For my first interactions with Brazilian culture and my language partner, I engaged with some prominent Brazilian cartoons and films. The first piece of media was a well known and popular cartoon called “Turma da Mônica”. I decided to read a bit into the history of the series and discovered it originated from a newspaper comic strip called “Folha da Manhã” in 1959. Since then it has been adapted into other media like movies, although I saw a cartoon marathon instead.
The cartoon was very funny and I can see why the series is so successful with children and teenagers in Brazil. All of the stories were not interconnected and started with a new plot in each episode. However, there were some missing links that I missed at the beginning of the episodes because I did not know who the characters were. “Cascão” for example is a young boy who refuses to shower and “Cebolinha” is another boy who has a very heavy lisp. In addition to trying to learn more about the characters, while I was watching the cartoon the first thing I struggled with was the amount of slang and shortening of words the characters produced. My language partner actually told me to look out for speech and grammatical errors that the characters produce since the comic is supposed to mimic the language behavior of children, as that is the target audience. As a whole, I learned a lot of different slang and some shortening of words that Brazilians produce, so I will continue watching some videos here and there to brush up on my informal vocabulary.
The second piece of media my language partner recommended was a comedy called ‘Minha Mãe É Uma Peça”. This film included famous actor and comedian “Paulo Gustavo”, who I learned passed away from COVID earlier this year. He was very much a cultural icon and my language partner mentioned “basically all of Brazil cried when he passed away”.
Knowing this while watching the movie made it much more engaging and I enjoyed the performance put on. The movie is actually a representation of his life as a child, although he plays the role of the mother in this film. The plot is about the mother being upset after hearing a phone call from her children in which they bash her as a mother figure and the way she continuously babies them. The mother then departs from their home and spends some time hidden away at her aunt’s house reminiscing about her children’s younger days when they still needed her for everything. The movie is then a compilation of funny moments and interactions with the children as they grew up in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro. Language-wise, I again struggled with the amount of slang used throughout the film. It also did not help that the movie had no subtitles, but I managed to understand 90% of what was being said and followed along with the storyline quite easily. Overall, the film provided great insight into the day to day cultural life of a middle class Brazilian family. It also introduced me to some of the common expectations for children in Brazil and some of the humor that comes along with it.
Comments
Hi Marco, It was really cool reading about Turma da Monica. I also agree because exposure to small things like cartoon definitely help with comprehension and picking up on small vocabulary which is helpful
Hi Marco! I really enjoyed reading about Turma da Mônica. I agree with you on how cartoons can help improve informal vocabulary because of the slang words that are used. I also learned a lot of informal vocbaulary through Korean webtoons and I feel like informal vocabulary is just as important as formal vocabulary is.
Muito bom!!!