TV SERIAL CHARGED WITH RACISM
Reichmann, Rebecca
The Geledes Black Women's Institute decided to take on one of the continent's mightiest media giants by suing TV Globo and the authors of a novela called Patria Minha for racial...
...When the police are summoned, Kennedy flees, fearing police violence and knowing that justice is arbitrary...
...The cowardly and servile image of Kennedy and the lamentations of his grandmother have the same effect as the supposedly scientific demonstrations of blacks' intellectual inferiority recently released by the neo-racists from Harvard...
...Geledes' court action was, however, widely criticized in the mainstream media as too radical...
...Within a few weeks, however, TV Globo's posture had changed...
...The Public Relations Department of TV Globo was quick to counter-attack in the press, charging that while TV Globo was addressing the important problem of racism, it was "too bad that Geledes tried to grab the headlines, demonstrating its own racism by determining that blacks must conscientize Kennedy...
...This is an image that...stigmatizes the entire black community which for centuries has fought against racism, for respect, for its self-esteem, and for dignity...
...In its judicial notification-a legal instrument that gives the offending party a chance to repair the offense-Geledes applauded TV Globo's attempt to expose racism, but denounced the novela's authors for clinging to "archaic" images of servile blacks: In whose interest is it for TV Globo to portray blacks as submissive, impotent and incapable of defending their rights?...An image is worth a thousand words...
...1. Cited in Jornalda Tarde, November 10, 1994, p. 3A...
...According to Geledes Coordinator Suely Carneiro, "the novela's white characters are diverse and complex while the black characters are frozen in a single stereotype-humble, defenseless and servile...
...The network issued a press release assuring that a black character, Kennedy's godmother, would have a long talk with him to instill racial pride...
...One of the novela's authors publicly recanted: "They were valid demands which we decided to take into account...
...One of the novela's writers also charged that reactions from the black community were imperious (prepotente), censoring his freedom of expression...
...In a typical episode, the novela's villain, Raul Pellegrini, accuses Kennedy, a black adolescent gardener, of theft, hurling racist insults: "Negro safado [slimy black]...when you don't soil coming in, you soil going out...do you think you could learn anything (in school...
...Nationwide, the press published rebuttals by the novela's authors and cited numerous African Brazilian activists, artists and political progressives who failed to see what the fuss was all about, especially since for the first time, a prime-time novela had portrayed how ugly overt racism really is in Brazil...
...Kennedy lowers his head, cowering in fear...
...Don't you know your brains are different from ours...
...Along with the notification, Geledes suggested that TV Globo could avoid a court case by demonstrating in the novela how instead of remaining helpless, Kennedy could contact black-movement activists and take legal action to defend his rights...
...The Research Institute for Black Culture (IPCN), the Nucleus of Black Consciousness of the University of S&o Paulo and the Black Pastorate of the Catholic Church also publicly denounced the novela...
...Geledes was not the only group to protest...
...Globo went on to claim that "to present the gardener, Kennedy, as a paradigm, reacting (to Pellegrini) in kind by repelling his aggression, might do well for the self-esteem of black audiences, but would not correspond to Brazilian reality...
...Geledes re-stated its position in a series of public interviews and published several editorials in the press...
...The Geledes Black Women's Institute decided to take on one of the continent's mightiest media giants by suing TV Globo and the authors of a novela called Patria Minha for racial discrimination...
Vol. 28 • May 1995 • No. 6
