Brazil: a Serious, Playful Country

Rio de Janeiro - Foreigners seem to be becoming increasingly enchanted with all things Brazilian, except, that is, the country itself. Brazil remains a taboo destination for most international tourists, scared away by sensationalist foreign media stories like a recent one in The Independent of London that described Rio as a city of cocaine and carnage. But as long as foreigners can savor "Brazilian-ness" from a safe distance, their fascination with the people and the culture seems to grow.

"Almost everywhere you turn, there's a bit of Brazil in the air," Newsweek noted in October, crediting Lula, Ronaldo, Gisele, Gilberto Gil with helping spread the positive contagion. Lula is perhaps the key cupid for this love affair. Newsweek said that his standing up to protectionism in the rich world, "playing Lilliputian to America's unilateral Gulliver... resonates well in a time of post-Iraq-war sensibilities."

This love affair could also be also linked to a global need for a nation that offers both a lucid and playful counterbalance in an increasingly fearful and bellicose world. American writer Tom Robbins recently wrote that "serious playfulness may be an effective means of domesticating fear and pain." By that, he means not denying the existence of suffering, but using a positive form playfulness "to deny suffering dominion over our lives."

That's what Brazil did, in August, when it sent its national soccer team to play an exhibition game in Haiti amid the chaos that followed an armed insurrection that had toppled the president. This seriously playful initiative buoyed Haitian spirits and focused world attention on the country's drama. Some 1,200 Brazilian peacekeeping troops paved the way for the national team in their first act - distributing of 1,000 soccer balls to Haitian children. Both forms of soccer diplomacy explain why Haiti's love affair with Brazil and its national sport have "grown to obsessive proportions," according to New York Times story in August.

Gilberto Gil also played cupid in his seriously playful dual role as minister/musician. A story in the Daily Telegraph of London with the headline "Brazil has a New Energy," described how he wooed Moroccans last year by "one morning giving thoughtful speech...the night after getting thousands cheering along to his particular brand of reggae-influenced Brazilian pop."

The energy of ordinary Brazilians abroad is equally contagious. At the Olympics, they (seriously) rooted for their beach volleyball teams by (playfully) dancing to Bahian rhythms that caused the entire crowd to vibrate. Such solidarity is what caused American jazz guitarist John Pizzarelli to recently say in the Brazilian daily O Globo that Brazil "is the only place in the world where the audience sings along with you."

Foreign rapture with Brazil won't fall out of fashion any time soon. There is, more than ever, a global thirst for an optimistic people who - because they have (in comparison to most peoples) absorbed, rather than alienated, racial and cultural differences - can spread their inclusive and playful positivism abroad.

Even I, an American living here, have used this growing global love affair with Brazil as my own personal shelter. Several years ago, while trying to order food in Portuguese in a Rome pizzaria, a group of 12 at nearby table asked me where I was from. To avoid their reaction to my saying "the United States," I said "Brazil." And the entire group burst out with "Brasiliano!"

This article was first published by the Brazilian daily Folha de São Paulo. Michael Kepp, a U.S. journalist living in Brazil for two decades, is the author of a book of essays "Sohando com Sotaque: Confissões e Desabafos de um Gringo Brasileiro," (Dreaming in an Accent: The Confessions and Critiques of a Brazilian Gringo), published by Editora Record. Order Sonhando com Sotaque from Livraria Cultura (in Portuguese).

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