direct consequence of mod-ernity tout court [see, for example, Debord 1977; Foucault 1979; Jay 1993; Little1993; Mitchell 1988]. The close relationship between spectacle and modernitycan be seen in the historical transition from oral to visual codes in both aestheticand epistemological domains, a process accelerated by modern media such asfilm and television [Manning 1989: 141]. Modern spectacles, as opposed torituals, invite a voluntary and nonbinding participation from spectators, whoremain individuated and uncommitted to such events and whose engagementis mostly reduced to the activity of looking. Citing Benjamin’s reflections onthe effects of mechanical reproduction on art, we could say about Rio de Janeiro’scarnaval in the 1930s that ‘‘the exhibition value for the first time shows its superi-ority to the ritual value’’ [1968: 226]. In fact, a detached and all-consuming gazeitself is what transforms ritual into spectacle [Savigliano 1995].

Foucault’s work suggests that ways of seeing help to constitute an episteme[Jay 1993]. In fact, the macrological control of populations as well as the micro-logical normalizing of individuals draw on the mixture of the gaze and discourse—spatial and visual controls are essential to disciplining practices [Jay 1993: 412].

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Regardless of how important vision is in a society, scopic regimes are always partof an epistemic field, constructed as much linguistically as visually [Buck-Morss1989; de Lauretis 1987; Foucault 1980, l984; Hall 1996; and Jay 1993, amongothers]. Scopic regimes are

the agendas and techniques of political visualization: the regimens that prescribe modes ofseeing and object visibility and that proscribe or render untenable other modes and objectsof perception. A scopic regime is an ensemble of practices and discourses that establish thetruth claims, typicality, and credibility of visual acts, objects and politically correct modesof seeing. [Feldman 1997: 30]

In Brazil, the discourse of mesticagem hegemonic since the 1930s structured‘‘correct modes of seeing’’ and spectacle techniques establishing links betweennational identity and Afro–Brazilian culture. Governmental policies and theshow-business industry appropriated the ‘‘free spirit’’ of carnaval into normativeperformances celebrating mesticagem.

CARNIVALESQUE MOVES IN THE LAND OF SPECTACLE

As Richard Schechner [1993] has pointed out, under the interests of the modernstate apparatus and brand-product placement, most contemporary carnivalshave left behind their transgressive impulse and become mirrors of the socialorder. He also reminds us, however, that unofficial culture can worm its wayback into the public scene. I had the pleasure of witnessing a hint of suchphenomena on carnaval Sunday, when the first group of schools paraded. Somefriends and I had gone to watch the parade and were happy to pay only R$l forthe tickets, since the only seats left were in the cheapest sector. After thefirst school made its presentation, there was a 15-minute interval to clean thesamb�oodromo and flood the audience with advertising through the loudspeakersystem. To our surprise, clothed in the loud orange, awkward-looking overallstypical of the COMLURB (the city’s cleaning service), a man and woman incharge of sweeping the section immediately across from our seats risked animpromptu samba pas-de-deux to the sound of music blasting across the Marquesde Sapucaı. The audience rose in delight, cheering and clapping at the dancers’display of ingenuity and irreverence on the street level below.

This response is telling in terms of how such small occasions of spontaneity candisrupt the well-established routine of acts confined to the known plot of escolasde samba. It is true that today vision is the dominant mode of perception andexperience in Rio de Janeiro’s pre-Lenten celebration.7 In fact, the televisedevents today keep people in front of the screen for hours on end, and the highprices of costumes prevent most from participating in the parades. Yet the narra-tives of my research participants show us that the ocularcentric regime [Soussloff1996] dominant in Brazil has failed to secure a grip on personal experiences ofsamba and carnaval. These narratives bring to the fore the heightened emotionsassociated with carnaval and the performance of samba for Cariocas (natives ofRio de Janeiro), who are not in the least uncommitted to such events and whose

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form of engagement goes significantly beyond practices of looking. Celeste, amember of my wing at Unidos da Cereja, once said,‘‘An escola de samba is likea soccer team, everybody has a favorite one. Mine is Cereja. But Cereja is the hus-band, and Acerola [another school] is the lover, and with the lover, it’s alwaysmore fun (mais gostoso) [laughter].’’

Celeste’s family members were also parading with her that year, including hersister Magda and Magda’s daughter, Vicky. Magda made some interesting com-ments about Vicky’s relationship to her favorite school, Acerola. She told me:

We watch the parade every year, and every year, when Acerola enters the avenida(samb�oodromo), Vicky begins to cry, she sobs inconsolably. I, on the other hand, am Cereja;I am so fanatical that I almost started up a fight once. We were among Acerolenses (suppor-ters of Acerola), and I started to shout ‘‘Cereja, Cereja.’’ Vicky told me to stop the cheeringin the midst of Acerola people, but I told her, ‘‘Why? I am Cereja, and I have to defend myschool wherever I am.’’

The passion associated with cheering for a school is a common topic of conver-sation among sambistas. Indeed, one of the recurring themes in my participants’narratives is the embodied emocao (emotion or thrill) involved in their experienceof samba. Marenice, the director of dancers in a small school, for example, tellsme of her visceral relationship to the music since she was a little girl:

Marenice: You know, the African sound, it really moved me, it moved my body (mexiamuito com o meu corpo) . . . . It is very easy for me to follow the rhythm ofpercussion instruments. Up until today, and I am 46 years old, I still dancewonderfully well . . . . When I go to an escola de samba, I am transformed.

Author: What do you feel?Marenice: I feel a great emocao. It’s huge, when the bateria (percussion) begins to play, I am

deeply moved, as if something was turned on inside of me, and I can’t standstill, it’s a desperate thing [laughter]. Look, I had tachycardia that is linked tothe emotion. I don’t have high cholesterol, because I’ve always taken care ofmy body, even though I am four kilos above my normal weight now, butI’ve always kept a reasonable weight. So there was no reason to have sucharrhythmia. So I went to a specialist, and he said, ‘‘Listen, Marenice, we’llperform a test, and if your problem is on your right ventricle, you won’t be ableto dance anymore, to move around.’’Everybody here was upset, because I cheer up everybody around here. Thisplace is always busy, during carnaval it is full of people, and really, sambareally cheers me up (me deixa muito animada), and I get transformed. I feel likeI’m 15 again. So everybody was upset. For me, my biggest sadness was gettingto the samba [e.g., a rehearsal], hearing the bateria playing, and not being able tomake one step. I wasn’t sad because I could die. I was sad because I might notbe able to dance to the sound of a bateria.

It is possible to say, following the experiences of my research participants, thatthe staging of Afro–Brazilian culture has not prevented samba lovers from con-tinuing to enjoy the thrill of music and dance. Moreover, the staging of carnavalparades in itself has played a role in furthering the sphere of influence of samba


by conquering more and more fans. To further illustrate the tension andcollusion, at times, between ocularcentrism and ecstatic embodiment, I turnnow to the uses of the body and of geographical space in the context of carnaval.I look at how, while carnivalesque bodies have been excluded from the centerstage, performers who ‘‘fit the bill’’ (i.e., conform to current beauty standards)manage to extract pleasure and meaning from the others’ gaze. This pleasure,nonetheless, is as much a consequence of ocularcentrism as it is the product ofritualistic forces harnessed by percussive polyrhythms.

GROTESQUE BODIES NEED NOT APPLY

Nowhere is the transformation from carnivalesque laughter to normative per-formance clearer than in the concrete and symbolic treatment of geographicalspace and the physical body. Following Bakhtin’s [1984] insights on the trans-gressive potential of carnaval, Stallybrass and White [1986] have discussed thesymbolic inversion of social hierarchies between the ‘‘high’’ and the ‘‘low’’ asforms of trespassing on culturally defined boundaries, which are mostly evidentwithin certain domains of experience. These domains, particularly loaded withsymbolism, are those of psychic life, geographical space, the human body, andthe social order. I have chosen to focus here on the ways in which the controland regulation of space and of the body reveal how the boundaries supposedlytrespassed on by rituals of inversion are in fact reinforced and reinvested withinthe very confines of carnaval parades.

The parades still represent a kind of geographic inversion in Rio de Janeiro, forthey involve the taking over of public spaces—particularly the Zona Sul (Southregion), where the middle and upper classes live—by the lower-class inhabitantsof the Zona Norte (North region). The Zona Sul is always trying to control theZona Norte and its conflicts, involving violent wars among drug lords, with aneven more abusive military police force. During carnaval, however, some ofthe prohibitions that prevail throughout the year against the dispossessed, andparticularly against Afro–Brazilians, are lifted, when once again Brazil ‘‘shows’’to itself that national identity is samba and samba is national identity. The dis-course of mesticagem is played out in the field of cultural relations, celebratingthe culture of those who are repressed and derided during the rest of the year.Within this celebratory impulse, however, the use of public space in carnavalparades has been strictly regulated and controlled, as illustrated in the openingethnographic vignette.

In relation to the human body, Stallybrass and White have argued that ‘‘body-images ‘speak‘ social relations and values with particular force’’ [1986: 10].Bakhtin associated the carnivalesque with grotesque realism, a form that

uses the material body—flesh conceptualized as corpulent excess—to represent cosmic,social, topographical and linguistic elements of the world . . . . Grotesque realism imagesthe human body as multiple, bulging, over- or under-sized, protuberant and incomplete.The openings and orifices of this carnival body are emphasized, not its closure and finish.It is an image of impure corporeal bulk with its orifices (mouth, flared nostrils, anus)

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yawning wide and its lower regions (belly, legs, feet, buttocks and genitals) given priorityover its upper regions (head, ‘‘spirit,’’ reason). [Stallybrass and White 1986: 8–9]

Mockery and exaggerated expressions of bodily comportment were prevalentin the context of early twentieth-century carnaval celebrations in Brazil. A hun-dred years later, however, the body presented in the spectacle of carnaval isheavily sexualized and its genitals strongly emphasized, but it is never debasedor grotesque, as Bakhtin would have had it. Not the outrageous but the aesthe-ticized and visually pleasing body now rules. Moreover, carnaval’s experiencesof the body have undergone a transition from an emphasis on tactile sensualityto a mode of consumption based on visual detachment. Following Debord’sinsights on spectacle, we can say that ‘‘everything that was directly lived hasmoved away into a representation’’ [1977]. This detachment, however, is notwithout eroticism. As opposed to the de-eroticized scopic regime of Cartesianperspectivalism, based on the dispassionate eye of the neutral observer, the pre-dominant mode of seeing in Brazilian carnaval presents similarities with that ofbaroque vision, which celebrates the dazzling, disorientating and ecstatic surplusof images [Jay 1993: 187]. This proliferation of images, however, is still caughtwithin the structure of a ‘‘monologic,’’ panoptic gaze, disciplining viewers andviewed. In spite of the sudden bursts of the carnivalesque in the midst of carna-val parades, these have been transformed into a modern popular entertainment,which is ‘‘just for show’’ [Little 1993].

Like the modern fair, carnaval can be a site of opposition to official ideologies, but

it is also the means by which emergent mercantile interests [can] stimulate new desires. . ..Far from being the privileged site of popular symbolic opposition to hierarchies, [it is] infact a kind of educative spectacle, a relay for the diffusion of the cosmopolitan values ofthe ‘‘centre’’ (particularly the capital and the new urban centers of production) throughoutthe provinces and the lower orders. [Stallybrass and White 1986: 38]

Carnaval in Brazil has irrevocably become part and parcel of ‘‘educational’’practices of exhibiting culture, tied to the economic interests of corporationsand to nationalistic policies destined to discipline popular culture and make ofit a spectacle for the nation. With the institution of televised parades, in 1971the schools each had their parading time strictly limited to 80 minutes, dramati-cally restructuring the nature of the celebrations in the samb�oodromo, as pointedout above. In fact, the 1970s would become known Brazil-wide as the years of‘‘visual’’ carnaval. When RIOTUR (the executive organ of Rio’s Secretary of Tour-ism) gave away its rights of transmission to the Escola de Samba Association in1981, that association began direct negotiations with television networks [RIO-TUR 1991: 192]. This turn of events sealed the future of carnaval by tying it tothe spectacular needs of broadcasting corporations.

Within this ‘‘panoptic’’ context, ‘‘carnivalized bodies’’ [Boyce Davies 1994]have become disciplined and put to the service of nation-making spectacles.The mulata, in particular, a main attraction aboard the one-person platforms oncarnaval parade floats, cannot afford to be grotesque in any way.8 Being thecenter of attention as a dancer requires that you demonstrate total control overyour demeanor. There is a high price to be paid for slips and faux pas:


I began to dance the samba on my own; eventually I got to know a lot of different steps, Istarted to make other moves, to dance with a man . . . because if he throws you around, youslide underneath him, he cuts across above you, you have to know, if not, can you imagineif it happens to you inside the school, to tumble and fall while on five-inch-heels? So Istarted dancing in a different way. [Sonia, personal interview]

Cultural practices that used to be considered shocking due to their indecentnature have been disciplined by the need to follow the rules. Appropriated byconsumerism, the once-oppositional culture of samba is part of wider practicesof commercialization of sensuality that neutralize radical impulses in contempor-ary celebrations of eroticism [Figure 3].9

Figure 3 Fabricia, rainha da bateria (queen of the percussion wing) of an escola de sambaperforming during carnaval at the Scala, a prominent Rio nightclub where mulata spectacles takeplace regularly (Photo by author).

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VISUALITY, PLEASURE AND RITUAL ECSTASY

The bleak picture invoked by totalizing scenarios merely shows us one aspect,albeit dominant, of Rio’s carnaval. In fact, the way women who take part in sambaspectacles conceptualize their role as mulatas is far from one of victimhood andmanipulation. Interestingly, the women collude with the dominant discourse onBrazilian national identity as mestico and embrace the regime of visuality enactedin carnaval parades as a source of social recognition and personal pleasure.Valeria Valenssa, for example, is one of the most famous figures in the pre-Lentencelebrations. Her claim to fame was to parade as queen of the bateria of a largeschool wearing only body paint. I had the opportunity to interview her duringmy fieldwork, and asked her how she felt while parading at the samb�oodromo.She said:

Ah, I miss it already (com saudade). I mean, it is an exhausting time, I work a lot, do manyshows, like on the Friday prior to carnaval this year, I worked Friday, Saturday and Sun-day in Aracaju [the capital of Sergipe state, 1,855 km distant from Rio]; it’s called off-sea-son carnaval. Then I come to Rio, I rest from Monday to Wednesday, and on Thursday Itravel, this year I did a show in Amap�aa [2,687 km from Rio], opening the carnaval season.From there I went straight to Sao Paulo [2,664 km], and came back to Rio [429 km] on theSunday, and on Sunday and Monday I paraded here in Rio. I mean, no doubt, it is incred-ibly moving to be able to parade here in Rio and to know that people are waiting for you,you know, your friends, ‘‘Look, I’ll be there, I’ll go watch your show,’’ ‘‘Where are yougoing to parade?’’ and so on. I think that no doubt there is great emotion in being ableto be here in your city during carnaval, like, it’s a symbol of our country, one of the sym-bols of our country. So then, when I am exhausted, because I don’t sleep during this week-end, I mean, when I get to the avenida, when I see people looking at me, the sound of thebateria, the music, the fireworks, this really touches me deep inside, no matter how tiredyou are, it’s impossible to stand still, to think about your tiredness, you forget yourself.

Another famous carnaval figure since the 1970s is Mary Marinho. She is mostlyknown as a member of the trio Irmas Marinho (the Marinho Sisters), who paradedwith a big escola de samba as an innovative feature, introducing choreographedsteps to the parade. Mary told me she resented being remembered as a mulata,as opposed to a professional dancer. To this day, she works internationally as achoreographer, being called to develop dances for the Ministry of Culture inAngola and for an art Biennale in Lisbon, for example. In spite of her discomfortwith how others perceived her craft, when asked what she had enjoyed the mostthroughout her career as a professional ballet dancer, she responded as follows:

Mary Marinho: What moved me the most? (De emocao?) For me, it was the first time I setfoot on the avenida. . . . Nothing compares. And, listen, I’ve worked inYugoslavia, I mean, all over Europe. There is nothing more moving (nadamais emocionante) than stepping onto the samb�oodromo.

Author: Why?Mary: Ah, it’s a magical thing. You want it never to end. For me, in terms of perfor-

mances, it was the most moving thing. So much so, that we did it once and wewent back 16 years in a row. . . . There is no better audience in the whole wideworld. Deep down, it’s the audience. There’s no better audience.


The common denominator in women’s experiences of dancing the samba incarnaval parades and at the rehearsals of schools is the feeling of thrill, or emocao.Interestingly, in most cases (e.g., Mary Marinho and Valeria Valenssa) this feelingemerges from the very experience of being watched and appreciated by a massiveand responsive audience. Dancers’ understanding of their art is mediated by amodern emphasis on beauty and visual impact, and by a modern ethics of workthat values individuality, personal skill, and creativity in the moment. Thisemphasis results in performances full of oomph and style, in which chutzpahand stamina are prized assets. These assets, however, also speak of another setof cultural traits and social values that escape the disciplinary logics of late capit-alism and modern individualism [Pravaz, forthcoming]. In this regard, Brazilianmodernity and ocularcentrism need to be considered vis-a-vis the pervasive yetfrequently unacknowledged influence of Afro–Brazilian forms of sociality. In fact,the emocao experienced by many carnaval performers can be directly linked toecstasy as the exit from individuality into an intoxicating fusion [Kast 1994: 127].

Exploring ecstasy as the possession of a human being by a god, Verena Kast[1994] stresses that ‘‘ecstasy carries us beyond limits, killing our normal person-ality’’ [1994: 122], and reminds us that ‘‘Dionysus was invoked by putting on amask’’ [1994: 123]. The origins of samba and carnaval parades in Rio are linkedto terreiros de candomble, the religious spaces where Afro–Brazilian polytheisticworship is enacted through spirit possession. When devotees ‘‘receive a saint’’in their bodies, the main form of expression of these spirits is that of dancingto the sound of percussive polyrhythms. The spirit who has descended subse-quently dons the clothes and accoutrements characteristic of its personality, suchas the double-axe of Xango or the mirror of Oxum. This enthralling fusion with thegods is facilitated and enhanced by the intensity of the music, and drummers arehighly respected and revered figures within the context Afro–Brazilian religion.

During carnaval, the experience of abandon and emocao described by myresearch participants can be attributed, in part, to the powerful ring of the bateriasof escolas de samba, composed of up to 300 members at times and producing an all-ecompassing, thundering sound. Moreover, revellers and performers put on cos-tumes (called fantasias in Brazil) that, despite being mass-produced and abstract,may, if not invoke the gods, at least afford an escape from or expansion ofour everyday personas [Da Matta 1979]. In the context of carnaval, therefore, itis still possible to inhabit a kind of passion that, although praised as a symbolof Brazilianness, is considered unruly in mundane, everyday settings. Withinthe context of carnaval, this ecstasy—albeit controlled, regulated, and harnessedfor political and economic purposes—continues to afford celebrants a glimpse ofthe carnivalesque. This may be why people keep coming back to the parades,against all odds.

CONCLUSION

We cannot underestimate the power of modern visual technologies and stateinterests in shaping the meaning and reception of popular traditions. As I haveattempted to show here, practices of cultural consumption have dramatically

108 N. Pravaz

transformed Afro–Brazilian performance customs in recent history. Global tour-ism flows have only enhanced this trend in the last few decades. Populist govern-ments since the 1930s have used Afro–Brazilian culture as an icon of mesticagem.In turn, corporate profits have contributed to the dramatic staging of samba-qua-Brazilianness. Mulatas’ bodies, in particular, have been literally caught in thespotlight, fulfilling the scopophilic desires of local (and international) audiencesfor ‘‘authentic’’ tropical abandon and mestico identity. Yet Afro–Brazilian sambaspectacles are contested sites, straddling between the surveillance of the gaze andthe embodied pleasure of performing ethnic traditions. In contemporary Brazil,the carnivalesque impulse is found, at times, in the marginal interstices that havemanaged to escape the all-encompassing colonizing gaze. At other times, it is thisvery gaze that enhances participants’ joy in cheering, dancing, and performingAfro–Brazilian culture.

NOTES

1. To preserve the anonymity of my research participants, all of the names mentioned inthis article, including the escola, are pseudonyms.

2. Carnavalescos are university-educated media experts hired by escolas de samba to designcostumes and floats, overview choreographies, and ultimately present a coherent,beautiful enredo (theme) of high visual impact.

3. The samb�oodromo is also known as Passarela do Samba (Samba’s Footbridge), the Marquesde Sapucaı Ave., or avenida. This massive structure was built in 1984 and holds almost100,000 people.

4. The understanding of samba as a product of black culture [Appleby 1983; McGowananand Pessanha 1998; Lopes et al. 1987] has been the object of debate in the literatureand challenged by authors who inscribe the music and dance within a more hybridor syncretic origin [Vianna 1995; Chasteen 1996].

5. The expression makes reference to the mastery required for the proper dancing ofsamba, and the sense of accomplishment it entails. This skill gets lost with the massivevisual emphasis of contemporary parades.

6. In the case of Unidos da Cereja, quadra is the colloquial name given to the school’s head-quarters and rehearsal space which, in fact, doubles as an indoor soccer hall at othertimes. The quadra is as large as a hangar and holds several thousand people during peakhours. The expression componente de ala literally means ‘‘wing member.’’ Any personwho participates in carnaval parades does so as a member of a specific wing.

7. When referring to ‘‘vision’’ as a dominant mode, I am pointing to the ocularcentrismcharacteristic of modern society and to the way in which such a mode is allied to tech-nology [Soussloff 1996].

8. Mulatas in Brazil are women of mixed black and white descent. The prevalence of theterm is a product of the ideology of whitening, which has encouraged ‘‘mixing’’ as aform of racial eugenics. Mulata is also the name given to a woman of color who per-forms the samba on stage.

9. For an analysis of the collapse of the moral apparatus of bourgeois capitalism, itsrelation to the oppositional character of modernist culture, and its subsequent appro-priation by the advertisement industry, see Bryan Turner [1991]. Note, as well,Foucault’s remarks on biopower and the contemporary exploitation of eroticism, in aseminal iterview with Quel Corps? [1980].


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Where Is the Carnivalesque in Rio's Carnaval? Samba, Mulatas and Modernity

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