The identity will be convulsive, or it will not be.

Max Ernst ¹ERNST, Max. Escrituras. Trad. Pere Gimferrer e Alfred Sargatal. Barcelona: Polígrafa, 1982. p. 213.

The complexity surrounding Brazil’s identities, formation, its significations and conflicts, continuously causes Brazilian society to grapple with itself in order to see Brazilianness as reflected through its social mirrors. Many scholars of Brazilian identity concern themselves with the multiple influences that make up this society and culture in their various manifestations.

Amongst these interpreters is anthropologist Roberto DaMatta, who has formulated Brazilian identity formation through an analysis of rituals. DaMatta argues that the role of rituals established in modern, industrial and individualist societies is to

 (…) to promote the social identity and to develop its character. It is as if the domain of ritual is a privileged realm through which to penetrate the cultural heart of a society, its dominant ideology and its value systems. Because it is the ritual that allows us to become aware of certain deeper social crystallizations that society itself seeks to situate as part of its “eternal” ideals. ²DA MATTA, Roberto. Carnavais, malandros e heróis. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 1997, p. 29.

In this context, ritual acts as a play of dramatizations that allows the construction of the consciousness of the social world we live in through representation. Its main mechanism is to remove features, elements, relationships and individuals from the scope of the banality of routine life and displace them. This change of perspective provokes an alternative reading of everyday life, revealing a point of view that was not before perceived.

In his book Carnivals, Rogues and Heroes, DaMatta describes three ritualistic-symbolic forms that he classifies as fundamental to understanding the internal logic of Brazil: Carnival, military parades (particularly the Independence Day march) and religious processions. He discusses how these three rituals relate to one another, especially Carnival and the parade on September 7th (Independence Day), in order to unify a notion of the Brazilian state that encapsulates the entire national territory. In addition to spatial integration, these two forms of conciliation affect how Brazilians relate to time, because they require a specific temporality: the national holidays. ³“Official dates are strongly structured from the political point of view. When one attempts to frame national memory through official dates selected for national festivals, there are often problems of political struggle. Organized memory, which is the national memory, is an important object of contention, and conflicts are common in determining which dates and events are to be recorded in the memory of a people.” In POLLAK, Michael. Memória e Identidade Social. Revista Estudos Históricos, Rio de Janeiro, vol.5, no. 10, 1992, p.203. The religious processions, on the contrary, are linked to the specific reality of particular cities, churches, or saints.

The ritual commemoration of Brazilian Independence in the form of a parade is a party of order organized by the state in order to demarcate the historical rite of passage in which Brazil liberated itself from colonial status, claiming that of an independent nation. Within this linear history, the same fact is repeatedly celebrated, retelling how the motherland was formed. The narrative of Brazilian life is guided by an official bias, reinforcing its institutions, key figures and power structures. But Carnival reflects the opposite of this, since the “fundamental carnivalesque drama is that of the dialectic between principles of hierarchy and equality.” ⁴DA MATTA, Roberto. 1997, p. 146. By observing the history of Carnival, it becomes clear that it is the only ritual in which the popular classes have an active voice. Samba schools, for example, come from local communities, from the hills of Rio de Janeiro.

Understood by DaMatta as a ritual of inversion, Carnival has the potential for insubordination, and for this reason enjoys a freedom to question, to pervert, and to place such National Facts into perspective. Samba schools have well explored this since the 1950s, when they began to address national themes in parading what we know today as sambas-enredo, samba-plot.

Meanwhile, apart from these “two contrasting social moments—of these symmetrical and inverse rituals in the framework of Brazilian social life, is the [religious] processsion.” ⁵Ibidem. It is a ritual that evades any questioning within its indistinct terrain that brings together authorities, saints and the sinful alike, from all social classes. The shared experience of walking together tends to lead to a systematic neutralization of social categories, everyone united in their contact with the saint. Moreover, the religious procession creates a new physical relationship with the street, as the saint leaves the sacred temple to go out and meet with the people.

Despite establishing different frameworks in society, whether by reaffirming hierarchical structures, reversing social roles, or neutralizing categories, these three forms of conciliation—Carnival, military parades, and religious processions—offer a new perspective on automatic routines by suspending time and displacing the everyday world for that of the ritual. Moreover—considering here Carnival in its world-famous form, the samba school parades—one can perceive basic similarities between the three rituals: all organize the body in lines, and all feature an operating structure organized by a fixed group of officials who produce these rituals (the military, the samba schools, the church), in addition to a gathering of spectators.

Brazil’s samba schools have existed since the late 1920s. They were officially recognized by Rio de Janeiro’s city hall in 1935, after the first samba championship in Praça Onze organized by the newspaper Mundo Sportivo in 1932. Upon its debut the competition between schools received media attention, and in the following year the newspapers Correio da Manhã and O Globo competed for sponsorship of the samba championship when the ultimate is the winner. While they gained the spotlight in the press and the city’s public space, ⁶On the first competition organized by Mundo Sportivo, the newspaper O Globo published under the headline The day after tomorrow, Praça Onze will be the theater of the Samba Championship—a spectacle that promises an exceptional magnificence “(…) The schools competing for the big prizes are the best in town. Rio will, in fact, see the enchanting masses from the hills descend upon Praça Onze. The spectacle could not be more picturesque and evocative. Each ‘school’ will appear to the public with a considerable number of figures. There are, therefore, hundreds of mouths singing, with the greatest emotion, the city’s most graceful melodies. Independent of the voices and musical instruments, there are a number of other newly interesting and charming details. Soon after the first ‘school’ enters the theater of the first competition, a wave of melody will fill the metropolis. The samba of the hills does not always descend to the city; it often remains up there, far from any possibility of being recorded. There are ‘rogues’ who forbid victrolas, because they have the impression that once recorded, samba loses its sincerity, its emotive and sweet grace, its delicious spirit.” (…) “In Praça Onze we will hear sambas that have never before reached our ears and therefore have all the formidable magical seduction of a first listening. We have already spoken of the prodigious instruments that achieve all the effects, deeply affecting the soul. Only the ‘cuíca’ (a Brazilian friction drum) will fill Praça Onze with its barbarian sound that draws the deep voices of samba, of amazement, of superstition.” O Globo, February 2nd, 1932. the schools organized themselves internally and created a statute to establish parade standards and the ritual elements that would characterize them, such as the required participation by a group formed by women from Bahia and the prohibition of use of wind instruments and story-plot not based on national themes. ⁷In 1938, the first article of the regulation proposed by the UES (União das Escolas de Samba—Union of Samba Schools) read as follows: “In accordance with national music, schools will not be able to perform at Carnival with international histories.” The following year, the decree was rigorously applied, leading to the disqualification of the Vizinha Faladeira school, which paraded with the storyline “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” based on the Disney film. < http://acervo.oglobo.globo.com/em-destaque/carnaval-poder-do-nacionalismo-na-era-vargas-ate-imperio-dos-bicheiros-20972662#ixzz­59jjm9iYG> accessed on March 14th, 2018 These standards, developed throughout the samba schools’ nascent stages, were in line with dominant political projects of the period: the dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas, who from 1937 architected a strong nationalist image to be projected abroad. ⁸“However, the conjuncture of the war, exacerbating nationalism, also acted as a catalyst for the elevation of samba to national representation, a process that in 1941 was marked by the transformation of Paulo da Portela into Zé Carioca by Walt Disney. Inspired by Paulo da Portela for this purpose was a situation that, despite all its legitimacy and moving justice, perhaps with the rare exception of Silva e Santos, has been treated by most samba schools as banal, when, in our opinion, it evidenced the transformation of samba—poor, black, suburban or favelado—into the image of the ‘Brazilian’ par excellence.” In FERNANDES, Nelson da Nobrega. Escolas de Samba: Sujeitos Celebrantes e Objetos Celebrados. Rio de Janeiro: Secretaria das Culturas, Departamento Geral de Documentação e Informação Cultural, Arquivo Geral da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro, 2001, p. 106.

“In the spirit of the ‘good neighbor policy,’ Orson Welles arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1942, according to Cabral (1974: 116), to “make a million-dollar movie about Rio’s Carnival.” With him were 22 RKO technicians and a great amount of equipment, with which the filmmaker filmed, among other things, the parades of Praça Onze and a frevo group at the Tijuca Tennis Club.” In FERNANDES, Nelson da Nobrega. 2001, p. 121. Samba, once associated with criminality, was favored by this political terrain and came to enter the bourgeois imaginary as “Brazilian culture.” During this time, the samba schools’ parades came to be representative as the main institution of Carnival.

Throughout the first two decades of the parades, the schools transformed Brazil’s heroes, its people, nature, history, and geography into samba performances. From the 1960s forward, the parade formalized its aesthetics and came to be presented in the form we recognize today. This decade gave us the figure of the carnivalesco, who defines the year’s theme around which narrative the samba storylines are told.

Despite affirming National Facts and great achievements, samba storylines are not necessarily subordinate to the dominant, official narrative. Carnival is a ritual of inversion and thus holds a highly subversive potential. It is therefore unsurprising that during moments of social and political adversity, less venerating and nationalist samba-plots arise.

In 1964 the parades were already televised ⁹“In 1960, the first broadcast of the samba school parade had been held on TV Continental.” In PRESTES FILHO, Luiz Carlos (editor). Cadeia produtiva da economia do carnaval Rio de Janeiro: E-papers, 2009, p. 53. and retained a high popular viewership within the country. This cultural manifestation that had once helped in the systematization of a national identity during the Estado Novo dictatorship was now targeted by the military dictatorship. Through its political police the regime monitored which associations were for or against the government, well aware of the power exercised by samba schools as vehicles for the spread of ideas.

When freedom is suppressed, the only way to breathe is through the cracks.

The theme of freedom is recurrent in the artistic manifestations of a country as Brazil, where it seems that the oppression is the order. During the military dictatorship some samba schools dared to broach the subject, responding to a difficult period of censorship by making use of a referential framework that dates from the subjugation of the country to the Portuguese metropole, and an independence movement that retained colonial traces in the new nation, and the longest-lasting legalized slavery in History.

In 1967 the samba-plot of the Acadêmicos do Salgueiro samba school, by Fernando Pamplona, entitled The History of Freedom in Brazil, raised the military’s attention. The carnivalesco had to justify his choice of a storyline that celebrated popular struggles. ¹⁰See: CRUZ, Tamara Paola dos Santos. As escolas de samba sob vigilância e censura na ditadura militar: memórias e esquecimentos. Dissertação (Mestrado) – Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro, 2010, p. 153. For this reason, the police of the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS) became a constant presence at Salgueiro’s meetings. The military wanted to be included on the list of revolutions that the samba storyline was about to narrate about the forms of freedom experienced in the country – such as Independence, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Proclamation of the Republic. As this did not happen, the school suffered retaliations, including power outages and the withdrawal of their funding.

Another samba-plot that displeased the military was Heroes of Freedom by samba school Império Serrano, in 1969. The samba composed by Silas de Oliveira, Mano Décio da Viola and Manuel Ferreira had provocative verses: Far away soldiers and drums/ Students and teachers/ Accompanied by clarion sound/ They sang like this/ Freedom has dawned/ Freedom has dawned / That breeze that youth cherishes/ That flame/ That hate cannot stamp out for the universe/ It’s revolution in its rightful reason. The country was already under the rule of AI-5 and the composers needed to explain to DOPS why freedom was being sung “in lyrics that blended the mood of the student marches that rocked the country in protest against the military regime with the Anthem of Independence.” ¹¹At <http://acervo.oglobo.globo.com/em-destaque/carnaval-poder-do-nacionalismo-na-era-vargas-ate-imperio-dos-bicheiros-20972662#ixzz59jlO7vHk>. Accessed March 14, 2018. Editor’s note: the verses Freedom has dawned / Freedom has dawned corresponds to one verse from the Brazilian Independence Anthem.

At the police station, Silas de Oliveira explained: “I’m not at fault for portraying history, it was not I who wrote it. What I did, you, sir, could have done it.” ¹²In: SILVA, Marília T Barbosa da & FILHO, Arthur L. de Oliveira. Silas de Oliveira: do jongo ao samba enredo. Rio de Janeiro: MEC/ FUNARTE, 1981. The verse, “It’s revolution in its rightful reason,” was censured by the dictartoship and had to be modified to, “It’s evolution in its rightful reason.”

Among other samba-plots that address the national freedom, the abolition of slavery and the provocation of the status quo during the dictatorship, one can also observe those of Unidos de Vila Isabel in 1980, Dream of a Dream, composed by Martinho da Vila, Rodolpho and Graúna, with the verses: Open minds/ Without mouths closed/ Alert youth/ The winged beings (…) A smile without fury, between the defendant and the judge/ Clemency, tenderness/ For the love of the enclosure/ Prison without torture. In 1985, with the dictatorship in its last gasps, there was also And Speaking of Longing by Caprichoso de Pilares with: (I want to vote!)/ Directly, the people chose the president/ I ate more beans/ Grandma kept savings under the mattress/ Today everything has changed/ Lots of people in the wrong place.

Storylines with this critical depth and clarity about the games of sociopolitical domination ceased to appear between the late 1990s and the 2000s. More than thirty years passed before such a biting storyline as My God, my God, is slavery extinct? by Paraíso do Tuiuti in 2018. Bringing the political horizon back to the avenue, in their parade the school highlighted the persistence of slavery in Brazil, 130 years after the signing of Golden Law, Brazil’s official abolition. The samba presented the inheritance of enslavement and exploitation in present form as informal labor and the institutionalization of the precariousness of work through the dismantling of labor laws.

Addressing patterns of neglect in Brazilian education and in mainstream media coverage, such as modern rural slave labor and the demonstrations manipulated by FIESP and MBL in favor of impeachment and the “fight against corruption,” the school managed to infiltrate Rede Globo with these issues. The disconcertion during the television broadcast by the station was widespread, but most so during the last allegorical float: the “neo-tumbeiro,” (“neo-entomber”) carrying a neoliberal vampire wearing a presidential sash. During the broadcast, there were more than 30 seconds of silence from commentators, between minutes 37:42 and 38:25 ¹³Transmission of the parades broadcast live on Rede Globo at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkVKiEzQMUw>. Accessed on February 20, 2018. – a situation almost unthinkable for a vehicle of communication descendant from the radio, for which narration is crucial.

*

In evoking the three rituals proposed by DaMatta as a portal to map Brazilian society and its functioning, its unique aspects and its representatives, we can infer that the performance Desdito by Lais Myrrha intrinsically condenses aspects of the religious procession, the military parade, and Carnival in addressing the theme of national independence.

The work in question takes the painting Independência ou Morte! from the sacralized-monument, the Ipiranga Museum, and its erasure in the Louvre building, producing a Pedro Américo parade in front the History of European Art of the building as well as in its internal areas, accompanied by the public. The procession crystallizes in two moments, at the beginning and the end, when the formation of the painting is repeated on the stairs of the building with the musicians of the brass band, who occupy the place of the cavalry, and the extras who play the role of D. Pedro I and his entourage.

The performance takes as its starting point September 7th (and its imagetic representation), the main theme of the parade. As in the military parade, the musicians from the performance play wind instruments and all the participants wear uniforms to differentiate their internal categories as well as themselves from the public and their color scheme alluding to those of the painting, the nation’s birth certificate; they execute contained and synchronized movements, forming a neutral body that performs the Anthem of Independence, patriotic symbol par excellence.

Ultimately, the performance makes use of inversion, present in the ritual of Carnival, where a parade can tell National Facts from more perspectives than merely those promoted by authorities. Art is similar to Carnival in that both are territories in which it is possible to turn the world as we know it upside down in order to evoke new senses and ideas. The performance performed at the museu do louvre pau-brazyl investigates a milestone of Brazilian identity by breaking one of its main symbols, the Anthem of Independence. The repetition of the formation of Independence or Death! rewinds Brazilian history, offering echoes of Millôr Fernandes: “As our archaeological discoveries increase, it is evident that Brazil has a huge past ahead. Or a huge future behind, if you prefer”. ¹⁴FERNANDES, Millôr. Millôr definitivo: a bíblia do caos. São Paulo: L&PM Editores, 1994, 3a. ed., p. 30.

*

This text was originally published in the book where is pedro américo? (museu do louvre pau-brazyl, 2018) and revised in June 2021.

*

• 1
  ERNST, Max. Escrituras. Trad. Pere Gimferrer e Alfred Sargatal. Barcelona: Polígrafa, 1982. p. 213. ↩︎
• 2
  DA MATTA, Roberto. Carnavais, malandros e heróis. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 1997, p. 29. ↩︎
• 3
  “Official dates are strongly structured from the political point of view. When one attempts to frame national memory through official dates selected for national festivals, there are often problems of political struggle. Organized memory, which is the national memory, is an important object of contention, and conflicts are common in determining which dates and events are to be recorded in the memory of a people.” In POLLAK, Michael. Memória e Identidade Social. Revista Estudos Históricos, Rio de Janeiro, vol.5, no. 10, 1992, p.203. ↩︎
• 4
  DA MATTA, Roberto. 1997, p. 146. ↩︎
• 5
  Ibidem. ↩︎
• 6
  On the first competition organized by Mundo Sportivo, the newspaper O Globo published under the headline The day after tomorrow, Praça Onze will be the theater of the Samba Championship—a spectacle that promises an exceptional magnificence “(…) The schools competing for the big prizes are the best in town. Rio will, in fact, see the enchanting masses from the hills descend upon Praça Onze. The spectacle could not be more picturesque and evocative. Each ‘school’ will appear to the public with a considerable number of figures. There are, therefore, hundreds of mouths singing, with the greatest emotion, the city’s most graceful melodies. Independent of the voices and musical instruments, there are a number of other newly interesting and charming details. Soon after the first ‘school’ enters the theater of the first competition, a wave of melody will fill the metropolis. The samba of the hills does not always descend to the city; it often remains up there, far from any possibility of being recorded. There are ‘rogues’ who forbid victrolas, because they have the impression that once recorded, samba loses its sincerity, its emotive and sweet grace, its delicious spirit.” (…) “In Praça Onze we will hear sambas that have never before reached our ears and therefore have all the formidable magical seduction of a first listening. We have already spoken of the prodigious instruments that achieve all the effects, deeply affecting the soul. Only the ‘cuíca’ (a Brazilian friction drum) will fill Praça Onze with its barbarian sound that draws the deep voices of samba, of amazement, of superstition.” O Globo, February 2nd, 1932. ↩︎
• 7
  In 1938, the first article of the regulation proposed by the UES (União das Escolas de Samba—Union of Samba Schools) read as follows: “In accordance with national music, schools will not be able to perform at Carnival with international histories.” The following year, the decree was rigorously applied, leading to the disqualification of the Vizinha Faladeira school, which paraded with the storyline “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” based on the Disney film. < http://acervo.oglobo.globo.com/em-destaque/carnaval-poder-do-nacionalismo-na-era-vargas-ate-imperio-dos-bicheiros-20972662#ixzz­59jjm9iYG> accessed on March 14th, 2018 ↩︎
• 8
  “However, the conjuncture of the war, exacerbating nationalism, also acted as a catalyst for the elevation of samba to national representation, a process that in 1941 was marked by the transformation of Paulo da Portela into Zé Carioca by Walt Disney. Inspired by Paulo da Portela for this purpose was a situation that, despite all its legitimacy and moving justice, perhaps with the rare exception of Silva e Santos, has been treated by most samba schools as banal, when, in our opinion, it evidenced the transformation of samba—poor, black, suburban or favelado—into the image of the ‘Brazilian’ par excellence.” In FERNANDES, Nelson da Nobrega. Escolas de Samba: Sujeitos Celebrantes e Objetos Celebrados. Rio de Janeiro: Secretaria das Culturas, Departamento Geral de Documentação e Informação Cultural, Arquivo Geral da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro, 2001, p. 106.
  
  “In the spirit of the ‘good neighbor policy,’ Orson Welles arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1942, according to Cabral (1974: 116), to “make a million-dollar movie about Rio’s Carnival.” With him were 22 RKO technicians and a great amount of equipment, with which the filmmaker filmed, among other things, the parades of Praça Onze and a frevo group at the Tijuca Tennis Club.” In FERNANDES, Nelson da Nobrega. 2001, p. 121. ↩︎
• 9
  “In 1960, the first broadcast of the samba school parade had been held on TV Continental.” In PRESTES FILHO, Luiz Carlos (editor). Cadeia produtiva da economia do carnaval Rio de Janeiro: E-papers, 2009, p. 53. ↩︎
• 10
  See: CRUZ, Tamara Paola dos Santos. As escolas de samba sob vigilância e censura na ditadura militar: memórias e esquecimentos. Dissertação (Mestrado) – Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro, 2010, p. 153. ↩︎
• 11
  At <http://acervo.oglobo.globo.com/em-destaque/carnaval-poder-do-nacionalismo-na-era-vargas-ate-imperio-dos-bicheiros-20972662#ixzz59jlO7vHk>. Accessed March 14, 2018. Editor’s note: the verses Freedom has dawned / Freedom has dawned corresponds to one verse from the Brazilian Independence Anthem. ↩︎
• 12
  In: SILVA, Marília T Barbosa da & FILHO, Arthur L. de Oliveira. Silas de Oliveira: do jongo ao samba enredo. Rio de Janeiro: MEC/ FUNARTE, 1981. ↩︎
• 13
  Transmission of the parades broadcast live on Rede Globo at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkVKiEzQMUw>. Accessed on February 20, 2018. ↩︎
• 14
  FERNANDES, Millôr. Millôr definitivo: a bíblia do caos. São Paulo: L&PM Editores, 1994, 3a. ed., p. 30. ↩︎