by Marina Krebs
“Culture” has been a very complicated word for me to define over the past years. What is totally unique for a nation? Do humans have a “universal culture”? What defines us and what makes us equal? After learning a lot about culture on this semester of English II, I have come to the conclusion that culture is everything that embraces the unique aspects of a group of people (in a big or small scale). Culture can be seen in the food, clothes, habits, music, language, celebrations, generally in the “way of living” of a certain group. Even though this semester we learned about culture relating to nations, culture is everywhere: favelas have their own culture, goths have their own culture, Jews have their own culture, nordestinos have their own culture… Surprisingly they all (and many more) come together to create the “Brazilian culture”, which, because of its enormous diversity, is susceptible to many stereotypes.
As we have seen in one of our classes when we discussed about Chimamanda’s TED talk, "The danger of a single story", stereotypes are created from the single stories most people make or learn about others. If there is no interest in learning about a culture or in undoing certain stereotypes, they will perpetuate and become the only story about a country. Culture is complex and there are almost 200 countries with many cultures inside of them, so it’s impossible to be educated on all of them. But it is our duty to try every day to be as open as possible and don’t believe in the single stories, because not only can they be offensive, but also oppressive.
For instance, I will be using Brazil as an example. It’s very easy for foreigners to see a movie or TV news about Brazil and choose to believe that what is shown in those is everything they need to know about our culture. They will probably think Brazil is nothing more than beaches, Amazon, carnival and violence. But what they don’t think about is that these stereotypes can shape the way they see Brazilians and our culture in general. After some interviews students from English II had with foreign students from PPE (Programa de Português para Estrangeiros), there were a lot of interesting responses about our culture in the eyes of the others. Most of them thought Brazilians were all extroverted, happy, party people, and even though they are not bad stereotypes, they can be very reductive. The worst stereotypes that we could see definitely came from bad representation in movies. After watching the documentary “Olhar estrangeiro” for our class, we had an idea from where those bad stereotypes came from, such as “Brazilians are promiscuous” or “Brazilians speak Spanish”. Although it’s impossible to completely escape from stereotypes, it is up to us to question and educate ourselves on bad stereotypes and to compromise on not perpetuating them.
Unfortunately, we are all exposed to the single stories. Chimamanda said that these stories can be oppressive because the less we know about a country, the worse are stereotypes made for them. It’s very easy to see TV news about diseases in an African country and reduce Africans to only that story. On the other hand, we don’t do that to powerful nature nations such as the USA or European countries. What has changed for me is that the media controls stereotypes, so what we need to do is always question what is said to us. There is no shame in not knowing about a culture or country, it’s better to say “I’m not educated on this, I will research more about it” than guessing and basing what you will say on stereotypes. Sometimes being respectful is better than having an answer to everything.
Lastly, I can say that I ended the semester prouder of my culture than when I started it. Brazil is so rich in diversity and it makes me sad that even Brazilians perpetuate stereotypes about our country. It is still a bit confusing to me what makes a person Brazilian, what type of feeling unites us – a mix of every color, religion, heritage – as this thing we call “Brazilian”. Whether it be our music, manners, language, way of living, food and even our memes, I think being Brazilian is feeling equal, united and connected, even with so many differences. I’m in no way similar to an indigenous person in the Amazon, but I know our different experiences are what makes this country what it is. And maybe that is why we are so unique: a big land made by many stories that all together defines us as one.
“Culture” has been a very complicated word for me to define over the past years. What is totally unique for a nation? Do humans have a “universal culture”? What defines us and what makes us equal? After learning a lot about culture on this semester of English II, I have come to the conclusion that culture is everything that embraces the unique aspects of a group of people (in a big or small scale). Culture can be seen in the food, clothes, habits, music, language, celebrations, generally in the “way of living” of a certain group. Even though this semester we learned about culture relating to nations, culture is everywhere: favelas have their own culture, goths have their own culture, Jews have their own culture, nordestinos have their own culture… Surprisingly they all (and many more) come together to create the “Brazilian culture”, which, because of its enormous diversity, is susceptible to many stereotypes.
As we have seen in one of our classes when we discussed about Chimamanda’s TED talk, "The danger of a single story", stereotypes are created from the single stories most people make or learn about others. If there is no interest in learning about a culture or in undoing certain stereotypes, they will perpetuate and become the only story about a country. Culture is complex and there are almost 200 countries with many cultures inside of them, so it’s impossible to be educated on all of them. But it is our duty to try every day to be as open as possible and don’t believe in the single stories, because not only can they be offensive, but also oppressive.
For instance, I will be using Brazil as an example. It’s very easy for foreigners to see a movie or TV news about Brazil and choose to believe that what is shown in those is everything they need to know about our culture. They will probably think Brazil is nothing more than beaches, Amazon, carnival and violence. But what they don’t think about is that these stereotypes can shape the way they see Brazilians and our culture in general. After some interviews students from English II had with foreign students from PPE (Programa de Português para Estrangeiros), there were a lot of interesting responses about our culture in the eyes of the others. Most of them thought Brazilians were all extroverted, happy, party people, and even though they are not bad stereotypes, they can be very reductive. The worst stereotypes that we could see definitely came from bad representation in movies. After watching the documentary “Olhar estrangeiro” for our class, we had an idea from where those bad stereotypes came from, such as “Brazilians are promiscuous” or “Brazilians speak Spanish”. Although it’s impossible to completely escape from stereotypes, it is up to us to question and educate ourselves on bad stereotypes and to compromise on not perpetuating them.
Unfortunately, we are all exposed to the single stories. Chimamanda said that these stories can be oppressive because the less we know about a country, the worse are stereotypes made for them. It’s very easy to see TV news about diseases in an African country and reduce Africans to only that story. On the other hand, we don’t do that to powerful nature nations such as the USA or European countries. What has changed for me is that the media controls stereotypes, so what we need to do is always question what is said to us. There is no shame in not knowing about a culture or country, it’s better to say “I’m not educated on this, I will research more about it” than guessing and basing what you will say on stereotypes. Sometimes being respectful is better than having an answer to everything.
Lastly, I can say that I ended the semester prouder of my culture than when I started it. Brazil is so rich in diversity and it makes me sad that even Brazilians perpetuate stereotypes about our country. It is still a bit confusing to me what makes a person Brazilian, what type of feeling unites us – a mix of every color, religion, heritage – as this thing we call “Brazilian”. Whether it be our music, manners, language, way of living, food and even our memes, I think being Brazilian is feeling equal, united and connected, even with so many differences. I’m in no way similar to an indigenous person in the Amazon, but I know our different experiences are what makes this country what it is. And maybe that is why we are so unique: a big land made by many stories that all together defines us as one.