by Diego Lunkes, Larissa Longaray, Tiele Kawarlevski
Throughout the project of Culture and stereotypes article (what concerns to discover how Brazil is seen by foreigner eyes), with the interviews, the documentary “The Foreign Eye” and the Nigerin writer Chimamanda Adichie’s speech, we saw that our stereotype is exactly how we thought it was. When we asked foreigners about their visions about Brazil before they arrived here, they answered what we thought they would: samba, jungle, beautiful and sensual women, beaches, slums and violence.
This is not so far from reality, but it is not just like this. They use Rio de Janeiro and Amazon as reference while Brazil has other twenty-six states. The documentary “The Foreign Eye” is concerned to show stereotypes, but it's done in an American way, like said Larry Gelbart, American television writer, playwright, screenwriter and author : “an American cake, but it had a Brazilian frosting". This happens because they are talking about different cultures and they just know how to do it if they see it through their own culture and this is how stereotypes are built. So, the stereotype ends up being a summary for reality and this summary just contemplates one vision about all stories, in other words, it is not a lie, it is just a bad summary. Like Chimamanda said in her speech: “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.”
On the other hand, we have other parts of this story. When we interviewed the foreigners asking about their actual vision of Brazil, they answered that it has changed. They discovered that, actually, we are friendly people and receptive with the foreigners, that we are hardworking (then we are not partying all the time) and not everybody likes samba and soccer. They also discovered other cultural expressions, like it is said in the website article Real Life for English (http://migre.me/c834h): “Brazil knows how to party and how to celebrate its beautiful culture with many festivities throughout the year such as Carnaval. The world is amazed by cultural expressions like samba and capoeira.”
We are completing the foreigners stereotyped vision about Brazil, so it is interesting to say that what is called "a whole jungle" is, in fact, our biodiversity. Our country has a really big variety of animals and vegetation, but differently from the stereotyped image, we do not domesticate wild animals in our backyards. And about our rich culture: during the colonization of Brazil, we had a lot of immigration, for example, Italian, German and Polish. So, we are a big mixture.
Our mixture is our culture: richer than a simple stereotype. This is the cake filling.
This is not so far from reality, but it is not just like this. They use Rio de Janeiro and Amazon as reference while Brazil has other twenty-six states. The documentary “The Foreign Eye” is concerned to show stereotypes, but it's done in an American way, like said Larry Gelbart, American television writer, playwright, screenwriter and author : “an American cake, but it had a Brazilian frosting". This happens because they are talking about different cultures and they just know how to do it if they see it through their own culture and this is how stereotypes are built. So, the stereotype ends up being a summary for reality and this summary just contemplates one vision about all stories, in other words, it is not a lie, it is just a bad summary. Like Chimamanda said in her speech: “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.”
On the other hand, we have other parts of this story. When we interviewed the foreigners asking about their actual vision of Brazil, they answered that it has changed. They discovered that, actually, we are friendly people and receptive with the foreigners, that we are hardworking (then we are not partying all the time) and not everybody likes samba and soccer. They also discovered other cultural expressions, like it is said in the website article Real Life for English (http://migre.me/c834h): “Brazil knows how to party and how to celebrate its beautiful culture with many festivities throughout the year such as Carnaval. The world is amazed by cultural expressions like samba and capoeira.”
We are completing the foreigners stereotyped vision about Brazil, so it is interesting to say that what is called "a whole jungle" is, in fact, our biodiversity. Our country has a really big variety of animals and vegetation, but differently from the stereotyped image, we do not domesticate wild animals in our backyards. And about our rich culture: during the colonization of Brazil, we had a lot of immigration, for example, Italian, German and Polish. So, we are a big mixture.
Our mixture is our culture: richer than a simple stereotype. This is the cake filling.