CROSS-DRESSED POETICS: LESSONS AND LIMITS OF GENDER TRANSGRESSIONS IN BRAZILIAN POPULAR MUSIC By LUCIANA C. MONTEIRO A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2007 1 © 2007 Luciana C. Monteiro 2 To my parents, Sylvio and Marisa 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, I would like to thank my committee members, Dr. Efraín Barradas and Dr. Tace Hedrick, for their kind guidance and for their comprehension in dealing with my last-minute Brazilian timing. I also thank them for making me vulnerable to the Cultural and Gender Studies bug. I thank Dr. Elizabeth Ginway and Dr. David Pharies for the opportunity to be a Teaching Assistant in Romance Languages and Literatures, and for supporting me throughout these past years, making it possible for me to complete this degree. I thank Sunni for giving me incentive to join UF and to expand my intellectual horizons, and for being a shining light throughout this adventure. I thank her for the infinite patience she had in listening to my research findings over and over, in proof reading my writings, and understanding the fact that I may never use the right prepositions. I am grateful to the loving Goddess who gave the two of us a chance to be here today and to have hopes for tomorrow. Above all, I need to thank my parents, Sylvio and Marisa, for their unconditional support and their pride, their endless love and caring, and for infusing me with self-confidence and freedom of thinking. I thank my brother Sylvio for my two adorable little nephews and for being such a loving and affectionate man. I thank my friend Monica who, despite the physical distance, provided me emotional and spiritual support when I most needed it, and for lending me her ears by staying on the phone line for hours. “Gracias a Belkis por ser mi hermanita aquí.” Thanks to this family, I was never alone and always had a life filled with love. My last word, and the most important, must go to my advisor, “meu chefe,” Dr. Charles Perrone. I could not have asked for a more generous, relentless and dedicated mentor. “Carlo” is my intellectual guru, my beer friend, my joke partner and one of the most bighearted persons I have ever met. “Obrigada ao Carlos” for letting me in, and I hope he sticks around because there is still a lot of fun for us to share. “E agora, ‘vai trabalhar vagabund(a)’!” 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................4 ABSTRACT.....................................................................................................................................6 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................8 2 SHIFTING GENDER AND SEXUAL IDENTITY PARADIGMS ......................................21 Representations of Women in Mid-Century Brazilian Popular Music...................................23 Chico Buarque: Female Poetic Personae................................................................................32 3 DEFYING MASCULINITY: A DIFFERENT KIND OF MAN ...........................................59 Caetano Veloso: Gender Ambiguity and Sexually Ambivalent Stage Personae....................59 Ney Matogrosso: a Master of Cross-Dressing and Masquerades...........................................73 Gilberto Gil: Mythical and Poetical Androgyny ....................................................................94 4 DEFYING FEMININITY: A DIFFERENT KIND OF WOMAN.......................................103 5 CONCLUSION.....................................................................................................................129 APPENDIX DISCOGRAPHY ..............................................................................................138 LIST OF REFERENCES.............................................................................................................142 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................................147 5 Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Master of Arts CROSS-DRESSED POETICS: LESSONS AND LIMITS OF GENDER TRANSGRESSIONS IN BRAZILIAN POPULAR MUSIC By Luciana C. Monteiro August 2007 Chair: Charles A. Perrone Major: Latin American Studies This thesis examines manifestations and implications of gender transgression in Brazilian popular music from c. 1966 until c. 2006. In late twentieth-century MPB (Música Popular Brasileira) sexually ambiguous performances destabilize fixed gender identities, question established notions of masculinity and femininity and provide a site where artists and audiences can challenge heteronormativity. Focusing on verbal and non-verbal aspects of musical discourse of select contemporary singers and songwriters, I investigate the ways in which their works subvert and/or assert Brazilian society’s hegemonic (hetero)sexist ideas. Influenced by the international counterculture movements, young Brazilian music-makers were committed to fighting a double source of oppression: the moral traditions of Brazilian society, as well as the repression posed by the authoritarian military dictatorship (1964–1985). Successive generations followed the artistic lead of Chico Buarque and Tropicalist Caetano Veloso and have consistently defied hegemonic discursive practices in relation to gender and sexuality. Analysis of performances and lyrics produced over the past forty years reveals how the practice of cross-dressed poetics and the creation of ambiguous stage personae have contributed to the questioning of patriarchal values, female submission, masculine and feminine standards 6 and the exclusivity of heterosexuality. Nevertheless, exhaustive repetition within commodity culture and social dynamics pose a limit to the subversive potential of such artistic utterances. The fact that those defiant experiences occur in a select, carnivalized public space means that they do not necessarily translate into acceptance of personal gender transgressions or into sexual politics, and the preference in Brazil continues to be to keep unconventional sexuality as the “unspeakable.” 7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW This thesis examines manifestations and implications of gender transgression in a central field of expressive culture in Brazil. In late twentieth-century Brazilian popular music sexually ambiguous performances destabilize fixed gender identities, question established notions of masculinity and femininity and provide a site where artists and audiences can challenge heteronormativity, which will be defined fully below. Focusing on verbal and non-verbal aspects of musical discourse—lyrics, sound structure, and artistic performance, live / recorded—of select contemporary Brazilian singers and songwriters, I investigate in which ways their works subvert and/or assert Brazilian society’s hegemonic (hetero)sexist ideas. The verbal discourses contained in the songs examined in this investigation are readily accessible, as vocals are clear and understandable. Musical arrangements never interfere with aural comprehension (as it can in certain genres, such dance music, heavy rock and others). The analysis of relevant artistic cases during a forty-year span, from c.1966 until c.2006, intends to demonstrate how a cross-dressed poetics manifest itself in composition and performance. Once established, each case of critique will be complemented by discussion of its impact on society on a broader level, according to the period of occurrence. A guiding hypothesis for the present investigation is that despite the significant gains in proposing new and less rigid notions of gender and sexuality, the traditional way Brazilian society operates poses a limit on the subversive potential of such artistic utterances, which often tend to be confined to and understood as part of a carnivalized space. Several key terms are introduced in this preamble and will be used throughout the chapters to follow. Most have been incorporated into discourses of gender and queer studies over the last several decades. Heteronormativity should be understood as those punitive rules (social, familial, and legal) that compel individuals to conform to dominant (hegemonic) heterosexual 8 standards for identity. The term is a short version of normative heterosexuality. Heteronormativity is strictly correlated to gender conformity and rigid boundaries that separate feminine from masculine. The common-sense notion is that gender is a sign of sexual orientation, and policing gender functions as a way to secure heterosexuality. Sexist refers to having strict definitions of what pertains to female and male, often with implied bias. In the binary opposition between feminine and masculine, the latter tends to enjoy a privileged position. Heterosexist is, in turn, a similar rigid and hierarchical separation of heterosexual and homosexual. The terms carnivalized and carnivalesque derive from the Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. They will be used here in regards to artistic expression that incorporates aspects of the rituals of carnival, such as eccentricity, role inversions, and violations of generally accepted behaviors. When referring to Brazilian society, carnivalization also incorporates Roberto da Matta’s idea that social life embodies the ambivalences symbolized in the rituals