Super Xuxa
If there is an American equivalent to the Xuxa phenomenon in Brazil, I'd love to know about it.
While her presence as the country's top entertainer has waned in the last decade, it's still hard to avoid seeing Xuxa in televison commercials, b-movies, cartoons, toy stores, and shopping malls. I've become so fascinated by her legend, I've made it a personal mission to visit O Mundo Da Xuxa the next time I'm in Sao Paulo.
In my pursuit to become a self-taught expert on Brazilian popular culture I came across an interesting article on the social impact of Xuxa in her native country.
Amelia Simpson writes in her essay titled "Xuxa and the Televisual Imaginary,"
"The Xou da Xuxa (the live 5-hour, six-days a week, program she hosted for over a decade) attracts because it dissolves unseemly differences of race, gender, and class in a televisual pandemonium of generic happiness and idol worship. Xuxa's image assembles in one tidy package a set of unweidly, mutually contradictory ideas. She celebrates an ideal of femininity that is both erotic and domestic. She relentlessly markets a consumer-driven model of modernity in a country where the basic needs of many citizens are not met. And she presents a white ideal of beauty in a nation with the second-largest population of African descent on earth. Xuxa's image thus reconciles, without resolving, the deep fissures of race, gender, and capital that divide Brazil."
Pretty heavy stuff. She goes on to say that Xuxa's persona became such a encapsulation of perfection for the uneducated, that many thought she was a celestial being and the second-coming of the Virgin Mary. In one case, a Xuxa doll was said to have wept blood.
Of course, American audiences weren't fooled when Xuxa made an attempt at an American version of her variety show. I vaguely remember when this debuted ; being caught completely off-guard by her kooky antics, sychronized dances, and failure to command the english language. All that said, her 1988 movie, "Super Xuxa Contra Baixo Astral" (Super Xuxa vs. Satan) is brilliant from beginning to end (think Labyrinth meets Rainbow Brite meets City of God). Here is the only place I've been able to locate that sells this masterpiece of Brazilian cinema.
While her presence as the country's top entertainer has waned in the last decade, it's still hard to avoid seeing Xuxa in televison commercials, b-movies, cartoons, toy stores, and shopping malls. I've become so fascinated by her legend, I've made it a personal mission to visit O Mundo Da Xuxa the next time I'm in Sao Paulo.
In my pursuit to become a self-taught expert on Brazilian popular culture I came across an interesting article on the social impact of Xuxa in her native country.
Amelia Simpson writes in her essay titled "Xuxa and the Televisual Imaginary,"
"The Xou da Xuxa (the live 5-hour, six-days a week, program she hosted for over a decade) attracts because it dissolves unseemly differences of race, gender, and class in a televisual pandemonium of generic happiness and idol worship. Xuxa's image assembles in one tidy package a set of unweidly, mutually contradictory ideas. She celebrates an ideal of femininity that is both erotic and domestic. She relentlessly markets a consumer-driven model of modernity in a country where the basic needs of many citizens are not met. And she presents a white ideal of beauty in a nation with the second-largest population of African descent on earth. Xuxa's image thus reconciles, without resolving, the deep fissures of race, gender, and capital that divide Brazil."
Pretty heavy stuff. She goes on to say that Xuxa's persona became such a encapsulation of perfection for the uneducated, that many thought she was a celestial being and the second-coming of the Virgin Mary. In one case, a Xuxa doll was said to have wept blood.
Of course, American audiences weren't fooled when Xuxa made an attempt at an American version of her variety show. I vaguely remember when this debuted ; being caught completely off-guard by her kooky antics, sychronized dances, and failure to command the english language. All that said, her 1988 movie, "Super Xuxa Contra Baixo Astral" (Super Xuxa vs. Satan) is brilliant from beginning to end (think Labyrinth meets Rainbow Brite meets City of God). Here is the only place I've been able to locate that sells this masterpiece of Brazilian cinema.
posted by Kevin J. Elliott at 1:33 AM
2 comments 
2 Comments:
this is nothing short of scary.
Would Oprah come close to qualifying?
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