This unexpected and embarrassing encounter with the cinema as aprimal screen produces a repudiation in the young Obama, as heattempts to reduce its meanings to "the simple fantasies" of "theunreflective heart of her youth." Black Orpheus, it would seem,must be repudiated because it "invaginates" the paternal line ofsuccession, around which the memoir is organized, with a blackness thatevades the natal occasion with a peculiarly insistent previousness,[28] ablackness that the "mother had carried with her to Hawaii allthose years before" (my emphasis). Pregnant with great expectations bornof the womb of carnival, Stanley Ann Dunham had "named" Obama evenbefore she knew his name. She had dreamed of blackness (just as earlymodern European medical science feared she might), thus giving birth toblackness.[29]
So, what kind of African and African-American blackness irritated andembarrassed our future president in that revival theater that night?Shall we accept his Dorothy-in-the-Wizard-of-Oz explanation of arepressed Kansas girl with Technicolor dreams of the "warm, sensual,exotic, different"? Or, do we also hear in this irritation andembarrassment the undoing of the patronymic name? Do we hear echoes ofDerrida's "loss of the proper [. . .] in truth the loss of what has nevertaken place, of a self-presence which has never been given but onlydreamed of"?[30] Perhaps. If we do, we might also recognize a detailomitted from Obama's summary of Black Orpheus that must surelyhave struck him at the time. Or at least, it strikes me in watchingBlack Orpheus today. Obama's generalized reference to "depictionsof childlike blacks" omits the highly plausible identification hismother may have had with the lead female role Eurydice, the simplecountry girl who is shown, in the film's marvelous opening scene,arriving into Rio by boat. Obama never mentions that we enter into theworld of Afro-Brazilian carnival through the eyes and heart of a youngblack woman. Neither does he name the ebullient, melancholic actress whoportrayed Eurydice, born eight years prior to his mother, not in Brazil,but in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. If Marpessa Dawn could show Ann Dunhamhow to dance the samba, what other "broken' [hearted] claim(s) toconnection" might there be?
Rio Carnival Naked Girls
DOWNLOAD: https://shoxet.com/2vEZq9
Therefore to experience first-hand the habits of beach-goers in India, taking their dip in the sea on the Tamil Nadu coast, fully clothed in their saris and salwar kameez, was something of a shock, albeit in reverse: Why would people not feel comfortable taking at least some of their clothing off? And that prompts the next question: Why would people not feel comfortable taking all of their clothing off? Because, you see, that proviso about some bikini material having to be present is an important one for the average Brazilian. I find myself frequently explaining that, in spite of what one might believe from the images of the Rio Carnival beamed around the world, one is not likely to find girls with bare breasts, let alone completely naked, on the beaches in Brazil. In a very small bikini, yes. In no bikini at all, not really.
Contrast that with the beaches of the Mediterranean, where Europeans have been used, for decades now, to sunbathe topless or, in selected locations, in the buff. (And that includes yours truly, who has no compunction in owning up to having gone entirely nude on beaches in Greece and Spain, whether alongside other nude, clothed or partially-clothed companions.) A standard explanation is that Europeans are simply making a choice on how much of their bodies to tan, and expressing their personal freedom to do so; whereas those Brazilian girls are all subtly engaged in an exercise in seduction, whereby the goal is to suggest and entice, and never completely to expose; never, that is, until and unless seduction is successfully achieved.
Revelers dressed as "Mascaritas" take part in a traditional carnival celebration in the small village of Luzon, Spain, on Feb. 26, 2022. Preserved records from the fourteenth century document Luzon's carnival, but the real origin of the tradition could be much older. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
Community members stand over suspected illegal gold miners after beating them and stripping them naked before police arrested them near Krugersdorp, South Africa, on Aug. 4, 2022. The men were beaten with sticks and their camps set ablaze following the alleged gang rapes of eight women by miners the week before. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell)
2ff7e9595c
Comments