Housewives Embrace Corruption in Brazilian Soap Operas

As incredible as it may seem, in the midst of the shootout by the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) in São Paulo, between one news flash and the next on the sentencing of the murderers of the Richtofens and of Liana Friedenbach and Felippe Café, at the climax of the reporting on another huge political scandal (the Bloodsucker Mafia), and with all the widespread sleaziness of the political campaign, an apparently innocent news item could nevertheless be the most disturbing of all.

In an interview given to Veja magazine, the writer Sílvio de Abreu, creator of the novela Belíssima, the recent prime-time success on television, told us that middle-class housewives participating in focus groups for the programs with the biggest audiences are rooting for the villains and not for the good guys. Yes, it's true that the guys in the white hats aren’t much fun, but is that because they were "stupid" enough to do the right thing? Not the bad guys - no, they have charm and verve.

For those who might imagine that this is nothing new, the writer explained that five years ago, when he was writing another novela for the same leading network (Rede Globo de Televisão), As Filhas da Mãe, the behavior of these groups evaluating the fictional work of this popular diversion par excellence was exactly the opposite. That is, over the last five years Brazilian society has dumped some of its dearest moral values into a stinking sewer in order to embrace an amoral ethics of results, which can be summed up by the way in which these housewives unalarmedly view the careers of characters who do evil in order to do well for themselves.

This attitude explains, at least in part, the support that the president of the Republic has been showing in his race for re-election, in spite of the fact that his party, the PT, and his administration have had their images shattered by a corruption scandal of vast proportions, perhaps unmatched in the history of the Republic.

The truth is that this erosion of values has now established two basic rules. One is the "Yes, I am, but who isn't?" of the cynical character of the old TV comedies. The other is the joke that the humorist Stanislaw Ponte Preta (Sérgio Porto) used to make in his newspaper columns in Rio de Janeiro in the nineteen-fifties and sixties: "either morality will be restored, or we will all get rich".

There is not longer any point to discussing if the chicken or the egg came first. That is: we don't have to deal with the philosophizing which might precede the following question: "Are scummy politicians representatives of an amoral society, or has the citizenry become amoral due to the example given by the sordid elite which controls the political game?" Whatever our answer may be to this question, which, moreover, ought to be, but is not, being discussed in campaign speeches and in academia, the problem is much more serious. We live immersed in a culture of corruption in which practically everyone is implicated. Who never bribed a traffic cop? Who never paid baksheesh to a public employee in order to move things along? Who never gave a little cash to a policeman to get off scot-free? For us to get out of this sewer we need to use as our motto the humble statement of Jesus to the crowd preparing to stone the woman taken in adultery: "let he among you that is without sin cast the first stone" (John, 8, 7).

We urgently need to recover our moral values in order to reknit the social fabric which is unraveling day by day, without giving up on fundamental concepts of political and economic freedom. We can't rely on spurious strategies like the blank vote or alienated nihilism, nor call up the old authoritarian ghosts of the recent tragic past. Part of the loss of our old moral values can be explained precisely by the cowardly avoidance by the citizen of his elementary duty to vote and have influence on the direction of public matters. Everyone has to do their part in the necessary cleanup - debate, take a stand, not give up - that is what is necessary. Those who flee or chicken out will be accomplices in the moral suicide which Brazilian has consciously, if stupidly, accepted.

* Translated from the original Portuguese by Tom Moore. Tom is a classical musician and translator who lives in Rio de Janeiro. His most recent CD of trio sonatas by Boismortier is available from A Casa Estúdio.

Discuss Brazilian corruption and politics on our discussion forums