This is the first in a series of several posts on the Carnaval season in Brazil. A second post shows some aspects of Carnaval in two areas in the interior — Mirinzal and Central do Maranhão, and in Rosário. A third shows some elements of the celebration in the capital city of São Luís. The final post shows the parade or Carroća, in the town of Rosário.
The photo-based posts will appear above this one, but will refer to this as a source of reflection on how the smaller cities and the towns of the interior differ from the well-known Carnival in Rio de Janiero.
Carnival in Rio and elsewhere
Often when we describe our work in Maranhão people ask if that includes the Carnival (Carnaval) of Rio de Janeiro. Others have sometimes heard of the Bmba-meu-boi festival in Parintins in the state of Amazonas and ask if that , too, is in our research program.
The answer is “no,” because neither is in our specific research focus. But in another sense it is, of course, “yes” because of the interconnectedness of Brazilian celebration culture. Each of these immensely popular celebrations figures in our work, but mostly as a cultural reference that helps us understand the differences in the way celebration takes place in the smaller capital of São Luís and, most of all, how different is the celebration in the interior of Maranhão.
The first point of reference is that the Carnaval of Rio de Janeiro is a huge entertainment and economic enterprise in its current form. The Sambadromo in Rio holds tens of thousands of spectators. They sit in high grandstands on both sides of a long “passarella” along which the schools of samba parade. To am American’s eyes it looks like an auto drag strip with a long, unobstructed pavement. Seen in the off-season there is, well, virtually nothing to be seen other than the physical facility and its well-known arches that (unlike McDonald’s) resemble the buttocks of a very leggy woman with generous buttocks. It is not a model of subtlety, an all its monumentality.
During the night(s) of the parade/passarela, groups (schools of samba, as they are called) parade along the runway for 1 ½ hours each. Usually six groups are chosen for the final parade. Taken one after the other the parade of spectacular groups take a minimum of nine hours. It is broadcast on television and goes on all night. There are other groups in lower categories that parade at other times. Most important is that the entire process is competitive and extremely expensive and, for the winner, lucrative.
At one time the schools of samba were supported by the neighborhoods that were their homes. That is still at least partly the case, but the logistics, costumes, and business elements are now staggering. Even tourists can pay the equivalent of a few hundred dollars for the experience of participating in the group. They also have to attend rehearsals, be talented and fit enough for the show, and provide their own costumes. Participants like this have become a source of income to help feed the entertainment machine.
The street parades are different. Here everyday Brazilian citizens wear costumes and party in the streets. This element has some resemble to street parties associated with the Mardi Gras in New Orleans or Fasching in some German cities. These are real people, for the most part, partying in public.
Foreigners may have a picture in mind of Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro), the famous 1960s film of the Rio Carnaval blended with the myth of Orpheus in the underground. There is a kind of romance of the favela where the groups originate, and a love story from classical mythology. The luscious atmosphere of the film is filled with darkness and color, anonymous romance, personified death, and the darkness of voodoo or macumba.
What you see on Brazilian television from Rio now is a daylight party with a lot of drinking, colored hair, cross-dressing, and ordinary people in imaginative costumes. There is no sign of darkness, mythical figures, death, or even anonymous sex with strangers. That is later.
So, the romantic Carnaval may be in the darkness. But what is common with street parties in the interior is the presence of everyday citizens and some sponsored groups, celebrating in public. The floats in the interior have little in common with those of Rio – many of which resemble space stations, alternate universes, Macy’s parade on steroids, jumbled together with huge amounts of bare human flesh that has to stay covered in colder climates.
What we discovered here is that many Brazilians in the interior experience the Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro just as people in the northern hemisphere do – on television. Their own celebration is smaller, grittier, and close to home. Like the street parties in Rio, the ordinary citizens are remarkable and often unconstrained in their costumes – in fact they may be all the more interesting because they are done more with imagination than with money.
There is one more theme that is common in commentaries on the Carnaval. Anthropologists called on Bakhtin and DaMatta point out that these may be “Rabelaisian” inversions of authority and a satire on conventional power and authority. Politicians and religion are mocked, sexual mores and conventional customs are scorned, and there is for a time a “popular” ownership of the streets. This element certainly exists in the celebrations in the interior.
The most common element of mockery is not the Church or the profane power structure, however. It is in the mockery of stereotyped heternormative gender roles. Cross-dressing seems to be the most common “transgression,” even in the interior. There are many variations. Some are “macho drag” with men in cheesy costumes. Others are more serious in their costumes, and some are elaborate and genuinely imaginative and sexy in their presentation. Somewhere in between are young men who seem to by trying out cross-dressing and gender variation in a safe way. Some simply use the occasion to advertise that “Homophobia is prohibited. A crime.” This popular t-shirt slogan is stating the anti-discrimination law of Brazil that prohibits homophobic discrimination along with gender, sexual orientation, handicap or race.
It may be exaggerated to say that the Carnaval is a Rabelaisian protest against “normal” society and norms, but it is indeed true that it provides a temporary space for alternative expressions – especially of gender definition and sexual orientation.
