by Wesley Henrique Acorinti
This past semester I took part in my English II course project called “Brazil in the eyes of the other”. The objective of this project was to discuss how people from other cultures see Brazil and Brazilians so that we could understand how we see other cultures. Among other things, the project also aimed at finding out what stereotypes are, how they are formed and how we can deconstruct them1. After going through it, I would define the word ‘culture’ as the ideas, customs, social behavior and language of a particular society.
When a society is depicted, either in daily speech or in the media, it is usually followed by a stereotype. In countries like Brazil – that foreign people usually have one single version of its society – it is common for them to think that a made-up trait, such as the ones seen in overseas movie productions, is the single truth.
Those stereotypes are mainly created and often reinforced by the mass culture industry, especially by the movies, as we have seen in the documentary called “Foreign eye” (in Portuguese, “Olhar estrangeiro2”). In this movie, we could verify that the image created about Brazil is regularly related to topless women, going to the beach every day, people who do not work, jungles, stereotyped “African” culture, sexuality, and idealized Latin love.
After taking part in the project, I have learned not to define one group of people according to one single artwork. The Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi advocates that it is dangerous to have one single story about a place. We, Brazilians, are seen as sexy vagabonds because there are only a few published artworks that approach Brazilian diversity. Nonetheless, that is not the case of powerful countries, such as the United States. We do not stereotype Americans as Norman Bates, the main character of Psycho, because we have many stories that address other traits Americans may have; from love to hate and from poverty to wealth, we are provided with a lot of artworks which give us a plural insight about the U.S.
After all, awareness was risen about thinking our portrayed image critically. It is quite sickening to see our country as a generalization of some traits as if we were somehow homogeneous. Even though it does not sell as much as the consolidated image, in Brazil, there is wealth and there are people like me who do not like the beach, who are hardworking and who do not live a high sexualized, idealized Latin love romance.
This past semester I took part in my English II course project called “Brazil in the eyes of the other”. The objective of this project was to discuss how people from other cultures see Brazil and Brazilians so that we could understand how we see other cultures. Among other things, the project also aimed at finding out what stereotypes are, how they are formed and how we can deconstruct them1. After going through it, I would define the word ‘culture’ as the ideas, customs, social behavior and language of a particular society.
When a society is depicted, either in daily speech or in the media, it is usually followed by a stereotype. In countries like Brazil – that foreign people usually have one single version of its society – it is common for them to think that a made-up trait, such as the ones seen in overseas movie productions, is the single truth.
Those stereotypes are mainly created and often reinforced by the mass culture industry, especially by the movies, as we have seen in the documentary called “Foreign eye” (in Portuguese, “Olhar estrangeiro2”). In this movie, we could verify that the image created about Brazil is regularly related to topless women, going to the beach every day, people who do not work, jungles, stereotyped “African” culture, sexuality, and idealized Latin love.
After taking part in the project, I have learned not to define one group of people according to one single artwork. The Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi advocates that it is dangerous to have one single story about a place. We, Brazilians, are seen as sexy vagabonds because there are only a few published artworks that approach Brazilian diversity. Nonetheless, that is not the case of powerful countries, such as the United States. We do not stereotype Americans as Norman Bates, the main character of Psycho, because we have many stories that address other traits Americans may have; from love to hate and from poverty to wealth, we are provided with a lot of artworks which give us a plural insight about the U.S.
After all, awareness was risen about thinking our portrayed image critically. It is quite sickening to see our country as a generalization of some traits as if we were somehow homogeneous. Even though it does not sell as much as the consolidated image, in Brazil, there is wealth and there are people like me who do not like the beach, who are hardworking and who do not live a high sexualized, idealized Latin love romance.