Sick in Salvador, Bahia: My rant about Brazilian television

So I’ve been to a specialist and taken additional lab tests and, yes, I have mononucleosis. It seems to be only a moderate case; I spend less time in bed or on the couch every day.

The common name for mono in Portuguese translates to “the kissing illness,” which is similar to the slang term in English. It’s a common infection spread during Carnaval. I have a feeling that people (the Vieiras, the doctor here) just don’t believe me when I say that I haven’t kissed anyone or had any type of saliva contact with anyone. It even seems far-fetched to me that I got it from a dirty glass or some other source. But so it goes.

I should note that there’s no evidence that I picked up mono in Brazil, or specifically Bahia or Alagoas. The virus is dormant for some time before symptoms occur, and the window of time (symptoms starting on the first Thursday in Maceió) suggests that I could have been infected in Rio, on a plane, or in the United States.

In any case, the doctor’s orders to rest and stay well hydrated, when combined with the fact that I have no home internet connection, have led me to watch a lot of Brazilian television.

Some background for a subtitle: the movie Wayne’s World, which I saw in the bargain bin in Lojas Americanas long ago, has the Portuguese title “Quanto Mais Idiota Melhor.” Literally translated, Wayne’s World becomes “The More Idiotic, the Better.” I found this both funny and mildly insulting to one of the better products of American pop culture in the mid-1990s. Anyway, if I were to write a documentary about Brazilian TV, I would entitle it “O Globo Me Faz um Idiota” or “Globo Makes Me An Idiot.”

There are multiple television networks in Brazil (roughly, Band, Globo, SBT, and Record). Of these, Globo is dominant. It’s not even close. Globo is also omnipresent: when you go to the notary, the supermarket, the bar, the restaurant, the bank, the pharmacy, the mall, the airport, the bus station, or any one of many other public spaces, if there’s a television nearby, chances are 95% that it’s tuned to Globo. Walking down the beachfront avenue in Maceió one night, past some hotels and apartments, I heard the iconic sounds (doo-doo-duh-doo-doo! doo…) of the novela “Viver a vida,” the current 9:15 PM Globo drama, coming out of multiple windows. (I might qualify this by noting that special sporting events (read: important football games) are sometimes only shown on SportTV, which will have a high percentage of viewers. However, SportTV is itself owned by Globo.)

There’s a long political history about how Roberto Marinho, Antonio Carlos Magalhães, and the military regime worked together to bring Globo to every corner of Brazil in the postwar period. Local distributorships were usually sold to local political bosses. Hence, for example, the Globo distributorship here is owned by ACM’s family and the Collor de Melo family owns the Globo license in Alagoas. I can’t provide the entire story.

In the time that I’ve consumed TV, I’ve come to two observations about Globo’s programming: 1) it’s incredibly insipid, and 2) it’s incredibly self-promoting.

WARNING: Rant to follow. As a mental health break, here are some photos of the view out of my apartment window in Salvador. I look down on the Lacerda Elevator, the south end of Comércio, and the old São Marcelo Fort. The church steeple in the foreground belongs to the Igreja da Misercórdia, the first hospital in Brazil. To the far left, near the Elevator, is the Palácio Rio Branco, the old colonial administration building for the entire colony of Brazil and current city hall. Visible ships are moving products in and out of the port at the north end of Comércio, and from other points in the Recôncavo Baiano (the shoreline around the bay). This view looks into the Bay of All Saints, with Itaparica island on the other side, about 15 km away . It’s truly magnificent.






Back to Globo. Start with the novelas. There are approximately five or six novelas playing on Globo at the moment. The afternoon one about people living on the frontier (unclear whether in Brazil or America) just ended, and has been replaced by another about a slave-owning plantation family and their relationships with their favored slaves. The evening novelas feature some woman who just got thrown in jail, a pair of rival rock music dynasties in São Paulo, and a novela about the difficult lives of supermodels who live in either Rio de Janeiro or Buzios, the resort town east of Rio.

The last is Viver a vida, or “To Live Life.” It’s the most important soap in Brazil at the moment. (It enjoys a charmed spot, at 9:15 PM right after the national news on Globo.) I explained to Neal that I finally realized what makes Viver a vida such captivating TV: all of the actors and actresses are drop-dead gorgeous. They’re hot, outstandingly hot, including the men and the older characters. The entire cast has more sex appeal than should be legal. Neal replied that this is true of many novelas. And while it’s true that novela actors are by definition good-looking – and yes, Brazilians are already on average beautiful people – I think that Viver a vida stands above the rest in the sheer sexiness. This is altogether fitting; it’s, as I noted, a novela about the lives of supermodels.

Of course, being soap operas, they’re ALL THE SAME. There are only a limited number of plot devices, love triangles, emotions, and manipulations possible. The plots move much more rapidly than do plots in US soap operas, but this doesn’t mean that they cover new ground. The Globo soaps are mainly shot in massive sound stages (bigger than aircraft hangars, and sometimes visible when you fly in) located west of Rio de Janeiro. Sometimes they feature new backgrounds. (The popular novela that previously occupied Viver a vida’s spot was about family intrigue in India. Some outdoor shots were done in India.) In general, however, the plots and emotions and actions have been constant since the debut of television here.

The other networks have their own soaps, but the production quality is slightly lower and none of the titles seem memorable.

On Globo, after the news and Viver a vida, they have Big Brother Brasil. The concept is the same as the original UK version, except that the show is shown five days each week. There’s little in a single day that can be edited down to good moments, but they show it anyway. I must confess that I’ve never watched more than a minute. I can get my fill of reality shows featuring idiots acting idiotically in the States.

BRIEF DISCLAIMER: I don’t mean to suggest that Brazil is alone in trashy TV. Goodness knows that the United States is a pioneer in the field: Jerry Springer, reality television, E, VH1, and so on. I would, however, wager that the average 24-hour line-up on NBC, CBS, and ABC is probably less insulting to one’s intellect than is the Globo line-up. (And I confess to enjoying Family Guy and the Simpsons, so maybe Fox should be thrown in there.) Whether this is a function of the level of education among viewers, in a country still in development, I leave as an open possibility.

I should also note that Jornal Nacional, the evening national newscast that comes between the soap about the rock producer families and the soap about supermodels, and sometimes after the local news, has the best production values of any news show in Brazil. (JN has its own complicated history and accusations of bias.) And unlike most other news programs, especially those on other networks, it doesn’t dwell on the latest grisly crimes of the day. Jornal Nacional’s news clips, available online, also helped me learn Portuguese, so I have a soft spot for the husband-and-wife weekday announcing team. (They have triplets and live in a penthouse in Lagoa in Rio.)

Globo then goes out of its way to use the rest of its programming – except for feature films (recently, for example, Herbie and Jurassic Park 3 – The Plotless World), mid-day news and dubbed anime cartoons – to promote the line-up of soaps and Big Brother Brasil. The weekend variety shows feature interviews with the actors and reality stars. (I recently figured out how much Faustão’s show is one long series of commercials. And I now want to physically harm Luciano Huck, but that’s another story.) A morning program with an incredibly annoying parrot puppet and a cosmetically-enhanced blonde features interviews of the same. Every commercial break recently has had an announcement about how “it’s worth seeing again the emotions of [novela about frontier life that is ending].” Commercials themselves feature the soap stars pitching products or program tie-ins. At lunch time, there’s even a game show that revolves around how much contestants remember about previous and present Globo novelas. And in every case, Globo just happens to find people in malls, on the street, and in the audience who can talk at length about how they feel about any given soap star or personality on Big Brother. I’m always astounded at how much people care. (The “people on the street” are, without fail, in São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro.)

The other networks feature even dumber variety shows (“O Melhor do Brasil,” whatever show Ratinho is on), news shows that feature a host fulminating about how awful crime and criminals are while his correspondents flash updates and stick their microphones in the faces of the accused (“Brasil Urgente”), a version of Wheel of Fortune sponsored by a cosmetics company that seems to feature players who don’t really know the strategies behind Wheel of Fortune and an older cosmetic-surgery-up-to-the-gills host who wastes time staring at the board and trying to figure out what the puzzle is (on SBT), a version of the Price is Right, and the same news and movies that Globo features. To my benefit, I guess, I’ve learned that Brazilian law doesn’t necessarily include Miranda rights. I was shocked the first time I saw a local reporter walk up to an accused, stick a microphone in their (dropped, hidden) face and ask them why they committed the crime. The taped police interrogation of the accused murderer of a cartoonist and his son in São Paulo has been played multiple times now. (He confessed to the crime. It’s a sad story.)

As an aside, one of the networks features the dubbed cartoons of Woody Woodpecker (“Pica Pau” in Portuguese). I don’t understand that cartoon. Woody is, at root, an anti-hero and a real asshole. The comedy consists of nothing but physical violence; there’s not a bit of clever wordplay. And then Woody the raging asshole always seems to win against his stupider, abused opponents. Who wrote and approved this garbage? (Unless the fact that Woody is red-white-and-blue is a political commentary on American aggression abroad during the Cold War, which might start to make sense….)

In sum, my brain is not enhanced by network TV here. I do enjoy watching football, but had to do it with the door closed last time because the neighbor down the hall kept cursing loudly at the TV.

There is one shining exception. The public access television station in Bahia (TVE, channel 2) has real investigative reporting, few commercials, interesting interviews, and Sesame Street (Vila Sésamo). I think I saw a similar channel in Alagoas that had an interesting interview with a PSDB state deputy and a member of an anti-corruption NGO about spending in the state assembly. (Alagoas still has problems paying public worker salaries. While I was there, the State Assembly voted an increase in their own annual bonus, to be retroactive to last year. By one account, with two or three exceptions, the state deputies in Alagoas are all self-interested crooks.)

Thank goodness for this public access channel. I learned that, in Portuguese, Big Bird is Garibaldo, Ernie is Élio, and Cookie Monster is named Come-come, or “Eat-eat.” Fantastic.

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My internet connectivity should be back up soon, and Bethany will be here at the end of the week. In sum, I’ll watch less of Globo, and my blood pressure will hopefully stabilize.


+++ Footnote: my beef with Luciano Huck. Huck is everywhere. He advertises more products than does any other celebrity in Brazil. He’s the goofy-looking guy pointing to products on signs at bus stops. Recently, his show featured a kid who was part of a surfing school in a favela in Rio. To fulfill the kid’s dream, they flew the kid to Hawaii to surf with Kelly Slater. First, they had to show the kid’s background – how he lived in a house on a morro that didn’t have a refrigerator. (They later showed this footage to Kelly Slater, who acknowledged that, while he grew up poor, Kelly never had to live without a refrigerator.) It struck me as a terrible use of money to fly the kid to Hawaii in a new wardrobe to surf for a few days when he continues to live in poverty. But at the end of the show, Huck promised to sponsor and help the surf school provide alternatives for kids in the favela. Okay, fine, whatever.

Fast-forward to next week. Huck’s show – the Saturday variety show on Globo – again features the same family. And he promises to give the family a new house. Great! With one catch: to win the house, the father, who, it is shown, makes a living selling trinkets and necklaces on the beach in Rio, has to balance on a wooden board over a rolling fulcrum for 45 seconds. What!!!??? This family’s fate is turned into cheap amusement for a national audience? Fuck you, Luciano Huck. (Postscript: the father succeeded. It’s unclear how they’re supposed to pay the maintenance on a new house, but I’m sure that will be passed over.)