Note from BW of Brazil: So, according to an article I saw earlier today, the last episode of the controversial Globo TV series Sexo e as negas will soon air. Well, the series may be ending (and it is not clear if it will return for a second season), but the analysis of this program is not over on this blog. A number of things concerning the series, the protests and the division it caused in the Afro-Brazilian community speaks much to issues such as power (or lack thereof), criticism, interpretation, images and division. Criticism of the program began even before its debut and continued throughout in pieces written by various writers, critics, bloggers and even college professors. Below is another analysis of the program which sums up the thoughts of many beyond its continuation of long-running stereotypes of Afro-Brazilian women: the series simply isn’t very good.
Sexo e as negas: Globo series hidden away in a shallow mood
“The Falabella characters drag on with very little presumptuousness in a blaze of shameless sex and lack of ideology …”
By Elenilson Nascimento & Anna Carvalho
The Sexo e as negas (Globo TV) program comes, in these times of intellectual laziness, as a parody of more of the same in which a genre that is perversely inflated by shallow humor that cannot be restricted to politically correct, remembering here people like Jerry Lewis, Os Trapalhões (1), Molière (in discourses of humor), social criticism under the alabaster of metaphor, of people that abstracted at a time when the thought of iron imprisoned, where they captured the alienating laughter on their programs that, today, we have the same prisons of thought where we were being relativized in an impassioned politic without rationalism, because the perverse of political correctness hit us with its holster.
The author, writer, actor and director of the series Sexo e as negas, Miguel Falabella, has emerged remarking that this new work of his has been boycotted by the media and the public – even having a community on Facebook – for show a thematic of black people, therefore, in his view, there are not too many articles about the production. But the main problem of Sexo e as negas is not only the lack of material extolling the value of the work, but the opposite. Even before debuting, the program was already suffering harsh criticism from the entities of the Movimento Negro (Black Movement) throughout the country because, according to them, it would help to further spread the prejudice against mulheres afrodescendentes (women of African descent).
But Brazilian society, never accustomed to thinking for itself, quit being democratic and today reserves itself in a socialóide tendency in its universes of consumption, low esteem, and perversities, always labeling others who differ from themselves as anachronistic, imbecile or really censoring even the marshals of its own censorship. In a sequence from Sexo e as negas that resonated much on the internet, for example, two characters are having sex. Nothing more than common in dramatics of current productions. However, according to the actor getting closer to his scene partner, something similar to a penis appears on the screen. And that was itself was enough for websurfers to put the Ministério Público (public prosecutors) into action. Recently, actor Rafael Zulu revealed that director Cininha Paula had requested that a codpiece not be used to give more veracity to the scenes. But doubts came out: could the actor get excited in a scene? Obviously it happens, but it is not linked to the actors being horny or something similar on camera. The scene asks for that breathing, that positioning and heat. It’s all very real, but professional, Zulu said in an interview.
With the initial noise since its debut, the big problem now is that, like Dupla Identidade (a series of the same network, but with a higher quality aesthetic and argumentative), Falabella’s production goes on the air too late. The two works could be best utilized if the time of their showings helped to cause a more useful buzz. Given this frightening scenario, presenting itself as the feminine constructor of the American film/series Sex and the City, coming from a series about the life of a wealthy writer, with her rich friends, in a narcissistic and rich society in the 90s and that, after the woman discovered her plenitude in the labor market, lies alone in bed due to lack of love, a luxury item for women who dared to evolve, to think, to dominate and not concede.
If the scenario of Sex and the City is Dantesque for the consumption of people that buy because they don’t see themselves in its thematic island: rich, shallow, pragmatic, anatomical to a society that consumes everything except love, due to this they have sex, in Sexo e as negas, a maid, a receptionist, an unemployed woman and a cook show the exact opposite, which has generated protests from women intellectuals, artists and homemakers who simply don’t feel represented in the Globo series.
Before there was a Malu Mulher (2), divorced at a time when marriages were still tiles in poorly designed homes in the feminine constructor because they were eminently patriarchal, that received, from this feudal lord, a slap in the face and said, “Knock, knock …” so that her husband would calm himself in his intent. But today, Falabella’s characters drag on with very little presumptuousness in a blaze of shameless sex and lack of ideology, and that is the great sin of the author, because the characters are imprisoned in the slum, he didn’t nurture them with freedom as a vehicle of citizenship, he didn’t endow them with a discourse of the Big Apple, because they are a kind of souvenir of the American series dressed up for the Rio Sahara.
Baiano (Bahian) seasoning – In the last episode, airing on October 25th, there was the presence of Bahian actor Amaurih Oliveira – the winner of the Braskem Award in 2014, and one of the leading artists in the movie Irmã Dulce, directed by Vicente Amorim, with a debut set for November 27th, representing a nurse in a scene with explicit and unnecessary sexual content (photo at top of article). Actress Maria Bia, one of the protagonists of the series and that starred in the torrid scenes with Amaurih, said she was startled by the controversy that engulfed the show, accusations of racism and sexism. But this impasse is not resolved because when the author illustrates or when he also executes the path of the discourse of power and preaches to his black women in the senzala (slave quarters), in a brothel as cruel as it is humorous, he reveals a face of the current Brazilian drama: poor and arrogant.
In short, whoever writes this material are two people who have learned to restart life every day, after thirty, again and again, seeing the world that they dreamed of as a kind of Oblivion brain of the 90s and becoming a open market of post-modernity, because we didn’t evolve, we deplete our concepts and imprison ourselves in others. But still, Miguel Falabella, a formerly interesting author, releases Sexo e as negas with black women protagonists in a country that was the last to abolish slavery, that takes refuge in shallow humor, where its analytical and thinking incapacity divides itself into a stupid, headless country, and into another that dislikes thinking about its intolerance.
The Falabella series is not good, even though he tries to insert in the normality of his gender women that exhibit his plentitude, having sex, displaying his right to hunt, waving goodbye to the attached stigma, but that falls into a sin of caricature because Falabella is a kind of vaudeville. But we see an attempt to put his discourse in the illustration of apathy alluding to Xica da Silva, but it was only an attempt, because the show is crude because it does not fit, because it skews itself in a not very serious discourse, more localist than in reparation. And the black woman in the senzalas (slave quarters) had no right to her hymen, her son, her breasts or to her emotional universe. And it seems that they still don’t have it.
Source: Cabine Cultural
Note
1. Os Trapalhões was a Brazilian comedy group and also a Brazilian television series created by Wilton Franco. Its members were Dedé Santana, Zacarias, Mussum and their leader Didi Mocó, that was played by Renato Aragão. The name Trapalhões is derived from the Portuguese verb atrapalhar, which means the opposite of helping, to do something the wrong way or to Those that confuse. The name is translated “Tramps” in English DVD subtitles. It was originally aired by Rede Globo from 1977 to 1993. Source
2. Malu Mulher was a TV series broadcast by Rede Globo from May 24, 1979 to December 22, 1980, written and directed by Daniel Filho. The theme song, “Começar de novo”, was a great hit in the voice of one of Brazil’s greatest popular female singer, Simone. Source
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