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No Stereotypes, please. We are Brazilians
Source: BBC News, Brazi.l By Steve Kingstone

What comes to mind when I say Brazil? Dazzling football skills? Carnival celebrations? Or more negative images of urban poverty and gun violence? Either way, Brazilians care deeply about what the rest of us think.

Life is lived to the full but Brazilians care about their country's image.
If you visit Latin America's largest nation, beware of the following four words: "Do you like Brazil?"

You'll hear them from a taxi driver, a hotel porter, or maybe an immigration officer before you have actually set foot in the country.

I would suggest three possible answers.

"Yes." "Definitely yes." And: "Yes, Brazil is the greatest country I've ever seen."
Any variation on the above will be met with a wounded expression and, quite possibly, a critical riposte about your own country.

If that sounds flippant, come here and try it. This is a fascinating, beautiful country, whose people are optimistic and full of life.

Brand Brazil

But behind the carefree exterior is a nation deeply concerned, perhaps even paranoid, about what outsiders think.

As far as I was concerned, brand Brazil equalled laid-back cool - and here they were worrying about what the British, the Canadians or the Belgians might think of them

Two new films got me thinking about this sensitive issue

The first is called Olhar Estrangeiro (Through the Eyes of a Foreigner), a Brazilian documentary poking fun at Hollywood stereotypes of this country.

In it, we meet the pineapple-wearing Carmen Miranda, bikini-clad beauties defending the Amazon, and a stream of movie villains heading for Rio - Hollywood's destination of choice for anyone on the run.

Interestingly, the stereotype that drew gasps of indignation, was the suggestion that Brazilian women run around topless on the beach. For the record, it's not true.

Public image

In the documentary, stars including Michael Caine and John Voight laugh along with the joke, cheerfully admitting the inaccuracies and idiocies of their own Brazilian movies.

But I came away wondering why the film's talented director had invested so much time in the project. After all, lots of places are stereotyped by Hollywood - think of Paris, for example. This is not a case of Brazil being singled out.

But if Olhar Estrangeiro was the appetiser, the red meat of the identity debate was served up by an American film, Turistas, which was released in the US in December and has just hit cinemas here.

As the name suggests, it portrays a group of young American tourists enjoying the delights of an exotic destination. But they fall victim to a gang of kidnappers looking to extract and sell human organs.

Brazil's carnivals are a seen as a symbol of the nation's confidence.
American reviews quickly depicted Turistas as a mindless gore-fest, barely worth the price of entry. That might have been the end of the matter, except Turistas is set in Brazil.

Cue outraged postings on Brazilian websites - honing in on the fact that foreigners in the movie are hacked to death by sinister jungle-dwellers.
"The Americans think we're cannibals," screamed one outraged blogger. Another complained that the film likened all Brazilians to native Indians or monkeys.

"Why don't they make a film about the atrocities in Iraq?" was a common response. Others pointed to violence in the US, notably high school shootings.
At an official level, you might have expected the Brazilian authorities to maintain a dignified silence. Instead the national tourist board announced that it would monitor the impact of the film in the United States, guaranteeing it more publicity.
All of which I found puzzling. Could this really be the Brazil of popular imagination? Where life is lived at full volume, where the beach, the football pitch, the streets pulsate with a unique energy.

As far as I was concerned, brand Brazil equalled laid-back cool. And here they were worrying about what the British, the Canadians, the Belgians might think of them.

I put that to some Brazilian friends. Some readily admitted what I had come to suspect: that the bravado and bluster mask was something close to a national inferiority complex.

Growing pains

A Brazilian colleague said the world's fifth-largest country was desperate to be taken seriously, to punch its weight globally.

But deep down, she said, many Brazilians were still in awe of nations perceived to be more developed. She said praise from those countries was seen as an affirmation of Brazil's ambitions, while criticism was taken to heart.
She recalled that the government here recently launched a publicity drive to boost the nation's self-esteem. The slogan is: "The best of Brazil is the Brazilian people."

Another Brazilian friend described this country as a hormonally-challenged adolescent in the global family of nations - beset by growing pains and prickly when offered advice.

He said Turistas had hit a nerve because, however crudely, it highlighted genuine problems here, like robbery, kidnap and, yes, organ trafficking.
But it was easier, my friend said, for Brazilians to attack the tone of a trashy American B-movie, than to face up to such problems themselves.
All very revealing self-analysis, but to me there is still something unfathomable about the combination of attitude and angst.

Could it be that the Brazilians have the most swaggering inferiority complex in the world? The next time I'm asked "Do you like Brazil?", I will reply unequivocally: "Yes, it's a great country. But you shouldn't need me , or any other foreigner< to tell you so."