Misconceptions by Douglas Abelino

m i c o c e p i o n

s n t s

— Douglas Abelino —

misconceptions —

misconception an idea or belief that is wrong because it has been based on a failure to understand something.

3 People always assume you have to look a certain way based on what they know about your culture or where you are from. And sometimes everything they know is just a few and full of misconceptions. Stereotypes can act as a social eraser for individual identity and oppressively stigmatize individuals. By living away from my home country I have been through some funny and/or awkward situations saying where I came from, mainly due to the lack of knowledge that people have about other culteres further than their own. This project is about showing to people the different faces. People who are different from what they could expect and what these people have to say about their own culture and their experiences living abroad. Douglas Abelino — 2014 —

misconceptions —

Douglas Abelino — 2014 —

misconceptions —

Douglas Abelino — 2014 —

misconceptions —

The Brazilian stereotype is misjudged most of the times. Generally people expect us to be football enthusiasts or dancers. But the fact is that we have much more to show than these shallow features. We share many different cultures that are so deeply intermingled that it’s barely possible to see the beginning of one and the end of another. Arctheture, music, design, engineering, etc are so part of us as in any other country and, therefore, very unique. It bothers me to see how people try to reduce our various away of expressing ourselves to the simplistic vision of “happy and dumb” people that we are not.

Douglas Abelino — 2014 —

Hugo

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Flávia It bothers me how people around the world are not well informed about us. Brazil is a huge country with such a rich cultural variety, and in school we learn all about world history, but other countries don’t bother to learn about us. People think we all live in Rio de Janeiro, spend all day at the beach, love samba and that we can all dance it. I am quite the opposite because I really don’t like to go to the beach and sunbathe, I live in a part of Brazil that is a lot different than the Rio stereotype that everybody knows. A man at a pub once was surprised because I looked too pale to be Brazilian. People constantly ask, more as an affirmation, like “Oh, Brazil? You people speak Spanish, right?” (actually we speak Portuguese). Recently, a British girl asked me if we have christmas in Brazil like they have in here. It was an innocent question, but somehow I was a bit offended by it.

Douglas Abelino — 2014 —

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Giovana People expect that all the Bazilians play and love football, and frequently I hear people that I have just met asking me about it. Personally, I don’t care much about football, I don’t follow the championships, so it bothers me a bit that people prefer talking about it than any other greater things from my country. Aside from that, in what concern to Brazilian woman people usually expect from us big boobs and a big butt as well. It had never bothered me, but that was until I met a finnish man who got surprised when he discovered my nationality. He said: “You don’t have a Brazilian butt!”

Douglas Abelino — 2014 —

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Juliano

I don’t know exactly what people are expecting about the Brazilians, but what I can say is that it is never what we really are. Every time someone asks me where I am from the next thing they say is “Really?!” Sometimes people say I have a good english like if it wouldn’t be possible for a Brazilian and they ask me how long I’ve been here, and after saying that I just got here they don’t believe like if I’m joking about. I think I don’t fit in their expectations. I believe people don’t understand how big and multiple is Brazil, there we have tons of mistures with lots of different cultural backgrounds, what make it harder to guess where we came from and this is what makes every single Brazilian unique and different from each other.

Douglas Abelino — 2014 —

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Laryssa

I am tan, affective and I smile for everything. I like football and I know how to samba. I think this is the typical Brazilian stereotype. I am just wondering right now that I may carry the face of Brazil with me.

I understand that these expectations are part of our identity as a country, but sometimes I am bored of people always waiting the same things. I feel like a person totally foreseeable and that’s not true, we all have unique characteristics to offer. There are some places where I feel eyes on me just waiting for me to be a kind of promiscuous, seductive woman. Once a guy said that he knew I was from Brazil because I was not wearing a lot of coats and jackets. It seemed to me like for some people outside Brazil, Brazilian girls are always purposely looking for showing their bodies like mannequins in shop windows. It can be an opinion that flows as an heritage of Carnival, when all those wonderful women go to samba on the catwalk, showing their bodies. I just try to ignore this kind of comment.

Douglas Abelino — 2014 —

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Mariana

I don’t know exactly what people are expecting for me to be when I say I’m brazilian, but I know that I don’t fit in the appearance features. Because even living in a city that has many beatiful beaches for all the tastes I never get tanned, my hair is straight and ginger (when it is died) and I don’t smile all the time. But still, people keep looking for something that will make me to fit in what the imagine brazilians are, know or behave. Some guys had been kind of unpolite popping questions about my sexual behaviour, right after I said I came from Brazil. Other peolpe expect that I know how to dance and do it whenever they ask me to. I actually had dance classes for more than 10 years in which I learned ballet, not samba. And when people ask me to do samba, it is mostly the first thing they ask me. At the beggining of almost every first conversations, I am obligated to tell people that the mother language of my country is portuguese. It gets me annoyed that a country that makes people feel so curious about, has so many aspects that are unknwon by other cultures.

Douglas Abelino — 2014 —

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Sara

Once I was asked if the capital of Brazil was Buenos Aires. People sometimes even try to guess if it is Sao Paulo, or Rio de Janeiro. When I say I study architecture, I would really like people to ask how is it like to study in the country where Oscar Niemeyer left such a major architectural legacy, specially in its capital, which is Brasília, by the way. I would love to see people around the world recognising other Brazilian things rather than football, Carnival, sunny beaches and certain types of waxing. We have a broad range of different cultures, races, traditions and climates. Not all of us know how to samba or see wild animals everywhere we go. We speak Portuguese, not Spanish. We have rock ’n roll bands, good literature, delicious food, beautiful architecture… and we certainly would like to be recognised by all of it, not by stereotypes. We love to study other countries, their histories, cultures and traditions. And we hope the world gets to know our country better.

Douglas Abelino — 2014 —

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Everyone has a general idea about places they’ve never been, normally based on media. And that’s okay, nobody needs to know everything about everywhere, however it’s necessary to be careful because it’s just a general idea. Stereotypes aren’t a complete lie but they aren’t a complete truth as well. When I tell people I’m from Brazil they think about football, World Cup, beach, sun, carnival and yes, my city has two football teams, was hosting the World Cup, it has beautiful beaches, a hot sun and carnival during the carnival time and another one in the middle of the year because people like that party. But I don’t. I can count on my hand’s fingers how many times I go to the beach during a year and I really don’t know about football. So no, I’m not what people expect but yes, I’m Brazilian

Douglas Abelino — 2014 —

israel

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Douglas I believe that is easy to be attached to a stereotype from something that you do not know, it helps people to have a general idea about what to expect. What makes it funny is when what people expect is completely different of what the things truly are. This is what happened when I say I am from Brazil, normally people are very mistakes about what they know. Once someone felt surprised with me when I say I am Brazilian because the gneral ideia is that everybody in Brazil is black(ish). Some other people think that we spend all our days on the beach tanning, swiming and chilling like if we have nothing else to do. One believed that we have no cities and live into the jungle. I wonder from where these kind of ideas come from, because they are totally nonsense. Sometimes it’s funny other times this is pretty annoying. Brazil is a unique place on its culture and its people but it differs only a bit from any other western country.

Douglas Abelino — 2014 —

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Letícia

People question why I am blonde, since I am Brazilian, and this is something that pisses me off, because Brazil is all about mixing cultures and diversity, I thought everyone knew that. I have European ancestry what is very common in Brazil, almost everyone has family somewhere else in the world. For me it has always been normal, this cultural mix, to have, at least, family members of two different countries. In fact, I always thought that this was something normal in the world, until I came here. But when I say I have European ancestry people usually add: “oh, then you are Italian” No, I am not, I am Brazilian. My grandparents cannot be, but I am. I was born in Brazil, grew up with Brazilian culture, so I am Brazilian.

I would like people to know a little about our history to understand that there are all kinds of people there, nobody looks the same, and we all share the same Brazilian culture even if our ancestries came from different places, no one is less Brazilian than anyone because they are not tan or black or whatever people expect to be Brazilian.

Douglas Abelino — 2014 —

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Aline

One of the things that caught my attention in England is the difficulty of pronunciate other languages words. Nobody knows how to pronounce my name and I don’t think it’s a difficult name. They’re really used to make the foreign students create nicknames in English for themselves. I think that it shows a bit of unwillingness from them into learning about my culture. Also, everyone is surprised when see that my family names have origin in other countries than Brazil. Even England being an interbred country, it seems like this miscegenation is not teached as a normal thing in here. Besides that, since I’ve arrived in UK, I realized that people treat me well when I say I’m from other country, and they get really surprised that I am from Brazil. I don’t know if it’s about the misconception that they make about our people or because our country is far from here. I think both.

Douglas Abelino — 2014 —

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Bruna

Once I took a cab home and the cab driver asked where I was from. I answered that I’m Brazilian and he looked scared to me saying that he never would think I was from Brazil. Then I asked why and he said that he always thought that all the brazilians have brown skin and dark hair. That moment I became disappointed with the way the other countries see us. Thinking that Brazil has a stereotype is a mistake, be brazilian means be a mix of minimum two others nationalities. I’m half german and I always liked this. I grown up in a small town in the south of Brazil, that has german colonization. Although, it doesn’t means that I’m german, I’m brazilian and I’m proud of it. Since I arrived here in England, I’ve to hear that I don’t seem brazilian. I’ve to hear that I’m look like english people or from the Philippines. When I say that half german, they look for me and say “now it makes sense”. No, it doesn’t make sense, it hurts.

Douglas Abelino — 2014 —

misconceptions —

18 This project was devoloped to the L5 Collaborative Pratice Module Image/Text on the BA Visual Communication course at Birmingham City University I would like to thank all the colleagues who had collaborated with me on this project: Aline Kammer Bevilaqua Bruna rodrigues Flávia pinheiro Ampessan Giovana Dib Ishimura Hélen Carolina de oliveira Hugo Moutinho Israel Santana José vitor Brasil Juliano Silva Laryssa vilar Letícia panichi Mariana pöpper Sara Teixeira

Douglas Abelino — 2014 —