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.
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