Everyone Loves Brazil
msnbc.msn.com
The world has fallen hard for the boisterous culture that gave us caipirinhas and capoeiraBy Mac Margolis
Newsweek InternationalAug. 2 issue - Roberto Dultra knows his way around. For better than three decades, the Rio de Janeiro travel agent has lured foreigners to Brazil from just about everywhere. But Dultra—who speaks Portuguese and English but not a word of French—had never been to Paris. When he arrived there on his first business trip earlier this year, he promptly hit the storied Francophone stone wall. "No one gave me the time of day, not even the receptionists," he confessed to a friend after two straight days of ringing French travel agencies to sell packages to Brazil. So on his friend's advice, he changed tack. "I'm sorry I don't speak French," he began again, in his most diffident English. "I am from Brazil." And suddenly the walls came tumbling down. "Ah, Bre-sil!" bubbled the solicitous voice on the other end. "I'll put you right through."
Talk about opening doors. Not long ago, mentioning Brazil conjured images of street children or mountains of foreign debt or, at best, a lady in a tutti-frutti hat. For all the world knew, or cared, Brazil was just another big, affable Latin country—Mexico on steroids—tucked away somewhere below the equator. Even some heads of state seemed clueless. "It's nice to be in Bolivia," Ronald Reagan told an audience on his first state visit to Brazil in 1982. His hosts took it sportingly. "The people of Bolivia welcome the president of Canada," read the next day's newspaper. But beyond the gaffes and guffaws was a major hole in the mappamundi of the Western mind.
No longer. Though the number of foreign tourists to Brazil has increased only modestly in the past several years, Brazilians—or Brazilian culture—now reach nearly every corner of the world. Forget Gisele or Ronaldo, who are well on their way to becoming universal properties. Whether it's the caipirinhas flying off the bar at Sushi Samba in lower Manhattan, samba diva Elza Soares bringing down the house at London's Jazz Cafe, capoeira classes in Toronto or the sun-kissed sylphs dominating catwalks from Milan to Guangzhou—almost anywhere you turn, there's a bit of Brazil in the air.
The Brazilian contagion goes beyond the familiar enclaves of fashion and football. New Yorkers line up to hear two-time jazz Grammy nominee Luciana Souza, whether she's purring silky samba standards at Joe's Pub or loosing arias in an Osvaldo Golijov opera at Avery Fisher Hall. In May, Selfridges, the London department store, turned over its entire building to Brazilian food, fashion, music and art—and crowned it all with a four-meter replica of Rio's art deco Christ the Redeemer statue. Through September, London's Design Museum will feature the rococo creations of haute furniture makers Fernando and Humberto Campana—including the favela chair, patched together with sticks like Rio's shantytowns.
Much of the frisson is fueled by the spread of expatriate Brazilians. New York and Boston are crawling with them. Some 280,000 Brazilians of Japanese ancestry make their home in Japan. Brazilian fashion models are the workhorses of today's Asian fashion industry.
But to an unprecedented degree, Brazilian culture is now rubbing off on the locals. On the last Saturday of every August, Tokyo's traditional Asakusa district reels with the cacophony of a full-blown Brazilian carnival—and it's the native Japanese wearing the feathers and paint. Fogo de Cho, which pioneered "rodizio" barbecue franchising, has launched four restaurants in the United States since 1997, and plans to open one a year "for as long as the market bears," says owner Arri Coser. And American and European women bought $13 million worth of Brazilian bikinis last year—not to mention the waxes necessary to show them off. To Brazilians, it's just depilation, but to the Oxford Dictionary it's getting "the Brazilian."
Why all the fuss? Maybe it's the merry scandal of bearhugs and babble that breaks out whenever two or more Brazilians happen to be in the same room. Perhaps it's the way Jonice, Joyce and Janea—or any of the other seven "J sisters"—pamper the patrons at their eponymous Manhattan salon, cooing "meu amor" ("my love") and planting twin kisses on their cheeks, then waxing them into the girl from Ipanema. Whatever the explanation, the Brazil obsession is spreading. "We sensed a fascination," says James Bidwell, Selfridges marketing manager. "People are beginning to look west rather than east for inspiration, and Brazil has glamour, but also grittiness. Out of that combination comes great creativity."
Every flag has its hour in the sun, of course. Importing ethnic flavor has long been a pastime of the leisure classes in Europe and the United States. When King Tutankhamen's tomb was discovered in 1922, scarab earrings and Egyptian hieroglyphic motifs became hits in New York and Paris. When Asia's tiger economies began to stir in the early '90s, the West couldn't get enough raw-silk cheongsams and Asian fusion cuisine. In a time of global appetites and flights to anywhere, Brazil's turn was bound to come. But who ever imagined English bobbies dancing with samba queens?
Not everybody is so rapturous about Brazil—starting with the natives. Often Brazil's best talents, like Bebel Gilberto or Luciana Souza, have had to make their names abroad before anyone notices at home. "In Brazil," Antonio Carlos Jobim, one of the godfathers of bossa nova, once quipped, "success is a personal offense." The self-doubt may now be waning. Having world-music Grammy winner Gilberto Gil as Culture minister certainly helps. Most envoys are ponderous shmoozers; Gil just pulls out his guitar.
If there was a turning point for Brazilian self-esteem, it was in 2000, when the country celebrated its 500th anniversary with a splashy Rediscovery exhibit. So Paulo now hosts one of the world's top five biennales, and Brazilian art is on display everywhere from the Guggenheim to the Russian State Museum. "It's like new friends," says Edemar Cid Ferreira, director of Brazil Connects, a cultural promoter. "The world has started to ask, 'What country is this?' "
In an oblique way, credit may go to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the charismatic peasant's son turned president, who has stood up to protectionism in the rich world by tying up U.S. and European farmers and industrialists in international trade tribunals. Playing Lilliputian to America's unilateral Gulliver also resonates well in a time of post-Iraq-war sensibilities, where many nations feel caught between fundamentalist fury and muscle diplomacy. "The Brazilian style is about holding one's own without being a fanatic," says Roberto DaMatta, Brazil's most respected anthropologist. "That could be a balancing factor in international relations."
Perhaps. But all this could just as well be a passing fad, like the other ethnic crazes that come and go like so many plats du jour. One day, of course, Ronaldo's knees will give out and uber-model Gisele will kick off her heels and pass the fashion crown to some lithe young thing from Croatia or Kenya. No one is predicting that the Brazilian invasion is here to stay. But it's going to be fun while it lasts.
With Rana Foroohar in London, Karin Bennett in New York and Hideko Takayama in Tokyo
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc. |
