by Leonardo Foschiera de Mesquita
As the Nigerian book author Chimamanda famously said, stereotypes are created based on a single aspect of someone’s culture (or story) that is transformed into the major or defining characteristic about that person or their group. As if these oversimplified ideas and images about a person were not damaging enough, this phenomenon gets bigger when stereotypes are about a group of people, such as a nation. The customs, arts, social institutions and achievements of a particular country are what defines its culture. But how can one really know a culture and be sure that the ideas they have are not actually part of the stereotypes about a country? For people who do not know Brazil or have never made a research about our country, the things that they probably heard about us are regarding soccer, beaches, Carnival and the extreme violence, that can be found anywhere and at any time of the day.
Although these and many more stereotypes are long established, their maintenance could be attributed solely to the people from other countries, who did not bother to check the authenticity of the information they received and spread through the media. But that would mean to ignore the tricky and complex nature of stereotypes: that they are not necessarily false and, at least in the case of Brazil, they are actually reinforced by our own media. We see it in our movies, telenovelas and on the news all the time and we know that what is shown is not everything about our country, but a foreigner might not see past the marvelous beaches from Rio, the well-played soccer matches from our clubs or the daily violence that is present in urban areas.
In my English class, I had the opportunity to understand how some foreigners saw Brazil before they came here and how their perspective changed once they got to know our country through us, Brazilians. My group was interested in the aspects of language and the difficulties of Portuguese, but we talked to foreign students who told us many things about that and about their expectations. Some of them told us that they thought we spoke Spanish before researching more, others talked about the dangers of the streets and the great climate, and almost all of them said that Brazilians were warm and not shy at all. Of course, many of the things they said had a basis on the truth, but they also discovered that it may rain a lot here depending on the season, that not all places are as dangerous as they thought and some of us do not like physical contact or are not very sociable. In a similar way, I discovered things that I did not know about their countries and how much in common we have. With all of that in mind, I have learned that I do not need to know everything about a foreign country and should not take the information given on the movies and news as false, but rather keep an open mind and try to learn not only from multiple sources about a country, but from multiple people from there, because, if culture is something that exists in a group of people, it is only fair that we consider all opinions and expressions in order to define it.
As the Nigerian book author Chimamanda famously said, stereotypes are created based on a single aspect of someone’s culture (or story) that is transformed into the major or defining characteristic about that person or their group. As if these oversimplified ideas and images about a person were not damaging enough, this phenomenon gets bigger when stereotypes are about a group of people, such as a nation. The customs, arts, social institutions and achievements of a particular country are what defines its culture. But how can one really know a culture and be sure that the ideas they have are not actually part of the stereotypes about a country? For people who do not know Brazil or have never made a research about our country, the things that they probably heard about us are regarding soccer, beaches, Carnival and the extreme violence, that can be found anywhere and at any time of the day.
Although these and many more stereotypes are long established, their maintenance could be attributed solely to the people from other countries, who did not bother to check the authenticity of the information they received and spread through the media. But that would mean to ignore the tricky and complex nature of stereotypes: that they are not necessarily false and, at least in the case of Brazil, they are actually reinforced by our own media. We see it in our movies, telenovelas and on the news all the time and we know that what is shown is not everything about our country, but a foreigner might not see past the marvelous beaches from Rio, the well-played soccer matches from our clubs or the daily violence that is present in urban areas.
In my English class, I had the opportunity to understand how some foreigners saw Brazil before they came here and how their perspective changed once they got to know our country through us, Brazilians. My group was interested in the aspects of language and the difficulties of Portuguese, but we talked to foreign students who told us many things about that and about their expectations. Some of them told us that they thought we spoke Spanish before researching more, others talked about the dangers of the streets and the great climate, and almost all of them said that Brazilians were warm and not shy at all. Of course, many of the things they said had a basis on the truth, but they also discovered that it may rain a lot here depending on the season, that not all places are as dangerous as they thought and some of us do not like physical contact or are not very sociable. In a similar way, I discovered things that I did not know about their countries and how much in common we have. With all of that in mind, I have learned that I do not need to know everything about a foreign country and should not take the information given on the movies and news as false, but rather keep an open mind and try to learn not only from multiple sources about a country, but from multiple people from there, because, if culture is something that exists in a group of people, it is only fair that we consider all opinions and expressions in order to define it.