by Enzo Sezar de Assis
Throughout this semester, I had the opportunity to learn about a subject that I had not considered before: culture. What exactly is culture? How do you define it?
Culture is an abstract idea and it can be very complex. It´s what defines us, it´s the way we see the world around us, the way we communicate, the way we express ourselves. Culture is in our identities, in our beliefs, and it certainly is one of our most precious treasures, after all, culture is the image of the society that we live in.
As you can see, culture is the definition of a certain community. So, obviously, when their culture is attacked, it becomes a serious problem. All it takes to severely change that image of people is someone with power and influence spreading lies filled with prejudice, and people who believe them, and there you go, you have a stereotype.
The problem with a stereotype is that it is generalized, as if a whole community could be defined with one cliché. Of course at some point a foreigner saw a bunch of Brazilians playing football or being late to some appointment, in the same way a Brazilian could have seen a person from Asia fighting martial arts, or any other stereotype we know, but it doesn´t mean that it´s relatable to a country in its entirety.
When researching about the influence of movies and books in the way foreigners see Brazilians, my classmates and I have reported numerous stereotypes about Brazil caused by the entertainment media, such as ´´every Brazilian loves carnaval´´ and ´´every place in Brazil is dangerous´´, but the question to be made here is “Did those people have a correct presentation of Brazil? No, they didn´t, and we can´t blame them, because it was the only superficial image they had, the only image that the media had provided.
But I can`t speak about stereotypes without including myself in the subject. Before learning about culture, I had a lot of misrepresentations of lots of countries, languages, traditions and cultural traces in general, but the problem is that I didn`t notice it, and, because of that, I was unconsciously staining other people’s images. I used to treat it as a joke, making voices with a funny accent in English or making funny comments about certain cultures, such as: ´´every German speaks loudly´´ or ´´every British love tea´´. I had so many stereotypes about Brazil itself, of each region of the country, that, somehow, I had more stereotypes about Brazil than people who didn`t live in my country.
So, in the same way the foreigners that I interviewed believed in lies about other cultures, so did I, and I know that it isn´t my fault, but I feel ashamed of the images I had built in my imagination. It is really a wonderful thing that I was capable of acquiring a different way of seeing both mine and foreign cultures, getting rid of the stereotypes I had in the process.
Throughout this semester, I had the opportunity to learn about a subject that I had not considered before: culture. What exactly is culture? How do you define it?
Culture is an abstract idea and it can be very complex. It´s what defines us, it´s the way we see the world around us, the way we communicate, the way we express ourselves. Culture is in our identities, in our beliefs, and it certainly is one of our most precious treasures, after all, culture is the image of the society that we live in.
As you can see, culture is the definition of a certain community. So, obviously, when their culture is attacked, it becomes a serious problem. All it takes to severely change that image of people is someone with power and influence spreading lies filled with prejudice, and people who believe them, and there you go, you have a stereotype.
The problem with a stereotype is that it is generalized, as if a whole community could be defined with one cliché. Of course at some point a foreigner saw a bunch of Brazilians playing football or being late to some appointment, in the same way a Brazilian could have seen a person from Asia fighting martial arts, or any other stereotype we know, but it doesn´t mean that it´s relatable to a country in its entirety.
When researching about the influence of movies and books in the way foreigners see Brazilians, my classmates and I have reported numerous stereotypes about Brazil caused by the entertainment media, such as ´´every Brazilian loves carnaval´´ and ´´every place in Brazil is dangerous´´, but the question to be made here is “Did those people have a correct presentation of Brazil? No, they didn´t, and we can´t blame them, because it was the only superficial image they had, the only image that the media had provided.
But I can`t speak about stereotypes without including myself in the subject. Before learning about culture, I had a lot of misrepresentations of lots of countries, languages, traditions and cultural traces in general, but the problem is that I didn`t notice it, and, because of that, I was unconsciously staining other people’s images. I used to treat it as a joke, making voices with a funny accent in English or making funny comments about certain cultures, such as: ´´every German speaks loudly´´ or ´´every British love tea´´. I had so many stereotypes about Brazil itself, of each region of the country, that, somehow, I had more stereotypes about Brazil than people who didn`t live in my country.
So, in the same way the foreigners that I interviewed believed in lies about other cultures, so did I, and I know that it isn´t my fault, but I feel ashamed of the images I had built in my imagination. It is really a wonderful thing that I was capable of acquiring a different way of seeing both mine and foreign cultures, getting rid of the stereotypes I had in the process.