Marriage in Contemporary Northeast Brazilian Popular Poetry and Comedy

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes five works of northeast Brazilian cordel poetry (popular verse poetry in chapbooks) and three northeast Brazilian stand-up comedy performances through the lens of their respective treatment of the theme of marriage. It poses and answers three questions: how does each work characterize marriage, how do these characterizations tend to differ between the two genres, and what do those tendencies reveal about the nature, status, and direction of each genre? It also newly identifies commonalities between northeast Brazilian cordel poetry and stand-up comedy. Finally, it proposes new questions for future consideration, based on this study’s conclusions. This dissertation is innovative in several respects: it is the first academic study of northeast Brazilian stand-up comedy; it is the first in-depth analysis of the theme of marriage in northeast Brazilian cordel; it is the first work to compare the two genres; and all eight of the works that it analyzes have never been written about before. These eight works were selected because they are representative of the genres and because they focus on the theme of marriage. The five selected poems are also representative of the diversity of cordel poets, as they include works by authors of different ages, genders, sexual orientations, and geographic areas of northeast Brazil. The five cordel poems analyzed are: O romance de João Besta e a Jia da lagoa by Francisco Sales Arêda (circa 1950); O sacrifício do amor ou o noivo ressussitado by Manoel d’Almeida Filho (1977); O casamento do boiola by José Francisco Borges (1985); Romance de Amanda e Mara by Graciele Castro (2020); and As ninfas da cachoeira ou o castigo da ambição (2001) by José Mapurunga. The three stand-up comedy performances analyzed are: “Um show de comédia standup” by Paulo Araújo’s (2018); “Adulto” by Whindersson Nunes (2019); and “Comédia da vida casado” by Kedny Silva (2022). Other active northeast Brazilian comedians, including Arianna Nutt and Max Petterson Monteiro, are referenced but not analyzed, as they have not yet published extensive recordings of their stand-up comedy performances. The analysis of the five cordel poems through the lens of marriage reveals diverse approaches, styles, identities, and perspectives. Each poem depicts marriage from a different angle and in a different light; moreover, each one does so with nuances and layers of meaning that only a close reading can reveal. Arêda presents happy marriage as a reward for the protagonist’s supposed humility, whereas d’Almeida Filho frames marriage as a social obligation in which the protagonist repays female devotion by offering marriage in return. Borges, in his whimsically vulgar poem, leverages gay marriage to satirize the clergy, while mocking homosexuality as a “modern” aberration. Castro, on the other hand, in sharing her personal story about meeting and marrying her wife, celebrates marriage, including gay marriage, as a sincere expression of love. Mapurunga, meanwhile, frames marriage as an imperative: he grants prosperous marriage as a reward for his protagonist’s honesty and obedience, while also directly exhorting his (ostensibly male) reader to embrace monogamy and settle down. Furthermore, analysis of the poems’ wording and rhymes reveals subtleties that complicate and transcend the above interpretations. The three stand-up comedians, on the other hand, all jokingly characterize marriage in mostly the same manner, dwelling on a negative, pessimistic depiction of marriage centered on conflict and tension. They present personal anecdotes from their marriages in that light, and they extrapolate those alleged experiences to general affirmations. In doing so, they focus on a single trope: the henpecked, emasculated husband in a passionless relationship who lives in fear of his wife’s anger and eventually capitulates to her manipulation and demands. Only Nunes ventures beyond that characterization, employing the theme of marriage as a basis for affirming and joking about his low-income upbringing, regional and socioeconomic class contrasts in Brazil, and the opulence of Brazilian elites along with the greed of those who profit from them. The creativity, originality, and ingenuity of the comedians’ stand-up comedy performances are to be found not in the plot, framework, or underlying messages of the material, but rather in the unique details of the comedians’ respective anecdotes, in the cleverness of their wordplay, and in the flourishes of their delivery that successfully evoke the audience’s laughter. This study has generated new questions that only further study and the passage of time will answer. Could northeast Brazilian stand-up comedy, like cordel, become more diverse and innovative? Specifically with regard to the comedians’ treatment of the theme of marriage, why is there such uniformity and negativity? Nutt, in her few published video clips of her stand-up comedy performances, makes jokes about marriage and divorce that align with the three male comedians’ characterizations. Is there something about the imperative of generating laughter that requires the comedians to base their marriage jokes, at least to some extent, on depictions of interpersonal conflict? Are those characterizations currently necessary or most effective for generating humor for Brazilian audiences, or are they prevalent for other reasons? To what extent is the trope of marital strife, and its usage in northeast Brazilian stand-up comedy, a localized phenomenon, and to what extent is it characteristic of stand-up comedy more broadly? Will northeast Brazilian stand-up comedy on the topic someday consist of more material beyond that trope? And when, and in what ways, will gay marriage form a substantive part of the material of northeast Brazilian stand-up comedians? If there is to be a transformation in how marriage is portrayed, what, or who, will drive it? More generally, how and why will northeast Brazilian stand-up comedy evolve? Will it diversify mainly due to an increase in the diversity of its comedians, or might diversification occur for other reasons – such as increased maturity of the genre over time, along with more experienced audiences that are fatigued by well-worn tropes and that seek out new approaches? Finally – whether with or without such an evolution of the genre’s content and approaches – will Brazilian stand-up comedy, including that of northeast Brazilian comedians, attract the scholarly and critical attention that today it still lacks? Might Brazilian stand-up comedy’s foreign origin, as well as the “discovery” and appreciation of it by foreign scholars, inspire Brazilian intellectuals to recognize Brazilian stand-up comedy (including northeast Brazilian stand-up comedy) as an art form worthy of study – in the same way that Brazilian scholars, motivated by the constructed myth of Brazilian cordel’s foreign origin and by the interest of foreign researchers, embraced cordel poetry and enthusiastically began researching it in the 1960s after having mostly ignored it for over half a century? As for northeast Brazilian cordel poetry, how will the genre evolve? And how might it be influenced, if at all, by the rise of stand-up comedy in the region? Will the two genres continue to flourish and evolve in parallel? This dissertation argues that stand-up comedy is in some ways an heir to cordel, given that the genres share a number of key attributes, and considering that northeast Brazilian stand-up today has some characteristics that northeast Brazilian cordel used to possess but no longer does (or at least not to the same extent). Both stand-up comedy and Brazilian cordel poetry are characterized by the commercialization of published products (videos and chapbooks), by the use of themes and techniques that generate or suggest intimacy so as to compensate for the distance between the performer and the audience, and by the inclusion or simulation of direct dialogue or interaction, however limited in scope, between the artist and the viewer or reader. Meanwhile, northeast Brazilian stand-up comedians perform to live audiences and publish recordings that reach millions of viewers, whereas cordel poetry nowadays is rarely recited publicly as it once was, and it no longer has the readership that it once did. This is not at all to say, however, that cordel poetry has been superseded by stand-up comedy. Although stand-up comedy may have overtaken cordel in terms of live performances, distribution, and audience size, it has by no means challenged cordel poetry with regard to the literary genre’s cultural significance and identification with the region. Moreover, the immensity and diversity of the cordel poet community, including the presence of many young poets, attests to the continued relevance and dynamism of the genre – even though the genre has evolved away from live performance, and even if fewer chapbooks are sold today than decades ago. How might northeast Brazilian cordel poetry and stand-up comedy converge, or diverge, or coexist, in the coming decades? Might there be a resurgence of live performances of cordel, in the form of poetry readings and theatrical presentations? Or will the cordel universe continue on the path toward becoming an entirely written genre, leaving the element of performance to other genres? Meanwhile, will the pursuit and presence of humor increase in cordel as a consequence of competition or influence from stand-up? Or will cordel authors instead focus mainly on conveying new opinions and perspectives, ceding the realm of humor and laughter to stand-up? Finally, might it be the northeast Brazilian stand-up comedians who change course, maintaining humor and laughter while more purposefully selecting and diversifying the premises of their jokes? These are some of the questions for future consideration that emerge from this study’s analysis of eight works in two genres of northeast Brazilian popular cultural production.