STRICTLY SPEAKING: RATS AND VULTURES, PEOPLE CHOSE THE PRESIDENT DIRECTLY

Abstract

The samba schools parade in Rio de Janeiro is a party which exemplifies what Marcel Mauss called “complete social event”, since it acts out and intermingles the region’s economic, jurisprudent, religious, moral and political institutions, alongside with aesthetics and morphologic phenomena. In its symbolic dimension, the parade makes use of a large myriad of languages which establish the communication between the social actors involved, echoing Ernst Cassirer’s proposal that language is a basic phenomenon of men as symbolic and social beings. During the parade one can notice the use of non-verbal language, such as instrumental sounds, dances, gestures, costumes and allegoric elements, as well as verbal languages expressed in the synopsis of the theme sambas and overall script. This work aims at exploring the way through which the samba school parade - regarded as a complete social event which establishes a network that mobilizes several institutions simultaneously - followed the movement of Brazilian redemocratization in the 80s by portraying the social anxiety in their theme sambas.