IT WAS IN THE NYT

Álvaro Kassab

Much before Larry Rohter entered the government's index and became a national topic when he put President Lula's supposed drinking habits on the agenda, researcher and translator Regina Parreiras Vieira Martins published an excerpt from a text by the reporter, published in 1999 by The New York Times, as an epigraph to his master's thesis Representations of Brazil: European immigrants and carnival in the American imagination, presented last September at the Institute of Language Studies at Unicamp (IEL). On the same presentation sheet, there is another text, this one by journalist James Brooke, Rohter's colleague at the New York daily. Rohter's article reports that Brazil considers itself a racial rainbow because it has more than 60 terms to designate variations in skin color, “ranging from black, for someone like Pelé, to 'white', for someone who has extremely fair skin even though they are of 'mixed race'”. At the other end, things are more subtle: Brooke's report, published in 1994, reveals to the public in her country that Santa Catarina is an extension of Bavaria... Regina Martins' choice for the game of mirrors and antagonism goes a long way of the reasons for the coincidence. It is the result of a thorough analysis of 197 reports made about Brazil, between 1985 and 2000, by the NYT. The research, funded by Capes, delves into the internals of the discourse adopted by the morning newspaper and advances by translating its respective - and harmful - implications. The researcher, as was evident in the many interviews she gave in recent weeks, made her conclusions public, starting with the “two Brazils” that emerge from the North American newspaper's rotations. What some of the media overlooked is the vast theoretical repertoire that underpinned the work. In the following interview, Regina Martins details what her dive was like.

Journal of Unicamp– What was the objective of your research?
Regina Parreiras Vieira Martins – It is necessary to initially mention the corpus. I analyzed articles published about Brazil, by The New York Times, between 1985 and 2001. They were collected in the microfilm sector of the Library of Congress, in Washington. The initial objective of the research was to investigate the prevalent representations of Brazil in the diary during that period. In the master's research, the analyzes focused on reports published between 1992 and 1999, focusing on the South region in conjunction with European immigration and on the Southeast and Northeast regions, represented by Rio and Salvador in their connection with Carnival. In my doctorate, I am focusing on other topics. I also bring in my thesis, the work of Joseph Page, The Brazilians, which made it possible to analyze, from a discursive perspective, a reading by a North American author of the history of Brazilian carnival and European immigration, as the author includes a rescue of historical narratives from Brazil.

JU - And what conclusions did you reach?

Regina - A pre-analysis highlighted the most recurrent themes: poverty, mysticism, plurality of religions, impunity, corruption, slave labor, racial democracy, etc. All scandals involving human rights violations, massacres, devastation are highlighted in the newspaper. The image of carnival appears with astonishing frequency. There are almost no records of carnival events such as the maracatu, the frevo blocks, the Olinda puppet parade, the electric trios carnival and the Rio carnival bands. Mainly samba schools from Rio and blocks from Salvador, such as Ilê-Aiyê, appear. However, my research on the topic continues. I analyzed several other aspects that I have not yet published. Mysticism, for example, seen from the perspective of North American culture, takes on another dimension. They even say that Brazilians' political passivity can be attributed to mysticism, which in the country is so exacerbated that it harms public management. The then president, José Sarney, is cited as an example in a 1988 article.

JU - In addition to Rio and Salvador, what other regions appear in the reports?

Regina - One thing that surprised me was observing that the South region is very represented with a completely different focus than the others. The Amazon region also appears frequently.

JU - What would be the biggest regional differences, in the view of NYT reporters?

Regina - The basic difference is that the South region is generally portrayed in an idealized way, pointing to the relationship that Americans have with Europeans. There, progress, urban planning and the competence of public administrators in solving social and economic problems are praised, which would also be present in other regions of the country, and which, however, are not resolved. The states of Santa Catarina and Paraná are the main focus of this rhetoric. They even mention that the South region is a piece of Europe, as if lost in the midst of tropical chaos, indicating the presence of all the resonances of the discourse of exoticism, of colonial discourse, which have already been extensively explored by several Brazilian and foreigners.

JU - Can we say that this is a Eurocentric vision?

Regina - Undoubtedly. The southern region is discursively constructed as a case of “success”, understood in the ideas of progress. This “progress” is attributed to the fact that the South was colonized by Europeans (Germans, Italians and Poles), and also because it is primarily inhabited by descendants of European immigrants. This is a question of line of descent acting as a determinant in the form of social and political organization of a given region. The presence of other inhabitants of the region, from other ethnicities, is silenced.

JU - What about other regions?

Martins – The rest erupts like a chaotic and mixed-race Brazil. It is generally observed that the race-ethnicity factor is prevalent in the description of Brazilians. In the representation of this other part of Brazil, a more relaxed, looser country appears, whose population ignores the economic problems. Carnival would act as an escape from these problems. They folklorize a lot. Even the description of social problems approaches a naturalistic narrative.

JU - In what way?

Regina - In the exacerbation of details, for example. I was curious to compare the focus given to articles about poverty in Brazil and the United States. In articles about American poverty, I observed a very different discourse. For example, articles that report the growth of poverty in the United States are very insightful and synthetic. A scientific discourse prevails there – they publish statistics, measures that are being implemented to contain poverty, they bring relevant sources to support their statements, so that, in terms of poverty, there is very little left. In the case of Brazilian poverty, both the narrative used and the focus are very different; one aspect that stands out is the novelistic, appealing tone, which brings them very close to the brown press. Poverty is linked, almost exclusively, to social issues. This mismatch, in the representational field, can easily be observed in Hollywood filmography, in which the violence is always “Latin”, “black”, or the work of some psychopath.

JU - And what about carnival?

Regina - In my dissertation, there is a chapter about carnival. In a report, they even wrote that the costumes at Rio's samba schools have so many feathers that it's hard to believe that a peacock even remains alive with feathers anywhere on the planet... There's a lot of irony. In another case, they portray the “Mendigos de Ipanema” block, creating a counterpoint between this block and the others. They weave a whole novelistic rhetoric about this block. A lot of social criticism which, however, is crossed by the very difficulty they have in dealing with differences.

JU - To what do you attribute this tendency to load up on paint?

Regina - It's fiction journalism taken to the limit, with a good dose of sarcasm. Now, it is not appropriate to territorialize the frequent associations of a set of thematic associations, such as poverty, impunity, violence, etc. to “third world” countries, as authors such as Koptiuch point out, as, today, they are found in the countless urban agglomerations of the planet. This is, from my point of view, a political strategy, similar to what was done with the East, as Said already denounced in 1978. As the USA itself does, today, with Iraq. This practice builds identities and then legitimizes political actions. Bhabha, for example, currently a professor at Harvard, discusses these issues. Another point that is very interesting is the emphasis given to the issue of ethnicity in the construction of samba representations. They often emphasize ethnicity; that samba came from Africa...

JU - Is there a racist component to these approaches?

Regina - Certainly. A work by Frances & Tator (University of Toronto Publishers, 2002), in which 500 articles published in the Canadian media between 1992 and 1996 are analyzed, attributes the frequent association of certain national groups, in their case Jamaicans and Vietnamese, to a racist practice. , dance, music and sport. That's where these nationals could stand out. At the end of my dissertation, I point to the drawing of two Brazils. One that is developed and organized, because inhabited and colonized by Europeans; and there is the Brazil of dance, mysticism, music...

JU - In addition to this reductionist view, what else did you find?

Regina - It is worth highlighting that perception, in a way, is a simplification because representations are interpretations. However, it is also important to emphasize that there is a very high degree of irony; the texts approach mockery. This is one of the factors that indicate that the ethical dimension must enter the scope of the discussion on press freedom. The NYT seems to be very comfortable with irony. I read, for example, an article about Dr. Fritz, which is emblematic in this field. It clearly indicates that they are in search of spiritual operations and other exotic themes. They open the article by describing a spiritual operation, as follows: “without using any type of anesthesia, the powerful Doctor Fritz ...”. Regarding the construction of these stereotypes for the country, it is worth remembering that there are countless national versions of this feat. In effect, we are reduced to everything that is considered “undesirable” in modernity. But Brazil, which stands out, is not just chaotic. The brand created for the country with these stereotypes affects, and has serious social, political and economic implications for its inhabitants. It is also worth reflecting on which sectors of society benefit and profit from these negative images, both in Brazil and abroad. The stereotype, from my point of view, also constructs important forms of subjectivation for Brazilians. One of the factors that contributes to these “negative brands” sticking is our old low self-esteem, as pointed out by Brazilian authors such as Luiz Fernando Veríssimo, Contardo Calligaris, Eni Orlandi, Maria José Coracinie and Graça Capinha, among others.

JU - What analysis do you make of the episode involving President Lula?

Regina - The language, the absence of relevant sources, the old rhetoric were not a surprise. However, the fact that they dedicated an entire article to the “supposed drinking habits of a president”, with such irony, was noteworthy. On the other hand, after publication, it seemed to me a lot of arrogance on the part of the NYT, the fact that the newspaper did not retract it. This is an opportune moment to talk about the NYT's sometimes biased approach. An example of this is the newspaper's coverage of Peter Holman, a British journalist, arrested and expelled from Israel on May 28th, which appears in just one NYT article, on the 30th. Worthy of note is the fact that the NYT did not mention “expulsion”, which occurs in the four articles published regarding the possible expulsion of Larry Rohter, between May 12th and 15th. A comparative analysis between the coverage of the two cases shows several discrepancies. The time is also ripe to talk about retraction. In an article published on May 26, the newspaper's editors not only recanted, but also indicated the articles in which they admitted that there had been inaccuracies in the coverage of the Iraq war. Possibly, considering that this mea culpa was not enough to contain the damage to the image, caused by successive episodes, which have been tarnishing the reliability of the mythical newspaper for years, with the case of journalist Jayson Blair, in 2003, being the most talked about In Brazil, the ombudsman, Daniel Okrent, sworn in in December, admits that there was partial coverage of the Iraq War. In this article, published in the Sunday edition of May 30th – “Weapons of Mass Destruction? Or Mass Distraction?” (“Weapons of mass destruction? Or mass distraction?”) – Okrent attributes these inaccuracies to “distraction” or the “lust for holes” and assumes that the failure was not individual, but institutional – “ The failure was not individual , but institutional”–. It remains to be seen whether this justification – “saying it was a distraction” – will be incorporated, from May 30th, into the booklet of best practices for international and national journalism. Now, in relation to the episode involving the article published by Rohter, I consider that it was important in that it led to reflection, installed a discourse in Brazilian society, around fundamental themes, among others – “Brazil’s image abroad” , “international press” and “press freedom” – in other words, it was possible to discuss these issues from different perspectives. By including these topics in the episode's discussion agenda, the national press undoubtedly contributed to stimulating reflection on these issues. These are, in my opinion, some of the positive developments of this passage.