by Daniel, Tufts 1+4 Participant
Bramerica
Bramerica is the fifth biggest country in the world with a population of about 200 million people and the seventh largest economy. Now you may have never heard of Bramerica, but it’s real all right. How do I know? Oh, because I live there.
Bramerica is Brazil today. It’s what happens when globalization sends American capitalism around the globe riding on the back of Beyoncé’s new world tour. Bramerica is this weird cultural mash-up that leads to non-English speakers singing Joan Osborne’s One of us or Brazilians wearing the shirt pictured on the right ➜
to a local cultural celebration, or restaurants 4,226 miles (6,801 km) south of Key West serving XBurgers (I wish the XBurger was a super secret CIA program to enlist hamburgers as patriotic informants; but in reality the letter X is pronounced ‘chees’ in Portuguese. So, X-Burger…yea, you get the idea.) But above all else, it’s when I run into this⬇︎:
on day one of my 7 months in Brazil. So yea, for the past five months I have been living on the other side of the equator, thousands of miles away. But something is off, something is just too familiar, too American.
Language
For an English speaker arriving in Brazil none of this may seem out of the ordinary. We are so used to seeing English everywhere that when a Brazilian billboard advertises “Brunch” you don’t even bat an eye. In order for us to truly notice the lingual weirdness present we have to break our own glass, take a step back and think “Wait, what?”
Fewer than 5% of Brazilians speak English but the beach store I passed on my walk to a picturesque shoreline still says that their bikinis are “70% OFF” and the billboard for the nearby music park (FYI: billboards are called “Outdoors” in Brazil) still says “Yes, We Dance.” The Brazilian population does not regularly speak in English but one of the most effective marketing techniques used in Brazil is writing in a language that Brazilians can’t understand: English. That is because for many, English=cool.
To give you a better idea, let’s run through some of my favorite examples of Portguesed English words (English words that are casually thrown into Brazilian conversation like they were Portuguese in the first place): Food Truck, Stand Up, delivery, livestream, meeting, video games, delete, fashion, touchscreen, network and my all-time favorite, the aforementioned super spy X-burger. These words are everywhere, a Brazilian library of the English language, and I am not even including the proper nouns (mostly tech and social media companies) that are even more prevalent. These words, and the social media used to transmit them are the messengers of this lingual and cultural assimilation; globalization is providing them with a new means of travel.
There has never before been a time when a language, any language, could spread so quickly and so efficiently. At one point, Latin ruled the Mediterranean and later, Mongolian, much of the Eurasian continent. But these lingual supremacies were accomplished through bloody conquest; English has secured its position at the top through means of money: economic conquest. While history may repeat itself, this the world has never seen. Because Bramerica isn’t just language; it’s everything.
Modern Culture
A few summers ago I attended a summer program with Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians, Indians, Pakistanis and, of course, Americans (Me!). At one point, a Palestinian friend of mine said to me “You Americans, you have no culture, (just capitalism).” I add this last phrase here with a little freedom of expression because it would have completed the perfect Hollywood punchline (and helps me make my point). But my friend was stuck thinking of culture in the traditional sense: the parades and costumes of Carnaval, the festive dinners of Eid and the elongated necks of the Kayan Lahwi. He forgot that for every age there is an equivalent culture. And that right now, we are in the cultural age of the luscious golden arches of McDonalds and the cutesy tongue-sticking ghost of Snapchat. We are in an age of globalized culture and in many senses, globalized American culture. Where what is served and sold to the global population tends to tilt toward what the global population desires; and what the global population desires right now tends to be written in a certain North American language (hint: it’s not Spanish, French or any form of the Eskimo-Aleut languages).
This is not some patriotic rant but rather a realization, a truth, made clear by the Brazilian woman I saw wearing the star spangled banner across her bum and the multiple Brazilian men and women with US Army and Navy branded clothing. Oh, and of course, this again:
Entertainment
Entertainment is the real powerhouse of this story. If social media is the messenger and globalization the means, then entertainment is the message; it’s what bounces around the airwaves and shapes the world’s view on American society as well as a sizable chunk of the world’s view of itself.
If you ask Brazilians about their favorite TV shows, movies or music, much of it ends up being pretty familiar to a typical American teenager. Netflix binging is nearly as popular here as it is in the states; Brazil will have an estimated 24.4 million Netflix subscribers by 2020 (the highest other than the US) and American films and music are widely available in the land of bikinis and futbol. In an age where the media you consume, the shows you watched as a kid, and the music you listen to are quintessential pillars of communication and personality this globalization of culture and media makes connecting with foreigners easier than ever before. Because now, many of us have grown up with the same shows, listen to the same music, and are waiting for many of the same movies to come out (The Star Wars opening weekend was packed here as well). So while we may live on other sides of the planet, in many ways, this modern age allows us to all grow up in similar households, creating an easy bridge into connections and conversation across continents.
Christmas
Just as what you eat affects how you feel (and, potentially your waist size); what a country consumes affects how its culture is defined. The effects of widespread American culture are much deeper than many would expect; in Brazil, the Grinch didn’t steal Christmas, we did.
In December, the average temperature in Florianopolis is around 25° Celsius (that’s 77° Fahrenheit). So Santa’s got no need for his 19th century Americanized jolly red garb around here; but he wears it all with pride: his big belly, big beard, big robe, reindeer and even his snow have all followed him to Brazil. It’s like Santa came galloping in from the US, where, in every single piece of American film or media, Santa Claus (“Papa Noel” in Brazil) is represented as a jolly fat man dressed up for the winter. But shouldn’t that Santa really only make an appearance where he was created, or, at least where it’s a little bit below freezing? Shouldn’t the fake snow be unnecessary for Christ’s birthday (presents are another story)? We have inadvertently sold the world our holidays, or, for some, our version of theirs. And Santa’s not alone, over the past decade or so, October 31st has been turned into the Halloween that I recognize back home with costumes, pumpkins, candy, English and all.
As the presence of American media and technology grows, the deeper American culture and language embeds itself into other countries and their cultures.
Em Fim
What does all of this mean for Americans? Most of us live our lives oblivious to the fact that what we create, consume and compose is not just for us, or even just for the North American continent or the Western Hemisphere. We forget that our creations and our culture are displayed to the world at large in a way never seen before. We forget that the films we create, the music we produce and the businesses we churn out are the lenses through which the rest of the world comes to understand us; just as beaches, bikinis, baladas and soccer are how we understand Brazil.
This epidemic is not just constrained to Brazil’s borders. South America in its entirety, Europe, Asia, Africa; every continent has caught The English. They have all been touched by not just American capitalism but American culture. (I tend to conflate English and American a lot throughout this post, that’s mainly because most of the English material and products that I have seen here have been American. Also, I am American…so there’s that bias.)
But the next time you turn on the radio or are looking for a new show to binge on Netflix, count how many are not in English and not in the Foreign Language section. Then think about all of the Brazilians, Egyptians and Argentinian people searching through a nearly identical library, choosing between dubbed and subbed as well as Action and RomCom. And then think of the last time you heard a song in Portuguese on the radio, and remember that someone, somewhere in Brazil is rocking out to Maroon 5 at this very moment. Then be amazed.