Were it not for the disclosure of a gray note to the press and a bureaucratic record in the Official Gazette, no one would know that Mário Frias, a 48-year-old actor, had become the fifth special secretary of culture in 18 months of Jair Bolsonaro government. There was no announcement, neither journalists, nor guests, nor speeches, nor inaugural ceremonies, contrary to what had happened, about three months before, on arrival, with pomp, of his predecessor and professional colleague Regina Duarte.
Frias, known to the public for having been the heartthrob of the sixth season of the soap opera teen Workout, presented a game show with students on Rede TV, the fifth most viewed open channel in Brazil, before joining the government. He had made himself available in an interview at the end of May, when the fall of Regina Duarte to the post already seemed imminent.
The performance of the Viúva Porcina interpreter, which lasted in the secretariat from March to June, was disapproved by everyone. By President Jair Bolsonaro, who did not like that she, aged 72, fulfilled quarantine in São Paulo instead of working in Brasília, and, above all, for the artistic class for not commenting on the death of cultural icons or the absence of a concrete measure in defense of the sector.
Faced with direct criticism from colleague Maitê Proença in an interview with CNN Brasil, Regina was outraged and threatened to leave the studio. In the same interview, he also relativized the deaths caused by the Brazilian military dictatorship [1964-1985] and, subsequently, she was sued by the relatives of victims.
Before, the position was in the hands of Roberto Alvim, who fell after imitating Nazi minister Joseph Goebbels in an official video. The Brazilian secretary said that “the Brazilian art of the next decade will be heroic and national. (…) Or it will be nothing”, while the German minister stated, in the 1930s, that “the German art of the next decade will be heroic (…) or else it will be nothing “. As background music for his intervention, Alvim chose opera by Richard Wagner, Hitler and the Nazi regime’s favorite composer.
While calling the attention of the artistic community for calling the celebrated actress Fernanda Montenegro “sordid” and “liar”, Alvim was still in the news for the nominations he made.
For the Palmares Foundation, which takes care of the Afro-Brazilian cultural heritage, he indicated Sergio Camargo, for whom “slavery was beneficial for the descendants”. According to him, “Marielle Franco will never be a legitimate heroine of black Brazilians, except for those who are in the toes [local de venda de drogas] and in prisons “and”[o músico] Martinho da Vila is a tramp who should be sent to Congo “.
Rafael Silva, the new holder of the National Library, blamed Caetano Veloso and other contemporary musicians, such as Gabriel O Pensador or the band Legião Urbana, for illiteracy in Brazil.
The nominee for the presidency of Funarte, an organization that encourages the arts, believes that “rock leads to abortion and Satanism”. For conductor Dante Mantovani, “the Beatles implanted communism”, while “Soviet agents infiltrated the CIA distributed LSD in Woodstock to destroy the family cell” and “UNESCO propagates pedophilia”.
Alvim also appointed a social columnist and evangelical pastor, a reverend, a novelist for TV Record, owned by Bishop Edir Macedo, among others.
“The lack of importance of culture in the Bolsonaro government is undeniable. And the worst thing is that the few actions in the sector are always harmful: at Ancine [agência reguladora do cinema], at the Palmares Foundation, at the Cinemateca, everything follows the intention to demobilize, dismantle, destroy “, the writer and journalist Thales de Menezes laments to DN.
Just plug hole
For Ricardo Rodrigues, producer and musical agents of names such as the singer Liniker, among others, “the Bolsonaro administration started by transforming the ministry into a secretariat, then changed the ministry that manages the sector and now goes into five secretaries always with the intention of plug the hole and just to not end the secretariat once and for all “.
“Because, in fact,” he continues, “there was not a single real action carried out, a structuring policy, nothing, the only concern is to keep a television figure at the front, someone connected to the big television conglomerates, on the commercial side”.
Frias, however, like Regina and Alvim, is under the tutelage of the Minister of Tourism, Marcelo Álvaro Antônio, accused of ideological falsehood, misappropriation of electoral resources and criminal association in a scheme of embezzlement of public money in female candidatures of the then Bolsonaro’s party, the PSL.
Before, responding to the Minister of Citizenship Osmar Terra, a doctor who called quarantine in the fight against coronavirus useless and predicted 2100 deaths in Brazil due to the disease (it has already passed 55 thousand), the secretaries of culture were banker Ricardo Braga, for an anonymous two months, and Henrique Pires, who left for “not agreeing with censorship”.
At stake, Bolsonaro’s suspension of four series on diversity and LGBT themes on public televisions.
Theatrical shows like “Abrazo”, by Shakespeare’s Clowns, and “Gritos”, by Dos à Deux, the first for bringing the story of a government that forbade citizens to speak and the second for being played by a transvestite, were also canceled .
Thaís Seganfredo, editor of the Observatory of Censorship in the Arts, pointed out this and other moments of cultural management under Bolsonaro to DN.
“Besides the cases of censorship, there is no cultural policy, in fact since the time of Roberto Alvim, who later proved to be a fascist, there is a cultural antipolitics and a hate speech to the artistic class, it is worth remembering that Bolsonaro denied inclusion of the artists among the categories that receive emergency aid of 600 reais in the pandemic “.
“Luckily,” continues Seganfredo, “civil society and parliamentarians organized themselves to build an action, a priori, emergency due to the new coronavirus, who is actually encouraging culture in Brazil is the legislative power”.
She remembers that “the thought that guides the Bolsonaro government is that the communists took the country intellectually through culture and education”.
Theory encouraged by Olavo de Carvalho
This conspiracy theory is, above all, encouraged by the philosopher Olavo de Carvalho, considered the guru of the new extreme right in Brazil, including Bolsonaro, his sons and Alvim, for example.
According to Olavo, in order to dissolve the family cell, the left occupies, as determined by the Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci, cultural spaces, where it intends to empty the Jewish-Christian traditions of meaning and trivialize practices such as zoophilia, cannibalism and pedophilia.
In this vein, the president began his government to question the sponsorship of state companies for culture and to threaten the “Rouanet Law”, a law to support culture, whose incentive ceiling fell from 60 to one million reais.
With Mário Frias, who despite the cold arrival at the government received public praise from deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro via social networks, is there any hope for change?
Not for Ricardo Rodrigues. “With Mário Frias he changes very little, he is just someone who will occupy the position, at most he will serve to carry out an ideological campaign, so that culture remains as a tool of the government’s ideological axis, I have no hope”.
“My hope is that all of this has led to a great resumption of associations representing sectors, which are articulating to build public policy through the hands of the people and not by the government, which is mobilizing itself to reconstruct everything they want to destroy”.
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