Dancing Hitler for Carnival Shocks Over-The-Top Rio
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Expat Village is edited and published by
Iain Williams in Caracas, Venezuela.
A Bloomberg story by Adriana Brasileiro at www.bloomberg.com
Even Rio de Janeiro has its limits. The city, whose annual Carnival celebrations regularly include half-naked women and over-the-top parties, banned a samba group from entering a holocaust-inspired float in the championship this year.
The float, with a pile of atrophied concentration-camp victims at its base, was to be accompanied by a dancer dressed as Adolf Hitler.
``The idea of a dancing Hitler on top of dead Jews is outrageous,'' said Jose Roitberg, a spokesman for Rio de Janeiro's Israelite Federation, which represents Jewish interests and sued to have the float thrown out.
During the five-day event, which started Feb. 1, Rio's top 12 samba groups, known as schools, each present an 80-minute parade featuring hundreds of drummers and as many as 5,000 dancers. The group's theme is reflected in its songs, elaborate costumes and floats.
The holocaust float was part of samba group Viradouro's ``It Gives You Goose Bumps'' show, which portrayed events, movies and characters that make people shiver.
``It's about all the wonderful and terrible things that make your hair stand on end,'' said Lucia dos Santos, who was in charge of Viradouro dancers dressing as the monsters from the movie ``Alien.''
Chucky and `The Exorcist'
Other floats depicted kissing and tongues, as well as characters from horror movies such as Chucky from ``Child's Play'' and the possessed Regan from ``The Exorcist.''
The 12 samba schools spent about 50 million reais ($29 million) this year on the costumes and floats, according to Rio's Samba Schools' Association. As many as 140,000 spectators will watch the carnival parades from towering bleachers and private boxes on either side, according to the city.
Viradouro lost in court Jan. 31, as Judge Juliana Kalichszteim of the Tribunal of Justice of Rio de Janeiro cited a federal law against Nazi propaganda and racism.
The judge warned that if the school included the float in its parade today, it would be fined 200,000 reais plus 50,000 reais for each dancer dressed as Hitler.
Gags and a Noose
Viradouro didn't accept the court decision without protest. In place of the banned display, the school paraded a float carrying protesters dressed in white tunics with gags over their mouths and a sign that said ``The future cannot be built by burying history.'' A dancer dressed as Joaquim Jose da Silva Xavier, the hero of Brazil's independence known as ``Tiradentes,'' who was hanged in 1792, watched from above with a noose around his neck.
``The restriction to freedom of expression creates a fertile territory for the proliferation of violence, disrespect, brutality and extermination,'' Viradouro said in a statement on its Web site. ``Neither the executioners nor the victims of the tragic history of humanity have the right to hide the facts and dim our memory.''
Unlike Charlie Chaplin's ``The Great Dictator'' and ``The Producers,'' two successful films that took a humorous look at Hitler, Viradouro's float probably failed because it wasn't obviously a satire and may have caught viewers by surprise, said Arnold Aronson, a professor at the theater division at Columbia University's School of the Arts.
``No one was forced to watch the Chaplin film or `The Producers','' which was ``presented as ridiculous farce in which Hitler and Nazis were depicted as buffoons,'' Aronson said in an e-mailed response to questions from Bloomberg News. ``A parade float forces itself on everyone who views the parade, and Carnival has a huge and diverse audience.''
Christ and a Gun
Viradouro isn't the first samba school to push the limits of good taste and lose. Beija-Flor, one of Rio's largest schools, was forced in 2003 to yank a statue of Christ armed with an automatic weapon from its show about drug-related violence.
``We are used to being shocked by samba schools and their crazy designer -- we even expect that year after year,'' said Dora Bernardes, a jewelry store owner from Brazil's Minas Gerais state who has traveled to Rio every Carnival for 10 years. ``But Hitler is just not funny -- not here in Rio, not anywhere.''
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Expat Village is edited and published by
Iain Williams in Caracas, Venezuela.
© Copyright 2003 by Expat-Village.com
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