Translator: David DeRuwe Reviewer: Maurício Kakuei Tanaka
Please close your eyes.
It'll be quick, I'm not going to do magic.
OK? Just relax.
Please close your eyes.
It'll be quick.
Imagine
an angel.
Keep this image.
A prince,
a princess,
and a doll.
Keep these images, and now open your eyes.
I want to know, in these images that you visualized,
how many of them were black?
Yes,
I confess that, until today, I do this test,
and still can't deconstruct these images
that my mind insists on reproducing.
How to deconstruct this?
The question I ask
is if what you see when you close your eyes
is the world that you want and imagine.
I want to know if what you see
is good for you.
Is it good for you?
Well,
sometimes it seems like someone is dominating my thoughts,
controlling how I should act,
how I should dress, and what hairstyle I should have.
It seems like some kind of curse
when I find myself in this situation -
obligated to use things that I have no choice about.
I have a 17-year-old daughter.
Her name is Gabriela.
She's an actress,
a dancer, a violinist,
and a singer.
She's here,
and she's one of the creators
of the "Tá bom pra você?," "Is it good for you?" project.
When Gabriela was 13,
she read a book
called "Um Defeito de Cor," "A Color Defect,"
by Ana Maria Gonçalves, a writer I like very much.
It's a novel.
She was doing theater, and one day, she stopped and said,
"Mom, I'm doing theater.
I want to be an actress.
I'm a model, I can sing,
but I don't see many places for me
in advertising, theater, or movies.
Sometimes, one or two.
I want to talk about this.
She was actually a little angry.
Thirteen years old -
it's a little complicated.
I said, "Well, let's get this out.
Let's start a blog, talk about this, and see where it leads.
Let's put this discussion forward."
A little later, this idea became a video channel.
I said, "Let's produce what isn't there already:
commercials with our faces,
that represent us.
Let's produce things to see if we can provoke people a little bit
to think about how advertising normally portrays things.
My first idea was to talk
about the standard margarine ad.
[Black Light margarine]
You must have seen
that the actors in margarine commercials are always the same:
heterosexual white couples,
men who respect morals and good customs
with their submissive modest housewives.
Excuse me, I needed to say this, OK?
(Laughter)
(Cheers)
(Applause)
Have you noticed
that, in these commercials for margarine and other things,
women are always so very happy
to be joyfully serving everybody?
I don't know what woman wakes up this way, but anyway -
(Laughter)
So we created our first commercial,
starring a black family.
On the video channel "Tá bom pra você?," Black Light margarine is available.
It's still not in supermarkets, but we'll keep waiting.
So, for the first time in Brazil's history -
at least, I've never seen a commercial for margarine with a black family -
we have it on "Tá bom pra você?," and there's my family.
This idea originated from Gabriela,
her questions, and our talks,
but soon after,
my entire family decided to participate
because I pressured them.
They had no choice.
I had an actor at home, my husband,
who collaborated a lot with this project,
and my son, who had to be convinced, as he was a little contrary to the idea.
(Laughter)
I want to say that the standard ad is very dangerous
because it causes serious problems
for people who don't fit the pattern.
Problems and even psychological issues,
as in the case of Juliete.
[Alisandro]
Juliete is this girl who is tormented by this monster called Alisandro.
Alisandro carries a pot.
I'll explain that to you:
Juliete is a very famous black feminist blogger
with hair like this, like mine.
She feels very pressured
when she has to face her first employment interview.
She stays in that torment
and starts to monitor what happens in society.
You must have seen what happens to black women
who now occupy positions
that before were occupied only by white women:
actresses, singers, right?
Racist attacks
always happen to these women.
Juliete starts to see that and gets a little scared, desperate,
and starts suffering delirium and having hallucinations of Alisandro,
who appears with an enormous pot of smoothing cream
and other instruments of torture
that people with hair like mine don't want to use.
This guy appears in Juliete's nightmare, at school, and on her computer.
It's serious business, and she'll end up in the asylum.
This is serious.
It's serious.
The other commercial I wanted to use to provoke this debate
was about something very simple that happens to every woman:
menstruation.
There's never been a tampon commercial with a black woman.
I saw Lélia Gonzalez, an important black activist, saying this.
I think this interview is already 25 years old.
She said, "I never saw a tampon commercial with a black woman."
So we created the Free Black tampon,
[Free Black]
also available at "Tá bom pra você?,"
soon to be seen in markets near you.
We continue to wait for this too.
So I want to talk about other products we consume.
It's worth remembering that we, blacks,
are 57% of Brazil's population,
according to IBGE government agency figures.
We consume more than 1.5 trillion Brazilian reals per year.
But in the advertising and audiovisual industries,
we're only at 4%.
And we consume these products.
[Black Cereal]
Here's Black Cereal, also available at "Tá bom pra você?"
We also made a commercial for toothpaste:
Total Protection Black toothpaste.
Because, as incredible as it seems, we brush our teeth, right?
(Laughter)
And worst of all, we buy these products.
Let's think, like I said, let's imagine.
We're more than half the population.
Imagine if we quit buying these products.
What would happen?
(Cheers)
(Applause)
Huh?
(Applause)
Now I want to talk about my sister.
Beatriz Nascimento, unfortunately, passed away 17 years ago,
but I've kept everything she taught me.
My sister, when I was young - I was born in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro -
made sure to take me to places frequented by Rio's elite.
She took me to these places, looked at me and said,
"Look, I'm bringing you here
so you'll learn that absolutely nobody has the right to tell you
that you can't enter these places."
So I learned this lesson well,
and now I want to show you
what happens when children and youngsters feel represented.
These images that I'll show now
are photos of children that were taken by their parents
when they felt represented.
I don't think I need to make any comment.
There's a photo is of an American boy.
His mother took that picture when she saw her son's reaction
when he identified with the child on the package of diapers,
the child with the doll.
I don't think I need to comment,
but I want to comment
about this last photo of a boy, who is 20 years old now.
He's a biomedicine student,
a black boy.
When I lived in Venezuela, I worked in the sports field.
One day, my son came home crying and crying.
He couldn't talk.
Went in the bathroom.
Couldn't talk with me.
Trying to talk with him, I asked,
"What happened?"
He answered, "Mom, I went in the school,
and all the kids laughed and asked if someone had forgotten me in the stove."
(Sighs)
This is still very difficult for me.
So -
So I said, "What can I do?"
He was 13 or 14.
I thought, "How can I say that it's society that's sick,
and he doesn't have a problem?"
I got the lyrics from a song called "Negro Drama,"
by Mano Brown.
(Cheers)
(Applause)
I said,
"Listen to this music, once, twice, three times alone.
Later, if you want, we can talk, chat a little, see what you think of it,
and let's talk, figure out this story."
He listened to it. He loved it.
After this day, we started hearing
Racionais, Mano Brown's group, at least 10 times a day.
Matheus, the one in the picture who's learning biomedicine,
is my son.
(Cheers)
Then, when I returned to Brazil,
I made a point to get a photograph of his first reaction
when he saw his idol, Mano Brown, onstage.
It was crowded; I needed someone to take the picture, but I saw nobody.
A little later, I saw Eliane Dias go by,
the marvelous goddess who was just here.
I took her arm and said, "Please, my son needs to meet" -
I didn't know Eliane at this time -
"My son needs to meet Mano Brown."
She said, "OK," understanding the situation.
She said, "Wow, I need to take this boy."
And there he was with his idol.
Well, I want to say
that representation is important -
extremely important for society and very good for business.
since half of this population consumes all the products.
It's good that we're in São Paulo so we can talk about this.
We don't want to be equal to anyone.
That's not it.
The most interesting thing in the world
is difference.
We don't want to be equal to anyone, but we deserve equal rights,
and we'll fight for those, right?
I think it's very simple.
We don't need appreciation from people affected by the margarine commercial,
who think it's great to say,
"No, I'm not a racist, my best friend's a black guy."
No, that's not the point.
It's simple: you only have to understand that if there's a chair for you,
there has to be one for me too, right?
That's the point.
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)
We're talking of one nation.
We're the Brazilian nation.
This isn't a friends club
where your brother, uncle, and cousin enter -
No!
We're all part of humanity.
We must respect it and respect human rights, OK?
I think diversity is more interesting than a world full of dolls,
angels, princes, princesses, gods, queens, and kings, all equal.
No!
I want to be able to suddenly close my eyes next time.
I suggest that you do the same, tomorrow or later, today, later,
and try to realize that your mind is free
to have the dreams you want,
the images you want,
and to make the films you want,
thus deconstructing our colonized minds.
We need new stories to do that.
And finally,
as I usually say,
"The good thing
is when I can learn with you
what you still don't know about me."
Is it good for you?
Thank you.
(Applause)