Dear Caetano

É sua primeira vez no blog? Leia antes o post “Uma Introdução” (em português).*

Lately, everything exciting in my life happens on the bus.

By that I don’t mean that things are boring; far from it. Back in September, I was stuck on what would be a 9-hour bus ride back from São Paulo when I got a series of increasingly alarmed phone calls about a post I’d written about PUC, and we all know how that ended up. And Sunday I was on a frescão crawling back from Galeão, just arrived from Brasília, when I got a text message. Did you see Caetano’s column in O Globo today???

The three question marks sent my heart pumping. My cell phone was out of credit and the bus was stuck in traffic; I was tempted to call collect, but convinced myself not to. The next hour was agonizing. Had Caetano said something about me? Come on, I told myself a little disgustedly. As if that’s what it is. Probably he wrote about Carmen Miranda or Clarice Lispector, or maybe he was giving a show in Rio this week. There was a whole host of  possible reasons for someone to tell me to read Caetano’s column. You’re so full of yourself, I chided. But the three question marks did seem urgent. As soon as I hopped off the frescão, I raced up to the apartment. There, on the kitchen table, was a neatly foldedSegundo Caderno. I saw “Caetano Veloso,” then “Tigre,” then my name. I thought my legs were going to give way.

If you’ll give me license: a brief digression on Nelson Rodrigues. (I can’t help it, he’s all I’ve been reading lately.) Nelson, who by the time of the crônicas of O remador de Ben-Hur was deeply unsettled by nearly everything he saw in contemporary society (unsurprising for a child of 1912 who was practically born in suspenders), gleefully recounted a recent incident in a 1969 column.

At a press conference for Sympathy for the Devil, Jean-Luc Godard had appeared with the film’s producer, Ian Quarrier. When the pair arrived, Godard was about to open his mouth, but Quarrier burst in. “It was all ‘me, me, me.’ You all understand? He was the genius, not Godard. Who had the idea for the film? Him. The story, the characters? All him. Godard wanted to lay claim to a bit of it, but Quarrier wouldn’t allow it. Now, any of us patiently tolerates our own narcissism and despises it in others. And then, out of the blue, Godard turned to Quarrier and gave him a stunning slap in the face.” [Other accounts say it was a straight-up punch, but that’s besides the point.]

But, as Rodrigues says, Quarrier wasn’t humiliated. The slap gave him “instantaneous and brutal celebrity,” winning him invitations to festivals across the world. “Some say that the slap became more important than either Quarrier or Godard.” The producer couldn’t have been happier. He and the slap became inseparable. “In the worst-case scenario,” Nelson concludes, “his epitaph will read as follows:  Was slapped by Godard.”

That’s all the Nelson Rodrigues I wanted to cite; now we’ll get back to Caetano. Eventually, after a few minutes of hysterically pacing around the kitchen, I sat down to read everything in the column that came after my name. Caetano does say some nice things about my blog, it’s true. He also pokes fun at my academic pedigree, wondering aloud how he can possibly debate with an Ivy Leaguer when he dropped out of college, and then gently censures what he sees as a pre-Tropicália purism in my critique of La piel que habito. He mentioned my criticisms of the clichés about Brazil to Pedro Almodóvar, and Almodóvar, right of the bat, mentioned two American films that portrayed an equally ridiculous Spain. “What I want is to stress that the fact that Brazilians didn’t get worked up about [La piel que habito] could be a good sign,” Caetano writes.

Now, in my meager defense, let me say that I wasn’t exactly exhorting Brazilians to picket Almodóvar’s films. What I realized, watching a drug-lord carioca parade around in a tiger suit in one of Almodóvar’s films, is precisely how easy it can be – even in this day and age – for Americans to not recognize the degree of parodic exaggeration present in many external representations of Brazil. Just a brief sampling of the reactions I got from relatives and acquaintances when I announced I was going to Rio sufficed to drive that home. There’s no reason Brazilians shouldn’t take it with good humor; I don’t get worked up about Friends, for God’s sake. But it’s true that I tend to get more indignant on Brazilians’ behalf than I perhaps should. Last semester I took a wonderful seminar on Music and Literature in Brazil, and Prof. Meira Monteiro spent a solid semester trying to beat purist notions of “authenticity” and scorn for kitsch out of our heads. As much as I adored the seminar, having Caetano Veloso say the same thing to my face (to my face in newsprint, rather) had a slightly different impact.

Let’s just take a TIME OUT here to analyze what’s just happened. On the Princeton application, they ask for your favorite book (at the time, Cien años de soledad), favorite word (I put “absquatulate”) and favorite film (it was Todo sobre mi madre, hands down). In the family car back home, there’s a mix CD with half a dozen Caetano songs on it that I played so often that my sister ended up banning it. So, to summarize: one of my favorite directors and one of my favorite artists think that I took a slightly myopic view of the former’s latest film. Nelson has a good phrase for situations like these: eu fiquei dilacerada de alegria.

Caetano Veloso and Pedro Almodóvar disagree with me. I’ve got the makings of a damned good epitaph right there.

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux

É escritora, tradutora, brasilianista e diretora de pesquisa na Rádio Novelo