Gabriela Monteiro Lunardi Thesis

“THE ‘ZOEIRA’ NEVER ENDS”: THE ROLE OF INTERNET MEMES IN CONTEMPORARY BRAZILIAN CULTURE

Gabriela Monteiro Lunardi Bachelor of Social Communication (Advertising), 2013, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil)

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy (Communication)

Digital Media Research Centre School of Communication Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology 2018

Keywords

Brazilian culture

Brazil

Cultural identity

Digital culture

Humour

Internet

Memes

Participatory media

Zoeira

Abstract

Internet access and use is growing around the world and, accordingly, the importance of understanding its cultural influence is also growing. Via everyday social media use, the stories, rumours and jokes that make up the culture of the internet are shared and transformed. Some of these texts are “memes”: that is, groups of texts that share similar characteristics and spread on the web, changing and adapting from one context to another (Shifman, 2014). To analyse internet memes means to investigate the cultural meanings of those expressions and how they relate to culture and society more broadly. In this context, this study focused on Brazilian memes.

I used textual analysis to study in depth three Brazilian internet memes: the

Neves and Temer’s recordings meme, which sprang from a secret audio recording of a discussion involving political corruption; the Sarrada no Ar (Brazilian funk) meme, which commented on a dance craze; and the Gretchen meme, which focused on the mononymous Brazilian celebrity Gretchen. I based the selection and analysis of the memes on the concept of the zoeira, which is a particularly Brazilian form of humour.

My goal was to understand how Brazilian internet memes represent specific aspects of

Brazilian culture and explore how Brazilian meme culture relates to the broader popular culture of the internet. This thesis concludes that: (1) humour is the way

Brazilians found to talk about controversial elements of Brazilian culture; (2) Brazilian internet memes can work as a genuine avenue of protest; (3) memes help Brazilians to build their cultural identity; (4) creating and sharing internet memes about Brazilian culture helps Brazilian users to connect with each other, forming a sense of shared community; and (5) through memes, the Brazilian community finds its place on a

global internet whose popular culture remains dominated by the English language and

American culture.

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Table of Contents

Keywords ...... i Abstract ...... ii Table of Contents ...... iv List of Figures ...... vi Statement of Original Authorship ...... x Acknowledgements ...... xi Chapter 1: Introduction...... 1 1.1 Context of the study ...... 1 1.2 Research design ...... 3 1.2.1 Objects of study ...... 4 1.2.2 Analysis approach ...... 5 1.3 Thesis structure ...... 6 Chapter 2: Internet Memes ...... 9 2.1 What are internet memes?...... 9 2.1.1 The structure of internet memes ...... 11 2.1.2 Repackaging mechanisms and meme genres ...... 13 2.2 Meme vs. viral ...... 14 2.3 Memes as social and cultural expressions of the internet ...... 15 2.4 From global to local ...... 17 2.5 Humour as an attribute ...... 20 Chapter 3: Humour and the Brazilian Internet ...... 22 3.1 Carnival: A Brazilian allegory ...... 22 3.2 The Brazilian laugh ...... 24 3.3 The zoeira: Brazilian humour on the internet ...... 27 3.3.1 Defining zoeira ...... 27 3.3.2 Zoeira vs. trolling ...... 30 3.3.3 The zoeira in digital media studies ...... 32 Chapter 4: Research Design ...... 36 4.1 Objects of study ...... 37 4.1.1 Politics: Neves and Temer’s recordings ...... 37 4.1.2 Class: Sarrada no Ar (Brazilian funk) ...... 38 4.1.3 Popular Culture: Gretchen ...... 39 4.2 Research process ...... 40 4.2.1 Discovering the Brazilian memes ...... 41 iv

4.2.2 Defining the concept of the zoeira and its uses ...... 43 4.2.3 Selecting the memes ...... 45 4.2.4 Collecting the material ...... 47 4.2.5 Storing the material ...... 51 4.3 Analysis approach ...... 52 Chapter 5: Politics – Neves and Temer’s recordings ...... 54 5.1 The zoeira in politics ...... 55 5.2 Neves and Temer’s recordings ...... 61 5.2.1 Memetic examples ...... 63 5.3 The zoeira in Neves and Temer’s recordings ...... 83 Chapter 6: Class – Sarrada no Ar (Brazilian funk) ...... 88 6.1 The zoeira in class ...... 88 6.2 Sarrada no ar (Brazilian funk) ...... 94 6.2.1 Memetic examples ...... 96 6.3 The zoeira in Sarrada no ar ...... 108 Chapter 7: Popular Culture – Gretchen ...... 113 7.1 The zoeira in popular culture ...... 113 7.2 Gretchen ...... 118 7.2.1 Memetic examples ...... 120 7.3 The zoeira in Gretchen ...... 131 Chapter 8: Conclusions ...... 137 8.1 Overview ...... 137 8.2 Discussion of findings ...... 138 8.2.1 Humour is the Brazilian way to talk about Brazil ...... 138 8.2.2 The zoeira as protest: Bottom-up ...... 140 8.2.3 The zoeira as the Brazilian pursuit of cultural identity: Top-down ...... 142 8.2.4 Brazilian community on the internet: “It is ugly, but it is us” ...... 143 8.2.5 Brazilian community on the “global internet”: “We are the internet too” ...... 145 8.3 Limitations and further research...... 146 Bibliography ...... 148

List of Figures

Figure 1. “Caturday”, a variation of the meme LOLCats ...... 9 Figure 2. “Nazaré Confusa” or “Confused Lady” meme ...... 12 Figure 3. Variation of the “Confused Lady” meme ...... 12 Figure 4. Cartoon from the newspaper O Pasquim ...... 25 Figure 5. Frames of the video “Zoeira” ...... 28 Figure 6. Image commonly used for “hueing” in online game forums ...... 31 Figure 7. Photo of the soccer game Brazil vs. Germany, during the semi-finals of the FIFA World Cup in 2014 ...... 33 Figure 8. Photoshopped picture of the TV host Faustão in a red shirt wearing a “white wing” ...... 34 Figure 9. Inaccurate description of the Brazilian meme Zuera on the website Know Your Meme ...... 42 Figure 10. Screenshot of the search page of the Museu de Memes catalogue ...... 43 Figure 11. Blog post from Ah, Negão! explaining the origin of the “gigantic backpack” meme ...... 46 Figure 12. Tweet about Claudia Raia’s performance of the Sarrada no Ar ...... 50 Figure 13. Facebook video about Gretchen as a meme ...... 51 Figure 14. Images of the tactile paving on the irregular sidewalk ...... 56 Figure 15. Facebook post featuring a screenshot of an ad for cases for GPS tracking devices ...... 57 Figure 16. Original photo of the children wearing the huge backpacks ...... 58 Figure 17. Photoshopped picture of the children as characters of the Mario Kart video game ...... 59 Figure 18. Photoshopped picture of the children going to the National Skydiving Centre ...... 59 Figure 19. Photoshopped picture of the children as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ...... 60 Figure 20. Image macros of the president of Brazil with the subtitle “I’m laughing / but I’m worried” ...... 61 Figure 21. Facebook video with the video clip of the song “D.i.s.c.o” ...... 64 Figure 22. Facebook photo of Ronaldo protesting against the President Dilma Rousseff ...... 65 Figure 23. Tweet with a video of the “credits” of Brazil ...... 66 Figure 24. Facebook post featuring a screenshot of a Tweet of the former President of the Chamber of Deputies, Eduardo Cunha ...... 67 vi

Figure 25. Photoshopped picture of Temer wearing a Vasco jersey ...... 68 Figure 26. Tweet featuring a reaction GIF illustrating the feeling of joy about the possible resignation of Temer and Neves after the corruption scandal...... 69 Figure 27. Tweet with a photoshopped picture of Temer sitting on the Iron Throne ...... 70 Figure 28. Image macros of Regina George from the film Mean Girls ...... 71 Figure 29. Tweet making fun of the supposed high frequency of impeachments in Brazil ...... 71 Figure 30. Tweet ironically simulating the announcement of Celso Roth as the new president of Brazil ...... 73 Figure 31. Facebook photo of the singer Ivete Sangalo wearing the presidential sash next to the singer Zeca Pagodinho ...... 73 Figure 32. Photoshopped picture of the singer Joesley Safadão with the logo of the JBS company over his face ...... 75 Figure 33. Tweet mocking the fact that “Joesley” would be an “honourable” name in Brazil ...... 75 Figure 34. Photoshopped picture of Lula playing the violin ...... 76 Figure 35. Photo collage of Rousseff smiling and laughing ...... 77 Figure 36. Photoshopped picture of Lula as Beyoncé on the video clip of the song “Formation” ...... 78 Figure 37. Tweet with a picture of the violinist playing one last song in the sinking Titanic ...... 79 Figure 38. Tweet with a picture of a girl smiling and holding a glass of beer in front of a truck on fire ...... 80 Figure 39. Tweet ironically saying that internautas do not need to worry about Brazil, as they “live on the internet” ...... 80 Figure 40. Tweet relating the name “Joesley” with something “typically Brazilian” ...... 81 Figure 41. Tweet relating the corruption scandal with the Brazilian TV Show Sessão da Tarde ...... 82 Figure 42. Facebook post from PT’s official Facebook page, providing a link to a collection of photos of President Temer ...... 85 Figure 43. Facebook post from the page “The Best of Brazil is ‘the Brazilian’” with a picture of a girl standing in the middle of the road and smiling in front of a truck on fire ...... 91 Figure 44. Facebook post with a picture of a car with a large household mirror replacing the rear-view mirror ...... 92 Figure 45. Facebook post with a picture of a child swimming in an improvised “pool” on a balcony ...... 93

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Figure 46. Screenshot of scene of the “Sarrada no Ar” dance video from Fezinho Patatyy on his YouTube channel ...... 94 Figure 47. Photo of a girl at school performing the Sarrada no Ar towards another girl ...... 97 Figure 48. Picture of a class of school children posing for a school photograph, while one of the students is doing the Sarrada no Ar body pose ...... 98 Figure 49. Screenshot of a scene of a video featuring two people dressed as the superheroes Spider-Man and The Flash, dancing the Sarrada no Ar in the middle of a street ...... 98 Figure 50. Screenshot of a scene of a video where a hairdresser is dancing Sarrada no Ar while cutting a client’s hair ...... 99 Figure 51. Picture of a man and a dog doing Sarrada no Ar ...... 99 Figure 52. A Facebook post featuring a video of Cláudia Raia doing the Sarrada no Ar on TV ...... 101 Figure 53. Repost of Mario Götze’s cover photo where he is celebrating a goal and supposedly doing the Sarrada no Ar ...... 102 Figure 54. Photo of a “Legendary Sarrada Challenge” attempt...... 103 Figure 55. Three examples of the variation of the meme Sarrada no Ar, the “Sarrada Evolution” ...... 104 Figure 56. Photoshopped image with the silhouette of Patatyy performing a Sarrada no Ar as the “unknown Pokémon” ...... 105 Figure 57. Screenshot of frames from the “Super Sarrada World” video ...... 106 Figure 58. The “Weekend Decree” from the Facebook page Legado da Copa ...... 107 Figure 59. Picture of a girl next to a wall pointing to graffiti saying: “I just want to sarrar” ...... 107 Figure 60. A Facebook post with a picture of a scene of the TV show Casos de Família ...... 115 Figure 61. Photo of Compadre Washington with headphones ...... 116 Figure 62. An image macros of Gretchen ...... 118 Figure 63. Gretchen’s first album “My Name is Gretchen” ...... 119 Figure 64. Screenshot of frames of a Gretchen reaction GIF about preferring to stay at home watching TV series rather than socialising ...... 121 Figure 65. Facebook post with a photo collage with four pictures of Gretchen wearing different wigs ...... 122 Figure 66. Reaction GIF of Gretchen making a rainbow with her legs revealing the text “foda-se” (“I don’t give a fuck”) ...... 123 Figure 67. Memetic text “Atenta” (“Alert”) ...... 124 Figure 68. Memetic text “Hopeless Gretchen” or “Sad Gretchen” ...... 125 Figure 69. Photoshopped picture of the horror movie character Annabelle with Gretchen’s face...... 126 viii

Figure 70. Photoshopped picture of the actress who plays Cuca revealing her “real” face, which here appears to be Gretchen’s ...... 126 Figure 71. Facebook post with a photo collage with Gretchen and Ariana Grande’s pictures ...... 128 Figure 72. Facebook post with a photo collage of three pictures from a Gretchen concert ...... 129 Figure 73. Tweet ironically suggesting that the “GIF” format was named after Gretchen ...... 130 Figure 74. Tweet with a GIF of Gretchen dancing in the “Swish Swish” video clip...... 131 Figure 75. A Facebook post with a screenshot of the comments on Katy Perry’s “Swish Swish” video clip on YouTube ...... 135

ix QUT Verified Signature

Acknowledgements

Writing this thesis was a big challenge - not only because I had to write in

English, which is a second language for me, but also because I had to explain concepts about Brazil that are difficult enough in Portuguese for Brazilian readers, let alone in

English and for the rest of the world. I was only able to face this challenge because I am surrounded by amazing people who helped me throughout this journey.

First and foremost, I must thank my family. My parents understood my desire to explore the world and study culture. They supported me unconditionally during my stay here in Australia, and only someone who comes from a Latina-Italian family knows how much it means to receive this support far from home. I know it was not easy to accept the idea of having your daughter living 15,000 kilometres away from you, Mum and Dad, and for that, I will be eternally grateful, obrigada mãe e pai. To my childhood idol and forever confidant, my sister Marina, who helped me understand the academic world in Australia and who has always believed in me, thank you mana.

To the woman who inspired me the most, my grandmother Elza, who taught me to be strong and never give up, thank you vózinha.

I would also like to thank both my supervisors, Professor Jean Burgess and Dr

Stephen Harrington. Thank you for all your support and guidance. Especially Jean, without her I would not be doing a Masters at all. She is someone whom I have admired since I discovered my passion for digital media studies when I was writing my undergraduate thesis, in 2013. Jean, I will never thank you enough for believing in me, in my will to do research and for helping me throughout this process. You are the best mentor I could have asked for. I believe I can say that I not only learnt a lot in our

meetings, but I also laughed a lot. I can assure you that by now you are as much zoeira as any other Brazilian. So thank you for making this thesis not only something that I am proud of, but also something so enjoyable to do.

Furthermore, I would also like to thank my partner, Pigue, who not only believes in all my projects, but also supports me daily in all my insecurities, existential crises and concerns about the Master’s degree. Thank you for being so great. You are the best person I could have ever chosen to share my life with, and I love you. Also, thanks to all my friends from Brazil and the ones that I met in Australia for supporting me and understanding when I could not meet or answer a message because “I have a thesis to finish”. You are the best.

Finally, I want to thank all QUT staff and colleagues who helped me to develop this research project, either by helping me with technical questions or by giving me emotional support. Carla, Jarrod, Sofya, Hannah, Sam, Yi, Maryline, and all those that

I have met at QUT, in lectures or workshops, that somehow have helped with this thesis - thank you.

For all of you, I hope you enjoy the reading!

Professional editor Michelle Dicinoski provided copyediting and proofreading services according to the guidelines laid out in the university-endorsed national

“Guidelines for Editing Research Theses”.

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Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 CONTEXT OF THE STUDY

One thing I learned as soon as I arrived in Australia was that my sense of humour was markedly different from the Australian one. I quickly got used to hearing questions like “is Brazil a dangerous place to live?” My answers were honest: “Yes, more than you think”, I would say, followed by a series of stories about assaults and other crimes that I, or some friend of mine, had experienced. I used to laugh while telling those stories. Why? First, because I think that such incidents are so absurd that they have become funny; and second because – I have to confess – for me it was kind of amusing to see the astonished faces of Australians discovering the sad reality of Brazil. In

Brazil, we are used to mixing talk about our problems, or the “ugliness” of our country, with expressions of humour. But I soon realised that I really had to stop laughing when talking about Brazilian problems in Australia – they are not really funny after all, and it seems like I only realised that in Australia, with all those shocked, serious faces looking at me.

When I gather with my Brazilian friends, on the other hand, we feel free to laugh at our country’s problems and culture, and the internet has become the perfect place to engage with this Brazilian humour. We might say to each other, “Have you seen that meme about the chaos in Rio? Oh, I miss Brazil! An Australian would never understand that!” I noticed that some internet memes – that is, those funny videos, images and texts that spread throughout the internet – perfectly portray what we miss most about Brazil, in a way that Australians seem not to understand. That feeling of nostalgia and culture shock while living overseas aroused my curiosity about the

cultural meaning of Brazilian internet memes. I was interested in understanding why some memes were experienced as “typically Brazilian”, and why Brazilians felt so connected with them.

According to the leading meme scholars on whose work I build in this thesis

(Milner, 2016; Shifman, 2014), memes are both social – emerging out of interactions among internet users – and cultural – working as expressions and shapers of shared values and meanings. Most of the books, articles and theses about internet memes I read, however, analysed memes from a macro perspective, as expressions of the internet culture in a general sense. They did not take into consideration the specificity of the smaller cultural groups which form the internet’s public sphere, or how these cultural aspects are reflected in the creation and propagation of memes. In order to address a more localized perspective, this thesis purposes to investigate the specific characteristics and uses of Brazilian memes as the expression of one such cultural group.

Today, Brazil occupies fourth position globally in terms of the number of internet users per country (Internet Live Stats, 2016), and Brazilian memes are spreading on the internet, which (until the rise of the Chinese internet) has traditionally been dominated by the English language (Danet & Herring, 2003). In that context, my interest was in understanding what role Brazilian internet memes play in Brazilian culture today, and what non-English meme culture can tell us about the diverse popular culture of the internet. In order to achieve that objective, I developed two research questions:

1) How do Brazilian internet memes represent specific aspects of Brazilian

culture?

2) How is Brazilian meme culture related to the broader popular culture of the

internet?

After collecting and analysing the material for the study, a process which I will clarify in the next chapter, this study has found that: (1) humour is the dominant

Brazilian way to talk about Brazilian political, social and cultural issues; (2) Brazilian internet memes are a genuine form of protest in Brazil, a country that has gone through a history of political changes, and whose people have been deprived of expressing their concerns about their nation; (3) Brazilian internet meme culture clarifies and helps to define Brazilian cultural identity; through humour, Brazilians represent the country’s popular culture and illustrate what “being Brazilian” means; (4) Brazilian internet memes connects the Brazilian users on the internet in one community that recognises itself as coming from the same background and belonging to the same culture. In that context, Brazilian memes help the Brazilian community to define their identity online too; (5) in relation to the “global internet”, sharing Brazilian memes with the world means to put Brazilian community on the “internet map”, working as a symbolic subversion of the established power, as English and US culture dominates this space.

1.2 RESEARCH DESIGN

This study starts with the concept of the zoeira, which I define here as Brazilian humour on the internet, especially when the main topic of the meme is Brazilian culture. Zoeira is a Brazilian Portuguese slang expression which can be loosely translated as “joke” or “mockery”. On the internet, this expression is used to make fun of a situation, usually one that was not originally intended to be funny, and often with explicit reference to Brazilian national identity or culture. So, for example, when an internet user creates a meme to mock Brazilian corruption, people call it a zoeira. From that premise, I examined a series of Brazilian memes using this type of humour, the

zoeira, and identified its three main uses on the internet: (1) politics, that is, when

Brazilian internet uses the zoeira to talk about Brazilian problems related to politics, such as corruption, social inequality and violence; (2) class, related to Brazilian social inequality, focusing on the way the zoeira is used make fun of lower-class behaviour and to represent what “being Brazilian” means; and (3) popular culture, when users use the zoeira to illustrate their opinion about the Brazilian mainstream culture, making fun of it from a superior perspective, but recognising it as genuinely Brazilian.

1.2.1 Objects of study For each use of the zoeira, I selected one representative internet meme to be analysed. Each one of the three memes illustrates how the respective use of the zoeira appeared on the internet.

For politics I selected the “Neves and Temer’s recordings” meme. This meme was a result of the press leak of recordings of two phone calls, one involving the

Senator Aécio Neves, another involving the President of Brazil, Michel Temer. Both recordings revealed that those politicians were involved in a major corruption scandal

(Watts, 2017a). When the press released the audio material, the immediate response of the Brazilian internet was to create memetic texts about this episode, using the zoeira to making fun of the chaotic political scenario (Martini & Braga, 2017).

For class I selected the Sarrada no Ar meme. It originated in a YouTube video where an amateur dancer of Brazilian Funk (a type of music typical of the Brazilian favela, or urban slums) creates a dance routine for the song “Sarrada no Ar”. This choreography became a dance craze, and people all over Brazil started to reproduce the Sarrada no Ar dance in the most unusual places. Here, the zoeira relates to the act of turning Sarrada no Ar into a symbol of the lower-class and, ultimately, a symbol of

Brazilian culture. 4

For popular culture I chose the “Gretchen” meme. Gretchen is a Brazilian singer and dancer who became a pop icon in Brazil in the late 1970s, mostly because of her sexy dance moves. She went through a troubled career, trying to recover her success at all costs, and later becoming a porn star, a mayoral candidate and a reality TV star

(Brum & Samora, 2010). The internet turned Gretchen into a meme, making fun of her failures, but also marking her journey as a truly Brazilian story. Gretchen’s career represents mainstream culture in Brazil, and that is why Brazilian internet users used the zoeira to both mock and exalt her as a symbol of Brazilian popular culture.

1.2.2 Analysis approach Based on the concept of the zoeira and its uses, I investigated how the three selected memes appeared on the internet and how they represented the uses of the zoeira. I collected memetic examples (that is, images, videos, GIFs and texts which were part of the memes) of each one of the memes and divided them into groups based on their content. Through a process of close textual analysis, I examined a corpus of examples from each of the groups, looking for the “intrinsic zoeira” within them.

First, I analysed how each meme was represented. I investigated the type of language used in the memetic examples, their formats (image, video, text) and if they were digitally edited (and if so, how they were modified). I also investigated whether any specific group of people, or type of user, had identified with that meme. I did this by analysing how the meme appeared (that is, in which channels – Facebook, Twitter or blogs), in what kind of groups, communities or pages online, and in what way (as comments, or as social media or blog posts). Finally, I investigated if that meme somehow changed the way Brazilians deal with that topic or with meme culture in general.

1.3 THESIS STRUCTURE

The thesis starts with a review of internet memes as a field of study (Chapter 2) and the role of humour in Brazilian culture (Chapter 3). In Chapter 2 I discuss what internet memes are and why the internet creates and share memes. First, I clarify the meaning of memes and how it has shifted from their original definition (Dawkins,

2006) to the current popular understanding of “internet memes”, based on Shifman’s

(2014) concept, which defines an internet meme as a group of digital items that share similar aspects and are spread and transformed across the web. I also explain the differences between the concept of “meme” and “viral”, which are often conflated

(Burgess, 2008; Shifman, 2014). A meme can be viral, in the sense that it can spread on the internet reaching a significant amount of access, but it does not need to reach a broad audience in order to become a meme (Burgess, 2008; Shifman, 2014). Then, I analyse the social motivations behind the creation and sharing of memes and how they can work as cultural shapers on the internet (Gal, Shifman, & Kampf, 2015; Milner,

2016; Miltner, 2014; Shifman, 2014). I also discuss how memes are being adapted to different cultures, where “global” memetic aspects are shaped to fit “local” contexts to be reproduced on the internet (Laineste & Voolaid, 2017; Shifman, 2014). Finally,

I analyse in more detail one key memetic attribute, humour (Milner, 2016; Miltner,

2014; Shifman, 2014), by reviewing three theories of humour in communication

(Meyer, 2000): relief, incongruity and superiority.

In Chapter 3 I examine aspects of Brazilian culture, focusing on the role of humour in Brazil. First, in section 3.1, I use the allegory of carnival to analyse Brazilian culture, as Matta’s (1991) study suggests, combining this theory with Bakhtin’s (1984) concepts of the carnivalesque and the ambivalent laugh of carnival. Next, in section

3.2, I analyse what role humour played in Brazil during the Empire of Brazil, in the

19th century (Queiroz, 2010; Telles & Soares, 2016), and during the Brazilian military dictatorship, in the 1960s (Telles & Soares, 2016). Finally, in the last section of

Chapter 3, I explore the role of Brazilian humour on the internet, through the concept of the zoeira. I explain what zoeira means, the differences between the zoeira and trolling, and also review how the expression zoeira was approached in previous

Brazilian digital media studies.

Chapter 4 outlines the research design, in which I review the research questions and the focus of the study. Here, I present the three objects of study (Section 4.1): the three uses of the zoeira and their respective memes. Section 4.2 is dedicated to clarifying the processes of material selection and collection, the discovery of Brazilian memes on the internet, how I defined the concept of the zoeira and its uses, the criteria for the selection of the objects of study, and how I collected and stored the material.

Finally, in section 4.3, I present my approach to textual analysis and explain how I applied it to the material.

Chapters 5, 6 and 7 are dedicated to the analyses of the three uses of the zoeira and its memes: Chapter 5 is “Politics – Neves and Temer’s recordings”; Chapter 6 is

“Class – Sarrada no Ar (Brazilian funk)”; Chapter 7 is “Popular Culture – Gretchen”.

All the three chapters follow the same structure: the first section is dedicated to explaining the use of the zoeira of that particular chapter; the second section overviews the meme’s story and analyses the material collected on that meme, that is, its memetic examples; and the last section relates that use of the zoeira in the meme, analysing the cultural meanings behind the meme.

Chapter 8 is the conclusion. Here, I review the thesis’s significance and discuss the main findings of the study. First, I outline that humour is the Brazilian way to talk about social issues in Brazil. On the internet, the zoeira works as a liberating, 7

ambivalent laugh that allows Brazilians to talk about delicate subjects such as politics, the gap between social classes, and the country’s popular culture. I also identify that

Brazilian internet uses the zoeira as a form of protest in political memes, when the

Brazilian internet positions itself as “the people” against “the authorities” and subverts the power of the authorities. The zoeira also works as a tool to build the national cultural identity, as Brazilian memes help Brazilian internet users to identify and relate with Brazilian culture and images. Finally, I state that through Brazilian memes and the zoeira, Brazilian users connect with each other, becoming part of one group, culturally distinct from the rest of an internet dominated by the US culture and English language contents.

After explaining the findings, I present the limitations of this thesis and propose possible directions for further research, suggesting an extension of this approach to other distinct cultural groups on the global internet.

Chapter 2: Internet Memes

2.1 WHAT ARE INTERNET MEMES?

Recently, the word “meme” has come to be widely used to refer to images, texts and videos that spread on the internet as jokes and rumours (for example, Figure 1).

Usually carrying a dose of humour, memes are everyday expressions of the web

(Burgess, 2008; Milner, 2016; Shifman, 2014). Internet users create, transform and share memes to express their opinion, reinforce a point of view, comment about a topic or illustrate their ideas (Milner, 2016). As we will see in this chapter, memes are social and cultural expressions of the internet, and work to construct digital media folklore

(Burgess, 2008; Milner, 2016; Shifman, 2014).

Figure 1. “Caturday”, a variation of the meme LOLCats. This meme features cute pictures of cats with texts written in “lolspeak”, an internet vernacular that interprets and imitates how cats would speak if they could speak English. From “Caturday” by C. Menning, 2010. Retrieved June 12, 2017, from http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/caturday

The concept of “internet memes” comes from the term “meme”, which was introduced in 1976 by the biologist Richard Dawkins as the theory of transmission of culture by imitation (Dawkins, 2006). The word “meme” (a mixture of the Greek root

“Mimeme” and the word “gene”) was defined as a “new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation” (Dawkins, 2006, p.

192). According to this theory, culture would be replicated from person to person, similar to the concept of genes, but here in a non-genetic way.

This original theory is somewhat controversial (Shifman, 2014), and it has been further explored by a wide range of scientific disciplines (Blackmore, 1999; Burman,

2012; Chase, 2006; Marsden, 1998; Rose, 1998; Vaneechoutte & Skoyles, 1998). I will not dig into those studies here, but it is important to outline that the contemporary vernacular concept of “internet meme” differs from the initial approach, which sees the meme as the cultural equivalent of the biological gene – that is, as a unit of replication and variation that might be used to explain the evolution of ideas.

Limor Shifman (2014) established one of the first official definitions of the term “internet meme” in digital media scholarship, and I will follow this definition throughout the thesis. According to her, internet memes are: “(a) a group of digital items sharing common characteristics of content, form and/or stance, which (b) were created with awareness of each other, and (c) were circulated, imitated, and/or transformed via the Internet by many users.” (p. 41). That is, Shifman (2014) comprehends memes as cultural units with several dimensions and different aspects to be imitated, and one meme not as an individual text, but as various texts, which form a group that share common characteristics.

2.1.1 The structure of internet memes According to Shifman’s (2014) approach, three dimensions compose the structure of internet memes: content, form and stance. Here, “content” relates to the ideas and ideologies behind the meme’s creation; “form” expresses the physical structure of the meme, for example, whether it is an image or video; and “stance” determines who established the information and how they “position themselves in relation to the text, its linguistic codes, the addressees, and other potential speakers”

(Shifman, 2014, p. 40). Therefore, any time that digital items are shared, imitated and transformed in any dimension (content, form and/or stance) and by many people, an internet meme is born.

To illustrate this concept, I will use as an example a Brazilian internet meme which became popular worldwide, the “Nazaré Tedesco confusa” (in Portuguese) or

“Confused Lady” (Figure 2). This meme is a photo collage of screenshots of scenes where the Brazilian soap opera character Nazaré Tedesco, played by the actress Renata

Sorrah, looks confused. The image also has math equations drawn over her pictures

(arthurferreira, 2017).

Figure 2. “Nazaré Confusa” or “Confused Lady” meme. From “Math Lady / Confused Lady” by arthurferreira, 2017. Retrieved April 26, 2017, from http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/math-lady-confused-lady

Nazaré Tedesco was a character with (comically) psychopathic tendencies in the telenovela Senhora do Destino, broadcast in Brazil in 2004. In the Brazilian internet, the character’s facial expressions and bizarre scenes became a “masterpiece” for creating memes. The “Nazaré Tedesco Confusa” meme became internationally famous. In this meme, internet users started to replicate this image with texts describing different situations that often make people feel confused. In the “Confused

Lady” meme, the form and content were replicated, whereas the stance changed from one example to another, as I will explain below.

Figure 3. Variation of the “Confused Lady” meme. From “Just say it in months, god damn it!” by 9GAG, n.d. Retrieved April 26, 2017, from https://9gag.com/gag/a25ZDYw/just-say-it-in-months-god-damn-it

In Figure 3 we see an example of the “Confused Lady” meme. We can see that the example is part of this meme because it replicates the same form (visual, a photo collage) and content (Nazaré Tedesco’s image with math equations over her photos,

illustrating the idea of facing a difficult situation or trying to figure out an answer for a problem). Nevertheless, the stance here can change from one text to the other. The statement in Figure 3, for instance, is suggesting that some people get confused when pregnant women count pregnancy time by weeks. The combination of the text “when a woman says she’s 29 weeks pregnant” with the Confused Lady image invokes an imagined audience of people who have gone through a similar situation, and who might therefore identify with this meme.

2.1.2 Repackaging mechanisms and meme genres Any given meme’s structure can be modified in many ways across the internet, through what Shifman (2014, p. 19) calls the “means of repackaging”. There are two main forms of repackaging: mimicry and remix. Mimicry “involves the practice of

‘redoing’ – the re-creation of a specific text by other people and/or by other means”

(Shifman, 2014, p. 20), that is, when a text is imitated or parodied by another. The other form of repackaging, remix, is the manipulation of a digital item.

Based on the means of repackaging, internet users can create different meme genres, that is, “types” of memes, that follow a certain structure and aesthetic style

(Shifman, 2014). Shifman (2014) defined nine meme genres, such as “Photoshop”, that is, memes that use pictures which were digitally edited in software like Adobe

Photoshop; “Photo Fabs”, when the meme consists in imitating a body position; and

“Stock Character Macros”, when a text is applied to a fixed image. Milner (2016) expanded this range and added genres like “Text” and “Screenshots”, which show new ways that a meme can be repackaged. Today, as this study will further show, there are many other types of memetic texts. The use of everyday expressions of the internet

such as reaction GIFs1, for example, became part of the meme culture (Miltner &

Highfield, 2017). A GIF is an animated image, like a short video, that repeats itself in looping. And reaction GIFs, as the name indicates, are GIFs that the internet uses to express reactions, feelings and thoughts (Miltner & Highfield, 2017). The different repackaging mechanisms and meme genres build the memetic vernacular, as they define structural and aesthetic rules within the meme culture (Milner, 2016; Shifman,

2014).

2.2 MEME VS. VIRAL

As outlined above, memes can be created, circulated and replicated by many people on the internet. Due to this, sometimes memes are (inaccurately) called “virals”

(Burgess, 2008; Shifman, 2014). A “viral” is a single piece of content (e.g., a video) which reaches a huge number of internet users in different social networks in a short period as part of a “social information flow process” (Nahon & Hemsley, 2013, p. 16).

Although virals can, indeed, become memes, virals and memes are not synonymous:

Whereas the viral comprises a single cultural unit (such as video, photo, or

joke) that propagates in many copies, an Internet meme is always a collection

of texts. You can identify a single video and say “This is a viral video” without

referring to any other text, but this would not make much sense when

describing an Internet meme. A single video is not an Internet meme but part

of a meme – one manifestation of a group of texts that together can be described

as the meme. (Shifman, 2014, p. 56)

Therefore, an internet meme (or a part of it) may be viral, but it does not need to be viral to be considered a meme. A viral is an individual digital item that becomes

1 Acronym for Graphics Interchange Format. 14

widely spread on the internet, whereas an internet meme is a collection of correlated contents which may or may not become widely popular. As Milner (2016, p. 90) explains: “whether massively public conversation, esoterically subcultural or intimately interpersonal, memetic media afford collective connection by intertwining individual expression with social precedent”. In other words, it is not the possibility of spread that determines a meme’s success, but its ability to be social and collective.

2.3 MEMES AS SOCIAL AND CULTURAL EXPRESSIONS OF THE INTERNET

Memes are fundamental social and cultural expressions in internet culture. As

Milner (2016, p. 2) suggests, “the participatory media world is made—is brought into existence and sustained—through messy memetic interrelationships. It exists in the space between individual texts and broader conversations, between individual citizens and broader cultural discourses”. That is, internet users create and circulate memes motived by personal identification with a collective end, building the internet as a social space. According to Shifman (2014), social motivations behind the creation of and interaction with a meme are based on the idea that we live in a highly individualised era, where people want to perform their unique identity, at the same time that they want to be part of larger social networks or communities. Therefore, people might create, share and transform internet memes because they identify themselves with that topic and want to feel part of a larger community (Milner, 2016;

Shifman, 2014).

The studies of Gal et al. (2015) and Miltner (2014) suggest that, more than social expressions of the internet, memes are cultural shapers of smaller groups that compose the internet. Gal et al. (2015) conducted a qualitative interpretation and quantitative analysis of more than 200 memetic responses to the video “It Gets Better”,

addressing how this meme worked as a tool for the LGBTQ2 community to construct its cultural identity online. Gal et al. (2015) analysed memes from the perspective that they work as discourses to reinforce or transform cultural codes and norms to validate a collective identity. In that case, the role of internet memes would be to determine who can participate in that community, or how members of the community will communicate with each other (Gal et al., 2015; Milner, 2016).

Miltner (2014) also approached internet memes as cultural identity builders in her study about the internet meme “LOLCats”. She identified three user groups that replicated and imitated this meme in different ways, and with different motivations.

Each user group uniquely related to the memetic code because each one of the groups belonged to a different subculture (Miltner, 2014). For example, the “Cheezfrenz” group was composed of cat-lovers, people who consumed, shared and created cat- related contents; the “MemeGeeks” were savvy internet users, people who perceived the role of internet memes and the LOLCats within the digital sphere; and the “Casual

Users”, people who shared that content because it was fun, or they were bored, or they were cat owners, so they related to the subject. In that context, the members of the

“Cheezfrenz” group, for example, were not only building the internet culture, but also reinforcing their own cultural identities as cat-lovers.

These two approaches to memetic culture – from the perspective of memes being social expressions of the internet culture (Milner, 2016; Shifman, 2014) and as cultural shapers of specific groups on the internet (Gal et al., 2015; Milner, 2016) – stress the focus of this study. The interest, here, is to analyse memes as social

2 Acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered and Queer. 16

expressions of participatory media, as cultural artefacts that emerge from conversations within smaller groups that compose the broader internet.

2.4 FROM GLOBAL TO LOCAL

The English language has dominated the internet (Danet & Herring, 2003).

Most memes that have become famous worldwide are in the English language and primarily related to US culture, a pattern that carries over to most previous studies of internet memes (Davison, 2012; Gal et al., 2015; Milner, 2016; Miltner, 2014;

Shifman, 2014). Those studies have analysed “internet memes culture” – a broad subject – based on those examples, which only reflect one part of the internet, as their audience is limited to those who understand both the English language and US popular culture.

For example, Milner (2016) cites the meme “Imma let you finish”. This meme was based on an incident that occurred during the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, when the rapper Kanye West interrupted the pop singer Taylor Swift, starting with the phrase “Imma let you finish…”. Internet users all over the world applied this phrase in other contexts and situations where someone interrupts another person. But only someone who has a contextual knowledge of the background story (that is, who knows who West and Swift are, and what they culturally represent) and reads in English understands the content of this meme and, ultimately, why it is a meme. This meme may have become global because English is the internet’s lingua franca, and even those who are not American, or do not have English as their first language may understand the joke. But would this work if those celebrities were Spanish, Italian,

Egyptian, Brazilian? Or if a similar situation happened in another context?

Shifman (2014) suggests that, recently, local communities have adapted globally famous memes to their local realities, mixing internet culture and local

culture. In this case, “universal” memetic elements are replicated and combined with local elements. By “universal” I mean memetic attributes which people from different backgrounds can identify, such as some types of humour, established stereotypes, human feelings or universal analogies. For example, Shifman (2014) cited the South

Korean hit “Gangnam Style”,3 whose video clip went viral and gained international attention in 2012, later becoming a meme (Chariot, 2013). Although the music talks about a local subject (the Gangnam district, which is a symbol of socioeconomic status in Seoul), and its lyrics are in Korean, it was parodied in many languages by many countries which adapted the lyrics and context to local situations. Although the meaning of the music and its language are highly localised, the humour and dance in the video are global, and that is why it became famous worldwide.

Laineste & Voolaid (2017) also investigated how internet users adapted globally known memes to local contexts, through an analysis of qualitative data of 100 humorous memes from Estonia. They gave as example famous memes that were modified to national contexts, such as the scene from the film Downfall,4 which in

Estonia was used to talk about political and economic events. The universal memetic elements of the Downfall meme were Adolf Hitler as historical figure and the Second

World War as historical event, elements which are known worldwide, but also the scene’s plot: an angry person (someone in a higher position, in this case, Hitler) yelling to a group of people in an “inferior” work position, such as employees (in this case, the Nazi generals). In Estonia, the local subject used was the refugees’ immigration

3 Pop song from the South Korean singer PSY. Featuring comic dance movies and scenarios, the video clip went viral in 2012, reaching more than 1.6 million likes on YouTube (Chariot, 2013). 4 Scene from the epic German movie Der Untergang, or Downfall in English, in which Adolf Hitler yells at the Nazi generals. The original scene is in German, and the video received several parody- subtitles in different languages (Dubs, 2009). 18

into the country. In one of the parodies, Hitler becomes angry with immigrants when he realises he is also an immigrant (Laineste & Voolaid, 2017).

In fact, some videos, images and phrases have the potential to be famous worldwide and become memes either because (1) they are based on globally known events or characters; or (2) because they carry memetic elements which can be universally understood, working as a “memetic canvas” for adaptations. Whereas the

“Imma let you finish” episode is an example of a globally known event, Gangnam

Style presents universal memetic attributes. In this case, the memetic elements which are universal can be easily adapted to local contexts, changing the subject the meme talks about, but not its memetic vernacular.

What Laineste and Voolaid (2017) and Shifman (2014) do not highlight, however, is the large number of internet memes which are not local adaptations of globally known memes, but original content that represents a nation’s folklore, with structure and content specifically related to local culture. For example, the “Confused

Lady” meme, discussed above, was already a popular meme in Brazil before it became popular worldwide. For Brazilians, Nazaré Tedesco as a telenovela character (and what she represented for the national culture) was the primary memetic element. When this meme became international, the folkloric story behind it was dropped, because almost nobody outside Brazil knew who Nazaré Tedesco was. It became a meme because the “confused” (global) element was replicated, not because of the (local) role that Nazaré plays in Brazilian culture.

In summary, many studies focus on “global” memes that are in English and about US culture; while there are a few studies about local adaptations of globally known memes, little is known about the cultural meanings and practices of local memes. In Brazil, for example, there are various internet memes that reflect Brazilian

culture, and no significant study has yet been undertaken about the role of internet memes in Brazilian culture.

2.5 HUMOUR AS AN ATTRIBUTE

Not all memes are funny, but humour works as a key element of the memetic social process (Davison, 2012; Miltner, 2014; Shifman, 2014). As Milner (2016) and

Shifman (2014) pointed out, internet memes carry different types of humour depending on their social functions. A specific form of humour may define who participates in a particular group because it is connected with the identities of the social group who creates and circulates that meme (Miltner, 2014). In that sense, a group of people or culture can identify with a type of humour, so they will “get the joke” and interact with the meme.

According to Meyer (2000, p. 311), humour is “a cognitive experience involving an internal redefining of sociocultural reality”, that is, a personal interpretation based on a reflection of social and cultural truth. He outlines three theories or types of humour used in communication: relief, incongruity and superiority. Those types of humour are used in memetic texts in order to create the joke and connect with users who relate to the subject and humour of the meme.

In relief humour “people experience humour and laugh because they sense stress has been reduced in a certain way” (Meyer, 2000, p. 312). In that case, the laugh expresses the relief in the face of a bad situation, as a “release of nervous energy” (p.

312) that serves as a remedy for a tense situation. The second theory, incongruity, happens when:

an accepted pattern is violated, or a difference is noted – close enough to the

norm to be non-threatening, but different enough from the norm to be

remarkable. It is this difference, neither too shocking nor too mundane, that

provokes humor in the mind of the receiver. (Meyer, 2000, p. 313)

In that sense, humour results from the contrast between a typical situation, which follows a social norm or habit, and a surprising element. For example, when a man is wearing a dress (which most societies consider “women’s clothing”), or when an old lady uses modern slang.

The third theory, superiority humour, relates to people who “laugh outwardly or inwardly at others because they feel some sort of triumph over them or feel superior in some way to them” (Meyer, 2000, p. 314). This type of humour has a significant social effect because it keeps the social hierarchy in order: there are the ones in the position to laugh (higher position), and others that “are the joke” (lower position), as with the figure of the jester during the Middle Ages (Meyer, 2000).

As we will further investigate in this study, the humour of Brazilian memes is also built upon the humour types of relief, incongruity and superiority, depending on the topic of the meme. In the next chapter, we will investigate the role humour plays in Brazilian culture and understand how humour is expressed on the Brazilian internet.

Chapter 3: Humour and the Brazilian Internet

Brazil is one of the biggest and more active communities online and Brazilians are using the internet in distinctive ways (Internet Live Stats, 2016; Ruvolo, 2014).

Aiming to understand the cultural motivations behind this behaviour, in this chapter, I am going to relate some key aspects of Brazilian culture with the production and circulation of Brazilian memes on the internet.

In the following section (3.1), I use the allegory of the carnival to discuss the traditional social order existent in Brazil and outline how, during this ritual, humour works as a tool to symbolically subvert established power relations. In Section 3.2, I will describe other contexts in which humour played a key role in Brazilian history, both as a form of protest and as a tool to describe the Brazilian cultural identity. These first two sections provide the necessary background for understanding the humour of

Brazilian memes. Throughout section 3.3 I will introduce and elaborate the concept of the zoeira, arguing that it is an effective descriptor of typical Brazilian online humour, thereby establishing the theoretical base for my analysis of specific Brazilian memes.

3.1 CARNIVAL: A BRAZILIAN ALLEGORY

Brazilian history is marked by a traditional order of hierarchies and social divisions (Matta, 1991). Brazilians divide themselves – physically, culturally and socially – according to those who do or do not have economic or other sources of power (defined by social relations or jobs, for example) (Matta, 1991). Paradoxically, the Carnival – one of the most typical Brazilian rituals – works as a reverse metaphor

of Brazil. The Brazilian Carnival puts at stake the established social order, allowing the traditional system to collapse for one week (Matta, 1991).

In Brazil, holidays represent much more than a break from daily life (Matta,

1991). For Brazilians, they mean the chance to suspend the social condition forcibly imposed by the hierarchical social system and freedom from all types of authority: the

State, the Church, “the boss”, and the upper class (Matta, 1991). In that context, the

Brazilian Carnival, an official holiday in Brazil, is the perfect myth of the absence of hierarchy and it works as a process to “re-signify” the national culture, to rethink and recreate Brazilian identity and social traditions (Matta, 1991).

In Rabelais and His World, Mikhail Bakhtin (1984) introduces the concept of the carnivalesque to explain the subversive and liberating characteristics of carnival

(Bakhtin, 1984). During the carnival, all the social patterns change - public places become private, and the common people become the centre of attention: “Bakhtin saw the carnivalesque as a refuge of the oppressed classes, a way of sustaining resistance until the forces of history resulted in the overthrow of oppression and the liberation of the oppressed” (Bayless, 2014, p. 2). Carnival represents a place and a time of inversion, where ordinary people symbolically overtake positions of power (Bayless,

2014; Bowles, 2015; Siffert, 2016).

This subversion occurs due to what Bakhtin (1984, p. 12) calls “the people’s ambivalent laughter”, that is, a liberating laugh that allows the working class to mock upper classes and express their concerns about the society, at the same time that it is festive and triumphant. In that context, the “carnival laughter” (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 11) works as a tool that makes the utopia of inversion seem possible. It is a metaphor for the celebration of this temporary freedom from the official orders and transcribes the main language of the folk culture (Bowles, 2015; Siffert, 2016). Unlike sarcastic

humour (which is negative and individualist, where the oppressor laughs at the oppressed), the carnival humour is playful, universal (everybody laughs at everybody) and collective, because it works as a “social release of tension” (Bowles, 2015, p. 53).

3.2 THE BRAZILIAN LAUGH

From the 19th century to the 1980s, Brazilian humour played two significant roles: first, it was a cultural weapon against the Brazilian hierarchical tradition; second, it worked as a mechanism to represent a complex national identity.

In the 19th century, the Portuguese royal family settled in the Empire of Brazil, which was still a colony of Portugal. With the official arrival of the crown in the country, the first newspapers and magazines began to be produced. Considering that only the elite knew how to read, journalists created illustrated magazines to entertain and inform the common people, usually using humour to communicate with the lower- class (Queiroz, 2010; Telles & Soares, 2016). Journalists used charges (editorial cartoons) mostly to satirise Portuguese royalty and the high culture through burlesque humour (Queiroz, 2010; Telles & Soares, 2016).

According to Davis (2014), burlesque humour has elements of irony and parody because it deploys inversion and criticism. The burlesque is not individualist and bitter like satire, but collective (Bakhtin, 1984; Davis, 2014). It is the way the lower-class found to laugh at the dominant elitist morality. It can be expressed in two ways: “by treating a serious subject in an overly familiar manner—low burlesque or travesty—or treating a relatively trivial subject in a grandiose way—high burlesque or parody” (Davis, 2014, p. 2). In Brazil, both “low burlesque” and “high burlesque” were used to express the absurd contrast of the reality of the high society, the

Portuguese royal family, and the ordinary citizen.

From 1964 to 1985, during the Brazilian military ditactorship, the use of burlesque humour in charges worked as a form of protest (Telles & Soares, 2016).

One example was a charge published in the newspaper O Pasquim, whose cartoons became famous for their burlesque humour.

Figure 4 shows the famous painting “O Grito do Ipiranga” (“The Cry of

Ipiranga”) which illustrates the moment of the independence of Brazil when D. Pedro

I uttered the historical quote, “Independence or death!” However, in this cartoon, he is saying “I want Mocotó [a traditional Brazilian dish, very informal and unrefined]”

(Telles & Soares, 2016). This cartoon became a symbol of protest using burlesque humour because it mocked the national history during a time when the nationalism was the primary representation of power (Telles & Soares, 2016).

Figure 4. Cartoon from the newspaper O Pasquim. The speech bubble on the cartoon says: “I want Mocotó!” From “Quem quer Mocotó? Black Blocs e Cientec [Who wants Mocotó? Black Blocs and Cientec]” [Web log post] by L. Barbosa, 2013, November 1. Retrieved April 5, 2017, from http://www.cartapotiguar.com.br/2013/11/01/quem-quer-mocoto/

Saliba (2002) explored the role of humour during the Belle Époque

(approximately from 1889 to 1925), when Brazil had recently become a republic, and the Brazilian people were seeking to define their national identity. The tensions in this period of social and political changes can be seen in the literature of Portuguese intellectuals who were trying to portray Brazilian society. However, Brazil could not be described in a definitive way. There was no single definition of who was the “typical

Brazilian” and what it meant to “be Brazilian” at the time. The country was at once cosmopolitan and provincial, modern and old-fashioned, liberal and oligarchic (Saliba,

2002, p. 35). The humour, in that context, worked as the perfect linguistic expression for Brazil, because comic speech was not precise or fixed as formal literature. Humour represented an alternative to conventional forms and the outlet Brazilians found to express themselves genuinely (Saliba, 2002).

The ambiguity of Brazil’s identity as a nation was the main target of Brazilian humour in that period. The contrast between two mutually incompatible Brazilian realities – the spontaneous everyday life of the common Brazilian and the formality of social institutions – worked as the perfect “surprise element”, a typical characteristic of anecdotes and jokes (Saliba, 2002). This paradox, the absurdity of these two opposed realities (the “ordinary” and the “official”) living together in the same space, worked as the joke, allowing Brazil to portray its grotesque and bizarre reality, prompting an ambivalent laugh.

Whereas humour can be used as a practice of control to strengthen the hierarchical system existent in Brazil, it is also the main channel for the lower-class to express their concerns (Rodrigues & Collinson, 1995). Moreover, humour is part of the popular culture expression; it represents how the ordinary citizens face their harsh daily life. Brazilians laugh at misfortune – or, as a Brazilian idiom says, they “laugh

to not cry” – not only as a means of emotional relief, but also as a way to portray

Brazilian reality.

3.3 THE ZOEIRA: BRAZILIAN HUMOUR ON THE INTERNET

Today, humour continues to play a significant role in Brazilian culture. On the internet, for instance, the ambivalent laugh is characteristic of the internet culture

(Phillips & Milner, 2017), and also a Brazilian trademark online. In that context, the zoeira is the perfect metaphor of Brazilian humour on the internet, because it is an expression that illustrates how Brazilians deal with the nation’s problems and cultural identity through online humour.

3.3.1 Defining zoeira The Brazilian word zoeira appears on the internet as a kind of humour typical from Brazil. The word zoeira (or zueira, or zuêra) is a slang expression, a noun that comes from the verb zoar. According to the Portuguese language dictionary Michaelis

(2017), in lay language zoar means “saying or doing something for laughing; to tease, to mock,” as well as to “make noise, disorder, turmoil”; or to have “fun; do something with pleasure.” There is no English word that shares an exact meaning with zoeira, but most of the time it has a similar meaning to “kidding” or “mocking.” So, for example,

Brazilians may indicate that they are joking by saying “tô zoando!” (which loosely translates to “I’m kidding!” or “I’m messing with you!”) at the end of a sentence or action. Or they could say “é zoeira”, which could be translated as “it’s a joke”.

Although zoeira has a similar meaning to “kidding” or “mocking”, it usually relates to making fun of something tragic or controversial, something you are not supposed to mock, and often relates to topics about Brazil.

The video “Zoeira”, from the Brazilian YouTube channel “Porta dos Fundos”,5 illustrates the use of this word in Brazil. In a surgery room, a doctor keeps saying

“zoeira” after every procedure of the surgery (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Frames of the video “Zoeira” (English subtitles at the bottom of the pictures’ frames). From “Zoeira” [Video file] by Porta dos Fundos, 2016, July 7. Retrieved June 5, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UcIRNYYeEc

In the first scenes of the video “Zoeira” (Figure 5) the female doctor says

“scalpel” (scene 1). The male doctor turns to the table to grab the scalpel (scene 2) when the female doctor says “Zoeira!... scissors” (scene 3), and then she says again

“Zoeira, zoeira, zoeira, it’s the scalpel”. In the following scenes not shown here, the male doctor gets angry with the female doctor, not understanding why she keeps kidding with something as serious as surgery. This video not only criticises the

Brazilian health system and the lack of professionalism of Brazilian doctors but also illustrates how Brazilians use this word to mock serious issues.

5 “Porta dos Fundos” (“Backdoors”) is a Brazilian YouTube channel which features comic videos, often about Brazilian culture (Porta dos Fundos, 2017). 28

Around 2007, the Brazilian internet used the word zoeira mostly along with the sentence “A zoeira não tem limites” (“the zoeira has no limits”) or “the zoeira never ends” (just like that, in English), as an internet meme. The internautas6 used this meme mainly as a synonym of mocking Brazilian problems as a nation

(shakescakes297, 2016). Sims (2016b) tries to clarify the use of the word zoeira on the internet:

Refers to the act of joking around, even when things are bad. This comes up

mostly when bad news breaks and Brazilians quickly make a million funny

Internet memes about it. There is a saying in Brazil: “The zoeira never ends”,

that is, Brazilians never quit joking. In its essence, the word zoeira captures the

Brazilian cultural skill of making light of a bad situation. (para.7)

In that context, every time something bad happens in Brazil, instead of seriously complaining about it or protesting, Brazilians started making fun of the event along with the sentence “A zoeira não tem limites” or “The zoeira never ends”, as if laughing was the only possible thing to do considering the absurd of the situation. From that meme, the word zoeira started to be used on the internet as a kind of humour that defines a type of behaviour, as if “doing zoeira” meant to behave in a certain, very

Brazilian, way on the internet.

Funny Brazilian memes featuring corruption, bizarre celebrities, TV shows, and the peculiar “ordinary Brazilian citizen” are using the “zoeira”, that is, this type of unique Brazilian internet humour that draws on grotesque images of Brazil, to illustrate Brazilian popular culture and daily reality. In that context, the zoeira may be

6 Internauta is a Portuguese word which means “internet users”, usually when referring to those who frequently access the internet. It loosely translates to “internaut”, like an “internet astronaut”. In this research, I will use this word as a synonym for Brazilian (frequent) internet users. 29

used on the internet when internautas make fun of a situation or a person who is typically Brazilian and was not supposed to be intentionally funny. Of course, given that Brazilian internet users exist in a global culture, not all posts and memes that use this type of humour are about Brazil. But for the sake of clarity, in this research I will use the word zoeira to define this particular Brazilian online humour, which jokes about serious everyday topics.

3.3.2 Zoeira vs. trolling The concept of zoeira could easily be confused with the expression “trolling”, but it is more complex than that. In a simple definition, trolling means to disturb or trigger conflict in online conversations, just for the “lulz” – another internet vernacular expression which means “amusement at other people’s distress” (Phillips, 2015, p. 27).

Trolls can be highly discriminatory, racist, sexist or homophobic, can ignore ethical and moral barriers, and their practices can be considered cyberbullying and harassment, but they may also be harmless, and even produce valid political and social critiques (Phillips, 2015). In that context, some Brazilian users use the word zoeira when trolling, but zoeira and trolling are not synonyms.

First, the practice of zoeira does not always involve causing disturbance or distress to others. But even when this happens, the “zoeira troll” is different from a

“regular troll”. Fragoso (2015) explored a Brazilian trolling practice called huezagem

(“hueing” in English), which is an example of a “zoeira troll”. The huezagem is the excessive use of expressions such as “HUEHUEHUE” (Brazilian version of a laugh in internet vernacular, such as “hahaha”), “BR” (abbreviation of “Brazil”) and “Eu sou

BR” (“I am BR [Brazil]”), in online gaming forums. The number of posts and comments using those expressions were so large that users from other countries started to complain about being exposed to too many Brazilian conversations in Portuguese,

which they could not understand and which overloaded games channels (Fragoso,

2015). As a result, some Brazilian trolls began to post those expressions even more, to annoy those who were complaining about them (Fragoso, 2015).

Figure 6. Image commonly used for “hueing” in online game forums. From “Huahuehuahue” by abstratorama, 2011. Retrieved June 9, 2017, from http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/huahuehuahue

Although huezagem reproduces a common trolling behaviour, it possesses unique cultural characteristics:

The HUEHUEs represent themselves as ugly and feign ignorance and

incompetence. With that, they take hold of the insults that other players could

use against them and create a stereotype that works as protection. From this

point of view, the HUEHUEs seem to practice an extremely refined way of

trolling. (Fragoso, 2015, p. 160)

HUEHUEs proudly represent themselves – and, indirectly, all Brazilians – as noisy and grotesque. Paradoxically, they reinforce the bad stereotype of Brazilian users in multiplayer games, as both a critique of Brazilian behaviour online and as a realistic portrayal of Brazil. HUEHUEs can be considered trolls because they are “provocative

or offensive” (Bishop, 2014, p. 155) towards other users, but for those who “get the joke” – other Brazilian gamers – huezagem works as an ambivalent Brazilian joke.

The huezagem is an example of trolling using the zoeira, as it talks about typical bad Brazilian behaviour on the internet. However, Brazilian trolling and zoeira are not completely overlapping concepts. The zoeira, as a type of humour, can be part of trolling, but not every act of trolling relates to the zoeira, and not every act of zoeira can be considered trolling.

3.3.3 The zoeira in digital media studies Previous Brazilian digital media scholars have explored Brazilian humour on the internet. Barbosa (2015), for instance, analysed the dynamics of appropriations on the

Brazilian blogs “Te dou um dado” (“I’ll give you some data”) and “Morri de Sunga

Branca” (“I died in a white bathing suit”), which mock celebrities and the tabloids.

This study mixed quantitative and qualitative methods to identify the different categories of content on these blogs and how the humour was used. Barbosa (2015, p.

103) outlines that these blogs use a “type of internet humour” from Brazil, the “zoeira”.

Although Barbosa (2015) analyses the Brazilian humour online, she only cites the word zoeira as part of this context and does not deeply explore the meaning of this word.

Zago (2013, 2014b) discusses the role of humour in the contemporary journalism in Brazil. Zago (2013) follows the principle of “cyberculture remix” (Lemos, 2005), which is the idea that internet users appropriate and create new codes and cultural practices on the internet by recombining elements. While the focus is not on the meaning of the expression zoeira, her studies outline the use of Brazilian humour online and as a form of protest about politics (Zago, 2013, 2014b). Zago (2013, 2014b) pointed out that the internautas often pick images from national news to recreate, and

combine them with other images, giving them a new context and meaning, usually to make fun of how bizarre or unacceptable the event was, as shown in Figures 7 and 8.

Figure 7 is a Facebook post from the page “Historical Footage Made in Brazil”, which uses irony to combine contemporary Brazilian pictures with historical facts. In this case, the analogy is between Dante’s Divine Comedy and the semi-finals of the

2014 FIFA World Cup, when Germany defeated Brazil, scoring 7-1. Internautas made fun of this sad – but remarkable – game, creating analogies between this defeat and other failures Brazilians must face in daily life. In the picture, the German soccer players are forming a circle next to the Brazilian player Dante, as if they were

“preparing for the attack”.

Figure 7. Photo of the soccer game Brazil vs. Germany, during the semi-finals of the FIFA World Cup in 2014 when Brazil lost 7-1. Here, the Brazilian soccer player Dante appears surrounded by German players. From “Dante Alighieri entering the 7th circle of hell as shown in his book ‘The Divine Comedy’, c. 1320. Illustration by Gustavo Dore, 1864. Picture sent by Arthur Henrique” [Photograph] by Historical Footage Made In Brazil [worldhistorypics], 2017, February, 20. Retrieved November 20, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/worldhistorypics/photos/a.238903023227500.107374182 8.238901009894368/256178418166627/?type=3&theater

Figure 8 is a Photoshopped picture of Fausto Silva, or “Faustão”, a popular TV host in Brazil, wearing a “white wing”, a type of hat worn in the TV series The

Handmaid’s Tale. On the internet, internautas often mock Faustão’s fashion style, as he is always wearing shirts with strong colours and flashy prints. In Figure 8, he is wearing a red shirt of the same tone as the dresses which the handmaids wear in The

Handmaid’s Tale. Here, the addition of a Photoshopped white wing on Faustão’s head creates the joke, making a reference to the series as if he were one of the characters of the show.

Figure 8. Photoshopped picture of the TV host Faustão in a red shirt wearing a “white wing”, in a reference to the TV series The Handmaid’s Tale. From “The Handmaid’s Fausto. Destruidora essa série mesmo viu? [The Handmaid’s Fausto. That’s a really ass-kicking series, right?]” [Digital image] by Please Come to Brazil [pleasecometobr], 2018, February 18. Retrieved April 16, 2018, from https://www.facebook.com/pleasecometobr/photos/a.548824375215909.1073741832 .437749376323410/1582765541821782/?type=3&theater

Of all the Brazilian internet memes studies analysed in this research, none of them investigated the relationship between the production of memes in Brazil and the

country’s national culture. Most of the Brazilian digital media scholars have analysed global elements from the memes and, even when using Brazilian memes as examples, did not study specific aspects of the cultural identity of Brazil. Furthermore, there has been little in-depth investigation of the meaning of the expression “zoeira” or its value in studying the Brazilian internet behaviour. The word zoeira was briefly cited in some studies (Barbosa, 2015; Chagas, 2016; Zago, 2013; Zago, 2014a; Zago, 2014b; Zago,

2015) to talk about Brazilian internet, but without distinguishing it from other types of humour of the broad internet culture. In that sense, the zoeira and Brazilian memes were approached only as examples of the internet culture and meme-behaviour in general, not as a particular form that the Brazilian community found to discuss

Brazilian culture online.

Therefore, this thesis explores the zoeira as a cultural dynamic to understand the role of Brazilian internet memes in the national culture and in the broader internet culture. I will commence in the next chapter with a review of the research questions and the scope of the analysis, then present the objects of study and how I will analyse them.

Chapter 4: Research Design

As shown in the previous chapters, in digital media scholarship there have been few studies about internet memes outside the Anglosphere, and even in Brazilian scholarship little is known about how Brazilian internet memes relate to the country’s culture. Considering this gap in the literature, this study aims to understand the role of internet memes in contemporary Brazilian culture by answering the following research questions:

1) How do Brazilian internet memes represent specific aspects of Brazilian

culture?

2) How is Brazilian meme culture related to the broader popular culture of the

internet?

To answer these questions, I have used the concept of the zoeira to focus my study’s scope. In the study, I understand the expression zoeira as a type of Brazilian humour on the internet deployed by internautas to address Brazilian everyday reality and culture. I divided the zoeira into three main uses – politics, class and popular culture – which I will explore further in this research. In the next three chapters, I will detail each one of these uses, taking one meme as a significant example for each one of the uses.

Before doing so, however, I need to clarify the terminology used in this study.

Although most internet users use the word “meme” when referring to a singular text,

“meme” refers to a group of digital items, following Shifman’s (2014) definition of the meme (see section 2.1). As Milner (2016, p. 3) clarifies, “an individual tweet or image or mashup or video isn’t in and of itself a meme, though it may be memetic in its connection to other tweets, images, mashups, and videos”. Therefore, I will use the 36

word “meme” when referring to a group of single items (individual images, videos or texts) that share common memetic characteristics, and the expression “memetic examples” or “texts” when referring to individual items.

In the following sections, I will present the objects of study, describe the processes of selection and storage of the material, and clarify how I am going to analyse the memes.

4.1 OBJECTS OF STUDY

Observing Brazilian behaviour online, and based on Meyer’s (2000) study about theories of humour, I identified three uses of zoeira on the internet, that is, three ways in which Brazilian internet uses humour to engage with politics, class and popular culture. In this section, I will briefly present each one of the uses and the memes selected to be analysed. In Chapters 4, 5 and 6 I will examine each use of the zoeira and the chosen memes in more detail.

4.1.1 Politics: Neves and Temer’s recordings Chapter 5 will cover the use of the zoeira in politics, and more specifically in relation to corruption scandals. Here, the zoeira works as a form of protest about national problems that are considered typically Brazilian, such as violence, political corruption and poor public services. Today, Brazil is going through deep political changes, including the former president’s impeachment, and politicians frequently being arrested and removed from their positions (Romero, 2017). In light of those events, the immediate social responses on the web have been to mock Brazilian political corruption (Romero, 2017).

A large number of memetic texts related to politics are attracting the attention of the media and the politicians themselves (Avendaño, 2017; Martini & Braga, 2017;

Ruvolo, 2014; Sims, 2016a; Watts, 2017a). The current President of Brazil, Michel 37

Temer, for instance, tried to prohibit the use of funny comments, images and videos online denigrating his image (Avendaño, 2017). This action happened after 17 May

2017, when the Brazilian press published the transcript of two phone recordings, one with the senator Aécio Neves negotiating embezzlement, and another of Temer agreeing to a bribery scheme with a former member of the Congress who is currently in jail (Watts, 2017a).

As soon as the press published these recordings, a series of texts using the zoeira were created, mocking the president, the senator and the political situation in

Brazil. As a consequence, a few days later the presidential office sent an official letter to popular comic blogs in Brazil demanding them to stop the production of memes that would denigrate the president’s image (Avendaño, 2017).

4.1.2 Class: Sarrada no Ar (Brazilian funk) Chapter 6 addresses cases in which internautas use the zoeira to talk about the contrasting behavioural differences between social classes in Brazil. Here the focus is on the way middle-class internautas use the zoeira to laugh about how “most

Brazilians” present themselves to society. As the majority of the Brazilian population lives on a low income (IBGE, 2018), middle-class internautas are actually laughing at the lower class. In that context, some attitudes which are considered normal and ordinary for the “average Brazilian” may seem bizarre and grotesque in the eyes of these internautas, which use the zoeira to make fun of them. At the same time, internautas recognise those attitudes as a genuine representation of what “being

Brazilian” means.

One example of this ambivalence is the way Brazilian people see Brazilian funk, a type of music from the favelas.7 Brazilian funk is a dancing rhythm built from a mixture of influences, from Afro music to samba (Sneed, 2003). Because Brazilian funk’s lyrics are often full of favela slang, with sexual connotations or references to violence, some middle-class Brazilians consider it bad music, while others merely see it as bizarre and funny. From the lower-class point-of-view, the Brazilian funk simply represents the reality of life in the favela, and it is an expression of popular culture

(Sneed, 2003). In that context, many videos of people from favelas or poor communities dancing to Brazilian funk become viral on the internet – viewed both by people who truly enjoy that type of music, and by those who want to mock it – and some of them become memes.

In that context, I selected a meme based on a Brazilian funk song called

“Sarrada no ar (Passinho do Romano)”. This music was already famous in the favelas, but it became popular on the internet after the amateur funk dancer Fezinho Patatyy released a YouTube video in which he dances to this song.8 Sarrada no Ar became a dance craze, and people started to reproduce its movements well beyond the original context of the favelas.

4.1.3 Popular Culture: Gretchen In Chapter 7, I will discuss the use of the zoeira to mock Brazilian pop culture as represented by popular TV. When talking about “popular TV”, I am referring to entertainment content on free-to-air TV such as game shows, talk shows, reality shows, soap operas, music shows and televised sport (Barker, 2012).

7 Brazilian slums. 8 See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1Ka-xrihJI 39

Television is still the media’s biggest platform in Brazil (IBGE, 2018), and most Brazilians consider popular television their primary source of entertainment

(Kantar Ibope Media, 2017). In that context, some free-to-air TV products have become symbols of Brazilian popular culture. On the internet, the zoeira is used to express how bizarre, grotesque, and at the same time authentically Brazilian these products are.

Recently, some of the TV shows, celebrities and characters from free-to-air TV have become Brazilian internet memes. Some of these memes paradoxically mock

Brazilian popular TV, and yet also exalt it as if it were the perfect representation of national culture. The meme “Gretchen” is an example of this dynamic.

Gretchen has been a media personality since the 1970s, when she became a pop singer in Brazil, gaining fame mostly because of her sexy dance moves (Brum &

Samora, 2010). After this early success, however, Gretchen faced a troubled career.

She started to be considered another odd character from Brazilian popular culture, and her appearance on TV was limited to very low-rated shows (Brum & Samora, 2010).

The internet, however, transformed her into a meme. Texts using Gretchen’s image as meme canvas became so popular that internautas praised her as the “Queen of the

Memes” and she became a symbol of the Brazilian internet.

4.2 RESEARCH PROCESS

In this section, I will explain the process of selection, collection and storage of the material I analysed. I divided this section into five steps: (1) discovering the

Brazilian memes; (2) defining the concept of the zoeira and its uses; (3) selecting the memes; (4) collecting the material; (5) storing the material. These steps occurred iteratively rather than sequentially, but this division helps us to understand the whole

process of defining the three uses of the zoeira and their representative memes. Next,

I will detail each one of these steps.

4.2.1 Discovering the Brazilian memes When developing the contextual review, I sought to find where on the internet

Brazilian memes circulated most. Following previous meme studies, I first accessed

Reddit, 4chan and Tumblr, as these websites are considered relevant meme sources

(Milner, 2016). However, I noticed that the contents of those websites were almost all in English, and the presence of Brazilian users was very limited.

I also accessed the website Know Your Meme,9 the most famous memes catalogue on the internet, used as a research source by most meme scholars. But this website is also all in English, and most of the memes featured there were from the US.

Even when the catalogue presented a Brazilian meme, its description was not always accurate. Sometimes it was out-of-date or obviously written by someone outside Brazil and with limited knowledge of the Brazilian cultural context.

Figure 9, for example, shows a screenshot of a page from the Know Your Meme website defining the “meme zuera”, featuring an image of the huezing troll (Fragoso,

2015). Written by a gringo (as the description on Figure 9 says), that is, someone outside Brazil, the content is quite imprecise. The expression “zuera” cannot be simplified as a meme by itself, and it cannot be illustrated as a huezing troll either because those are not synonyms.

9 http://knowyourmeme.com/ 41

Figure 9. Inaccurate description of the Brazilian meme Zuera on the website Know Your Meme. From “Zuera” by shakescakes297, 2016. Retrieved November 6, 2017, from http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/zuera

My primary observation, thus, occurred mostly on my Facebook newsfeed and in the Brazilian news about memes. Those sources had more content about Brazilian memes, so it was better to identify common behaviours from internautas by accessing them.

Looking for a database which covered Brazilian memes, I also found the Museu dos Memes10 (“Museum of Memes”), which works as a meme catalogue such as the

Know Your Meme website but including a collection of Brazilian memes and academic works about them. This database has a search filter, where I could restrict my search to contents related to Brazil only (Figure 10).

10 http://www.museudememes.com.br 42

Figure 10. Screenshot of the search page of the Museu de Memes catalogue. In the search filter, I selected “Brazil” for “country/region”. From “Acervo e coleções [Storage and collection]” by Museu de Memes, n.d. Retrieved November 6, 2017, from http://www.museudememes.com.br/acervo/?speaker=all&topic=all&book=all&serie s=brasil

Accessing these three sources allowed me to understand the story of the memes’ creation, circulation and transformation and how the internautas related to them.

4.2.2 Defining the concept of the zoeira and its uses In the available sources, I started to look for patterns in Brazilian memes.

Primarily based on the Museu de Memes catalogue, but also observing memes from my Facebook newsfeed and Brazilian news, I started to identify repeated topics.

I divided the content of each Brazilian meme into four categories: memes not related to Brazilian culture; memes about corruption and other Brazilian problems related to politics; memes about the typical behaviour from “the ordinary Brazilian” or mocking attitudes consider “lower-class behaviour”; and memes about popular culture, usually from free-to-air TV shows. I excluded the ones which were not related

to Brazilian culture, as they are not the focus of this research, and observed in more detail the other three types.

From that previous analysis, I identified the subsection of politics – memes related to all the problems from Brazil that seemed out of reach of the ordinary citizen.

For example, political corruption, violence, economic inequality, and poor quality public services such as health, education, and transportation. Here, I could see the use of the zoeira when internautas made fun of those problems, given that they are so frequent in Brazil that they became usual and mundane.

The class memes were about the contrasts among the social classes in Brazil.

Here, middle-class internautas use the zoeira to talk about how the lower-class presents itself to society. That includes all aspects of the “typical Brazilian’s lifestyle”, such as products and services that the lower-class owns or consumes; the music they listen to; the movies they watch; the clothes they wear and the fashion trends they follow; the way they communicate (on social media and offline); and how they work around problems in an ingenious way, finding creative solutions to solve daily life issues. Here, the zoeira is referring to the fact that this lower-class behaviour works as a portrait of “the average Brazilian” on the internet, or as a symbol of what “being

Brazilian” means.

Under the category of popular culture, I classified all the memes using the zoeira to address Brazilian mainstream culture. This category refers mostly to popular TV products from Brazil, such as TV shows (including soap operas and their characters), actors, actresses, singers, TV hosts, soccer players, former reality TV shows’ participants and other media personalities. The zoeira, here, was used to laugh at how grotesque the Brazilian popular culture is, and how genuinely Brazilian it seems.

Observing how internautas related to those three types of content on Facebook and in the news, and based on the previous analysis of Brazilian culture, I called them

“the three uses of the zoeira”. Although zoeira is a slang term which can be used in various contexts and situations, I discovered that this word works as a higher level metaphor for Brazilian humour online. I also reviewed the theories of humour defined on Meyer’s (2000) study (see section 2.5) to understand how the humour worked in each one of the uses of the zoeira. From that definition, I use the three uses of the zoeira as bases to understand the role of internet memes in Brazilian culture and on the internet.

4.2.3 Selecting the memes After a broad observation of Brazilian memes and defining the three uses of the zoeira, I explored other channels besides Museu de Memes, my Facebook newsfeed and the news. As Facebook is the top social media site in Brazil (after the private messaging application WhatsApp) (Cossetti, 2017), I extended my observation to other Facebook pages which share memetic content related to Brazilian culture, and joined groups linked to those pages, where most of their content was created. I also accessed two famous comic blogs from Brazil,“Não Salvo” and “Ah Negão!”, which often introduce or explain new memes to the internet community. On those blogs, I searched for the word “meme” to found out what they were publishing about Brazilian memes (Figure 11).

Figure 11. Blog post from Ah, Negão! explaining the origin of the “gigantic backpack” meme. From “Precisamos falar sobre as crianças que ganharam mochilas gigantes na Bahia [We need to talk about the children who have received giant backpacks in Bahia]” [Web log post] by Joe, 2017, May 9. Retrieved December 20, 2017, from https://www.ahnegao.com.br/2017/05/precisamos-falar-sobre-criancas- que-ganharam-mochilas-gigantes-na-bahia.html

From those sources, I started the process of selecting the objects of study. The primary criterion was to represent the three uses of zoeira accurately. There were frequently many memes that would work as good examples for each one of the uses, but some of them were too culturally specific, too complex or too abstract for readers unfamiliar with Brazilian culture, so I eliminated those for the purposes of this study.

After narrowing the scope, my second goal was to find three memes that were highly relevant to the Brazilian internet community. Ultimately, I chose three memes that had in some way demonstrably changed the way Brazilians relate to the internet culture.

The first meme, Neves and Temer’s recordings, gained major attention from the

Brazilian national government. This event not only changed the way national authorities deal with Brazilian humour online but also urged the debate about censorship and the limits of humour in Brazil (Avendaño, 2017). Due to the extensive

media coverage of this meme, and its political repercussions, I chose to explore this meme as a significant example of the use of the zoeira in politics.

The second meme, Sarrada no Ar, is based on an amateur YouTube video, produced by an ordinary Brazilian from a favela. I chose to analyse this meme because it overcame social and economic barriers. The fact that Brazilian funk, a symbol of the lower-class popular culture in Brazil, had reached upper-class citizens and even TV celebrities through a meme are what makes this example so significant for this use of the zoeira.

The third meme, Gretchen, talks about a D-list celebrity from Brazilian popular

TV. What started as a culturally localised meme became internationally known when internautas began to share this meme with other users outside Brazil. People from other nations started to use Gretchen meme texts, even without knowing who she was or why she became a meme. The singer Katy Perry, for example, received so many images, videos and GIFs of Gretchen on Twitter that she featured Gretchen in one of her video clips (Iasimone, 2017). The way the Gretchen meme broke cultural boundaries and reached international audiences is what makes it a valued example of this use of the zoeira.

4.2.4 Collecting the material After selecting the memes, I began to look for the material to be analysed: that is, examples of each meme, and discussions about them. During the process of searching, I accessed a range of different sources, beginning with a broad search using the keywords “audio Temer meme”, “Gretchen meme” and “Sarrada meme” on

Google News. In this primary search of news about the memes I did not access every link from the results, but by reading some of the news stories I could understand how the meme was replicated and transformed throughout the internet, and what the

character of the press reaction to that had been. Most of the stories I accessed cited and gave examples of the memes. When this happened, I accessed the original source of the examples (such as Facebook and Twitter) to collect them.

The patterns of the search results for each of the three memes were different. For example, when looking for news about the Neves and Temer’s recordings meme, most of the stories explained the episode and gave various examples of how the internet reacted. When searching for the Gretchen meme, the most common subject was

Gretchen’s appearance in Katy Perry’s music video. And when searching for the

Sarrada no Ar meme, most of the stories talked about celebrities reproducing this meme, but few gave other examples of the meme.

From this broad search, I looked for significant examples by accessing the blogs

Ah Negão! and Não Salvo, using the keywords “Temer”, “Sarrada” and “Gretchen” to narrow my search. Although these blogs are known for creating and sharing memes, they have other types of content as well, so the focus was on the posts that talked about the memes’ stories or gave memetic examples of them. Most of the posts collected in these blogs were about the Sarrada no Ar meme. I could not find any relevant post about the Gretchen meme in either of the blogs, and none about Neves and Temer’s recordings in Não Salvo.

The search continued on Facebook, focusing on four pages: “O Brasil que deu certo” (“A Brazil that Worked”),11 “O Melhor do Brasil é o Brasileiro” (“The Best of

Brazil is ‘the Brazilian’”), “Please Come to Brazil” and “Legado da Copa” (“Cup

11 In Brazilian Portuguese, the expression “[he, she, it] deu certo” ( “worked”) is used when referring to someone or something that found a way to succeed, even when the odds were against that person or situation. “Brazil did not ‘work’” is a common expression in Brazil when talking about the country’s problems. The page “O Brasil que deu certo” (“A Brazil that Worked”) is, thus, ironically suggesting the opposite. 48

Legacy”).12 I chose these pages because they are popular in Brazil (they all have more than 500,000 “likes” on Facebook), and they all create and share memes about

Brazilian culture. In these pages, I searched for the keywords “Temer”, “Gretchen” and “Sarrada” in the search tool on the “posts” tab, and I also accessed the photo and video albums scanning for pictures and videos related to the memes. The pages had varying amounts of coverage of the three memes, which was determined by the nature of each page’s audience. For example, whereas the Legado da Copa page had more content about the meme Sarrada no Ar, Please Come to Brazil had more examples and discussions about the Gretchen meme. Besides those pages, I also kept accessing my personal Facebook timeline daily and saving and cataloguing examples from the selected memes that appeared in my newsfeed. Sometimes the content shared on

Facebook were reproductions of Tweets or other web pages’ comments, for example.

When this happened, I accessed the original source to collect the material.

I collected all material I found related to the three memes in the selected channels from October 18 to December 14, 2017. I not only collected memetic examples but also what I called “discussions”, that is, Facebook posts and Tweets that talked about the memes without using their texts. For example, Figure 12 is a Tweet about when the Brazilian actress Cláudia Raia reproduced the Sarrada no Ar dance in a morning

TV show. It says: “Waiting for memes and GIFs about Cláudia Raia making a sarrada no ar. Please, internet, don’t leave me in the lurch!” Figure 13 is a Facebook post sharing the link to a video about the meme Gretchen, named “Gretchen – The owner of Brazil”. Although those two posts are related to the studied memes, they cannot be classified as “memetic examples”, as they simply discuss the memes. In order to better

12 Referring to the 2016 FIFA World Cup, hosted in Brazil. 49

understand the memes, I collected this type of material and classified them as

“discussions”, but I did not use them as illustrations of the memes in the analysis chapter.

Figure 12. Tweet about Claudia Raia’s performance of the Sarrada no Ar. From “No aguardo dos memes e gifs da Cláudia Raia dando a sarrada no ar. Por favor internet, não me deixe na mão! (Nunca pedi nada) [Waiting for memes and GIFs about Cláudia Raia making a Sarrada no Ar. Please, internet, don’t leave me in the lurch!]” [Tweet] by Anonymous 1, 2017, March 24. Retrieved October 22, 2017, from https://twitter.com/flinaeron/status/845250020198809601

Figure 13. Facebook video about Gretchen as a meme. From “Gretchen – Proprietária do Brasil [Gretchen – Owner of Brazil]” [Video file] by Please Come to Brazil [pleasecometobr], 2016, September 24. Retrieved October 18, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/pleasecometobr/posts/1086853498079658

In the chapters where I analyse the selected memes, I used only the most representative memetic examples to illustrate each one. I had three main criteria to define which examples were the most “representative” ones. The first criterion was that the meme would better illustrate the many variations of each meme. That is, when exploring the memes in Chapters 5, 6 and 7, I divided the memetic examples into categories related to their content, as I will explain in the next section. In the analysis of the categories, I used examples to describe each one of the categories. Therefore, I chose the memetic examples that would best illustrate the categories in order to support my explanation. The second criterion for selection was that the memetic examples had appeared most frequently on the Facebook pages and comments, blogs and news stories I had accessed. These texts were not necessarily the most shared ones or the ones that reached the largest audience, but those which appeared most frequently in my research. The third criterion was that the memetic examples selected were not too culturally specific (which could prejudice the analysis of memes), as the focus here was to use the memetic examples to illustrate how the meme appears on the internet and to support the analysis about that specific use of the zoeira.

4.2.5 Storing the material I used the NVivo qualitative data analysis (QDA) software to store and organise the material. NVivo is an efficient application when qualitatively analysing data, as the material can be divided into many categories and later analysed using filters. First,

I used the tab “sources” to divide the material and websites accessed into three areas:

“Discussions”, “Examples” and “News and Blogs”. Every time that I found a relevant news story or blog post about the memes, I saved its hyperlink and a PDF version of the page in the file “News and Blogs”; when I found a good memetic example I took a snapshot and saved it with the original hyperlink in the file “Examples”. I also saved the screenshots of the Facebook posts and Tweets that discussed the memes, and saved them in the file “Discussions”.

I also divided the material into tags according to the name of the memes:

“Gretchen”, “Sarrada no Ar” and “Neves and Temer recordings”. I divided each tag into various categories, referring to the content of each memetic example. For example, if a memetic example was about a celebrity reproducing the meme Sarrada no Ar, I would save it under the tag “Sarrada no Ar” and the category “Celebrities”.

Through these different classifications, I was able to understand how the meme appeared on the web.

4.3 ANALYSIS APPROACH

To analyse the material and organise it for presentation in the following chapters,

I use a common structure for all three chapters. In the first section of each chapter, I analyse in more detail the respective uses of the zoeira. I clarify how each use of the zoeira appeared on Brazilian internet, and demonstrate this use with some examples.

In the second section, I review the background story of the selected meme – the Neves and Temer recordings for the politics chapter; Sarrada no Ar for the class chapter; and

Gretchen for the popular culture chapter. The second section includes a subsection called “memetic examples” that explains how I grouped the memetic examples based on their content and how these categories represent the meme. In the last section of

each chapter, I relate the use of the zoeira with the corresponding meme, analysing the elements that formed the zoeira in that meme.

In order to analyse the zoeira on each meme, I identify a few characteristics that reveal the zoeira within them. Through close textual analysis, I explore how the memetic examples were represented online by analysing the type of language, formats

(for example images, videos, GIFs) and any digital editing or transformation that the image was subject to. I also identify if there is a specific group of people or type of user who appears to associate with the meme, and how the meme appeared on the internet (that is, which channels internautas used to share them). Finally, I determine if the meme appeared to play a role in the transformation of any established social condition or rule in Brazil. Examples of such transformations include Brazilian political authorities’ interference in the production of memes in response to the Neves and Temer recordings meme; how the Sarrada no Ar meme broke a taboo as a lower- class cultural expression that reached upper classes and TV celebrities’ spaces; and how the Gretchen meme changed the way Brazilian internet users saw themselves on the internet as they conquered a new space on the web and in the international media.

Chapter 5: Politics – Neves and Temer’s recordings

In this chapter, I analyse how the zoeira is expressed in the “Neves and Temer’s recordings” meme. In the first section (5.1), I will discuss in more detail the use of the zoeira in politics. I offer examples of how Brazilian internet uses the zoeira to talk about politics through humour, by mocking authorities’ tendency to disregard social problems and joking about how ordinary those problems seem to be in Brazil. In the next section (5.2), I will first explain the background story of the meme Neves and

Temer’s recordings, then present some of the memetic examples collected in this research. I divided the memetic examples into nine categories regarding their content, which I will explain in more detail in section 5.2.1. Within the nine categories we can see that the internautas addressed the recordings by making fun of how chaotic

Brazilian politics is and how “typically Brazilian” this bizarre situation seems to be.

Building on the textual analysis of the memetic examples, in section 5.3 I discuss how the Neves and Temer’s recordings meme represents the use of the zoeira in politics. In section 5.3, I explore the memetic examples from a macro perspective, discussing how the different categories present patterns of format, language and aesthetics that defined the tone of the humour within the meme, and what those patterns have to say about how this meme illustrates the zoeira in politics. The various memetic examples studied in this chapter showed that the zoeira worked as a tool to protest and to subvert political power. By portraying Brazilian political failures, internautas used the zoeira to show the absurdity of the political system and its corrupted authorities.

The result is a form of comic relief, allowing a feeling of power inversion, which, as I argue in the conclusion, is a genuine form of protest.

5.1 THE ZOEIRA IN POLITICS

On the internet, Brazilians deal with the country’s political problems mostly through the zoeira. Issues in which the population seems to be a victim of the system such as violence, poor public services and corruption scandals are the primary themes of Brazilian political memes. Brazilians use the zoeira to make fun of those problems and criticise the current political scenario. In Figure 14, for instance, internautas are criticising a public construction work. Here, there are pictures of a sidewalk with tactile paving, which assists visually impaired pedestrians to walk independently on the street. The problem is that the sidewalk has a large step or terrace that appears without warning, which would make it impossible for a visually impaired pedestrian to follow the tactile paving. The caption ironically says: “It has been built here in my hometown (Macapá) the first Parkour13 track for visually impaired people”. When suggesting that the sidewalk was a Parkour track, the internauta was making fun of the shoddy work of the city council, which seemed not to care about visually impaired people, who could not know about the hazardous step on the sidewalk.

13 Parkour is a “form of Extreme sport that involves making one’s way through an urban environment above ground level, by jumping off buildings, over walls” (Parkour, 2011). 55

Figure 14. Images of the tactile paving on the irregular sidewalk. From “Foi contruída aqui na minha cidade (Macapá) a primeira pista de Parkour para deficientes visuais. [It has been built here in my hometown (Macapá) the first Parkour track for visually impaired people.]” [Digital image] by O Melhor do Brasil é o Brasileiro [omelhordobreobrasileiro], 2017, December 6. Retrieved November 15, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/omelhordobreobrasileiro/photos/a.879032165485862.107 3741827.879030835485995/1539124926143246/?type=3&theater

Figure 15 is an example of using the zoeira to talk about how crime seems to be something trivial in Brazil. This Facebook post shows a screenshot of a Facebook ad where someone is selling colourful cases for GPS tracking devices, used in Brazil to monitor parolees. In the ad, the description says: “Perfect for a person who is on parole”. The caption of the Facebook post ironically says: “E N T R E P R E N E U R

S H I P”. In one of the comments, an internauta writes: “Small thefts, great business”

(a reference to a Brazilian TV show for new entrepreneurs called Small Companies,

Great Business). Another comment says: “Hi girls, today the tutorial is about how to

become a criminal without losing your style KKKKKKK,”14 making an ironic reference to common introductions for beauty and fashion YouTube tutorials. Another says: “KKKKKKK Brazil and its capacity for transforming everything into zoeira”.

Figure 15. Facebook post featuring a screenshot of an ad for cases for GPS tracking devices. From “Emprendedorismo [Entrepreneurship]” [Screenshot] by O Melhor do Brasil é o Brasileiro [omelhordobreobrasileiro], 2017, July 17. Retrieved October 18, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/omelhordobreobrasileiro/photos/a.879032165485862.107 3741827.879030835485995/1405657679489972/?type=3&theater

When the government or other political authorities make mistakes or show that they do not care about the people, internautas use the zoeira to make fun of them.

Figure 16, for instance, quickly became famous in the Brazilian press. A kindergarten teacher of a small town in the state of Bahia took this picture featuring students with the huge backpacks which were provided by the city council.

14 The sequence of the letter “k” is a version of “hahaha” in Brazilian internet vernacular, usually used ironically. 57

Figure 16. Original photo of the children wearing the huge backpacks. From “Precisamos falar sobre as crianças que ganharam mochilas gigantes na Bahia [We need to talk about the children who have won giant backpacks in Bahia]” [Web log post] by Joe, 2017, May 9. Retrieved October 16, 2017, from https://www.ahnegao.com.br/2017/05/precisamos-falar-sobre-criancas-que- ganharam-mochilas-gigantes-na-bahia.html

The disproportionate size of the backpacks in comparison to the small children inspired internautas to transform this picture into a meme, using the zoeira, as we can see in Figures 17, 18 and 19, where the children were Photoshopped into other contexts

(Bittencourt, 2017). Figure 17 shows the children as characters from the video game

Mario Kart,15 as if their backpacks were the karts; Figure 18 shows them going to the national skydiving centre (as if the bags were parachutes); and Figure 19 shows the children as the characters of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,16 the backpacks being their shells.

15 A Nintendo video game from 1992 which features the characters from the game Super Mario racing on karts (Minotti, 2014). 16 Cartoon TV series about four ninja turtles that fight against evil (IMDb, n.d.-b). 58

Figure 17. Photoshopped picture of the children as characters of the Mario Kart video game. From “Precisamos falar sobre as crianças que ganharam mochilas gigantes na Bahia [We need to talk about the children who have won giant backpacks in Bahia]” [Web log post] by Joe, 2017, May 9. Retrieved October 16, 2017, from https://www.ahnegao.com.br/2017/05/precisamos-falar-sobre-criancas-que- ganharam-mochilas-gigantes-na-bahia.html

Figure 18. Photoshopped picture of the children going to the National Skydiving Centre. The sign says: “Skydiving National Centre. Welcome. Entry in 250m”. From “Precisamos falar sobre as crianças que ganharam mochilas gigantes na Bahia [We need to talk about the children who have won giant backpacks in Bahia]” [Web log post] by Joe, 2017, May 9. Retrieved October 16, 2017, from

https://www.ahnegao.com.br/2017/05/precisamos-falar-sobre-criancas-que- ganharam-mochilas-gigantes-na-bahia.html

Figure 19. Photoshopped picture of the children as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. From “Memes sobre tamanho da mochila de crianças viralizam na internet [Memes about the size of children’s backpacks go viral on the internet]” [Web log post] by N. Melo, 2017, May 9. Retrieved October 16, 2017, from http://blogs.opovo.com.br/id/2017/05/09/memes-sobre-tamanho-da-mochila-de- criancas-viralizam-na-internet/

Those examples show that, when talking about politics through memes, the zoeira works as a tool for protest. By portraying Brazilian political failures with humour, internautas use the zoeira to show how ludicrous the political system and its authorities in Brazil appear to be. In that context, I selected the Neves and Temer’s recordings meme as a significant example of how internautas deal with political corruption through the zoeira. Next, I will discuss this meme in more detail and explore how internautas used the zoeira to talk about the involvement of a senator and the president in a major corruption scandal.

5.2 NEVES AND TEMER’S RECORDINGS

Figure 20. Image macros of the president of Brazil with the subtitle “I’m laughing / but I’m worried”. From “Os melhores memes que circularam depois das denúncias contra Temer e Aécio [The best memes that spread on the internet after the accusations against Temer and Aécio]” [Web log post] by J. P. Pina, 2017, May 18. Retrieved October 20, 2017, from https://www.agambiarra.com/memes-temer-e- aecio/

On 17 May 2017, the Brazilian Federal Court of Justice released to the press a recording of a phone call between the president of Brazil, Michel Temer, and one of the CEOs of the food company JBS, Joesley Batista (O Globo, 2017). On this call,

Batista said he was “taking care” of Eduardo Cunha, the former president of the

Chamber of Deputies in Brazil who was arrested in March of the same year as part of the “Operation Car Wash.”17 Temer answers saying that Batista must “keep taking care of that.” That is, president Temer agreed to keep bribing Cunha to keep the deputy

17 “Operation Car Wash” (“Operação Lava Jato” in Portuguese) is an investigation by the Brazilian Federal Police. It started in 2014 with accusations of money laundering in small business and afterwards it was revealed that huge companies, such as the state-owned oil company Petrobras, were involved. This led to hundreds of politicians from different parties being investigated and accused of fraud, money laundering, gang formation and other corruption crimes (Watts, 2017b). 61

from reporting other politicians who were also involved in this major corruption scheme. On the same day that this first recording was leaked, the Brazilian press also released a recording of Joesley Batista talking to Aécio Neves, a member of the federal

Senate (G1, 2017a). On this phone call, Neves asked Batista to lend him 2 million

Brazilian reais to pay his defence in the Operation Car Wash process, and suggested to send his cousin Fred to pick up the money, as Neves wanted to send “someone we can kill before the prosecution” (G1, 2017a).

As soon as the press released those two recordings, the internet reacted by laughing about the absurd situation and, from that moment, a meme was born. Through different videos, images, GIFs, and texts, both right-wing and left-wing supporters used the zoeira to laugh about this event, approaching this episode from different perspectives.

To understand how this meme was approached we first need to briefly review the recent political situation in Brazil. In 2015, Dilma Rousseff, affiliated to the left- wing political party PT, ran as the president along with the Vice President Michel

Temer, affiliated to the opposition party PMDB (Gallas, 2016). Under accusations of administrative misconduct, Rousseff was impeached in 2016, and Temer became the president (Romero, 2016). Left-wing supporters accused Temer of a political coup and started to protest against his term (Boadle, 2016). Senator Neves, on the other hand, had run in the 2014 presidential election against Rousseff and was seen as the best alternative for the presidency by most right-wing voters in Brazil (Antunes, 2014).

Therefore, when the recordings were leaked, left-wing voters used the zoeira to laugh about those who supported Neves and Temer, whereas right-wing voters used the zoeira to laugh about how everyone seems to be corrupt in Brazil.

The meme about the Neves and Temer’s recordings, hence, was created, shared and transformed throughout the internet from different perspectives and through various memetic mechanisms. Next, I will present the memetic examples collected and the groups they formed in regards to their contents.

5.2.1 Memetic examples From the material gathered in this research I grouped the memetic examples into nine categories based on their content. They are named: “Aécio Neves”; “Brazil is chaos”; “Renounce, Temer!”; “Everybody is impeached”; “Everybody is the president”; “JBS and Joesley”; “PT’s reaction”; “Laughing at the zoeira”; and “This is so Brazil!” Next, I will describe each category and provide some examples to illustrate how they appeared on the internet.

Aécio Neves This category groups the memetic examples related to the content of the phone call between Batista and Neves. Here, internautas laugh mostly about Neves voters, people who believed he was the best choice for the presidency in the 2014 elections and then found out he was also corrupt. Through humour, internautas mostly criticised how naive Aécio Neves’ voters were in believing he was not corrupt.

Figure 21 is a video posted on a left-wing Facebook page. The video’s caption asks: “To whom did the bribe belong?” The video shows an extract from the video clip of the song “D.i.s.c.o” where the singers spelled the word “disco” – which in

Portuguese sounds similar to “de Aécio” (“from Aécio”, in English). The use of this cheerful video clip along with the subtitles “De A-é-ci-o” makes ironic use of Neves, as if it were fun for the left-wing supporters to finally prove that he was corrupted.

Figure 21. Facebook video with the video clip of the song “D.i.s.c.o”. From “De quem era a propina? [To whom did the bribe belong?]” [Video file] by Time Ciro Gomes [TimeCiroGomes], 2017, May 18. Retrieved October 18, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/TimeCiroGomes/videos/vb.1453548241604118/1756002 634692009/?type=2&theater¬if_t=video_reply¬if_id=1495073068593997

Figure 22 shows a picture of Brazilian retired soccer player Ronaldo in a protest over the impeachment of the former president Dilma Rousseff, in 2016. He is wearing a shirt bearing the slogan “It’s not my fault, I voted for Aécio” referring to the corruption scandals which broke out during Rousseff’s presidential term. Posted by humorous Facebook pages such as O Brasil Que Deu Certo on May 18, the page is making fun of all of those who were in favour of former president Dilma Roussef’s impeachment, believing that Neves would be the non-corrupt alternative.

Figure 22. Facebook photo of Ronaldo protesting against the President Dilma Rousseff. From “[Untitle image of Ronaldo wearing a shirt that reads ‘it’s not my fault, I voted for Aécio’]” [Photograph] by O Brasil que Deu Certo [obrasilquedeucerto], 2017, May 18. Retrieved October 24, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/obrasilquedeucerto/photos/a.341899696009066.1073741 829.334068633458839/666597060205993/?type=3&theater

Brazil is chaos This category connects this corruption scandal with all the other political failures in Brazil. Here, some examples illustrate how this episode reflects the generally chaotic situation in the country. Figure 23, for instance, is a Tweet of a video with the

“credits” of Brazil, as if the country were a movie that had reached its end. The Tweet says: “Brazil is over, roll credits”. In the video, “Portugal” is featured as “the creator”; the “native people” as “original idea”; “democracy” as “special participation”; and the

“cast” is composed of imperators from the Portuguese crown and Brazilian presidents indicted in the Operation Car Wash. This video ironically suggests that Brazil is a country doomed to fail since its colonisation as if there were no better alternative but to end it.

Figure 23. Tweet with a video of the “credits” of Brazil. From “O Brasil acabou sobe os créditos [Brazil is over, roll credits]” [Tweet] by Anonymous 2, 2017, May 17. Retrieved October 20, 2017, from https://twitter.com/BreHenrique_/status/864978606023421952

The Brazilian chaos is also exemplified by making fun of how corrupt Brazilian politicians are and how naive Brazilians are in trusting them. That is, here the internautas are laughing at themselves. For example, Figure 24 is a Facebook post with a screenshot of an old Tweet from the former president of the Chamber of

Deputies, Eduardo Cunha, who was cited in the recording of Temer’s call as the one being bribed. In the Tweet he is saying: “How is it possible that we are still living with these criminals in politics?” Some of the comments in this Facebook post also revealed other old Tweets from Cunha, who said “They [the other politicians] are stealing from us [the people]” and “There are so many bad people in this world!”, and also from

Aécio Neves, who Tweeted, “It’s unacceptable what’s happening now”. Obviously, all those Tweets were initially posted before Cunha’s arrest and the leak of the recordings, so the zoeira happens when comic Facebook pages post these Tweets in

another context as if they were reminding the Brazilian people (and themselves) how naive they are, and how corrupt Brazilian politicians are.

Figure 24. Facebook post featuring a screenshot of a Tweet of the former President of the Chamber of Deputies, Eduardo Cunha. From: “Sera [sic] possível que a gente ainda vai conviver com esses marginais na política? [How is it possible that we are still living with these criminals in politics?]” [Screenshot] by O Brasil que Deu Certo [obrasilquedeucerto], 2017, May 18. Retrieved October 24, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/obrasilquedeucerto/photos/a.341899696009066.1073741 829.334068633458839/666627470202952/?type=3&theater

Renounce, Temer! After Roussef’s impeachment, those who were against the impeachment used the quotes “Fora Temer” (loosely translates as “Out, Temer”) and “Renuncia, Temer”

(“Renounce, Temer”) to demand the end of Temer’s presidential term. In this category, this idea became stronger, as many internautas against Temer’s presidential term believed that the leak of the recordings would lead to Temer’s impeachment or renouncement. Therefore, this category reunites all examples that supported Temer’s impeachment, mocked those who supported Rousseff’s impeachment, and celebrated how the tables turned after the press reported the corruption scandal involving Temer 67

and Neves. For example, Figure 25 is a remixed image of Temer wearing a jersey of the Brazilian soccer team Vasco, a team whose frequent relegation to the Second

Division in the national championship is a topic of much internet amusement. In

Brazilian Portuguese people use the expression cair (“fall down”) in the Second

Division, so this picture mocks how Temer was “falling down” in his presidential term.

Figure 25. Photoshopped picture of Temer wearing a Vasco jersey. From “[Untitle image of Temer wearing a Vasco Jersey]” [Digital image] by Legado da Copa [legadaodamassa], 2017, May 21. Retrieved October 25, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/legadaodamassa/photos/a.1457424331180740.10737418 26.1451006558489184/1920445824878586/?type=3&theater

Figure 26 is a Tweet featuring a reaction GIF with a girl entering a house smiling and celebrating. The Tweet says: “Coming to see Temer and Aécio’s fall on Jornal

Nacional”,18 as if Temer’s fall was something to be celebrated.

18 Jornal Nacional (“National News”) is a news TV show which reported this corruption scandal. 68

Figure 26. Tweet featuring a reaction GIF illustrating the feeling of joy about the possible resignation of Temer and Neves after the corruption scandal. From “Chegando para ver o tombo de Temer e Aécio no Jornal Nacional [Coming to see Temer and Aécio’s fall on National News]” [Tweet] by Anonymous 3, 2017, May 17. Retrieved October 30, 2017, from https://twitter.com/LeonaDivaa/status/864985549001687040

Everybody is impeached This category connects the potential impeachment of Temer with the impeachment of the last Brazilian president, Rousseff, in 2016. Here, internautas address impeachment as if it has become something frequent in Brazil. Internautas compared the unstable presidency of Brazil with the HBO drama Game of Thrones

(Figure 27), a TV series in which the characters fight to sit on the Iron Throne and become the ruler of the Seven Kingdoms. This Tweet (Figure 27) shows a remixed picture of a character of Game of Thrones sitting on the Iron Throne with Temer’s face superimposed. The caption says: “The presidency of Brazil looks like reigning in

Game of Thrones, at the moment that someone sits on the throne, something happens and takes them out of there”.

Figure 27. Tweet with a photoshopped picture of Temer sitting on the Iron Throne. From “A presidência do Brasil tá parecendo reinado em Game of Thrones, que é só sentar no trono, que já acontece alguma coisa pra te tirar de lá. [The presidency of Brazil looks like reigning in Game of Thrones, at the moment someone sits on the Throne, something happens and takes them out of there]” [Tweet] by Anonymous 4, 2017, May 17. Retrieved November 25, 2017, from https://twitter.com/sormartinomau/status/864990306428743680

Figure 28 is image macros referring to the movie Mean Girls, where the character Regina George (pictured), leader of the “cool group” of high school girls, lays down strict rules about what to wear on each day of the week. A famous quote from this movie is “on Wednesday we wear pink”, and here the “strict rule” is that “on

Wednesdays we have impeachments”, in a clear reference to the high rate of impeachments in Brazil. The last example of this category (Figure 29) is a Tweet which says: “I love the time of the year between Easter and Christmas when we have impeachment”, as if impeachments occurred every year in Brazil.

Figure 28. Image macros of Regina George from the film Mean Girls. From “On Wednesdays we have impeachments” [Digital image] by Anonymous 5, 2017, May 18. Retrieved November 5, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10212877712608190&set=a.417954353 7472.2167506.1550926397&type=3&theater

Figure 29. Tweet making fun of the supposed high frequency of impeachments in Brazil. From “Adoro essa época do ano entre a Páscoa e o Natal que a gente tem o impeachment [I love the time of the year between Easter and Christmas when we have impeachments]” [Tweet] by Anonymous 6, 2017, May 17. Retrieved October 30, 2017, from https://twitter.com/erikgustavo/status/864992222621700096

Everybody is the president After Temer’s audio was released, internautas were discussing not only the president’s impeachment but also who would assume his position. It was unclear who could take over the government in the case of impeachment since most of the politicians in the line of succession were also being indicted in Operation Car Wash

(Jornal do Brasil, 2017). Therefore, internautas started to make fun about how bad the line of succession for the presidency was and ironically suggest bizarre “possible candidates”, implying that anyone could be a better president than the current Brazilian politicians.

This first example (Figure 30) shows a picture of the soccer coach Celso Roth, who is well known for getting hired at the last minute, usually when a soccer team is about to be relegated to the Second Division in a championship. The Tweet says

“#URGENT Celso Roth arrives in Brasilia and should be announced in the next few hours as the new President of Brazil #NewsFromPlanalto”,19 illustrating how

“desperate” Brazil was looking for a new president to “save” the country from failure.

19 A reference to the Palácio do Planalto, the official presidential workplace in Brazil. 72

Figure 30. Tweet ironically simulating the announcement of Celso Roth as the new president of Brazil. From “#URGENTE Celso Roth chega à Brasília e deve ser anunciado nas próximas horas como o novo Presidente do Brasil #NotíciasDoPlanalto [#URGENT Celso Roth arrives in Brasilia and must be announced in the next few hours as the new President of Brazil #NewsFromPlanalto]” [Tweet] by Anonymous 7, 2017, May 17. Retrieved October 25, 2017, from https://twitter.com/NandoJRocha/status/864992328691404800

Figure 31 is a Facebook post with a picture of the Axé20 singer Ivete Sangalo hugging the samba musician Zeca Pagodinho, both very popular in Brazil, and Sangalo is wearing a presidential sash. The zoeira was used to joke about how famous singers could be Brazil’s best option, as if the country was only good at producing entertainment, not politicians.

Figure 31. Facebook photo of the singer Ivete Sangalo wearing the presidential sash next to the singer Zeca Pagodinho. From “[Untitle image of Ivete Sangalo wearing the presidential sash next to Zeca Pagodinho]” [Photograph] by Legado da Copa [legadaodamassa], 2017, May 19. Retrieved October 25, 2017, from

20 Axé is typical Brazilian music which mixes African and Latin-American rhythms. In Brazil, this kind of song is most famous in the Northeast region, and it is labelled as a “pop” type of music (Henry, 2008). 73

https://www.facebook.com/legadaodamassa/photos/a.1457424331180740.10737418 26.1451006558489184/1919252428331259/?type=3&theater

JBS and Joesley Some internautas treated JBS’s CEO, Joesley Batista, as a Brazilian super-hero after he helped the Federal Police to revealed corruption cases by allowing the police to tap his calls to Neves and Temer. This is a zoeira because internautas were sincerely thanking a corrupt entrepreneur because “at least” he helped the Federal Police to expose Neves and Temer. Here, Batista is presented as a Brazilian anti-hero who fits with the nation and its political scenario.

Figure 32, for example, shows a picture of the Brazilian Brega music21 singer

Wesley “Safadão” (Wesley “Big Naughty”) with the JBS logo attached to his face.

The text says: “I’m tapping ‘everybodyyyy [sic]’”, referring to Wesley Safadão’s lyrics which says: “I’m dating everybody”.

21 The “Brega” music (which loosely translates to “cheesy music” in English) is a rhythm typical of the northern region of Brazil. The term “Brega” as a music style started to be used in the 1980s, to name popular songs considered cheesy and made for an uncultured audience (Araújo, 1988). 74

Figure 32. Photoshopped picture of the singer Joesley Safadão with the logo of the JBS company over his face. The text at the bottom of the picture says: “I’m tapping everybodyyyy [sic].” From: “O novo mene [sic]: O Joesley Safadão [New mene (sic): Joesley ‘Big Naughty’]” [Digital image] by Site dos Menes [SiteDosMenes], 2017, May 18. Retrieved October 18, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/SiteDosMenes/photos/a.429244703784586.86938.42923 7847118605/1495843000458079/?type=3&theater

Figure 33 is a Tweet which says: “Imagine how many kids will be named Joesley from now on”, as if this name were worthy of being honoured because Batista had turned out to be the nation’s hero.

Figure 33. Tweet mocking the fact that “Joesley” would be an “honourable” name in Brazil after Joesley Batista helped Federal Police to reveal the corruption scandal. From “Imagina quantas crianças vão chamar Joesley daqui pra frente [Imagine how many kids will be named Joesley from now on]” [Tweet] by Anonymous 8, 2017, May 18. Retrieved October 20, 2017, from https://twitter.com/harpias/status/865167724699426816

PT’s reaction After the press published the recordings, some internautas, mostly left-wing supporters, used the figures of the former presidents Rousseff and Lula22 to illustrate the reaction of the opposition party PT. For example, Figure 34 is a Photoshopped image used in Facebook posts and comments. It features the former president playing the violin, as if he was celebrating the leak of the recordings and the exposure of the current president’s corruption.

Figure 34. Photoshopped picture of Lula playing the violin. From “[Untitle image of Lula playing the violin]” [Digital image] by Legado da Copa [legadaodamassa], 2017, May 18. Retrieved October 25, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/legadaodamassa/photos/a.1457424331180740.10737418 26.1451006558489184/1918755265047642/?type=3&theater

Figure 35 is a photo collage of the former president Rousseff, who was impeached in 2016, smiling and laughing.

22 President of Brazil from 2003 to 2011, Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva is one of the founding members of the party PT and the first politician from PT to reach the presidency. 76

Figure 35. Photo collage of Rousseff smiling and laughing. From “Euzinha agora [Myself now]” [Digital image] by Please Come to Brazil [pleasecometobr], 2018, February 18. Retrieved October 29, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/pleasecometobr/photos/a.437753232989691.1073741828 .437749376323410/1330453767052962/?type=3&theater

Figure 36 is a Photoshopped picture of a scene from the video clip for the

Beyoncé song “Formation”, with Lula’s face replacing Beyoncé’s. Appropriating a line from Beyoncé’s Lemonade album and associated video promos, the subtitles say:

“Bitch, I’m back by popular demand” – a quote that opens the original video – as if

Lula were going to be elected as president after Temer’s corruption scandal.

Figure 36. Photoshopped picture of Lula as Beyoncé on the video clip of the song “Formation”. From “Bitch I’m back by popular demand” [Digital image] by Anonymous 9, 2017, May 19. Retrieved October 29, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1341742575907825&set=p.1341742575 907825&type=3&theater

Laughing at the zoeira While some internautas were mocking the Brazilian political scenario after the press published the recordings, others were laughing about how the Brazilian internet was reacting. This category groups the memetic examples that talked about how the internautas were laughing about a serious issue, showing how the internautas use the zoeira as a self-critique and a critique of the digital environment in which the political discourse takes place. For example, Figure 37 is a Tweet featuring an image from the movie Titanic. In the original scene, the lead violinist stands alone to play one final song as the ocean liner sinks and the passengers desperately try to save their lives.

Here, the Tweet says: “Brazil is the Titanic, and Twitter is the violinist”.

Figure 37. Tweet with a picture of the violinist playing one last song in the sinking Titanic. From “O Brasil é o Titanic e o Twitter é o violinista [Brazil is the Titanic, and Twitter is the violinist]” [Tweet] by Anonymous 10, 2017, May 17. Retrieved October 20, 2017, from https://twitter.com/luquinha/status/864993863064313857

Figure 38 is a Tweet with a picture of a happy girl holding a glass of beer in front of a truck that is on fire, and it says: “the meme that represents the current situation of

Brazil and the social media users”. Figure 38 presents the picture of the happy girl as a metaphor of how Brazilians react when the political situation is “on fire”, thus mocking the country’s own zoeira.

Figure 38. Tweet with a picture of a girl smiling and holding a glass of beer in front of a truck on fire. From “O meme que representa a atual situação do brasil [sic] e as pessoas nas redes sociais [The meme that represents the current situation of Brazil and its people on social media]” [Tweet] by Anonymous 11, 2017, May 17. Retrieved October 20, 2017, from https://twitter.com/xuxanave/status/865036467810295808

In the last example (Figure 39), an internauta states in a Tweet: “the situation is each day becoming more difficult in Brazil, luckily I live on the internet” as if the internet (and the zoeira) would represent an outlet for Brazilian problems.

Figure 39. Tweet ironically saying that internautas do not need to worry about Brazil, as they “live on the internet”. From “A situação ta [sic] cada dia mais dificil [sic] no brasil [sic] ainda bem que eu moro na internet [The situation is becoming each day more difficult in Brazil, luckily I live on the internet]” [Tweet] by Anonymous 12, 2017, May 17. Retrieved October 30, 2017, from https://twitter.com/arielfilipe/status/865027970678837252

This is so Brazil! In this category, internautas described the corruption scandal with specific reference to Brazilian culture. That is, here the examples represent the political chaos of Brazil as something typical or something that seemed already expected from Brazil.

For example, Figure 40 is a Tweet which says: “The Republic is going to fall because of a guy named Joesley. Nothing is more Brazil than that.” In Brazil, “Joesley” is seen as a common name for lower-income or rural people and, on this Tweet, this name works as a symbol for “the Brazilian people” in general. Knowing that the “hero” of this corruption episode is a “common”, “ordinary” Brazilian seems to be a joke, something typical from Brazil and its chaotic existence as a country.

Figure 40. Tweet relating the name “Joesley” with something “typically Brazilian”. From “A república vai cair por causa de um cara chamado Joesley. Nada é mais brasil [sic] do que isso. [The Republic is going to fall because of a guy named Joesley. Nothing is more Brazil than that.]” [Tweet] by Anonymous 13, 2017, May 17. Retrieved October 20, 2017, from https://twitter.com/ly_carr/status/864982005120995329

Figure 41 shows an image of the current President of the Chamber of Deputies in Brazil, Rodrigo Maia, who is the first in the line of succession for the presidency, and it says: “Tomorrow in Afternoon Session: this chubby little guy gets into so many troubles in Brasilia that even God has doubts about it. In: PRESIDENT BY

ACCIDENT”. Afternoon Session (Sessão da Tarde, in Portuguese) is a popular free-

to-air TV show that broadcasts movies every afternoon on the channel Globo.23 The tone of the writing on this Tweet reproduces how the speaker of the Afternoon Sessions present the movies’ commercials. The internautas reading this Tweet quickly understood this joke, as Afternoon Sessions is a classic TV show from Brazil and its ads are part of the Brazilian popular culture. The zoeira, here, consists in the irony of relating a product of the national popular culture with a corruption scandal, as if corruption was as trivial as a popular TV show.

Figure 41. Tweet relating the corruption scandal with the Brazilian TV Show Sessão da Tarde. From “Amanhã na Sessão da Tarde: esse gordinho arranja confusões que até Deus duvida em Brasília em Presidente Por Acidente [Tomorrow in the Afternoon Session: this chubby little guy gets into so many troubles in Brazil that even God has doubts about it. In: President By Accident]” [Tweet] by Anonymous 14, 2017, May 17. Retrieved October 20, 2017, from https://twitter.com/gugtavas/status/864991228353544193

23 The biggest channel of Brazilian TV, reaching the majority of the audience (Rede Globo, n.d.). 82

5.3 THE ZOEIRA IN NEVES AND TEMER’S RECORDINGS

Through videos, GIFs, Tweets and remixed images, both left-wing and right- wing supporters shared various memetic texts about this corruption scandal, mainly during the week when the press published the recordings. The zoeira here could be seen when the internautas took this bad news about Brazil and used humour to relate the episode to other Brazilian problems and the Brazilian culture in general, laughing with relief about their own tensions as a country. The various memetic examples previously shown in this chapter talked about the same subject, the release of the Neves and Temer phone call to Joesley Batista, from different perspectives.

Through the zoeira, internautas discussed how this event showed that Brazil is

“a chaos”; or how Brazilians are used to corruption; or how Brazil is hopeless (“it will never ‘work’ correctly”); or how the “second choice” (Temer and Aécio) are also corrupt; or they simply exposed how Brazilians deal with problems – by laughing, as if it was the only thing Brazilians could do when facing a bad situation. From various points-of-view, those memetic examples expressed how the Brazilians were feeling about the recordings, using humour also as a way to protest.

The zoeira could be seen when internautas used key elements from the recordings and combined them with other aspects of the Brazilian culture using various types of meme repackaging (Shifman, 2014). Using mechanisms of remix, for example, President Temer was depicted wearing the Vasco jersey (Figure 25), symbolising his failure as a president, while the former president Lula was

Photoshopped playing the violin, illustrating his possible celebration after the scandal

(Figure 34). Another repackaging mechanism used in the examples was to change the context of old texts, by reposting them in conjunction with the publishing of the recordings. The simple re-post of a screenshot of an old Tweet by a humorous

Facebook page, for example, worked as the zoeira, such as in the case of Eduardo

Cunha’s Tweet complaining about the corruption in Brazil (Figure 24), or the picture of the musicians Ivete Sangalo wearing a presidential sash with the singer Zeca

Pagodinho (Figure 31). The original cultural meanings and social functions that these examples had when first posted were transformed when the internautas changed their contexts by re-posting them immediately after the leak of Neves and Temer’s recordings.

We should also notice the type of language used in these memetic examples. The use of informal language, sometimes with Portuguese errors or using slang, demonstrated irony. For example, in Figure 41, where the politician Rodrigo Maia, the next in line to be the president of Brazil, was presented as a character in a movie on

Afternoon Session, the internautas used the existent social knowledge of the tone of speech used in Afternoon Session’s commercials to treat corruption as something trivial, part of the Brazilian culture. Through irony, this Tweet made fun of how

Brazilian corruption became as ordinary as a daily TV show.

This meme also changed the way Brazilian authorities deal with memes. On 22

May 2017, the Brazilian presidential office emailed two entertainment blogs from

Brazil, Ah Negão and Capinaremos, famous for creating and circulating Brazilian memes (G1, 2017b). The message warned that the use of Temer’s images for non- journalistic purposes needed prior authorisation from the official press office of the

Presidency and that the president’s images could only be reproduced if the original author was cited, following the copyright law in Brazil (G1, 2017b).

After this episode, internautas started to discuss freedom of speech on the internet. While the bloggers were apprehensive, as it was the first time an authority had interfered in the creation and circulation of memes in Brazil, other internautas 84

reacted by creating new memetic responses, criticising what was considered a non- democratic attitude from the president (G1, 2017b). The official Facebook page of the opposition party PT, for example, posted on 24 May a collection of photos from

President Temer (Figure 42), providing the original font of the pictures as he ordered, but emphasising that the use of any images for memes should be free (Caputo, 2017).

The picture says: “Michel Temer has forbidden photos for [the use in] memes. We didn’t”.

Figure 42. Facebook post from PT’s official Facebook page, providing a link to a collection of photos of President Temer. The photo says: “Michel Temer has forbidden photos for [the use in] memes. We didn’t”. From “Michel Temer quer impedir o povo de usar fotos oficiais do Palácio do Planalto em memes. O PT coleciona imagens do presidente golpista desde que ele chegou ao poder por meio de um golpe. E o uso é liberado, inclusive para memes! Acesse: http://bit.ly/fotostemeragpt [Michel Temer wants to forbid people from using official Planalto Palace photos in memes. PT collects images of the putschist president since he took power in a coup. And the use of the photos is free, even for memes! Access the link: http://bit.ly/fotostemeragpt]” [Digital image] by PT – Partido dos Trabalhadores [pt.brasil], 2017, May 24. Retrieved October 20, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/pt.brasil/photos/a.106208242798893.13150.1058213661 70914/1377981528954885/?type=3&theater 85

While, in the end, the blogs were not punished in any way, this event marked a significant change in Brazilian internet culture. The large number of memetic texts related to the Neves and Temer recordings caught the attention of the president of

Brazil who, for the first time, interfered with the memes’ production. For a while, after the president’s warning, Brazilian bloggers and internautas were apprehensive, without knowing if they were not following the law or if the president could interfere or not with issues of internet freedom like that.

This episode showed how sensitive protest is in Brazil. As we saw, since the origins of Brazil, Brazilians have used humour to protest about the authorities. In the carnival, Brazilians used the carnivalesque as a way to subvert power (Bakhtin, 1984;

Matta, 1991), at the arrival of the Portuguese crown they used burlesque humour to mock the royal family (Queiroz, 2010; Telles & Soares, 2016), and during the military coup journalists used funny cartoons to fight against the dictatorship (Telles & Soares,

2016). Humour has always been the way Brazilians express their opinion about politics. Similarly, here, the zoeira worked as a protest.

The president’s warning opened debates about freedom of speech on the internet and in Brazil. The Neves and Temer’s recordings meme, therefore, is presented here as a symbol of how the zoeira is not only about laughing about the problems, or a self-critique, but a valid form of protest.

To conclude, in this chapter we have seen that Brazilians deal with political corruption through irony, using the zoeira as a way to laugh with relief (Meyer, 2000).

Zago (2013) has previously discussed the use of remix and humour to deal with political news in Brazil, and here we see once again the use of remixing techniques, such as using Photoshopped images, changing the context of an image or setting the tone of a speech. Through these mechanisms, internautas related the Neves and

Temer’s recordings meme to Brazilian culture, as if corruption was something so recurrent in Brazil that it became trivial and part of the country’s cultural identity. The zoeira allowed internautas all over Brazil to protest, even prompting the authorities to rethink their relationship with internet memes in the country.

Chapter 6: Class – Sarrada no Ar (Brazilian funk)

In this chapter, I discuss the use of the zoeira as a mode of engagement with questions about class difference in Brazil. The following section (6.1) is dedicated to investigating this use of the zoeira in more detail. I describe how middle-class internautas represent some lower-class cultural practices and behaviour through the use of memes, constructing them as bizarre or grotesque but at the same time as funny and an integral part of what being Brazilian means.

Section 6.2 explores the meme Sarrada no Ar (Brazilian funk) and its backstory.

In section 6.2.1 I analyse its memetic examples, which I divided into seven categories based on their content and format. In section 6.3 I identify the formats, aesthetics, forms of speech and memetic mechanisms used throughout the Sarrada no Ar meme and what they have to say about this use of the zoeira. I observe that the zoeira emerges when the context in which the meme is reproduced is somehow unusual in terms of class, or when it is bizarre and absurd, but typically from the lower-class, reinforcing the use of the Sarrada no Ar as a cultural symbol of Brazil’s cultural identity.

6.1 THE ZOEIRA IN CLASS

Internet access has been increasing in Brazil (IBGE, 2018). Lower socio-economic classes and rural communities are becoming more connected and, with that, the internet is working as a mirror of the economic and social disparities of the country

(Spyer, 2017). In his anthropological study “Social Media in Emergent Brazil”, Spyer

(2017) analyses the uses of social media of what he calls an “emergent working class”, a segment of Brazilian society that moved above the poverty line in the 2000s.

Recently, those Brazilians began to acquire more material goods, such as mobile phones and computers, and gained mobility, accessing environments that had usually been frequented only by the middle-class before, such as airports and universities. In that context, working-class Brazilians also began to use the internet, but their modes of online participation are far different from the Brazilian middle-class (Spyer, 2017).

On the internet, middle-class internautas mock how o brasileiro24 behave in their daily lives, and how their attitudes seem bizarre and grotesque, how they “lack manners” or act differently from what is considered correct from the middle-class perspective. Internautas use ambivalent humour to talk about the clothes the lower- class wear, where they live, what music they listen to, the products they use, the shops they go to, how they talk, the way they interact in social media – in short, they perform and reinforce their superior cultural capital (Bourdieu, 2010) as a way of redrawing the boundaries between social classes that are becoming less economically distant from one another.

But internautas do not only laugh about how odd lower-class behaviour is, thereby separating themselves from this behavior; complicating matters, they also include themselves by laughing about how typically Brazilian it is. When laughing at “o brasileiro” this use of the zoeira may be considered a form of superior humour (Meyer,

2000) because it is an elitist perception of the lower-class behaviour and lifestyle.

Nevertheless, the zoeira cannot be reduced and defined only as a type of humour that works to reinforce superiority, because here the zoeira works as a shared cultural identity-builder too. That is, whereas internautas make fun of what is considered

24 “O brasileiro” can be loosely translated to “the average Brazilian”. In general, Brazilians use this expression when referring to “most Brazilians”, that is, to the working class. 89

typical Brazilian, they also connect their own identities with the object of the humour, in a mixture of shame and pride.

The Facebook page O melhor do Brasil é o Brasileiro (“The best of Brazil is ‘the

Brazilian’”) is a representative example of this apparently paradoxical use of the zoeira. The name of the page is, in itself, ironic: They show why o brasileiro is “the best aspect of Brazil” by showing bizarre examples of things that are considered normal for the lower-class, or part of their daily life, but are treated as odd or unfamiliar for the middle-class.

Figure 43 illustrates this contrast between classes. A Facebook post features a photograph of a relaxed, happy girl standing in the middle of the road with both arms aloft in a gesture of nonchalance and holding a glass of beer in one hand, while approaching on the near horizon is a truck on fire, ominous clouds of black smoke filling the sky. The blazing truck has either not been noticed or is considered so ordinary that is of no concern to the girl.25 The caption for this photo says

“Welcome_to_Brazil.jpg”, indicating how culturally symbolic this picture is. Some of the comments are: “So what if the truck is on fire? The important thing is that the beer is chilled!”; “Welcome to Brazil, where the disgrace happens, and people keep smiling hahahaha”; and “the Brazilian art of dealing with the problems in life hahaha”.

Whereas internautas are laughing at this picture, they are also referring to that situation as typically Brazilian in a positive way. In that context, the relaxed, utterly unconcerned girl represents “the Brazilians” in a general sense, while the fire represents all Brazilian problems. Even if middle-class internautas do not identify themselves with that specific situation, this photo works as a metaphor for the way

25 This photo also appeared in the Neves and Temer meme, Figure 38. 90

Brazilians deal with all Brazilian problems. In that sense, they laugh at the situation in recognition of what “being Brazilian” means.

Figure 43. Facebook post from the page “The Best of Brazil is ‘the Brazilian’” with a picture of a girl standing in the middle of the road and smiling in front of a truck on fire. From “Bem_vindo_ao_Brasil.jpg [Welcome_to_Brazil.jpg]” [Photograph] by O melhor do Brasil é o Brasileiro [omelhordobreobrasileiro], 2017, May 5. Retrieved October 18, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/omelhordobreobrasileiro/photos/a.879032165485862.107 3741827.879030835485995/1334291249959949/?type=3&theater

Figures 44 and 45, for instance, illustrate how lower-class Brazilians turn a situation around and find creative solutions in the face of adverse economic conditions.

For some people, these behaviours might be considered lacking “manners” or

“etiquette”, or seem bizarre, but they are recognised as real portraits of Brazilian daily life, and that is why internautas connected with them. Internautas use the zoeira to indicate how funny Brazilian behaviour is, but also to validate this lifestyle as a genuine Brazilian way of life. Ambiguously, those images represent a self-celebration of what means being Brazilian on the internet.

Figure 44 is a picture of a car without rear-view mirror, so its owner installed a large household mirror instead. One of the comments says, “You can reverse park and also check if you’re looking good!!!”, and another says “‘The Brazilian’ looks to the engineer and says ‘kkkk engineer’”, as if the level of knowledge acquire in daily life of the “average Brazilian” were superior to what engineers learn in university.

Figure 44. Facebook post with a picture of a car with a large household mirror replacing the rear-view mirror. From “[Untitle image of a car with a regular mirror replacing the rear-view mirror]” [Photograph] by O melhor do Brasil é o Brasileiro [omelhordobreobrasileiro], 2017, June 6. Retrieved October 18, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/omelhordobreobrasileiro/photos/a.879032165485862.107 3741827.879030835485995/1365750743480666/?type=3&theater

Figure 45 shows a picture of an apartment balcony with a “pool” made out of a tarp. One of the comments says, “I’m only thinking how they are going to take out the water without flooding the apartment”, and another one says “‘The Brazilian’ hasn’t conquered the world because [they] don’t want to kkkkkk”.

Figure 45. Facebook post with a picture of a child swimming in an improvised “pool” on a balcony. From “Apartamento com piscina [Apartment with a pool]” [Photograph] by O melhor do Brasil é o Brasileiro [omelhordobreobrasileiro], 2017, June 12. Retrieved October 19, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/omelhordobreobrasileiro/photos/a.879032165485862.107 3741827.879030835485995/1378748262180914/?type=3&theater

As shown in this section, the internautas by turns mock and celebrate the lack of manners and oddness of the Brazilian people, as if all the representations of them were, at least, a fair portrait of Brazil. That is why the zoeira, here, carry aspects from both the superior and relief humour theories (Meyer, 2000), and represent a unique type of humour.

6.2 SARRADA NO AR (BRAZILIAN FUNK)

Figure 46. Screenshot of scene of the “Sarrada no Ar” dance video from Fezinho Patatyy on his YouTube channel. Here, Fezinho Patatyy is performing the “Sarrada no Ar” movement. From “Mc Crash - Sarrada no Ar - Passinho do Romano ( Fezinho Patatyy ) (DJ Maligno ) ♪ ♫ [sic]” [Video File] by Fezinho Patatyy, 2014, May 27. Retrieved October 21, 2017 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1Ka-xrihJI

In 2014, the amateur Brazilian funk dancer Fezinho Patatyy released a video of himself dancing to the song “Sarrada no ar (Passinho do Romano)”, from the singer

MC Crash (Figure 46). In this video, every time the song used the expression “sarrada no ar”, Patatyy performed a dance move which consisted of gesturing at his groin with his hands in a V shape while lifting one of his legs from the floor or raising both legs and jumping into the air.

Around 2016, this dance video went viral. Patatyy later used this dance move in other songs and videos and soon the Sarrada no Ar became a dance craze.

Internautas started to copy Patatyy’s dance move, creating parodies of the original song, reuniting people to reproduce the dance move, and even creating a

“championship” challenging people to reproduce the Sarrada no Ar in unusual places.

Dance crazes are nothing new. As Soha and McDowell (2016) have pointed out, long before the internet people already reproduced the Twist or the Macarena, for example, in patterns whereby dances that had come from a subculture were appropriated into mainstream culture. On the internet, the dance craze phenomenon was marked mostly by hip-hop videos on YouTube, in which dances were reproduced, transformed and spread all over the internet (Soha & McDowell, 2016). According to

Soha and McDowell (2016, p. 5), “this process mirrors hip-hop in general, which has depended heavily on sampling, remixing, sharing, and collaboration between artists and borrowing from other genres”. Similarly, Brazilian funk is famous for its dance moves, and the way it mixes different musical influences. In that context, the Sarrada no Ar became a Brazilian meme because of its favela roots and what it meant for

Brazilian culture.

The word “sarrada” is a slang term that basically means “having sex”, but it is mainly used to make fun when someone wants to talk about sex in an informal, non- serious way and the expression “no ar” means “in the air”. The Sarrada no Ar dance move, therefore, is a body movement which tries to imitate this sex position “in the air”. Clearly, this expression carries much sexual connotation, which is common in

Brazilian funk and other popular culture expressions from the favelas. As a result, the

Sarrada no Ar became a symbol of the lower-class’s “odd” behaviour, from the middle-class point of view. It became a meme when it was reproduced both in “typical” lower-class contexts, and outside the favelas, where this type of music and dance was not expected. When reproducing the Sarrada no Ar on the internet, internautas were, at the same time, laughing at the absurdness of Brazilian reality, and connecting with an idea of what “being Brazilian” means.

6.2.1 Memetic examples I divided the memetic examples of the Sarrada no Ar meme into seven categories based on their content and format: “Fabs”, “Celebrities”, “The Legendary Sarrada

Challenge”, “Sarrada Evolution”, “Original Photoshopped”, and “Text”. In this section, I will clarify each category and illustrate how they appeared on the Brazilian internet.

Fabs Similar to the Photo Fab genre (Shifman, 2014), this category includes all photos and videos where internautas were reproducing the body position of Sarrada no Ar.

Some of the pictures in this category showed people that were intentionally doing the

Sarrada no Ar movement, such as in Figures 47, 48, 49 and 50. Other photos and videos featured people or animals that were serendipitously caught and photographed in a position similar to the dance craze, as in Figure 51.

Here, the act of performing the Sarrada no Ar is, in itself, the joke. But when this dance craze is reproduced in contexts that are supposed to be unusual, and yet seem normal, the internautas use the zoeira to laugh at this situation as being typically

Brazilian. That is, middle-class internautas consider all those circumstances from the

Figures 47 to 51 bizarre but, at the same time, these texts symbolize Brazilian lower- class behaviour. They are funny because they are both bizarre and typical. Middle- class internautas consider it weird that kids (Figures 47 and 48) are dancing a sexual dance as if that was something “normal” to do, or that bizarre situations, such as people dressed as superheroes dancing in the middle of the street (Figure 49), hairdressers dancing while cutting someone’s hair (Figure 50), and dogs “dancing” the Sarrada no

Ar (Figure 51) are also treated as mundane. But, at the same time, they consider this behaviour typically Brazilian. In that sense, reproducing the Sarrada no Ar in

incongruous situations creates the joke, but the fact that those “bizarre” situations are typically Brazilian is what makes this meme a representation of Brazilian culture.

Figure 47. Photo of a girl at school performing the Sarrada no Ar towards another girl. From “[Untitled image of a girl performing the Sarrada no Ar towards another girl]” [Photograph] by O melhor do Brasil é o Brasileiro [omelhordobreobrasileiro], 2016, August 1. Retrieved October 24, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/omelhordobreobrasileiro/photos/a.879032165485862.107 3741827.879030835485995/1034752249913852/?type=3&theater

Figure 48. Picture of a class of school children posing for a school photograph, while one of the students is doing the Sarrada no Ar body pose. From “[Untitled image of a class of kids posing as for a school photograph with Easter baskets, while one of the students is doing the Sarrada no Ar body pose]” [Photograph] by O melhor do Brasil é o Brasileiro [omelhordobreobrasileiro], 2017, April 15. Retrieved October 24, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/omelhordobreobrasileiro/photos/a.879032165485862.107 3741827.879030835485995/1311578855564522/?type=3&theater

Figure 49. Screenshot of a scene of a video featuring two people dressed as the superheroes Spider-Man and The Flash, dancing the Sarrada no Ar in the middle of a street. From “Sarrada Civil” [Civil Sarrada]” [Video File] by Aquelas Imagens Nada a Ver com Nada [AquelasImagensNadaAVerComNada], 2016, March 11. Retrieved October 25, 2017 from https://www.facebook.com/AquelasImagensNadaAVerComNada/videos/807649646 007507/

Figure 50. Screenshot of a scene of a video where a hairdresser is dancing Sarrada no Ar while cutting a client’s hair. From “Corte o cabelo e ganhe uma sarrada do cabeleireiro [Cut your hair and get a Sarrada from the hairdresser]” [Web log post] by Não Salvo, 2017, August 3. Retrieved November 15, 2017, from https://www.naosalvo.com.br/corte-o-cabelo-e-ganhe-uma-sarrada-do-cabeleireiro/

Figure 51. Picture of a man and a dog doing Sarrada no Ar. The text says: “After a lot of practice, finally Bisosheylo [the dog’s name] has learnt to sarrar26 no ar”. From “Os ensinamentos da sarrada no ar estão em boas mãos [The teachings of

26 Verb which means “doing Sarrada.” 99

Sarrada no Ar are in good hands]” [Web log post] by Joe, March 1, 2017. Retrieved 5 November, 2017, from https://www.ahnegao.com.br/2017/03/os-ensinamentos-da- sarrada-no-ar-estao-em-boas-maos.html

Celebrities A number of Brazilian celebrities also performed the Sarrada no Ar on television and social media. The internautas were surprised by these events, which caught the attention of the press as well. In Brazil, it is unusual to see the television reproducing content from the internet, and it is even more rare to see a popular culture expression from the lower-class reality being appropriated by TV celebrities.

Figure 52, for example, is a Facebook post with a video of the actress Cláudia

Raia doing a Sarrada no Ar, and it says: “When you think you’ve seen everything…

Cláudia Raia sarrando27.” Raia is a well-known Brazilian actress and dancer who starred in several famous soap operas and musicals (IMDb, n.d.-a). In an interview conducted as part of the popular morning show Mais Você (More about You, loosely translated) the 50-year-old actress explained that she enjoyed doing “super modern things”, something that her younger colleagues considered unexpected, such as dancing Brazilian funk. Then, she demonstrated that knowledge about Brazilian funk by doing the Sarrada no Ar on the live show. The video of Cláudia Raia’s Sarrada no

Ar soon became part of the meme. It seemed funny for the internautas to see someone who “does not looks like the type of person who would enjoy this type of music” dancing to Brazilian funk music, a symbol of the favelas, and the antithesis of middle- class respectability.

27 Gerund form of the verb “sarrar”, which means “doing/performing sarrada.” 100

Figure 52. A Facebook post featuring a video of Cláudia Raia doing the Sarrada no Ar on TV. From “Quando você pensa que viu de tudo… Claudia Raia sarrando. [When you think you’ve seen everything… Claudia Raia sarrando.]” [Video file] by O melhor do Brasil é o Brasileiro [omelhordobreobrasileiro], 2017, March 28. Retrieved October 24, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/omelhordobreobrasileiro/videos/1290805287641879/

Figure 53 is a Facebook post from the page Legado da Copa sharing a picture of the German player Mario Götze, where he appears jumping and celebrating a goal, in a position similar to the Sarrada no Ar. The caption mocks, saying: “LOOK AT

THE GERMANS TRYING TO COMPETE IN THE SARRADA TOO, BRO.” This post uses the Sarrada no Ar as a symbol of being Brazilian, joking about the fact that the German players would be copying something typically Brazilian. Using the

German player makes a reference to the match between Brazil and Germany in the

2014 FIFA World Cup, where Germany defeated Brazil by 7-1. Soon after this great defeat, Brazilians used the zoeira to mock Brazil’s lousy performance. In that context, this post works as an auto-critique as well, as it makes fun of Brazil, suggesting that the country is worse than Germany in everything, even in what is typically Brazilian, such as the Sarrada no Ar.

101

Figure 53. Repost of Mario Götze’s cover photo where he is celebrating a goal and supposedly doing the Sarrada no Ar. From “Ó os alemão [sic] querendo competir na sarrada também bicho [Look at the Germans trying to compete in the Sarrada too, bro]” [Digital image] by Legado da Copa [legadaodamassa], 2016, July 21. Retrieved October 25, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/legadaodamassa/posts/1764472510475919

The Legendary Sarrada Challenge The Sarrada no Ar meme started to be reproduced in such unusual places that the internautas called some of the Sarrada no Ar pictures and videos “legendary”.

Based on that, the “Legendary Sarrada Challenge” was created to challenge other internautas to replicate the Sarrada no Ar in odd places and share their pictures and videos online. Some of the examples of this category featured failed attempts to be

“legendary”, because whoever was doing the Sarrada no Ar fell or got hurt, while others were so impressive that they became famous. Figure 54, for example, is a picture of a boy jumping from a building doing the Sarrada no Ar. The caption says: “He had to die to conclude the legendary sarrada, do not let that sacrifice be in vain, leave here your ‘amen’”. With irony, this post jokes with the Legendary Sarrada Challenge, suggesting that this challenge was both dangerous and absurdly pointless. 102

Figure 54. Photo of a “Legendary Sarrada Challenge” attempt. The picture says: “He had to die to conclude the legendary Sarrada, do not let that sacrifice be in vain, leave here your ‘amen’”. From “A sarrada lendária [The legendary Sarrada]” [Web log post] by Joe, 2016, March 30. Retrieved October 22, 2017, from https://www.ahnegao.com.br/2016/03/a-sarrada-lendaria.html

Sarrada Evolution Along with the Legendary Sarrada Challenge, internautas created the “Sarrada

Evolution”, a sub-meme of the Sarrada no Ar that became popular especially among teenagers. Here, friends took photos of themselves doing the Sarrada no Ar, each one performing one part of the movement, as if it were a freeze-frame series from a movie.

Like the iconic image of man’s evolution from the apes, this category plays with the idea that the Sarrada no Ar dance represents a cultural evolution of humankind. Figure

55 groups three examples under the category of the Sarrada Evolution.

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Figure 55. Three examples of the variation of the meme Sarrada no Ar, the “Sarrada Evolution”. From “Aprenda em 6 imagens a executar a sarrada lendária [Learn in 6 images how to do the legendary Sarrada]” [Web log post] by Não Salvo, 2016, May 11. Retrieved October 22, 2017, from https://www.naosalvo.com.br/aprenda-6- imagens-executar-sarrada-lendaria/ Original Photoshopped This category gathers all examples that used Photoshop as a meme genre

(Shifman, 2014). Here, internautas digitally manipulated the original video of Patatyy, changing the context in which the Sarrada no Ar was reproduced and creating the joke.

Following the incongruity theory of humour (Meyer, 2000), which suggests that people laugh at what is unexpected or different from the norm, when internautas associated the Sarrada no Ar, a cultural expression of the lower-class, with international or high culture expressions, they put in contrast two distinct realities, creating the surprising element of the joke. By doing that, they are also suggesting that the Sarrada no Ar is a symbol of Brazilian culture.

Figures 56 and 57 are examples of how internautas mixed the Sarrada no Ar with elements of global popular geek culture. Figure 56 associates the Sarrada no Ar

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meme with Pokémon’s commercial slogan “Who’s that Pokémon?”28 by using the aesthetics of the Pokémon quiz and applying the silhouette of Patatyy doing the

Sarrada no Ar, as if he was a Brazilian Pokémon.

Figure 56. Photoshopped image with the silhouette of Patatyy performing a Sarrada no Ar as the “unknown Pokémon”. From “[Untitled image of the silhouette of Fezinho Patatyy performing a Sarrada no Ar as the ‘unknown Pokémon’]” [Digital image] by Legado da Copa [legadaodamassa], 2017, March 27. Retrieved October 25, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/legadaodamassa/photos/a.1457424331180740.10737418 26.1451006558489184/1889467081309794/?type=3&theater

In the video “Super Sarrada World” (Figure 57) internautas combined the video game “Super Mario World” with the Sarrada no Ar dance. Here, Patatyy takes Mario’s place as the main character of the game. While a Brazilian funk song mixed with Super

Mario World’s theme song plays in the background, Patatyy jumps doing the Sarrada no Ar to grab golden coins and kill the enemies of the game.

28 Before and after every commercial break of the animated TV series Pokémon, there was a quiz showing a silhouette of a Pokémon while the narrator asked the audience “Who’s that Pokémon?” (pgj1997, 2010). 105

Figure 57. Screenshot of frames from the “Super Sarrada World” video, featuring Fezinho Patatyy as the game’s main character, Mario. From “Será que esse supera o passinho do serei hokage? [Does this video overcome the serei hokage's dance?]” [Video file] by Otakando das Sarradas [Otakand0], 2016, January 18. Retrieved October 22, 2017 from https://www.facebook.com/Otakand0/videos/942467492468599/

Text The last category groups the memetic examples that talked about the meme through text. The Sarrada no Ar as a dance craze became so popular that the expression

“sarrada” started to be used on the internet as an equivalent to “have sex”, in a playful, informal matter. For example, in one of the “Weekend Decrees”29 the Facebook page

Legado da Copa posted: “Just to remind you that today is Friday, the day to teach the boss’s son to do a Sarrada no Ar”, as if on the first day of the weekend it was “allowed” to break the rules, lead the boss’s son astray and party with him (Figure 58). Figure 59 is a picture of a girl next to graffiti that says: “I just want to sarrar”.

29 On Fridays the Facebook page Legado da Copa ironically posts “decrees”, in which they “impose rebel rules” to break usual rules and have fun on the weekend. 106

Figure 58. The “Weekend Decree” from the Facebook page Legado da Copa. From “Lembrando que hoje é sexta feira dia de ensinar o filho do chefe a dar ‘sarrada no ar’ [Just to remind you that today is Friday, the day to teach the boss’s son to do a Sarrada no Ar]” [Facebook status update] by Legado da Copa [legadaodamassa], 2016, September 16. Retrieved October 25, 2017 from https://www.facebook.com/legadaodamassa/posts/1791099264479910

Figure 59. Picture of a girl next to a wall pointing to graffiti saying: “I just want to sarrar”. From “Só quero sarrar [I just want to Sarrar]” [Photograph] by Legado da Copa [legadaodamassa], 2016, July 26. Retrieved October 25, 2017 from https://www.facebook.com/legadaodamassa/photos/a.1457424331180740.10737418 26.1451006558489184/1766349416954895/?type=3&theater

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6.3 THE ZOEIRA IN SARRADA NO AR

In this chapter I described the various forms the Sarrada no Ar meme took on the internet, from the simple reproduction of a body position to mixing the Sarrada no

Ar with pop culture elements. The way this dance is both sexualised and funny, an adult subject and a child’s game, is very representative of the Brazilian culture and a key element of the zoeira. As we will see next, the way Sarrada no Ar is paradoxical portrays the nation’s cultural identity.

Most of the material collected for this chapter appeared in comments or posts on

Facebook pages or blog posts, and little was found in Twitter posts. The Sarrada no

Ar was represented through amateur pictures and videos, without any refined production or editing. When using texts, the memetic examples used slang and lay language, also to connect with the idea that the Sarrada no Ar is an expression of the

Brazilian people.

Although this meme was widely famous on the internet, a specific group, with distinct characteristics, dominated the use of this meme. I observed that most of the internautas who created, transformed and shared the Sarrada no Ar meme followed the stereotype of heterosexual men. As Amaral (2011) outlines, on the internet, there are various subgroups which distinguish themselves by the way their participants interact online. By analysing the type of language of humour they use, the content they share, the topics they are interested, we can understand the characteristics of these groups and their cultural identity online (Amaral, 2011). In the Sarrada no Ar case, from the channels accessed, the ones that shared most of the memetic examples collected here were the Facebook page Legado da Copa and the blog Ah! Negão. Both channels utilise a type of language and sense of humour conventionally considered as

“masculine”, in a traditional social understanding, and they focus on subjects geared

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towards men. Indeed, most of the groups sharing and talking about the Sarrada no Ar meme were representative of this cultural ethos. There was also interest from teenagers and children, who saw the Sarrada no Ar as a type of game, mainly by reproducing the meme in the Legendary Sarrada Challenge and the Sarrada Evolution categories.

Regarding social class, I focused on the middle-class perspective about the

Sarrada no Ar. Following the idea of the incongruity theory of humour (Meyer, 2000) doing the Sarrada no Ar anywhere but a dancefloor is already humorous, as it is a dance routine and it seems strange to reproduce it outside this context. However, I noticed that, for the Brazilian middle-class, the humour in the Sarrada no Ar meme particularly happened in two forms: When it was reproduced in a context that was (1) absurd but typically Brazilian and, therefore, expected; or (2) surprising and unexpected.

So, for example, when children reproduced the Sarrada no Ar (Figures 47 and

48), it seemed absurd because this dance is full of sexual innuendo. It was also absurd when the Sarrada no Ar appeared in weird situations, such as when it was performed by a group of people dressed as superheroes in the middle of the street (Figure 49) or by a hairdresser while cutting someone’s hair (Figure 50). But middle-class internautas also expected those absurd attitudes, because they are examples of the lower-class behaviour in Brazil. Middle-class internautas may consider kids dancing to sexual songs as absurd or inappropriate, but this kind of behaviour is also understood to be quite normal for lower classes in Brazil. Middle-class Brazilians therefore reproduce the idea that, since most Brazilians belong to the lower social classes, if a memetic text presents the Sarrada no Ar in a lower-class environment, that text is considered absurd by middle-class standards, but at the same time typically Brazilian.

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Conversely, other memetic texts were funny precisely because they put the

Sarrada no Ar in unexpected contexts, creating the surprise element of the joke, as occurs in incongruity humour (Meyer, 2000). This happened when celebrities reproduced the Sarrada no Ar (Figures 52 and 53) and when remixing mechanisms

(Shifman, 2014) were used to cross the Sarrada no Ar with global pop-culture (Figures

56 and 57).

When celebrities voluntarily reproduced this meme on TV, internautas laughed because it was unexpected to see someone from the upper classes reproducing a symbol of the poor communities outside this context. Similarly, when internautas used a picture of a German player celebrating a goal, jumping in a movement similar to the

Sarrada no Ar, and suggesting that he was trying to “compete” with Brazilians (Figure

53), or when they Photoshopped Fezinho Patatyy doing the Sarrada no Ar as if he was a Pokémon (Figure 56) or as a character from a famous video game (Figure 57), they were making a joke by putting in contrast a symbol of Brazilian (lower-class) culture with international pop-culture. Here, the zoeira lies in (1) deploying the Sarrada no Ar as a symbol of Brazilian culture for the whole internet; and (2) ironically suggesting that Brazilian popular culture should be global, as if it was as great as Brazilian soccer or geek culture. By contrasting global pop-culture with Brazilian funk, internautas were displaying, on the internet, the concept that the Sarrada no Ar is a meme that portrays Brazilian culture.

It is clear that the Sarrada no Ar meme uses aspects of the superior humour theory (Meyer, 2000), both when it was reproduced in lower-class contexts that middle-class internautas considered absurd and typically Brazilian, and also outside this context, such as when it was performed on TV by celebrities or in Photoshopped images and videos. Middle-class internautas laughed at the Sarrada no Ar (and

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Brazilian funk) as a symbol of the lower social classes, from a privileged position and as a way to maintain their status quo in Brazil (Rodrigues & Collinson, 1995).

Nevertheless, this meme also worked as a way to localize Brazilian cultural identity on the internet. While middle-class internautas were laughing at lower-class behaviour, they were also identifying with that same behaviour because they were, ultimately, Brazilians. As we saw in Milner (2016) and Shifman (2014), people connect to memes to feel part of a larger social network and memes can work as cultural shapers (Gal et al., 2015; Miltner, 2014). In that context, the Sarrada no Ar became a cultural symbol of Brazil on the internet and connected the internautas in one group.

Internautas used the zoeira in the Sarrada no Ar meme to illustrate Brazilian cultural identity on the internet the same way as writers used humour to define

Brazilian cultural identity during the Belle Époque (Saliba, 2002). On the internet, however, the zoeira works also as part of the Brazilian meme culture. We can see that in Figures 56 and 57, for instance, when internautas mixed international pop-culture such as Pokémon and Super Mario World, and used memetic mechanisms of repackaging such as Photoshop (Shifman, 2014), with a local cultural expression. The

Sarrada no Ar thus shows that the zoeira is a Brazilian adaptation of the meme culture and it places the Brazilian community on the digital media.

As we have seen in this section, the Sarrada no Ar meme uses the zoeira because it plays with the contrasts between Brazilian social classes and recognises an expression of the favela’s popular culture as part of the Brazilian national identity.

This meme definitely touched a sensitive subject and changed an established social norm in Brazil. The Sarrada no Ar, like many other examples of Brazilian funk, disregards and violates upper-class morality and manners. While middle and upper-

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class people do not generally talk about private subjects such as sex in the public sphere, Brazilian funk treats sex as play, music, and dance. On the internet, these two worlds have collapsed. The middle-class internautas, and even well-known TV celebrities, have allowed themselves to break this social barrier and reproduce the

Sarrada no Ar as a symbol of Brazilian cultural identity.

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Chapter 7: Popular Culture – Gretchen

This chapter will discuss the use of the zoeira as a dynamic to talk about

Brazilian popular culture. Following the structure from the last two chapters, in section

7.1, I investigate in more detail this use of the zoeira. I will explain how internautas perceive popular TV products as symbols of Brazilian popular culture, and illustrate how they use the zoeira when creating memes and jokes about that. I have identified that internautas use the zoeira to both mock popular TV, in a form of superior humour

(Meyer, 2000), and also to celebrate its characters and shows as a way to legitimize them as part of the national folklore.

In the following sections (7.2 and 7.3) I am going to analyse the selected meme

“Gretchen”, exploring how it appeared online, with the memetic examples divided into five categories, discussed in detail below. Based on the analysis of the memetic examples, in section 7.3 I discuss the ambivalence of this meme, which both portrayed

Gretchen in a derogatory way and exalted her as a Brazilian internet diva. I have identified that while internautas make fun of her through a superior humour, they also sympathize with her, using Gretchen’s image as if she were a personification of the

Brazilian internet.

7.1 THE ZOEIRA IN POPULAR CULTURE

Television remains the most consumed medium in Brazil (IBGE, 2018). Most

Brazilians consider popular TV – such as soap operas, talk shows, reality shows, music or sports shows – their primary source of entertainment (Kantar Ibope Media, 2017).

In that context, the popular TV works as “a source for the construction of cultural identity” (Barker, 2012, p. 345), as it has a significant cultural influence on the masses.

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On the internet, middle-class internautas use references from TV as symbols of

Brazilian popular culture, usually to create memes and make fun of the mainstream culture. That is because, as Bourdieu (2010) argues, the social classes divide themselves not only by their economic power but also by their cultural consumption.

That is, middle-class and working-class people have different cultural tastes, and the upper class seeks to confirm their dominance by maintaining a certain distance from other forms of culture (McCoy & Scarborough, 2014). Therefore, on the Brazilian internet, the middle-class internautas use the zoeira to mock Brazilian popular TV, as they consider its shows and artists lowbrow or tacky.

On the internet, some free-to-air TV products and celebrities that the middle- class consider bizarre, grotesque or absurd became memes about Brazilian popular culture. One example is the show Casos de Família (Family Cases), a daily TV show which explores everyday family problems. Each episode of the show features a different theme, and the producers invite a family going through that issue to discuss it on TV. Most middle-class Brazilians consider this show sensationalist and a symbol of low culture. They make fun of the odd themes of the show, of the absurdity of families fighting (sometimes even physically) on TV, and of how the studio audience and the host Cristina Rocha get involved in the fights. For example, Figure 60 is a

Facebook post featuring a picture of a scene of a Family Cases episode with the theme

“Carol tried to kill her sister with a knife for a steak.” The post caption mocks saying:

“What is the best show on TV and why is it Family Cases?”. Cleary, the Facebook page is making fun of how absurd this theme seems for most internautas and ironises the quality of the popular TV saying that Family Cases is the best show on TV.

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Figure 60. A Facebook post with a picture of a scene of the TV show Casos de Família. The “daily theme” of the show this time is: “Carol tried to kill her sister with a knife for a steak”. From “Qual é o melhor programa da TV e pq [sic] é Family Cases? [What is the best show on TV and why is it Family Cases?]” [Photograph] by Please come to Brazil [pleasecometobr], 2017, April 15. Retrieved December 10, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/pleasecometobr/photos/a.437753232989691.1073741828 .437749376323410/1294406307324375/?type=3&theater

Another way internautas found to use the zoeira to mock Brazilian popular TV is by comparing Brazilian celebrities or TV shows with international events. Figure 61, for example, features Compadre Washington, lead singer of the popular Axé music group É o Tchan. This group was famous in the 1990s, mainly for their dance routines, which were popular among young people, although their songs were full of sexual innuendo. Washington was popular for being always in a good mood and creating iconic “slogans” that became his trademark. In Figure 61, however, Washington looks sad. He is wearing headphones, and the picture’s subtitles refer to the lyrics of the soundtrack of the movie La La Land. This picture was posted after the 89th Oscar awards, in 2017, when La La Land was mistakenly announced as the Best Picture

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winner (Maddox, 2017). The sad image of the naturally happy Washington listening to the soundtrack of La La Land is funny because it seems bizarre to mix this Brazilian singer with an international event such as the Academy Awards. It also seems to be impossible for someone like him, a popular Brazilian singer, to be listening to the soundtrack of this movie.

Figure 61. Photo of Compadre Washington with headphones. The added subtitles indicate that he is supposedly listening to the song “City of Stars” from the soundtrack of the film La La Land. From “Muito que bem [sic] [Very much good (sic)]” [Digital image] by Please Come to Brazil [pleasecometobr], 2017, February 14. Retrieved December 12, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/pleasecometobr/photos/a.437753232989691.1073741828 .437749376323410/1246583038773369/?type=3&theater

The use of the zoeira to address topics about Brazilian popular culture demonstrates both the internautas’ feelings of superiority about and their celebration of what they consider “bad” television. McCoy and Scarborough (2014) discussed the consumption of bad TV in the United States, and why people deliberately watch this type of show. By conducting 40 in-depth interviews with people who intentionally watched bad television, they classified the viewers into four categories, based on their

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behaviour as the audience. Two of these groups must be outlined here: those who watched with “ironic consumption” and those with a “camp sensibility” (McCoy &

Scarborough, 2014, p. 47).

The practice of “ironic consumption” is when the viewers “look down on the show and its characters” (McCoy & Scarborough, 2014, p. 49) and laugh at their lack of intellectual quality. The viewers’ pleasure, in this case, is related to the feeling of superiority, as they consider the show so ridiculous that they feel good about themselves. In contrast, the “camp sensibility” relates to a non-ironic celebration of the “bad”:

When consuming a television show or other mass media, viewers exchange the

normal esthetic standards of taste for an evaluation of the object on its own

terms. The viewer understands the show to be objectively “bad,” but uses the

framework of camp sensibility to lift the show upward. (McCoy &

Scarborough, 2014, p. 51).

That is, the viewers identify and connect with the failures of the producers and characters of the shows (McCoy & Scarborough, 2014).

Zoeira’s mode of engagement with Brazilian popular culture sits somewhere between “ironic consumption” and “camp sensibility”. Some Brazilian TV shows and celebrities are mocked because the internautas feel superior to them and their audience, but these shows and personalities are also being celebrated and consumed daily because the internautas somehow identify with them. For example, although internautas mock Casos de Família and how bizarre they think this TV show is, they also embrace it as part of Brazilian folklore. It is a portrait of Brazilian reality and, therefore, part of their cultural identities as well. On the internet, Casos de Família is ironically celebrated as a “great show”, because it has many elements from Brazilian

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culture which the internautas identify themselves with and, therefore, refer to them when using the zoeira to talk about the Brazilian popular TV. In that sense, internautas laugh at this show at the same time as they praise it as the best Brazilian TV show.

Even if with irony, this statement shows that internautas recognise Casos de Família as a genuine expression of Brazilian folklore, as happens with many other popular TV shows.

7.2 GRETCHEN

Figure 62. An image macros of Gretchen. The text says: “The peaceful look / of the owner of the Brazilian internet”. From “10 provas para não ter dúvida que Gretchen é a Rainha da Internet [10 proofs for never questioning if Gretchen is the queen of the internet]” by Frank, G., 2017, May 29, Nova Cosmopolitan. Retrieved December 12, 2017, from https://cosmopolitan.abril.com.br/celebs/10-provas-para-nao-ter-duvida- que-gretchen-e-a-rainha-da-internet/

Maria Odete Brito de Miranda has been known by the artistic name Gretchen since the late 1970s when she became a celebrity in Brazil. She first found fame as a singer and dancer. Lip-syncing songs in English, French and Spanish, she became

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famous for her sexy dance and became nationally known as the “Rainha do Bumbum”

(“The ‘Butt’ Queen”) in the 1980s (Brum & Samora, 2010).

Figure 63. Gretchen’s first album “My Name is Gretchen” released in 1979. From “Gretchen (BR) - My Name Is Gretchen.jpg” by LyricWiki, n.d. Retrieved October 20, 2017, from http://lyrics.wikia.com/wiki/File:Gretchen_(BR)_- _My_Name_Is_Gretchen.jpg

After years of success, however, Gretchen’s fame slowly dissipated, resulting in a controversial and troubled career as she attempted to revive her profile. In the

1990s, she became a gospel singer, in the early 2000s she starred in several porn movies, and in late 2000s she ran as a mayoral candidate for a small island in Brazil

(Brum & Samora, 2010). A few years ago, Gretchen became a D-list celebrity and was more famous for her many plastic surgeries and marriages than for her career (Brum

& Samora, 2010).

Gretchen’s bizarre life story, full of ups and downs and exhausted attempts to achieve success, perfectly represents Brazilian mainstream pop culture. The internautas, therefore, embraced her as a symbol of the Brazilian pop scene, both by

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laughing at her and by addressing her as a typical character of Brazilian popular culture.

On the Brazilian internet, Gretchen’s image was used to illustrate life struggles, feelings and opinions. Soon, the memetic texts using her image became so famous that internautas praised her as the “Queen of the Memes”, sharing her memetic texts with international internet users (Goes, 2017). Gretchen memes became famous worldwide, and even international celebrities became intrigued by her (Sanches, 2017). Katy Perry was reportedly so fascinated with Gretchen’s success as a one-woman meme that she invited the Brazilian celebrity to feature in one of her video-clips, validating

Gretchen’s position as the “Queen of the Memes” not only in Brazil, but worldwide

(Iasimone, 2017).

7.2.1 Memetic examples I divided the memetic examples about the Gretchen meme into five groups and named them based on their content. The groups are: “Life struggles”; “Gretchen as a reaction”; “Gretchen is bizarre”; “Gretchen as a pop icon (irony)”; and “Brazilian internet diva”. In this section, I will clarify how they appeared on the internet.

Life struggles This category groups all video frames, GIFs and images of Gretchen that were used as a canvas to illustrate internautas’ daily life struggles or dilemmas. Here,

Gretchen acts as a personification of the internautas’ feelings and opinions, working as a symbol of the “ordinary person”. In that sense, every time internautas shared or interacted with those memetic examples, they were identifying themselves with those situations, emotions and with the image of Gretchen, showing that they are somehow related to her.

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Figure 64, for instance, is a GIF featuring Gretchen cooking and looking at the camera as if she were talking to someone. In the subtitles, she is saying “I’m feeling like going out / making new friends, stop watching series for a while / living my life…”. Then she pauses and looks aside, as if she was thinking about something, and says: “wait / it’s gone”.

Figure 64. Screenshot of frames of a Gretchen reaction GIF about preferring to stay at home watching TV series rather than socialising (English translation at the bottom of the images). From “Gretchen está bombando no novo clipe de Katy Perry ft. Nicki Minaj [Gretchen is ‘lit’ in the new clip of Katy Perry ft. Nicki Minaj]” [Web log post] G. Visentini, 2017, July 14. Retrieved October 24, 2017 from http://wp.clicrbs.com.br/plural/gretchen-esta-bombando-no-novo-clipe-de-katy- perry-ft-nicki-minaj/?topo=35#.Wt1ZlVOFORs Figure 65 is a Facebook post with four pictures of Gretchen using different wigs. In the capture: “Me when there are free samples of a new product at the supermarket, and the lady [who is showing the product] says it’s only one product per person”.

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Figure 65. Facebook post with a photo collage with four pictures of Gretchen wearing different wigs. From: “Eu quando tem alguma degustação gratuita de um produto novo no mercado e a moça diz que só pode um por pessoa [Me when there are free samples of a new product at the supermarket, and the lady says it’s only one product per person]” [Digital image] by Please Come to Brazil [pleasecometobr], 2016, July 16. Retrieved October 27, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/pleasecometobr/photos/a.437753232989691.1073741828 .437749376323410/1027217057376636/?type=3&theater

Gretchen as a reaction This category brings together images and reaction GIFs of Gretchen doing different facial expressions. These memetic examples also work as illustrations of the internautas’ feelings and opinions, and they were most shared on comments or along with another text on social media. Although similar to the last group, here the memetic examples do not tell a story, rather they just show the internauta’s reaction. For example, Figure 66 is a GIF featuring Gretchen opening her legs while forming a rainbow and revealing the text “foda-se”, which loosely translates as “I don’t give a fuck”. This ironic image is often used when internautas are arguing and one of them wants to show that they do not care about the other’s opinion.

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Figure 66. Reaction GIF of Gretchen making a rainbow with her legs revealing the text “foda-se” (“I don’t give a fuck”). From “Pra quem não gostou #LoveWins [For those who didn’t like it #LoveWins]” [Tweet] by Anonymous 15, 2015, June 16. Retrieved October 24, 2017, from https://twitter.com/vavavoomers/status/614456731347849216

Figure 67 is a photo of Gretchen with the text “atenta”, which loosely translates to “alert”, meaning that the person who is sending this picture is paying attention (to the topic of the conversation). “Atenta” is a popular slang term among the Brazilian

LGBTQ community, especially online. This picture of “Alert Gretchen” appeared in comments on Facebook and Twitter when internautas wanted to show that they were paying attention to the subject, or wanted to follow the development of that topic.

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Figure 67. Memetic text “Atenta” (“Alert”). From “Em Manaus, Gretchen comemora título de ‘Rainha dos Memes’: ‘ganhei filhos na internet’ [In Manaus, Gretchen celebrates title of ‘Queen of the Memes’: ‘I’ve gained children on the internet’]” [Digital image] by Rylo, I. & Henriques, C., 2017, June 26, G1. Retrieved October 21, 2017, from https://g1.globo.com/am/amazonas/noticia/em-manaus-gretchen- comemora-titulo-de-rainha-dos-memes-ganhei-filhos-na-internet.ghtml

Sometimes, reaction images and GIFs of Gretchen were used without any text or extra editing, illustrating how the internauta reacted to a specific topic. In Figure

68, for instance, Gretchen appears to be sad or hopeless.

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Figure 68. Memetic text “Hopeless Gretchen” or “Sad Gretchen”. From “[Untitled image of Gretchen looking sad]” [Digital image] by Anonymous 16, 2014, November 5. Retrieved October 19, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=659600140820426&set=p.65960014082 0426&type=3&theater

Gretchen is bizarre In this category, internautas talked specifically about the persona Gretchen.

Here, the internautas are portraying her in an entirely derogatory way, referring to

Gretchen as someone bizarre and grotesque. These memetic examples talked mostly about her physical appearance, suggesting that she is ugly or has a scary appearance, making fun of what Gretchen became after her fame. By doing that, they were also reminding the audience of her unsuccessful attempts to remain young and attractive, and her failure in remaining relevant in the pop culture scenario. The memetic examples of this category showed that middle-class internautas portrayed Gretchen as inferior at times, using her image as a symbol of the “bad” popular culture in Brazil.

For example, Figure 69 compares her with the creepy porcelain doll from the horror movie Annabelle.

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Figure 69. Photoshopped picture of the horror movie character Annabelle with Gretchen’s face. From “[Untitled image of Gretchen as Annabelle]” [Digital image] by Anonymous 17, 2014, October 24. Retrieved October 26, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=873931325959233&set=p.87393132595 9233&type=3&theater

Figure 70 is a picture of the folkloric Brazilian character Cuca, a villain alligator from the Brazilian children’s tale Sítio do Picapau Amarelo (Yellow Woodpecker’s

Ranch). The two photos are from a TV series based on this classic tale and show the actress who plays Cuca taking off her mask and revealing her face. Here, the second photo was Photoshopped and Gretchen’s face was added to the picture, suggesting her physical similarity to the alligator Cuca.

Figure 70. Photoshopped picture of the actress who plays Cuca revealing her “real” face, which here appears to be Gretchen’s. From “[Untitled image of Gretchen as ‘Cuca’]” [Digital image] by Anonymous 18, 2017, June 19. Retrieved October 26, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1963775647196212&set=p.1963775647 196212&type=3&theater

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Gretchen as a pop icon (irony) In this category I have grouped all the memetic examples that ironically address

Gretchen as a Brazilian pop diva, supposedly praising her as a prominent national figure, but in fact making fun of her career.

To identify the irony in these memetic examples we must first revisit Gretchen’s status in Brazilian culture from the middle-class point-of-view. Most middle-class

Brazilians do not consider Gretchen to be a talented or legitimate cultural icon.

Therefore, when internautas praise her as a pop diva, they are highlighting how absurd and bizarre popular culture in Brazil is. As in the last category, here they are also making fun of Brazilian popular culture in general and using Gretchen as its main symbol.

It is important to note, however, that this category has similar aspects to the

“camp sensibility” group (McCoy & Scarborough, 2014). That is, at the same time that internautas are referring to Gretchen through superior humour, affirming that she is not, in fact, an acceptable pop icon, they are also recognising that she represents

Brazilian popular culture. In that sense, they are using her image to criticize Brazilian popular culture, but empathising with her as a Brazilian “failure”. They do that by, for example, comparing Gretchen with successful international celebrities. This is the case in Figure 71, a Facebook post that shows a picture of Gretchen next to the American singer Ariana Grande. They both are wearing similar clothes, with black and white squares, and the caption says: “Gretchen, timeless POP inspiration”. That is, internautas are laughing at Gretchen by ironically suggesting that she is a “timeless

POP inspiration” for the world, but they are also recognising her as a Brazilian pop icon by comparing her with an American pop icon like Ariana Grande, who is truly considered successful.

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Figure 71. Facebook post with a photo collage with Gretchen and Ariana Grande’s pictures. From “Gretchen, inspiracão atemporal do POP. Via @OficialGretchen [Gretchen, timeless POP inspiration. Via @OficialGretchen]” [Digital image] by Please Come to Brazil [pleasecometobr], 2014, September 27. Retrieved October 26, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/pleasecometobr/photos/a.437753232989691.1073741828 .437749376323410/660012287430450/?type=3&theater

Other examples just talk sarcastically about Gretchen as if she is a great and successful artist. For example, Figure 72 is a Facebook post featuring three pictures of

Gretchen’s concert, at what seems a small and modest concert hall. The caption says:

“CONGA LA CONGA30 WORLD TOUR has been a blast since its arrival in Brazil; reliable sources have told me that Recife went wild with the Butt Queen. I’m already refreshing the T4F31 website to guarantee my ticket here in Rio.” The tone of this post is similar to how news websites and blogs report famous shows. Here, the irony happens when internautas use this tone along with the pictures of Gretchen’s small,

30 The song “Conga, Conga, Conga” was one of the most famous Gretchen songs in the 1980s. This post refers to the chorus of the song, which says: “Conga, la conga, conga, conga, conga”. 31 Time For Fun (T4F) is a huge Brazilian entertainment company that produces most of the international concerts in Brazil. 128

modest concert, making fun of the idea of Gretchen’s “world tour” and also suggesting that it has been a success, promoted by an entertainment company that brings famous international artists to Brazil – something that seems impossible for a failed Brazilian pop icon.

Figure 72. Facebook post with a photo collage of three pictures from a Gretchen concert. From “Conga La Conga World Tour chegou com tudo no Brasil; fontes seguras me disseram que Recife foi ao delírio com a rainha do rebolado. Já estou dando F5 no T4F pra garantir o meu ingresso aqui no Rio. [Conga La Conga World Tour has arrived in Brazil; Reliable sources have told me that Recife went wild with the Butt Queen. I’m already refreshing the T4F website to guarantee my ticket here in Rio.]” [Digital image] by Please Come to Brazil [pleasecometobr], 2014, October 5. Retrieved October 26, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/pleasecometobr/photos/a.437753232989691.1073741828 .437749376323410/664086523689693/?type=3&theater

Brazilian internet diva Unlike the last category, here Gretchen has been indeed considered a success; not as a singer or dancer, but as a one-woman meme. In this group, I have gathered all the memetic examples that talked about Gretchen as the “Queen of the Memes”.

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Although there is still a touch of irony, it is clear that this time the internautas were recognising Gretchen’s success as an internet icon. For example, Figure 73 is a

Tweet saying: “Only a few know, but GIF in English means Gretchen Internet File”, ironically suggesting that the “GIF” format was named after Gretchen, as there are so many GIFs of her on the Brazilian internet.

Figure 73. Tweet ironically suggesting that the “GIF” format was named after Gretchen. From “poucos sabem mas GIF em inglês significa Gretchen Internet File [Only a few know, but GIF in English stands for Gretchen Internet File]” [Tweet] by Anonymous 19, 2017, July 3. Retrieved October 30, 2017, from https://twitter.com/danilo_sanches/status/881946395724460036

I noticed that most of the memetic examples of this group celebrated Gretchen as a national icon online when she became an international meme. Especially after her appearance in Katy Perry’s video clip, Gretchen seemed to be considered the

“ambassador” of the Brazilian community online. For example, Figure 74 is a Tweet with a GIF of Gretchen dancing in the video clip of Katy Perry’s song “Swish Swish”.

The Tweet says: “This GIF has never been so representative of us Brazilians as it is today! THE INTERNET IS OURS! #SwishSwishGretchen”.

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Figure 74. Tweet with a GIF of Gretchen dancing in the “Swish Swish” video clip. From “Este gif nunca representou tão bem os brasileiros [sic] como hoje! A internet é nossa! #SwishShiwhGretchen [This GIF has never been so representative of the Brazilians as it is today! The internet is ours! #SwishSwishGretchen]” [Tweet] by Katy Perry Brasil [katyperrybr], 2017, July 3. Retrieved October 26, 2017, from https://twitter.com/katyperrybr/status/881953022422777857

7.3 THE ZOEIRA IN GRETCHEN

As we saw in the last section, whereas internautas are making fun of Gretchen by comparing her to a creepy character from a horror movie, they also praised her as

“Queen of the Memes” and “the owner of the internet”. It is this ambivalent humour

(Phillips & Milner, 2017) of the Gretchen meme that makes it a perfect representation of the zoeira in Brazilian popular culture.

Internautas used many different memetic forms here, and the irony appears in all of the examples. Gretchen was represented through reaction GIFs, image macros, images of her without text, Photoshopped photos and comparisons. The tone of the writing in the texts demonstrated the irony, whether by using slang (mostly from the

LGBTQ community) or by reproducing the tone of the discourse of tabloids about celebrities. Even when positively speaking of her or treating her as a celebrity, their 131

discourses carried an ironic tone. The same happened with the memetic examples which used only images. Just by positioning a picture of Gretchen next to the singer

Ariana Grande (Figure 71) or by Photoshopping Gretchen’s face to Annabelle’s picture (Figure 69), for example, internautas were mocking her status as a celebrity – in the first case – or her physical appearance – in the second case.

The type of irony present in the Gretchen meme is related to a specific subculture and social class. The LGBTQ community has been the most involved with the creation and circulation of the Gretchen meme. The LGBTQ community, as a subculture, has a particular vocabulary and tone of discourse (Amaral, 2011), and many texts collected in this research use this type of language. Another indicator is that the Facebook page

Please Come to Brazil, famous for sharing comic content about pop culture and queer- related content, created and shared the most substantial amount of memetic Gretchen texts collected in this study.

Besides the LGBTQ community, the Gretchen meme is also related to the social disparity among Brazilian classes. To understand the irony of this meme, the internauta must have prior knowledge of Gretchen’s story and also agree with the middle-class point of view about Gretchen. That is, the internauta must see Gretchen as a failure, which is not always true for some people in the lower social classes in

Brazil, for example, who still consider Gretchen a successful singer (Brum & Samora,

2010). In that context, the Gretchen meme was created, transformed and shared by internautas who considered Gretchen a symbol of a failed Brazilian popular culture.

Paradoxically, the same internautas who talked about Gretchen’s physical appearance pejoratively, as we saw in the “Gretchen is bizarre” section, used her image to represent themselves, as we saw in the “Life struggles” and “Gretchen as a reaction” categories. That is, on the one hand, Gretchen was diminished as someone inferior to 132

the internautas, who laugh about her failure as a celebrity through superior humour

(Meyer, 2000). On the other hand, internautas used Gretchen’s image to manifest their feelings, reactions and opinions, as if she was the personification of “any ordinary

Brazilian”. In a way, internautas used her, a “failed character”, as a symbol of their own failures, as if the Gretchen meme allowed them to share unspoken, personal issues. In that sense, internautas embraced the Gretchen meme with the “camp sensibility” that McCoy and Scarborough (2014) identified in their study.

Brum and Samora (2010) suggest in their documentary Gretchen: Road Movie, that Gretchen’s bizarre trajectory represents the ordinary Brazilian life path. In that sense, when the internautas mock Gretchen as a Brazilian celebrity, such as we saw in the category “Gretchen as a pop icon (irony)”, they are not only laughing at her from a superior position, but also empathising with her as symbol of Brazilian popular culture, connecting with her story as a fellow Brazilian. We can see that identification when internautas compare Gretchen to international personalities (Figures 71 and 72), or when they considered her a symbol of the Brazilian internet (Figures 73 and 74). As

Brazilians, when internautas mock Gretchen’s career they are also laughing at themselves, at what “being Brazilian” means for the rest of the world. Taking as an example the comparison between Gretchen and Ariana Grande (Figure 71), internautas consider this image funny because it seems bizarre to know that while the

US has successful artists like Ariana Grande, Brazilian popular culture is represented by someone like Gretchen. This is a superior point of view, indeed, but it also shows empathy for Gretchen as a fellow Brazilian, as if she portrayed all Brazilian failures that are part of the internautas’ daily lives.

The idea that Gretchen represents what being Brazilian means on the internet was intensified when Gretchen appeared in Katy Perry’s video clip for “Swish Swish”.

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From the premises that internet users interact with a particular meme because they identify themselves with that meme and want to feel part of a great community (Milner,

2016; Shifman, 2014), and that memes work as mechanisms to reinforce cultural codes

(Gal et al., 2015; Miltner, 2014), the Gretchen meme and its intrinsic zoeira became a symbol of Brazilian community online, and localized Brazilian meme culture on the global internet. In that context, when internautas started to share the Gretchen meme with international celebrities online, they did it as a way to represent Brazilian community and the Brazilian meme culture online. The idea that Gretchen was the personification of the internautas also meant that Gretchen was an inside joke, that is, a joke from Brazilians about Brazilian culture, using the zoeira. Therefore, when Katy

Perry invited Gretchen to appear in her video clip, Gretchen broke a significant barrier between the Brazilian community and the rest of the internet community, or the

English-speaking internet. That is because Gretchen became an internationally known meme without losing local characteristics. As an international meme, Gretchen turned into a source of Brazilian pride to be shared with the rest of the internet, and internautas started to treat Gretchen as a true symbol of the Brazilian internet.

Figure 75, for example, is a Facebook post from the page Please Come to Brazil.

The post features a screenshot of the comments in the Katy Perry video clip of “Swish

Swish” on YouTube. The capture says: “I’m ‘dead’32 with the fight Brazilians x gringos33 on Gretchen’s video-clip. THIS MOMENT IS MINE”. In the screenshot, one of the comments says: “When I find a comment in English I will say ‘in Portuguese please’, just to feel like they feel”; another one says: “NOW THE OFFICIAL

32 In Portuguese the slang expression “morta” can be loosely translated to “I’m dead”. It is an expression that means something similar to “I can’t believe that!” and it is mostly used among the LGBTQ community on the internet, for when something shocking or unexpected happens. 33 Brazilian slang which means “foreigner”. 134

LANGUAGE IS PORTUGUESE. Learn, gringos”. This post shows that the Brazilian community recognised Gretchen as the point of connection between the Brazilian community and the rest of the (English-speaking) internet, and represents the subversion of the “underdog” feeling of Brazilians on the internet – a space dominated by English speakers.

Figure 75. A Facebook post with a screenshot of the comments on Katy Perry’s “Swish Swish” video clip on YouTube. From: “Tô apenas morta com o barraco brasileiros X gringos rolando no clipe da Gretchen. Esse momento é meu [I’m dead with the fight Brazilians x gringos on Gretchen’s video clip. This moment is mine]” [Screenshot] by Please Come to Brazil [pleasecometobr], 2017, July 5. Retrieved October 18, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/pleasecometobr/posts/1375451765886495:0

In conclusion, to some internautas, Gretchen is a symbol of the (lousy) popular culture in Brazil, and that is why they used irony to laugh at her. Through the Gretchen meme, the internautas were, in fact, criticising Brazilian popular culture and the

Brazilian media more broadly; but they were also using the figure of Gretchen as a personification of what being Brazilian means. From one perspective, mocking

Gretchen was about criticising Brazilian popular TV, but from another, it was about 135

embracing her (and her failures) as authentically Brazilian. Gretchen worked as a symbol through which middle-class and LGBTQ internautas criticised Brazilian pop culture. Nevertheless, she also became the personification of internautas’ feelings and opinions, as if her image represented a Brazilian inside joke. Once Gretchen became internationally known, she was recast as the face the Brazilian internet community turned to the rest of the world. In all those stages, the zoeira appeared as the mechanism to both criticise Brazilian culture and to help the Brazilian community to recognise itself on the internet.

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Chapter 8: Conclusions

8.1 OVERVIEW

Long before the internet, memes had always been considered cultural expressions (Shifman, 2014). They “have always played an important role as venues for expressing opinions and subverting established order” (Shifman, 2014, p. 149), and still today they play the same role. On the internet, though, different voices, social groups and individual backgrounds sometimes become intertwined, and internet memes are a reflection of this cultural mix.

In Brazil, a country with one of the highest numbers of internet users in the world

(Internet Live Stats, 2016), internet memes have emerged not only as expressions of internet culture, but also as new elements of national folklore. In that context, the primary purpose of this research was to understand the role of Brazilian internet memes both for contemporary Brazilian culture and the internet.

In this thesis, I first reviewed the most significant studies about internet memes in order to better understand the meme’s concept, structure and its meaning for the internet culture (Chapter 2). Next, I analysed Brazilian culture through the allegory of the carnival and sought to understand which role humour has been playing in Brazil

(Chapter 3). In Chapter 4 I defined the research design. I presented the objects of study and explained how the material was selected, collected, stored and analysed. I explored the objects of study in the three following chapters (5, 6 and 7). I analysed the zoeira in politics using the Neves and Temer’s recordings meme as the example (Chapter 5); in class, using the Sarrada no Ar (Brazilian funk) meme as the example (Chapter 6); and in popular TV, using the Gretchen meme as the example (Chapter 7). Chapters 5,

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6 and 7 each followed the same structure. In the first section of each chapter I discussed the designated use of the zoeira, in the second section, I gave a background of the selected meme and analysed how it appeared online, and in the third section, I addressed how that meme reflected the corresponding use of the zoeira. In this final chapter, I draw the study’s findings together in order to answer the research questions.

Next, I will discuss the study’s findings, divided into themes.

8.2 DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS

8.2.1 Humour is the Brazilian way to talk about Brazil As we saw in Chapter 3, humour has been critical in Brazil from the foundation of the country until today. Since the arrival of the Portuguese crown in the country, when the nation was defining itself, humour has played two central roles: (1) as a tool to subvert power, it is the way the working class found to talk about the tension between the social classes in Brazil and protest about the authorities and upper classes

(Matta, 1991; Queiroz, 2010; Telles & Soares, 2016); and (2) as a type of expression that allowed Brazilians to articulate the complex idea of what it means to be Brazilian, helping Brazilians to define the nation’s cultural identity (Matta, 1991; Saliba, 2002).

In that context, making fun of Brazil – its culture, its politics, its social and economic problems – became the Brazilian way of talking about the country’s issues. For

Brazilians, laughing at the country is a means to construct, debate, and belong to the nation.

When Brazilians want to talk about Brazilian culture and problems, there is always a liberating laugh behind it – a type of humour that allows them to approach those delicate subjects. In that sense, we see that Brazilians sometimes laugh at the country’s political problems rather than organise political demonstrations (although political protests do also occur, of course). This is evident in the Neves and Temer’s

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recordings meme, in which internautas were talking about a serious presidential corruption scandal with laughs and jokes.

Similarly, Brazilians do not only criticise lower-class behaviours or popular culture, they make fun of them with a mixture of shame and pride. The Sarrada no Ar, for example, was seen as a lower-class expression from an uncultured type of music and, therefore, internautas laughed at it. However, they also reproduced the dance craze in various ways, transforming it into a meme and publishing their videos and images on the internet, sharing with their friends and family. They mocked the Sarrada no Ar but became part of that meme – without distancing themselves from it – at the same time. The same happened with the Gretchen meme. Although internautas depicted Gretchen’s image as ugly and grotesque, and made fun of her unsuccessful career (as we saw in Figures 69 to 72), they also used her image as a personification of their feelings and opinions (as showed in Figures 64 to 68), prizing her as the Queen of the Memes and making her the Brazilian internet’s ambassador (as we saw in

Figures 73 and 74, for example.)

On the internet, the zoeira works as a liberating, ambivalent laugh about Brazil, or more precisely, about what I will call here the “ugly Brazil”. The ugly Brazil is the way Brazilians understand the cultural and socio-political contexts in the country. It may represent different things, and address different topics. In this research, each one of the memes studied presented three different “ugly sides” of Brazil: political corruption, the cultural distinctions between the social classes, and its popular culture, primarily the one reproduced on popular TV. In the next two sections, I will explain how the zoeira represented the ugly, bizarre, or absurd side of Brazil addressed in each meme.

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8.2.2 The zoeira as protest: Bottom-up When the noble Portuguese crown came to Brazil in the 19th century, ordinary

Brazilians laughed about their social differences through burlesque humour (Queiroz,

2010; Telles & Soares, 2016); when a military dictatorship was established in the 20th century, Brazilians used funny cartoons to laugh at its absurdity (Telles & Soares,

2016); in the carnival of Bakhtin (1984) and Matta (1991), the common people used masks and costumes in a cheerful environment to invert established social positions; and when in the 21st century the press revealed that the president was part of a bribery scheme, Brazilians used the zoeira to create a meme. On the internet, the zoeira imitated Brazilians’ offline behaviour in the face of political conflicts: instead of going to the streets to protest like citizens in many other countries, internautas use humour to express how they feel about absurd situations and laugh at themselves as a nation.

It is interesting to notice that in political memes the internautas represent the people (the masses) versus the politicians (the authority). In that context, when analysing the Neves and Temer’s recordings meme, I could not define any specific social class, gender, age or social group related to the creation and sharing of this meme. Even right- and left-wing supporters were together here, making fun of this episode, albeit from different perspectives. That is because when the subject is politics, even middle-class Brazilians put themselves in a lower social position, as if they are also less privileged in comparison to authorities such as politicians. In a country full of political scandals involving corruption, internautas have discarded their social divisions and hierarchies to stand against a corrupt president, positioning themselves as “the people” against “the authorities”.

We could see that feeling of inferiority throughout the Neves and Temer’s recordings meme. For example, when internautas laughed about how chaotic Brazilian

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politics was after the leak of the Neves and Temer’s recordings, as we saw in Figures

23 and 24; or when they made fun of the sequence of impeachments in Brazil (Figures

27 to 29); or when they made fun of how “anyone could be a better president” (Figures

30 and 31); or when they treated JBS’s CEO Joesley Batista as a Brazilian hero

(Figures 32 and 33). The feeling of impotence was even clearer if we analyse the

“Laughing at the zoeira” category, presented in section 5.2.1. Here, internautas compared themselves with a violinist who kept playing while the Titanic was sinking

(Figure 37). In Figure 38, a girl smiling and holding a glass of beer in front of a truck on fire symbolised the reaction of the Brazilian internet to political corruption. Both examples used visual metaphors to illustrate Brazilians’ sense that the only possible solution was to pretend that nothing was happening.

The zoeira reveals, thus, the absurdities of the political scenario in Brazil. Using the zoeira, internautas were complaining about how politics and corruption are almost synonyms in Brazil, and also about how this absurd fact is part of Brazilian identity.

That relationship between Brazilian politics and cultural identity was clear in the category “This is so Brazil”, where the internautas connected the corruption scandal with Brazilian culture. In Figure 43, for example, internautas used the name of the

JBS company’s CEO “Joesley” (a typical lower-class name in Brazil) as a metaphor of the Brazilian people to explain how an ordinary Brazilian was responsible for the fall of the Republic, showing how absurd (and Brazilian) this fact is. In Figure 44, internautas mimicked the tone of a popular TV show to report the corruption scandal.

That is, internautas were creating a relationship between political scandals and

Brazilian culture, suggesting that corruption is intrinsic to Brazilian culture.

Laughing about Brazilian failure in politics means protesting in a Brazilian way.

It works as an in-joke: Internautas laugh at Brazil knowing that they are part of that

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chaos as well. Therefore, political memes using the zoeira also build the nation’s cultural identity, constructing what being Brazilian means on the internet and connecting the internautas among them.

8.2.3 The zoeira as the Brazilian pursuit of cultural identity: Top-down In Chapter 3 I talked about the role of Brazilian humour in Brazilian literature during the Belle Époque, when Brazil was being built as a nation (Saliba, 2002). I outlined that Brazil was a complex country at the time. People from different ethnicities and backgrounds were living together in the same country, and the task of defining what was typically Brazilian seemed impossible (Saliba, 2002). The poets, scholars and intellectuals of the time thus used humour as a tool to define Brazilian identity. They used the contrast between the social classes as the principal object of their humour, mixing elements of the average working-class Brazilian with the formality of the middle and upper classes (Saliba, 2002). This period may have been long ago, but this ambivalence remains present today.

When analysing Brazilian memes, I have identified two very similar uses of the zoeira: one is when internautas talk about “o brasileiro”, or the “average Brazilian”, referring to the way lower-class Brazilians behave; the other is when internautas laugh at Brazilian popular culture, especially popular TV. In both uses of the zoeira, there is a superior laugh from the middle-class at the lower-class (or at the low culture) – making fun of how ugly, bizarre, absurd or grotesque they are, as we saw throughout the Sarrada no Ar and Gretchen memes. But I have also noticed that the humour in these cases is not that simple to describe. In both cases, the internautas are connecting with the idea that the episode, person, or situation is typically Brazilian.

The recognition of lower-class expressions as part of Brazilian culture is clear in the Sarrada no Ar meme when internautas represent the Sarrada no Ar as a metaphor 142

for being Brazilian. That happens, for example, in the “Fabs” category (Figures 47 to

50), where the Sarrada no Ar is presented in situations that middle-class internautas consider “bizarre” but “typically Brazilian”. Or when internautas put the Sarrada no

Ar in contrast with global pop-culture icons, such as Pokémon (Figure 56), or the video game Super Mario World (Figure 57), creating “Brazilian versions” for those. Or when they complain about the German soccer player who was supposedly competing with

Brazilians in the Sarrada no Ar challenge (Figure 58). In all those examples, the internautas recognise the Sarrada no Ar – a symbol of the lower-class – as a symbol of Brazilian culture as well.

More than that, many times internautas express a kind of empathy for that ugly, bizarre, or grotesque situation, person, or episode. This empathy appears mostly in the

Gretchen meme. Internautas started to used Gretchen’s image to express their own opinions and feelings (as we saw in Figures 64 to 68) and soon she became the personification of the internautas, being exalted as the Queen of the Memes and representing Brazil to the world (as we saw in Figures 73 to 75).

Although the internautas always talk about Sarrada no Ar and Gretchen with a dose of irony and from a superior position, it is clear that they are indeed associating themselves with that image of Brazil, because it is genuinely Brazilian. In that sense, the internautas, in both “Class” and “Popular Culture” uses of the zoeira, apply the zoeira to criticise Brazilian popular culture and keep the status quo, but also to define what it means to be Brazilian and connect with this idea.

8.2.4 Brazilian community on the internet: “It is ugly, but it is us” As shown in the last sections, throughout the three uses of the zoeira, I could see that the zoeira expressed the Brazilian cultural identity. The zoeira worked as a way to represent how “ugly” Brazil is, indeed, but also to connect internautas in one group 143

that shared the same characteristics, that culturally identify as one nation. By sharing those memes, they were constructing a shared social network (Milner, 2016; Shifman,

2014), recognising themselves as Brazilians, as a group of people that understood the humour and culture behind the zoeira.

Through the zoeira, Brazilian memes not only portray Brazilian cultural identity as a nation but also as a digital community. Using the zoeira, internautas define the

Brazilian behaviour online. We can see that in the “Laughing at the zoeira” category in the Neves and Temer recordings (Figures 37 to 39), for example. Here, internautas illustrated the zoeira by explaining how the Brazilian internet reacts to a bad situation.

They were using memetic texts to portray Brazilian behaviour, constructing the values and norms (Gal et al., 2015) of Brazilian online community. That is, they were recognising the zoeira as an online expression of Brazilian culture.

Moreover, by using memetic vernacular, internautas set the zoeira as the

“Brazilian version” of the meme culture. That is, they applied “universal” memetic elements – such as the repackaging mechanisms remix and mimicry (Shifman, 2014); meme genres such as Photoshop, fabs, macros, screenshots, texts and reaction GIFs

(Milner, 2016; Miltner & Highfield, 2017; Shifman, 2014); and types of humour, such as superiority, incongruity and relief (Meyer, 2000) – to define “local” characteristics.

So, when internautas used memetic vernacular to compare Brazilian culture with international pop culture – such as when the Sarrada no Ar became the “Brazilian

Pokémon” (Figure 56), or the “Brazilian Super Mario World” (Figure 57), or when

Gretchen was ironically compared to Ariana Grande, as a Brazilian pop icon (Figure

71) – they were using those universal memetic rules to define Brazilian cultural identity, both as a nation and as a digital community, as if they were saying to the internet, “I know, it’s ugly, but it’s us”.

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8.2.5 Brazilian community on the “global internet”: “We are the internet too” Internautas share the zoeira with the rest of the internet as a representation of

Brazilian behaviour online. So, when internautas shared Gretchen’s memetic texts with international celebrities (Sanches, 2017), they were also defining what it means to be Brazilian online. They were presenting an “ugly”, but genuine, portrayal of Brazil to the world, the same way as the HUEHUEs trolls recognise themselves as noisy and grotesque, but as a realistic portrayal of Brazil (Fragoso, 2015).

When Gretchen appeared in Katy Perry’s video clip, however, the way that the

Brazilian online community saw itself changed. Her appearance in the video clip meant that: (1) the Brazilian internet changed the way they approached Gretchen, and she went from “symbol of failure” to “national pride” and started to be treated less pejoratively; (2) Brazilian meme culture started to be recognised as part of the “global” internet too.

Although the internet is sometimes considered a global, “democratic” space, free from formal hierarchies, the English language and the US dominate much internet culture (Danet & Herring, 2003). In that context, Brazilians consider themselves as belonging to the “lower-class” of the web, as it is an underdeveloped country that does not speak English. So, when Katy Perry, an American and internationally known pop icon, called Gretchen to appear in her video clip, it meant that Gretchen was considered to be a Brazilian pop icon by the rest of the world, and that Brazilian memes were being recognised as participants of “global” meme culture. So, that is why internautas said that “the internet is ours” in Figure 74, after Katy Perry’s video clip with Gretchen, or ironically suggested that Portuguese would become the official language on the internet and that Brazil was dominating the web (Figure 75). Through irony, they were indicating that Brazil does not sit on the margin of the internet anymore, because now

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Gretchen is as famous as Katy Perry, and Brazilian meme culture is as important as the US culture on the internet. That is, when the Gretchen meme became known outside Brazil, internautas were symbolically subverting the hegemonic power of the

Anglosphere. They know that Brazilian memes do not represent the whole internet, but by making these jokes about Brazilian relevance on the internet, they were putting

Brazil on the “internet map”; that is, they were defining the Brazilian online community and setting its place on the internet.

In conclusion, after the Gretchen meme gained international recognition, the

Brazilian internet has been not only defining its cultural identity through memes, but also defining its role in the broader internet. The internautas are reminding the rest of the internet that Brazil, too, has a role in shaping global digital culture.

8.3 LIMITATIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH

When debating how internet memes express specific aspects of internet culture,

Shifman (2014, p. 15) wrote: “Internet memes can be treated as (post)modern folklore, in which shared norms and values are constructed through cultural artifacts”. Indeed, internet memes reflect norms and values of internet culture, but in this study, we saw that they could express more than that. The Brazilian internet memes studied in this thesis showed that memes could also work as tools to define national cultural identity.

In Brazil, internautas expressed their opinions and feelings about Brazilian politics, social behaviour and popular culture through the zoeira, which helped them to explore the country’s cultural identity, both as a nation and as an online community. Finally, we saw that Brazilian memes worked as a mechanism that allowed the Brazilian community to position itself online and to be able to be seen in an internet dominated by the English language and US culture (Danet & Herring, 2003).

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Nevertheless, this study had some limitations. Due to the limited timeframe and resources available for the completion of a Master’s research project, I did not have any direct contact with internautas during this study. The chosen method, close textual analysis, allowed me to observe a large number of examples and discussions online and, consequently, I analysed more than one use of the zoeira. Nevertheless, I believe that a second phase of the research, with direct contact with participants, would enrich the findings of this study. By talking to internautas through in-deep interviews or focus groups, for example, we could further develop these analyses with their contribution.

I also acknowledge that the concept of zoeira is broad and complex and the observation of three examples alone is not sufficient for complete coverage of the subject. Therefore, I first suggest the development of the study of the zoeira through a broader observation and with the direct participation of internautas.

Personally, when writing this thesis, I became very interested in better understanding why Brazilian internet memes are becoming popular on the internet among users from other nationalities. I believe it would be fascinating to study more deeply what non-Brazilian users think about Brazilian memes, and how and why they are spreading them. More broadly, I believe that future research could analyse the role of internet memes in other cultures that form part of the global internet culture. It would be interesting to understand the particular ways in which other nations’ memes reflect culturally localised humour and national cultural identity, and the role of these memes in a transnational popular culture of the internet.

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