As I am sure I have complained about before, São Paulo nightlife culture has invented incredibly complex and expensive ways to control who gets in and who stays out of parties. Most social scientists that I read on Sao Paulo and in general lefitst or even cynical paulistanos would agree that this is a particularly absurd manifestation larger social strategies of class segregation. To give an example of how this works. For almost any party (i.e. any event that has a dj and a dancefloor) at a bar or club, you have to get your name on the list. Sometimes the list is just for a discount off the door price. Keep in mind door prices start at around US$15 and can go up to US$80. And drinks are separate. (In fact, São Paulo law says that you can charge admission or minimum consumption at an event, but you can't charge both). Many lists are by invitation only, or reach capacity days before the event. There are regular lists and VIP lists. Usually, VIPs or convidados (invited guests) pay less or nothing. To have to pay would mean that you are not cool enough to be wanted by the club.
All this makes me normally stay at home. Yesterday, however, I put my name on the list for a party that I have heard good things about: Voodoohop. It is known as a more underground, democratic party, where the cover is usually US$6-10. This month, they have a really creative system for the list and cover. The party is being called a "Prisoners' Dilemma" and the cover charge will work on a modified version of the classic decision-making game. Every person who puts their name on the list has the option to ask for a "Courtesy Invite" for the event. If no one asks the for the courtesy invite, everyone pays R$10 (US$5.35 this week). If under 15 percent ask for the courtesy invite, they will go in free, and the other majority will pay R$15. If over 15 percent of the people ask for the courtesy invite, everyone will pay R$25. I thought this was a very creative way of burlesquing the whole list system. Usually so entrenched in modes of distinction, this requires people think about working together.
We'll see how well that works. If I end up actually going, I will let people know.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Soap and Water
Two of my friends on facebook posted this video (below) of Brazilian soap opera stars calling on Brazilians to sign a petition against the hydroelectric damn Belo Monte. For those of you who don't know, the Belo Monte damn will be the third largest hydroelectric damn in the world. It will also flood about 600 hectares of the Amazon and displace many Xingu indigenous communities. At the Occupy São Paulo, and in various protests I have attended in São Paulo, stopping the Belo Monte project consistently emerges as one of the key agenda items of the left. The fight against Belo Monte has also been featured internationally in news venues like Democracy Now.
Ok, the video in question cannot be embedded because blogger, as part of the google empire, will only work with youtube. but the video can be accessed at http://vimeo.com/32115701. Sorry no transcript or subtitles. A little bit translated below.
This video is part of a series of comic/creative videos calling on Brazilian citizens to criticize the Belo Monte project. The plea from soap opera stars strikes me as pretty interesting for a variety of reasons.
1. The long history of mass media (particularly the super channel TV Globo) working with the federal government. Scholars of Brazilian media often say that broadcast television, and in particularly soap operas, are a major organ of the transmission of "ideal Brazilian values" and pro-government messages. Although television usually helps center-right governments and not the center-left Worker's Party currently in power.
2. A lot of soap opera stars do make public service announcements, but they usually focus on development, empowerment, or other non-devisive issues (like literacy or immunizations). Again, usually such calls are in support of government welfare programs.
3. The call for Brazilians (particularly in the South and Southeast) to have a more national and global perspective, and the soft satire of the comfortable middle class. The beginning of the video starts with various vingettes of why people (presumably in the industrialized South) should care about that far state of Pará. The soap opera stars mimic potential responses of indifference.
"Eu pago meus impostos, eu reciclo meu lixo, eu ensino meus filhos."
"Eu ainda tenho que me preocupar com hidroelectrico no Pará?"
[I pay my taxes, I recycle my trash, I teach my children. And I still have to concern myself with a damn in Pará?]. The trope, "I am a citizen, I pay my taxes, I raise my kids" is a popular one amongst the middle classes in São Paulo and Rio (and presumably other major cities). It usually has the overtone of I am a pessoa do bem (a person who makes good, usually meaning that they have a job and are not a bum). Here, the actress Juliana Pas invokes that group as the ideal political actor who should hear this message, but also mocks such a position, as not enough to act politically.
"Se não tem hidroelectrica, não vai ter energia, e dai, como vou assistir minha novela?"
"Gente preciso de luz, sou a pessoa mais conectada...Como que vou ficar sem energia, sem ipod, sem iphone, sem itudo."
[If we don't have the damn, there will be no electricity, how am I going to watch my soap opera? People, I need energy, I am, like, the most wired person. How am I going to go without power, without an Ipod, Iphone, Ieverything?] The parody here probably speaks for itself. But it is interesting to note soap opera stars satirizing their own public.
4. The critique of Brazilian progress. This is probably the most interesting. Since the Brazilian economy has had unprecedented sustained growth in the past seven or eight years or so, and since the global financial crisis barely skimmed Brazil, there has been an air of confidence about Brazilian society. This has included a self-congratulatory ethos that industrialization and consumerism show how much Brazil has arrived. This is one of the first things I have seen that comes close to the Brazilian mainstream that is starting to question that connection.
Ok, the video in question cannot be embedded because blogger, as part of the google empire, will only work with youtube. but the video can be accessed at http://vimeo.com/32115701. Sorry no transcript or subtitles. A little bit translated below.
This video is part of a series of comic/creative videos calling on Brazilian citizens to criticize the Belo Monte project. The plea from soap opera stars strikes me as pretty interesting for a variety of reasons.
1. The long history of mass media (particularly the super channel TV Globo) working with the federal government. Scholars of Brazilian media often say that broadcast television, and in particularly soap operas, are a major organ of the transmission of "ideal Brazilian values" and pro-government messages. Although television usually helps center-right governments and not the center-left Worker's Party currently in power.
2. A lot of soap opera stars do make public service announcements, but they usually focus on development, empowerment, or other non-devisive issues (like literacy or immunizations). Again, usually such calls are in support of government welfare programs.
3. The call for Brazilians (particularly in the South and Southeast) to have a more national and global perspective, and the soft satire of the comfortable middle class. The beginning of the video starts with various vingettes of why people (presumably in the industrialized South) should care about that far state of Pará. The soap opera stars mimic potential responses of indifference.
"Eu pago meus impostos, eu reciclo meu lixo, eu ensino meus filhos."
"Eu ainda tenho que me preocupar com hidroelectrico no Pará?"
[I pay my taxes, I recycle my trash, I teach my children. And I still have to concern myself with a damn in Pará?]. The trope, "I am a citizen, I pay my taxes, I raise my kids" is a popular one amongst the middle classes in São Paulo and Rio (and presumably other major cities). It usually has the overtone of I am a pessoa do bem (a person who makes good, usually meaning that they have a job and are not a bum). Here, the actress Juliana Pas invokes that group as the ideal political actor who should hear this message, but also mocks such a position, as not enough to act politically.
"Se não tem hidroelectrica, não vai ter energia, e dai, como vou assistir minha novela?"
"Gente preciso de luz, sou a pessoa mais conectada...Como que vou ficar sem energia, sem ipod, sem iphone, sem itudo."
[If we don't have the damn, there will be no electricity, how am I going to watch my soap opera? People, I need energy, I am, like, the most wired person. How am I going to go without power, without an Ipod, Iphone, Ieverything?] The parody here probably speaks for itself. But it is interesting to note soap opera stars satirizing their own public.
4. The critique of Brazilian progress. This is probably the most interesting. Since the Brazilian economy has had unprecedented sustained growth in the past seven or eight years or so, and since the global financial crisis barely skimmed Brazil, there has been an air of confidence about Brazilian society. This has included a self-congratulatory ethos that industrialization and consumerism show how much Brazil has arrived. This is one of the first things I have seen that comes close to the Brazilian mainstream that is starting to question that connection.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Reading Butler in Butantã
This is the introduction/interlude for a longer piece I intend to write on Queer Americana. In the larger paper, I will argue about the way a group of texts commonly labelled together as "Queer Theory" contains and is consumed outside of the U.S. as a kind of Americana. I plan to begin the paper with some observations in LGBT politics and marketing that show the affective pull and the analytic and symbolic reinterpretations of queer theory. Here is a rough draft of that opening part.
I was at first surprised how many younger LGBT activists expressed a need to learn "queer theory," for a few reasons. First, many LGBT activists I talked with previously expressed a resounding belief that queer theory was not "political." Because queer was "against identity" (contra identidade), there was no way to gain human rights (the ostensible objective for many). Second, some younger activists (many of whom were also liberal arts students), expressed a confident derision of postmodernism as a neo-liberal ideology. Nevertheless, many of the reasons people had for learning queer theory were equally compelling. In one meeting, activists decided that they would teach themselves queer theory, because "everyone is talking about it," and they needed to understand what it was all about before they dismissed it (or possibly embraced it). Another activist, "Pedro," a lawyer by training, had at first told me that he was against overly academic texts in general because they were inaccessible to many people and thus elitist. This conversation was specifically in regard to Lacan, which is very popular amongst some leftist Brazilian scholars. A month later, Pedro, upset by the comments a doctor had made at a transgender health conference, said that we needed to make LGBT politics in São Paulo more queer. When I asked him what this meant, he said that we needed to a conceptual-political tool that would be more critical of the medical reasoning that allowed the doctor to say that breast implants in a bio-woman were perfectly normal, but a bio-man should have a psych evaluation before having implants. Fair enough.
I wasn't surprised that queer theory was seen as North American. Queer theory can be interpreted, especially by many of its critics, as just one more colonial imposition on global South cultures. Major scholars in the U.S., such as Joseph Massad and Gayatri Gopinath are well known for making these critiques. But I have been struck by the particularities by which queer theory is seen as American. For more than a few people I have talked to, queer theory represents a very post-identity America, markedly Californian, and retains a certain hippiness to it. That is, if you ask LGBT people who have heard the word queer, many if not most will tell you that it's about the freedom to be what you want, that there are no rules. In fairness, this was an early interpretation of Judith Butler's work that scholars everywhere made. And it is an interpretation against which Butler spent many years trying to protest, combat, rectify, and elaborate. Nevertheless, this interpretation of queer as fluidity merges a little too neatly with older concepts of Brazilian sexuality as free, liberal, without labels. I was always skeptical of the way in which queer was often substitutable for modern. As another activist sarcastically joked, expensive gay clubs aren't gay, they're "modern." People will say, "ah, não gosto do rótulo." (Ahh, I don't like labels).
As queer was defined as not only American, but a certain kind of American: progressive left, critical of mass culture, post-identity, I have become more and more recruited by my interlocutors as a spokesperson for queer theory. This is a role that I have taken with some ambivalence. On the one hand, I appreciated that my interlocutors were interested in debate and wanted something from me that I could (presumably) give them. On the other hand, I have a lot of conflicting views about queer theory. I am not sure it actually exists, and it certainly isn't presentable as a set of coherent analytic mandates that many were looking for. Further, I have worked hard to get to know Brazilian academia, and I didn't want to be the American grad student who comes in and tells people that everything that they are reading and discussing is wrong, or worse, old.
I ended up teaching a course in queer theory at the University of São Paulo (Butantã campus) this past semester, and a lot of my observations are going to comprise the body of this paper. The course had a lot of problems (finding translations, getting people motivated to participate, etc). But there were also some really great results. After reading Butler's "Critically Queer," one student who was active in coordinating the class said that he wasn't sure if Brazil still needed queer theory. One of Butler's main arguments in this text is that "queer" as an appropriation of a sexual ephithet, always indexes a past pain. Queer thus always contains a melancholia (a refusal to discharge the mourned object) that is one of the sources of its radicality. (It's complicated. I'm simplifying and doing disservice to the article right now). For this student, the problem was obvious. How are we (in Brazil) supposed to share in this radical melancholy, when the term itself doesn't index a past pain as it does for Americans? I don't have any solutions for that question right now, and I doubt that I will have any ready for the final paper. But instead, I think it is interesting to ask whether this melancholia does produce a certain kind of Americana, which might be accessible to others, but becomes radically transformed without a shared history?
I was at first surprised how many younger LGBT activists expressed a need to learn "queer theory," for a few reasons. First, many LGBT activists I talked with previously expressed a resounding belief that queer theory was not "political." Because queer was "against identity" (contra identidade), there was no way to gain human rights (the ostensible objective for many). Second, some younger activists (many of whom were also liberal arts students), expressed a confident derision of postmodernism as a neo-liberal ideology. Nevertheless, many of the reasons people had for learning queer theory were equally compelling. In one meeting, activists decided that they would teach themselves queer theory, because "everyone is talking about it," and they needed to understand what it was all about before they dismissed it (or possibly embraced it). Another activist, "Pedro," a lawyer by training, had at first told me that he was against overly academic texts in general because they were inaccessible to many people and thus elitist. This conversation was specifically in regard to Lacan, which is very popular amongst some leftist Brazilian scholars. A month later, Pedro, upset by the comments a doctor had made at a transgender health conference, said that we needed to make LGBT politics in São Paulo more queer. When I asked him what this meant, he said that we needed to a conceptual-political tool that would be more critical of the medical reasoning that allowed the doctor to say that breast implants in a bio-woman were perfectly normal, but a bio-man should have a psych evaluation before having implants. Fair enough.
I wasn't surprised that queer theory was seen as North American. Queer theory can be interpreted, especially by many of its critics, as just one more colonial imposition on global South cultures. Major scholars in the U.S., such as Joseph Massad and Gayatri Gopinath are well known for making these critiques. But I have been struck by the particularities by which queer theory is seen as American. For more than a few people I have talked to, queer theory represents a very post-identity America, markedly Californian, and retains a certain hippiness to it. That is, if you ask LGBT people who have heard the word queer, many if not most will tell you that it's about the freedom to be what you want, that there are no rules. In fairness, this was an early interpretation of Judith Butler's work that scholars everywhere made. And it is an interpretation against which Butler spent many years trying to protest, combat, rectify, and elaborate. Nevertheless, this interpretation of queer as fluidity merges a little too neatly with older concepts of Brazilian sexuality as free, liberal, without labels. I was always skeptical of the way in which queer was often substitutable for modern. As another activist sarcastically joked, expensive gay clubs aren't gay, they're "modern." People will say, "ah, não gosto do rótulo." (Ahh, I don't like labels).
As queer was defined as not only American, but a certain kind of American: progressive left, critical of mass culture, post-identity, I have become more and more recruited by my interlocutors as a spokesperson for queer theory. This is a role that I have taken with some ambivalence. On the one hand, I appreciated that my interlocutors were interested in debate and wanted something from me that I could (presumably) give them. On the other hand, I have a lot of conflicting views about queer theory. I am not sure it actually exists, and it certainly isn't presentable as a set of coherent analytic mandates that many were looking for. Further, I have worked hard to get to know Brazilian academia, and I didn't want to be the American grad student who comes in and tells people that everything that they are reading and discussing is wrong, or worse, old.
I ended up teaching a course in queer theory at the University of São Paulo (Butantã campus) this past semester, and a lot of my observations are going to comprise the body of this paper. The course had a lot of problems (finding translations, getting people motivated to participate, etc). But there were also some really great results. After reading Butler's "Critically Queer," one student who was active in coordinating the class said that he wasn't sure if Brazil still needed queer theory. One of Butler's main arguments in this text is that "queer" as an appropriation of a sexual ephithet, always indexes a past pain. Queer thus always contains a melancholia (a refusal to discharge the mourned object) that is one of the sources of its radicality. (It's complicated. I'm simplifying and doing disservice to the article right now). For this student, the problem was obvious. How are we (in Brazil) supposed to share in this radical melancholy, when the term itself doesn't index a past pain as it does for Americans? I don't have any solutions for that question right now, and I doubt that I will have any ready for the final paper. But instead, I think it is interesting to ask whether this melancholia does produce a certain kind of Americana, which might be accessible to others, but becomes radically transformed without a shared history?
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Officeboy vs. Playboy
Do to the awesome response to playboys on my last post (one comment and one email!), I thought I would add one more post on the playboy and a competing archetype: the officeboy.
This morning I was listening to Bonde do Role's 2007 "With Lasers." BdR is/was an electroclash band that got pulled from obscurity and brought to the U.S. by former M.I.A. producer/boyfriend Diplo. In the North, they were the hipster shit for 20 minutes. I saw them at the Empty Bottle in Chicago in Octoberish 2007 (definitely during systems, as I recall). I've met very few people in Brazil who know about them, especially compared to their more successful contemporary exports, Cansei de Ser Sexy.
Anyways, as I was drinking coffee, typing a little, and listening to BdR, I realized that the first line of their song "officeboy" is "Trabalhando o ano inteiro de officeboy, para o final de ano pagar de playboy." [Working the whole year as an office boy, so (you can) spend like a playboy at year's end.]
Despite the professional sounding ring of "office," one would understand the term better by focusing on the pejoratively used "boy." Office boys are usually the working class 20-somethings who work as errand boys in Brazil's financial districts, particularly in São Paulo. As Teresa Caldeira writes, these "boys" and their mobile counter parts (motoboys) are paid low wages in order to curry documents up and down the street and take the subway to do so...things that the business elite would never do. Unlike bike messengers in the U.S., they are not seen as cool or alternative in anyway. They also don't work independently. Most office boys wear suits or shirts and ties to work.
Anyways, the BdR song puts a new light on the playboy as an aspirational identity. This jives a lot with Jennifer Roth Gordon's work on Playboys in Rio, who come from poor neighborhoods and dress up and use cosmopolitan codes to lay claim on a higher class status (thanks, Elina for pointing out Gordon's work).
Ok, so here is the music video. As I looked it up on youtube, it reminded made me feel nostalgic for those mid-2000's low-fi dance rock music videos (which this is obvies a part). I'm thinking of early Gossip and Hot Chip.
This morning I was listening to Bonde do Role's 2007 "With Lasers." BdR is/was an electroclash band that got pulled from obscurity and brought to the U.S. by former M.I.A. producer/boyfriend Diplo. In the North, they were the hipster shit for 20 minutes. I saw them at the Empty Bottle in Chicago in Octoberish 2007 (definitely during systems, as I recall). I've met very few people in Brazil who know about them, especially compared to their more successful contemporary exports, Cansei de Ser Sexy.
Anyways, as I was drinking coffee, typing a little, and listening to BdR, I realized that the first line of their song "officeboy" is "Trabalhando o ano inteiro de officeboy, para o final de ano pagar de playboy." [Working the whole year as an office boy, so (you can) spend like a playboy at year's end.]
Despite the professional sounding ring of "office," one would understand the term better by focusing on the pejoratively used "boy." Office boys are usually the working class 20-somethings who work as errand boys in Brazil's financial districts, particularly in São Paulo. As Teresa Caldeira writes, these "boys" and their mobile counter parts (motoboys) are paid low wages in order to curry documents up and down the street and take the subway to do so...things that the business elite would never do. Unlike bike messengers in the U.S., they are not seen as cool or alternative in anyway. They also don't work independently. Most office boys wear suits or shirts and ties to work.
Anyways, the BdR song puts a new light on the playboy as an aspirational identity. This jives a lot with Jennifer Roth Gordon's work on Playboys in Rio, who come from poor neighborhoods and dress up and use cosmopolitan codes to lay claim on a higher class status (thanks, Elina for pointing out Gordon's work).
Ok, so here is the music video. As I looked it up on youtube, it reminded made me feel nostalgic for those mid-2000's low-fi dance rock music videos (which this is obvies a part). I'm thinking of early Gossip and Hot Chip.
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