Carnaval, like soccer, is an Brazilian obsession. Some people live and breathe Carnaval, preparing all year round for five nights of dancing, or an hour's parade. And despite the sensuality of Carvaval, childern grow up involved. Does children's participation in Carnaval differ from their participation in naturism?
"Over the harsh nudity of truth, the diaphanous robe of fantasy" is the subtitle of Eça de Queiroz's "The Relic", and part of the theme of this year's parade of the Imperatiz Leopoldina samba school in Rio de Janeiro. The celebrated phrase can be taken to describe the difference the exiguous costumes of Carnaval make.
What is Carnaval?
The public spectacle of the Carnaval parade in Rio de Janeiro, and its lesser cousins elsewhere, is the face of Carnaval most visible to foreigners. But many cities still have street carnavals, where people dance in agglomerations of greater or lesser organization, a traditional activity that is making a comeback in recent years. And there are closed balls, the televising of which in the early 1980s provoked complaints from the then-president of the Republic. So which Carnaval are we talking about?
The Parades
The parades are a competitive activity, where a fraction of a point can move a "school" - the group that organizes a parade of an hour or so - up to a more prestigious class of schools, or downwards into the bush leagues. Some of these groups are organized by neighborhood, and in São Paulo many are associated with soccer teams, the fans of which can be fanatically loyal and involved.
During this year's Carnaval in the port city of Santos in São Paulo, a Carnaval float that had just finished the parade escaped its handlers and crashed into a power pole, electrocuting four people and bursting into flames, at about 1:30 in the morning. Among those aboard the float during the parade were 22 children, who were saved by having climbed off ahead of schedule, 75 feet before the accident. TV network Globo spoke with one eight-year-old who said, "God protected me." The school is linked to the Santos soccer team, and the boys on the float were dressed in soccer uniforms.
Inherent physical danger
A Carnaval parade is inherently dangerous. Because of the competitive nature of the event schools are driven each year to try out new and more spectacular effects. A school will put on its parade exactly once, except for the champions of each category, who parade again the following week. There is no full dress rehearsal. The labor is amateur or poorly paid - those who died pushing the float in Santos were paid US$20 for the night. The schools are precariously financed, traditionally by people on the fringes of the law. And of course it's often the middle of the night.
So why do children participate? Because they're part of it. If there are no young sambistas, there will be no middle-aged and then no old ones. A children's wing is usual, and many of those in the drum section are in their teens, at least here in my neighborhood.
The nationally and internationally televised Rio de Janeiro parade is one extreme of Brazil's Carnaval. A browse though Web sites finds this photo gallery of the "Indian tribes" in the Northeast city of Natal, where a heavy presence of children and adolescents is visible (or at least they were the ones who attracted the photographer's eye). In the city of Recife, where there are also "Indian" groups, this site tells us:
In the midst of each presentation, a mixture of generations forms the identity of each caboclo group. Sílvio Romero, known as Little Silvio, explains that the teachings are passed down from generation to generation. He, who has three children, takes pride in being able to continue the habit inherited from his father. "The Tapuias Chamber of Camaragibe, which I coordinate, is already on its way to the fourth generation. My father, José Boaventura Borges, was part of the Kapinawá Native Tribe".
But can't it be made more child-friendly? Well, the parade takes place at night because many of the effects show up better then: it's easier to make magic. Also, we're in the tropics here, and in the middle of the summer. It's not possible to air-condition an avenue. But it is cooler at night.
The parade does have elements of danger. So does dancing in the streets; there have been incidents with power lines and electrocutions there, too. This year the brakes on a sound truck failed on a hill, and a child was crushed. Children in the US play "American football" and ride bicycles despite the danger.
Inherent moral danger?
The question of moral danger to children is, oddly, touchier than that of physical danger. Here Carnaval and naturism com closer, as naturism carries no special physical danger to children except perhaps the chance for more pervasive sunburns. Skinned knees are just as possible in shorts.
A lot of the women in the Carnaval parade wear very little. That is rather the point. Bare breasts, whether by design or by accident, are taken in stride. This text from rio-carnaval.net explains:
"Even though total nudity is nor officially permitted, sometimes the floats have beauties who are topless or almost nude, men and women, using only body paint, and lot of glitter and a smile."
Could the children parade far from the more "adult" costumes? Perhaps, but the school assembles all together before entering the avenue, and the area of the "dispersion" brings together people removing very elaborate costumes, and those covering up near nudity. The atmosphere can apparently be odd, with the release of the tension of performance, and as people stop being characters and once again are friends and neighbors. And children.
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Peladista Joaquim took his son
to a 2013 Carnaval matinee ball |
Besides the costume, there is the question of performance. Those on floats gyrate and wave, but those on the street, samba. Sensuality is the goal, and it's achieved. But often a drum section will have a "junior queen". Certainly a mascot rather than a sex object, and wearing a much more substantial costume than her older counterpart (what's the point of baring a chest without breasts?) but she too sambas.
And the balls?
While the parades are for looking at, the Carnaval balls are for getting close to someone. There's a stricter age segregation. A samba school parade may include eight-year-olds, but a ball won't. There are separate "matinees" for kids, where costumes will be your more standard pirates and clowns and such. Brazil doesn't have Halloween, Carnaval is the big chance for children of all ages to dress up - as well as the chance for adults to dress down.
Carnaval balls have long been portrayed as a sort of one-night Sodom and Gomorrah, in many senses: the leading paper Folha de S. Paulo illustrated its social column the Friday of Carnaval with a photo of a transvestite. Once upon a time, an admission ticket was good for one man - and two women.
Waiting for developments in the Colina do Sol case, I languished one Carnaval in Taquara, Rio Grande do Sul. I didn't go to the ball at the traditional Clube Commercial, though I did notice that the Junior Queen's last name was the same as graces half-a-dozen of the larger establishments in town. The ball was crippled by restrictions imposed by the Prosecutors' Office barring adolescents; the last night was cancelled and tickets refunded. But the parade down the main street included teens who were some of the more uninhibited performers, and on the sidewalk I saw a number of teenagers drinking heavily, swigging vodka straight from a bottle.
Why include children?
Carnaval and soccer are Brazilian national obsessions which have a heavy involvement of youth. Not every boy is going to be a professional soccer star, and not every girl is going to the Muse of the Percussion Section. But there are soccer fields where anyone can play for enjoyment into middle age or older, and there is joy in being one of the dozens or hundreds who move in unison in one of the enormous blocks on the floor of the Sambódromo, between the floats. And there are plenty of other places to dance.
The samba schools, the Carnaval "Indian tribes" important in some regions, and the less structured groups see themselves as communities. They have stalwarts who keep the group running from year to year. Many of them have special sections for "veterans", who perhaps cannot stay light on their feet for an hour down the avenue, but have done much in the past, and for whom an honored place is found. They have wings where less precise dancing is needed, in which they sell places and overpriced costumes to tourists, to subsidize those who bring dance and dedication but no money.
And they have have children's wings, and child queens, and wings and tasks for adolescents, or as seen in the "Indian" photo gallery linked above, children and adolescents are mixed in with their parents, relatives and neighbors. For without the young, they will soon have only the old, and the traditions will die.
And children in naturism?
It would be astonishing to see a Brazilian naturist group with the same proportion of children as in the galley of pictures of the Natal "Indian" tribes above, or the number I see if in the months before Carnaval I follow the sound of the drums of the neighborhood samba school or even the proportion of children you see at Sunday Mass.
Opposition by prosecutors and others to the participation of children in Carnaval is sporadic and circumscribed. Banning those under 18 from balls that aren't special matinees is not uncommon. A news search finds that specific permission for an eight-year-old to act as "junior queen" of a percussion section in a Rio samba school. But no such permission was asked for the dozens or hundreds of other children who took part in the same celebration.
Why is the presence of children widespread and officially tolerated in the sensual hothouse of a samba school, but such a lighting-rod for police, prosecutors and family court judges in naturism? We'll loot today at one factor: why are the attacks on children's presence made? We may in the future come back to another issue, which is why do Brazilian naturists, individually and as a group, make no attempt to defend against such attacks?
Looking at the special treatment prosecutors dispense to Carnaval balls, we see that an event that takes place at a specified time in a specified place makes it easy to issue and enforce a ban. You go to the Club Commercial or the Praia do Pinho, you see if there are children or unaccompanied children, and if you find them you threaten someone with legal consequences. In contrast, not only is it difficult to police adolescents drinking on the street, but if you catch them - who do you punish? Who can be threatened with a loss of an operating license, or a punitive prosecution?
A samba school is many things: a public exhibition, a community event, a family tradition, an artistic creation. A Carnaval ball can have some of those elements - as in the once highly competitive costume competitions - but the overwhelming purpose is hedonistic.
Women on Brazilian beaches may wear almost nothing, but they do have if not "the diaphanous robe of fantasy", then at least the concealment of a bikini so diminutive that only "Brazilian waxing" lets it cover pubic hair. From the rear it's possible to buy two bikinis and between them get an all-over tan, suggesting that it's not important than anything specific be covered, but only that something be.
Looking at two specific prosecutorial bans on children and nudism, serves only to show us once again "Over the harsh nudity of truth, the diaphanous robe of fantasy":
In late 2010, the former president of SONATA, the group that manages the Tambaba naturist beach in the northeast state of Paraíba was arrested, supposedly for child pornography.
- The "evidence" displayed at a press conference included pictures of the man and his naturist family, defaced with black bars - except for his youngest daughter, who prosecutors displayed to the media fully nude. Very odd.
- Part of the follow-up was an announcement to the media that children would no longer be permitted on the beach. What we've heard here is that the ban in not in fact enforced - it was merely announced.
- Another effect was a decree by the local mayor cutting the size of the designated nude beach by two thirds; a "pharonic" resort development is being pushed for the environmental protection area behind the beach. Reducing the size of the nude beach was essential to making the resort viable, and the arrest may have been merely to provide a pretext.
In 2007, four naturists, including the president of the Brazilian Federation of Naturism, were arrested at or near the Colina do Sol nudist colony in southern Brazil:
- Several accusations were for the creation of child pornography; nothing questionable with the supposed victims ever appeared in over 5,000 pages of legal documents;
- The supposed victims, all in or almost in their teens, denied any abuse (except one, but he lies, as I've documented elsewhere);
- Meanwhile, nude photos of children taken in the nudist camp, something specifically banned in a consent decree signed with the prosecutors office, appeared in nudist magazines, and even in local general-circulation newspapers;
- Prosecutors took no action against those in clear violation of the consent decree, neither the child's father (also the club president) nor the publisher, perhaps because the testimony of the guilty, was the only evidence prosecutors had against the four innocents they'd arrested.
In these two cases, the posturing of prosecutors serve to let them appear in the press - and in fact, naturism gets press coverage far in excess of the actual number of people involved. It's great as a megaphone. But in neither case were the announced bans and consent decrees, actually enforced.
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