Counterculture feeds back and puts pressure on elitist ideals – 04/17/2023 – Michael França

“Anitta represents the degeneration of our culture”, said an annoyed colleague of the Carioca elite. Although he revealed some of his prejudice in this statement, there is something relevant to it. The country is undergoing a transformation process in which certain ideals, especially the more elitist ones, are being contested.

Defining what culture is is not trivial. However, it can be thought of as the set of perspectives, norms and beliefs, within and between groups, that shape and are shaped by both social and economic aspects of human interaction. In turn, cultural heritage is a kind of silent voice from the past that influences what is valued in modern societies and tends to be reflected in significant economic and social developments.

When the cultural pattern reproduces inequalities and discrimination, it not only becomes a source of exclusion but, as the population begins to become aware of it, it also becomes a source of conflict.

In the course of history, some groups have become more prominent than others. This allowed their ideals to be disseminated and assimilated by a large portion of the population. Despite its economic and political strength still persisting, some factors associated with the functioning of contemporary societies have braked, at least partially, the impetus of the power of influence of the hegemonic sectors.

One of these factors comes from demographic dynamics. It has been decades since the fertility rate among the richest has been below the population replacement level. Given that they tend to intermarry, what is observed is that old dynasties may simply be on the way to extinction.

On the other hand, procreation among the poorest in Brazil continued at full speed for years. This has changed the makeup of society over time and has led to an ever-increasing share of the population coming from disadvantaged backgrounds.

However, despite the profound neglect of women’s reproductive rights, especially those with low incomes, there have been advances in expanding access to higher education and in the years of study completed in basic education. Such progress was not enough to guarantee that everyone had an equivalent level of learning, but it allowed that part of this mass of people to begin to question certain standards with greater intensity. The lack of representation in spaces of greater social prestige, for example, is just one of them.

At the same time, we had the intensification of technological progress, which, to a certain extent, democratized the production and consumption of new content. If, in the past, the family, school and the mainstream media were responsible for a high share of the values ​​disseminated, now there is considerable competition with what is propagated via social networks and the thousands of influencers contained therein.

In this whole context, there is a dynamic process in which the demand and offer for alternative perspectives to the excluding cultural pattern of Brazilian elitism feed back over time. In the end, it is not surprising that minorities are expanding their power of influence and reshaping relevant aspects of national identity.

The text is a tribute to the song “Girl from Rio”, by Anitta.

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