by Luísa Hall Freitas da Silva
I think defining culture is extremely difficult because it is a concept that can vary from person to person. In this article I intend to give my opinion about this. In this way, culture is to me everything that forms a society; the way of thinking, speaking, expressing and creating things. Arts, for example, are forms of cultural manifestation, just like religions, the way we treat each other and what we consider right and wrong.
By definition, stereotypes are preconceived, standardized and generalized images established by common sense. Chimamanda, in her text "the danger of a single story", goes further and says that stereotypes aren't unreal ideas, but incomplete ideas. They reduce a whole culture to a single thing. In this way, they are created by people who have power and maintained through the media that selects and shows what they want to show. Brazil, for example, is shown abroad as a carnival country, with the most beautiful women, who listen to samba and funk and appreciate football. Nobody talks about other styles of music from Brazil, like MPB and Bossa Nova, and people outside think here we party all day, and people here are not used to working.
Besides that, the songs and movies produced here reinforce these images, so these stereotypes are held by the people who live here. Nobody tries to take the other cultural manifestations outside the country, so the problem isn't just the media, but how society acts in face of it, maintaining its stereotypes and letting them spread abroad.
I used to see Brazil as a backward and troubled country. And I still think there is a lot of prejudice and conservatism here. However, after interviewing some students, mostly from China and Korea, I could make a comparison and see positive things in Brazil that I had never seen before. We can be more open and more friendly then we think we are. We can be welcoming and enthusiastic too.
Although, that doesn't mean that there aren’t positive things in China or Korea. I used to think of these countries as being very conservative, but now I see that they are just different. I admire how respectful they are to their teachers and senior citizens, and how they value education. I thought they would feel uncomfortable and would not understand our way to act, but they were as friendly as they said we are. Therefore, it was an interesting exchange of ideas and I had the opportunity to learn more about stereotypes and how they work.
I think defining culture is extremely difficult because it is a concept that can vary from person to person. In this article I intend to give my opinion about this. In this way, culture is to me everything that forms a society; the way of thinking, speaking, expressing and creating things. Arts, for example, are forms of cultural manifestation, just like religions, the way we treat each other and what we consider right and wrong.
By definition, stereotypes are preconceived, standardized and generalized images established by common sense. Chimamanda, in her text "the danger of a single story", goes further and says that stereotypes aren't unreal ideas, but incomplete ideas. They reduce a whole culture to a single thing. In this way, they are created by people who have power and maintained through the media that selects and shows what they want to show. Brazil, for example, is shown abroad as a carnival country, with the most beautiful women, who listen to samba and funk and appreciate football. Nobody talks about other styles of music from Brazil, like MPB and Bossa Nova, and people outside think here we party all day, and people here are not used to working.
Besides that, the songs and movies produced here reinforce these images, so these stereotypes are held by the people who live here. Nobody tries to take the other cultural manifestations outside the country, so the problem isn't just the media, but how society acts in face of it, maintaining its stereotypes and letting them spread abroad.
I used to see Brazil as a backward and troubled country. And I still think there is a lot of prejudice and conservatism here. However, after interviewing some students, mostly from China and Korea, I could make a comparison and see positive things in Brazil that I had never seen before. We can be more open and more friendly then we think we are. We can be welcoming and enthusiastic too.
Although, that doesn't mean that there aren’t positive things in China or Korea. I used to think of these countries as being very conservative, but now I see that they are just different. I admire how respectful they are to their teachers and senior citizens, and how they value education. I thought they would feel uncomfortable and would not understand our way to act, but they were as friendly as they said we are. Therefore, it was an interesting exchange of ideas and I had the opportunity to learn more about stereotypes and how they work.