After not being able to see my family for two years, I finally went back to Brazil this January to visit them. As you might’ve seen on Twitter, the trip ended up turning kinda hellish, but it was very nice to be with my people (as in my family and friends; I’m actually Argentinian) and spend some time in the paradisiacal city of Búzios. I eventually made it back to New York, but I’m not quite ready to let go of the vacation vibe (or the warmth—why did NY have to greet me with freezing temperatures?), which is why for this edition I’m recommending my favorite things from Brazil!
A person: Carmen Miranda
The pitch: the most successful Brazilian singer of the 1930s, the highest-paid woman in the United States in the 1940s, and the purveyor of an iconic style—all in the same person.
Me gusta porque: I first had contact with Carmen the same way most people of my generation did: through a food label. Though in my case, it wasn’t Chiquita Banana but a brand of concentrated juice in Argentina called “Carioca” (which is what you call people from Rio De Janeiro). Once my family moved to Brazil, I learned a little more about Carmen: that she was actually born in Portugal and her family moved to Brazil when she was three years old, that she was a singer and dancer, and that her films had been instrumental to the United States’ Good Neighbor policy, which sought to foster a good relationship with Latin America through cultural exchange—a response to the failure of its previous, harsher policy, the “big stick”. But I would only truly get to know Carmen after moving to the US and taking a Brazilian cinema class in my MFA program (hoping to impress the teacher with my knowledge, though it turned out I had very little). In that class, we saw the Helena Solberg documentary Carmen Miranda: Bananas is My Business—though “documentary” may be a misleading term, as the film is quite trippy, with Solberg mixing in her personal life and even her dreams into her retelling of Carmen’s life. But I was still quite impacted by it; I couldn’t help but see myself in this woman who achieved so much success in her own country (Carmen is credited with making samba, a mostly lower-class genre up until then, popular across Brazil and abroad) yet still was seduced by the siren call of the US, where her troubles began. Americans were obsessed with Carmen for good reasons (her charm and talent) and not-so-good ones (her accent and “exotic” look), and it wasn’t long before the not-so-good ones took center stage—for example, she was asked to keep mispronouncing the title lyric of “South American Way” even after she learned how to say it right, because Americans laughed at the fact that it sounded like she was saying “soused American way.” Even to this day, the thing she’s most remembered for is her “tutti-frutti hat,” which she was proud of (and which she had culturally appropriated it from the candomblé practitioners of Bahia) but was never allowed to outgrow, either on Broadway or Hollywood, where her costumes grew more and more outrageous. Her bombastic fame became a vicious cycle, keeping her trapped in a stereotype (the exotic fiery latina) that is still around today, and which had the unfortunate byproduct of making her unloved in Latin America, where her films were rightly seen as offensive cultural pastiches—and she, as a traitor to her people. In spite of her enormous cachet, she died alone in her Los Angeles home at 46, a premature death that is believed to be a byproduct of her heavy use of barbiturates and amphetamines to cope with her manic schedule. But she was good at hiding the pain: watching her films or listening to her music, you can’t help but be roused by her luminous energy and contagious excitement, and we’re due for a thorough revisiting of her life in a prestige miniseries or thoughtful play that someone should pay me to write.
Where? Some of her movies are available for streaming, and her music is on Spotify!
Where can I learn more about her? If you speak Portuguese, I definitely recommend Ruy Castro’s biography, which is very long but I devoured in a couple of weeks—it’s the most in-depth reporting I could find on her life. Solberg’s documentary is in English, but isn’t really available unless you can find a hard copy in your local library. There’s also an English biography by Martha Gil-Montero, which I haven’t read.
Wait, didn’t you go on a podcast to talk about her? Why, yes I did—I’m flattered that you know that! Conrado Falco III invited me onto his show, Foreign Invader, to spread the gospel of Carmen.
A TV show: Sons of Carnival
The pitch: it’s very lazy to say this is The Sopranos of Brazil, but I am a lazy person.
Me gusta porque: Brazil is more known for its telenovelas (some if which command audience numbers that put the country’s electrical grid in danger) than its TV series, but this show is amongst my favorite things on television ever. One of the first products of HBO’s investment in Latin American content, Sons of Carnival focuses on Anésio Gebara, a bicheiro, someone who runs an operation of the popular illegal lottery known as jogo do bicho or “animal game” (hence the beautiful footage of wild animals in the show’s opening credits). Gebara, like many bicheiros in real life, washes his illegal money by running a samba dance company (or “school,” as they’re called in Brazil), a transportation company, and a slot machine operation, which are all managed by the many sons the title refers to. Perhaps The Godfather is a more apt comparison than The Sopranos, since the series does great work in exploring the emotional toll it takes on these men to live under the shadow of their powerful father, but that’s as far as the similarities go: what really makes Sons of Carnival stand out is the way that it uses the children’s race (the legitimate ones are white; the illegitimate ones, black) to challenge the myth that “there is no racism in Brazil” (a country that imported more slaves than any other). The story of the Gebara family can be seen as a metaphor for Brazilian society as a whole, and it fulfills that role without letting go of the humanity of each of its characters—all of whom, even the most vicious, showcase a vulnerability that makes it hard to judge them. The second season is even better, as (spoiler alert) the actor who played Gebara died, forcing the show to kill the character off and make Gebara’s sons face the difficult fact that, as bad as it was with him… it might be worse without him.
Where? HBO Max.
Wait, what the f*ck is going on with the subtitles? Yeah, HBO Max is horrible, so apparently it has uploaded a version in the original Portuguese but with hardcoded subtitles in Spanish, and no English subtitle options. It used to be worse; there was a time where the only thing you could watch was a version dubbed in Spanish. This is what happens when a company thinks of “Latin America” as being a country instead of a region. DO BETTER HBO.
A food: Bis
The pitch: the name “bis” means “encore,” which is an understatement—you can easily polish off a box of these babies in one sitting.
Me gusta porque: Obviously I should be crucified for singling out a Brazilian food that is not, like, pão de queijo or feijoada or something like that. But I will illustrate my choice with a little story: in my recent trip back, I went into a supermarket to get cigarettes and, waiting in line, I looked at the chocolates on display and decided to get something for my friends who were taking care of Chester. There were some expensive options, and then there was Bis: a simple, small wafer dipped in chocolate. I remembered just how addictive these babies could be, so I got a couple of boxes (in both the original milk chocolate and the much superior white chocolate options). The friend who was waiting for me outside laughed at my choice, saying “this cheap shit is what you’re getting your friends?” Cut to that same night, after she and I ate almost an entire box: she admitted, with dirty chocolate lips, that I had made a good choice, and that Bis was definitely the way to go. There’s something about the way they crackle when you bite into them, the expert proportion of chocolate to wafer, and the strategically small size that leaves you feeling like you finished them faster than you meant to—and you need just one more (a lie that you’ll keep repeating as you go). But because they’re so airy, that’s not a gorge that’ll leave you feeling sick; like a stereotypical Brazilian party, Bis offers excess that can keep going forever.
Where? You can buy them on Amazon (even the white version), but Google will offer other options that might suit you better.
Can I just get some of the ones you brought? I mean, I’m already considering keeping them for myself and not giving them to the actual friends I bought them for, so NO.
Also, it’s my birthday!
I’m turning 32 this coming Tuesday, and because my life is currently me running in circles and screaming as everything catches on fire (I literally have five different jobs right now), I have not had time to think of how I wanna celebrate. Since Omicronpalooza will not allow me to gather a bunch of friends, I wanna do a repeat of last year and ask people to give me money to buy material things that will make up for their love and physical presence. Throw cash at me and help me attain happiness!