Tentative Transgressions: Homosexuality, AIDS, and the Theater in Brazil

Chapter 2. Modernist and Neorealist Backtracking

By investigating heterosexual representations of homosexuality in the theater of Brazilian modernism, this chapter explores the different ways homosexuality was occluded in a key period of Brazilian culture and questions the extent to which playwrights like Oswald de Andrade and Nelson Rodrigues were ready or qualified to serve as critics of their own repressive historic moment. A reconsideration of their theater ushers in new questions and suggests ways of inscribing gayness onto the era. As we interrogate the aesthetic of lack—the turning of a blind eye—that seems to define the “official” theater of this period, two points are readily evident. First, these playwrights were writing at a time when the system of power in Brazil functioned and sustained itself partly by means of its repression of deviance. And second, whereas sexuality has played a key role in shaping the reputation of these playwrights, very little has been written on the interrelations of their works for the stage and the political and ideological energies that shaped the trajectories of these and other Brazilian modernists.1 As modernism gained control of the intellectual territory in 1920s Brazil, certain public figures and cultural manifestations that either had prefigured the movement or that shared certain features and interests were overshadowed. Prominent among such figures and manifestations were the prolific writer, playwright, and journalist João do Rio and the Luso-Brazilian version of revue, or teatro de revista. 42 chapter 2 Modernist and Neorealist Backtracking Performing Decadence, Rio-style The first openly homosexual prominent man of letters in Brazilian literature , João do Rio embraced the idea of decadence and set out to live it, with considerable relish, in the cafés, bars, and streets of turn-of-thecentury Rio de Janeiro.2 Through his demeanor, clothes, and general selfpromotion , he presented belle-époque Brazilian society with a lifestyle performance like none seen before.3 Had João do Rio lived to witness the first years of Brazilian modernism (he died the year before São Paulo’s Week of Modern Art, held in February 1922 and considered the country’s official initiation with the artistic movement) he may well have joined the group of poets, musicians, and painters who formed the first modernist nucleus. We can only speculate as to whether he would have been welcomed by that group but I believe it safe to say that most exponents of modernism would have been far from effusive.4 Although João do Rio was older than most of the participants (he was thirty-nine when he died), age should not have hindered his participation; Graça Aranha, one of the leaders of the first phase, was in his fifties at the time of the Week, while Manuel Bandeira, another major modernist, was not much younger than João do Rio. Nor would his dandyism alone have been enough for the modernists to shun him. At the outset, Brazilian modernism used a large number of shock tactics to call attention to itself and its ideas. Of the early modernists, Oswald de Andrade may have had the keenest sense of the importance of such tactics, carefully planning his every public appearance and statement to stun the middle class and intellectual establishment out of their morose smugness. Of all the modernists, it was Oswald who perhaps came closest to appreciating João do Rio’s importance . In a review of do Rio’s Eva, which had a brief run in São Paulo in July of 1915, Oswald wrote favorably of João do Rio’s theater (Rodrigues 1996: 180). Oswald had the piece published in O Pirralho,5 a journal he had founded in São Paulo in the early part of the second decade of the twentieth century. O Pirralho (published weekly between 1911 and 1917) was one of several harbingers of modernism in Brazil, and Oswald made sure that in his review he stressed the excellence of Eva as a symbolist play. Oswald and João do Rio had met some years earlier during Oswald’s then frequent trips to Rio de Janeiro; by 1911 the two playwrights were members of the infamous bohemian group led by the charismatic and controversial Emílio de Menezes (1866–1918) (Fonseca 1990: 50). While some intersections can be detected in the life and art of João do Modernist and Neorealist Backtracking 43 Rio...