Carnival and visual illiteracy

“4 days of carnival, 361 days of…”

The Brazilian carnival is celebrated by the Brazilian and foreign media alike as the biggest show on earth. To praise Brazilian carnival, hundreds of pages will not cover all the beautiful aspects of it.
The aim of the exhibition“4 days of carnival, 361 days of…” is a bit different. The proposal is to look to the pictures critically, thinking about the relationship between Brazilian society and the carnival. Generally, many Brazilian people say that carnival is a democratic festival, without prejudices, a moment which reflects, at least temporarily, the aspirations of the Brazilians poor. Can we believe in such assertion?
I could say that in Brazilian society, intellectuals and artists from a humble background have often betrayed revolutionary concerns in the interest of maintaining class power. Artists who taken into account the world where we live, cannot be absent or away of the necessity of talking about the problems related to this world.
The struggle of many teachers and intellectuals to tackle illiteracy in Brazil has been enormous, although such task is far from over. Know how to read and write is not enough, it is necessary to understand and question what they are learning, and also what it is being shown to them.
The Brazilian society is suffering the consequences of visual illiteracy, present in all social classes, all over Brazil, amongst people who have reached university and those ones who never have been in a school class. Images as well as words transmit an ideology and a way of thinking. The Brazilian society is still authoritarian and the way images are presented is arbitrary, quite often showing prejudice against blacks, Brazilian indigenous, women and homosexuals.
The Carnival reveals the Brazilian cultural diversity, however the festival has been an instrument to hide prejudices instead of fight against it.
During the processions, photographers and the Brazilian and the foreign television put their lens towards women, not to the ordinary women but only to those they believe will symbolise the beautiful of Brazilian women. But is necessary to question if those women, many of them with silicone breast implants, really represents the majority of Brazilian women. Who had taken part or watched a carnival procession know that beautiful women are a minority. It is necessary plurality and, that images do not become imposed in a kind of aesthetic dictatorship, reinforcing a chauvinist view of “beautiful and ‘yamy’ Brazilian women”.
The Homosexuals are gaining more and more space in the Brazilian society, the moment is a promising one, barriers have been broken, however it would be naive to see Brazil as a country that respects homosexuals. Brazil presents high levels of violence against homosexuals.
With regard to Brazilian indigenous, they are characterised as second class citizens. During carnival, rare are the moments when indigenous are portrayed in a genuine way. For instance, when the theme of one samba school includes or is related to Brazilian history, the violence , the genocide suffered by different Brazilian indigenous nations are forgotten.
What about Brazilian black people? Four days of carnival are not enough to erase the daily prejudice against black people in Brazil. The black people within Brazilian society do not have the same work and education opportunities. Inside the samba schools for instance, black people are normally placed amongst percussionists. The rich costumes and the prominent positions are reserved to white, and to national or foreign celebrities whom can pay for that.
It is clear that the carnival is hiding the social prejudice against the majority of Brazilian people. We are living in a social dictatorship which has been dividing the country in two groups: the haves and the have-nots.
The online exhibition “4 days of carnival and 361 days of…” is an invitation from www.BrazilianArtists.net for Brazilian, English and any other people who are interested in the Brazilian culture and society. A society of many sides and contradictions and a lot of work to be done.
www.brazilianartists.net/exhibition