Beyond Carnival: Male Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century Brazil (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture) Review

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(More customer reviews)Covering developments between 1890 and 1980, Green's book is the best place to begin to understand the appropriation of public space by gay male Brazilians. Besides seeming to have read everything written by or about male homosexuality in Brazil (his book's apparatus occupies more than a hundred pages), including archived forensic and psychiatric case records, Green draws on seventy life history interviews and a cache of illustrations from across the twentieth century.
Green shows that the gap between representation of rigid (masculine-active) bofe and (feminine-passive and frequently transvestite) bicha roles and how Brazilian males lived their sexualities increased during 1960s, and subsequently has been challenged in public discourse, but that behavior and purportedly universal norms were already noncongruent during the 1930s. Besides cataloging a history of growing bicha pride and steady bofe bashful ambivalence, Green also shows that bicha prominence in carnival is a tradition that is relatively recent, emerging during the 1950s, and suppressed for a few years at the beginning of the 1970s.
Green sensibly stresses the emergence during the 1950s and 60s of first bicha and then gay publications. The American homophile movement then also involved only a few determined individuals and fugitive publications. Rio's famed beaches have been important as places where men of varying economic status who are sexually interested in men meet - and socialize, and develop group consciousness, as well as engineering sexual liaisons. Brazilian gay clubs, bars, and restaurants cluster near beaches with gay enclaves.

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For many foreign observers, Brazil still conjures up a collage of exotic images, ranging from the camp antics of Carmen Miranda to the bronzed girl (or boy) from Ipanema moving sensually over the white sands of Rio's beaches. Among these tropical fantasies is that of the uninhibited and licentious Brazilian homosexual, who expresses uncontrolled sexuality during wild Carnival festivities and is welcomed by a society that accepts fluid sexual identity. However, in Beyond Carnival, the first sweeping cultural history of male homosexuality in Brazil, James Green shatters these exotic myths and replaces them with a complex picture of the social obstacles that confront Brazilian homosexuals.Ranging from the late nineteenth century to the rise of a politicized gay and lesbian rights movement in the 1970s, Green's study focuses on male homosexual subcultures in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. He uncovers the stories of men coping with arrests and street violence, dealing with family restrictions, and resisting both a hostile medical profession and moralizing influences of the Church. Green also describes how these men have created vibrant subcultures with alternative support networks for maintaining romantic and sexual relationships and for surviving in an intolerant social environment. He then goes on to trace how urban parks, plazas, cinemas, and beaches are appropriated for same-sex erotic encounters, bringing us into the world of street cruising, male hustlers, and cross-dressing prostitutes.Through his creative use of police and medical records, newspapers, literature, newsletters, and extensive interviews, Green has woven a fascinating history, the first of its kind for Latin America, that will set the standard for future works."Green brushes aside outworn cultural assumptions about Brazil's queer life to display its full glory, as well as the troubles which homophobia has sent its way. . . . This latest gem in Chicago's 'World of Desire' series offers a shimmering view of queer Brazilian life throughout the 20th century."—Kirkus ReviewsWinner of the 2000 Lambda Literary Awards' Emerging Scholar Award of the Monette/Horwitz TrustWinner of the 1999 Hubert Herring Award, Pacific Coast Council on Latin American Studies

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