Cultural Colonialism & Aesthetic Injustice

Gustavo Dalaqua on decolonizing minds.

- Gustavo Dalaqua

My first sight of an openly gay man was on television. In my early teens back in the late Nineties, almost every Saturday evening, my family and I would watch A praça é nossa, one of the most famous comedy shows in Brazil. Vera Verão, played by Jorge Lafond (1952-2003), a black gay man, was one of our favorite characters. Her sketches varied considerably. Sometimes, her race was the main reason for mockery. In other sketches, what led viewers to chuckle was Vera Verão’s fights with the women whose men she wanted to have. Yet despite their differences, a common event present in all sketches that Vera Verão played is that someone with disgust calls Lafond ‘bicha’ (‘faggot’). This was the moment my parents, my sisters, and I laughed the most: the moment when Lafond was humiliated for being gay. It is not surprising, then, that the Grupo de Gays Negros da Bahia (Group of Black Gay Men from Bahia) protested when the government announced that Lafond was chosen to advertise a public campaign against STDs among homosexuals. According to them, Lafond should not have been chosen because his work as a performer disseminated racism and homophobia.

What does Vera Verão have to do with ‘cultural colonialism and aesthetic injustice’? To answer this question, it is necessary to first explain what each term means.

Cultural Colonialism & Aesthetic Injustice