kali

I think I understand what you mean, though I might not be able to translate my thoughts into exact words. Not in English, that is. And I suppose that is somehow also part of the problematic.

I read the post, and there is no way to disagree with what deepad said. My reality might be just slightly different, but it stills fits in that same scenario. And when you question how does one copes with the politics of desire - well, I keep asking myself the exact same thing.

I've taken a course about the portrayal of the Other, mostly in the movie industry. It basically covered the Latin Americans, black and homosexual groups. It's the kind of thing that makes you angry. I can't even watch, say, Aladdin the same way I used to, and I used to love it when I was a kid. I grew up watching those things, being part of it, dreaming of going to countries where they shut my fellow countrymen inside small airports' rooms for weeks like they're criminals before kicking them back to my country with no further explanation for the mere fact they are South Americans. And the scariest part of it all is that it's really easy for one to watch or hear or read about that and not find it disturbing in the slightest. Because that's what they're told, isn't it? That Brazilians are all dealers who want to steal their jobs.

Anyway….

The lack of respect for the culture of others (mainly for the culture of former colonies) is so impregnate on societies that it kind of becomes a comforting zone or something. Like you don't have to understand the other, even if you are to speak or write about them, you just have to be aware of stereotypes and that is enough. It's like thinking Americans are all burger eaters with two neurons called Chip and Dale, or that the French are all poofs with berets. Brazilians equals soccer, samba and lack of clothing? Really? I don't think you have to understand everything and everyone, because really, you can't. No one can. If things were that easy we wouldn't be discussing this right now. But if you are going to write about a different kind of person, with different kinds of vision and beliefs, you really shouldn't assume that you understand that person based on a vision that is constructed by your own universe. It doesn't work like that. Shouldn't the fact that it will get people pissed somewhere represent a problem? It can be really toxic.

What deepad says goes further than that, I know. And I do find a lot of similarities in what deepad said and my own life and society, but there are differences, important differences, that I guess I'm thankful for, on some ways. However, in the end, one way or another, it's still all the same thing. I grew up with Zé Carioca's comics (I don't know if that's his name in English, but I suppose it is. He's the green bird, Donald Duck's friend). He's a crook. He does bad things, he's bad mannered, he doesn't work, spends his entire days on bars, dancing and drinking. But he's a nice guy, sympathetic, and that makes you generally like him (of course he uses his likeability to take advantage of people). But what defines him essentially is that he's a carioca. And that is the image everyone has of cariocas. A carioca is a person who is born in Rio de Janeiro. Well, basically, the rest of the country hates us, because of our accent, and because of the damn Zé Carioca's imagery. Argentineans hates Brazilians, because they think we are all Zé Cariocas, except there is a very large part of Brazil that actually resembles Argentina in everything. It doesn't make any sense. But that's what media and its poor and reckless representation does.