IBOPE, Brazil’s largest market research organization released the data from its last nationwide poll, about reading problems and how well the average person can read and understand a text.
As I always say, people can’t do that. They only read the title, they don’t have the superpowers required to assimilate a full text.
The research discovered that the amount of people who only read titles and the single phrases INCREASED in the last four years.
Monteiro Lobato, a great writer, once said: “A Country is made by men and books”. Looks like nobody paid him much attention.
Oh Well. Africa, here we go!
Even Argentina got one. Some countries without luxuries like tap water an paved roads did it, too. But not Brazil. Why? simple: our movie industry is poverty-oriented. We love our misery an are not afraid of showing it. Ok. A slum here and there is kosher, but to become a huge hit a Brazilian movie must show slums, social violence, black kids beaten by evil cops or a thousand miles of plain old fashioned rural poverty.
After a while it gets boring. Same old story with other characters. Even the actors are the same. And no, you can’t do it without a ‘denounce’ tone. A great little movie, Deus é Brasileiro (God is Brazilian) was ignored by the critics because it dared to be fun. To entertain and to show poor people being happy. Yes, Virginia, even poor people smile, love, have fun. They may be poor but they don’t feel miserable. At least not as miserable as the onnanist left-wing intellectuals believe they are.
We have a few pure-entertainment movies, but they’re not taken as seriously as the “real” movies.
Of course, American movies are allowed to be as fun and alienating as possible, because, well, that’s Hollywood. Point is: People love Hollywood-style movies, unless it’s a brazilian Hollywood-style movie. Our moviemakers are not allowed to be vain.
But there’s a small light of hope. Globo Filmes, a movie company tied to Brazil’s largest TV network release movie after movie, usually based on their own TV shows, or plain simple pure-entertainment movie. People are starting to react, and the public like what it see.
Maybe in one or two generations Brazil will have a great movie industry, like it used to have, back in the 40s/50s.
I’m not claiming we work all the time, but as a ProBlogger I can assure you: Our working hours are really weird. Worse, our work days never fit other people’s.
Here in Brazil we only have 100 or 200 holidays every year, and people get really eager in anticipation. Problem is: If you work at home, make your own schedule, can leave anytime for a beer, can say “screw you guys, I’m going home” or simply watch monkey porn the whole day, the very idea of a holiday makes no sense.
It’s like coming to Jenna Jameson with a friendly line “Hey’s, guess what! I’m getting laid tonight, isn’t it great?”
I know I shouldn’t, but sometimes I miss the whole “Next Friday is labour’s day! Thursday we drink until morning!” thing.
Guess I need 5 minutes of a 9-to-5 office environment, then I’ll stop my girlie complaining.
