“Various feedings in the alley, I’ll take this one to the alley”, sang MC Levin in the funk song “Vai Pereca”.
The image of a woman performing oral sex on a man during or after a favela dance is as frequent in funk lyrics as adultery in European literature.
If talking about a “beast in the alley” does not surprise funk listeners, seeing Anitta staging oral sex in a favela caused surprise, but revolt as well.
I’m talking here about the “leaked” images, last Friday (27), of the recording of her last clip that has not yet been released.
After the images, Anitta became, once again, a subject on social networks. I saw many criticisms of the singer gaining likes and shares, I saw the increase in followers of profiles on Instagram that condemned Anitta’s staging.
Just noticing this growth “at her expense”, I was already suspicious…
:: “Bum Bum Tam Tam” is more complex than Bach, says music researcher ::
The reviews reminded me of Greek tragedies. Those tragedies that speak of someone who tries to escape a destiny, but, in the attempt to escape, returns to it.
Oedipus was told that his fate was to kill his father and marry his mother. It was trying to escape this predestined future that he did exactly what was expected. He killed his father and married his mother.
The tragic criticism of Anitta tried to combat prejudice, but ended up reproducing racism, machismo and also moralism.
:: “Anitta shows that funk artists can create whatever they want, including reggaeton”, says researcher ::
Let’s analyze some of these criticisms and understand why Anitta is an artist as idolized as “cancelled”. Anitta works with the contradictions of the system!
Review 1: “Anitta reinforces the image of a hypersexualized favela, which contributes to sex tourism.”
Combating sex tourism is a legitimate and necessary cause. Combating the (racist) stereotype of a hypersexualized favela is completely legitimate and necessary! But, attributing structural problems to a person (however influential) to attack his work that hasn’t even been released seems like the old strategy of using ethical consensus to further silence funk productions. Something like: “enough funk because people in this movement are sexist, homophobic, objectify women, romanticize crime and sexualize children”.
Historically, these critiques have not sought to hitbut fight funk artists. Such criticisms also often come from white people in academia.
“Funkeiros aren’t fools, I know you don’t want to improve the world. You just want to shut me up”, I think this every time I deal with white academics “critical” of funk.
Criticism 2: “Okay, but what about this essentially sexist porn culture that objectifies the woman used by Anitta to spread her clips?”
Long before the objectification of bodies was problematized in pornography, it should be problematized in capitalism itself. The body, especially of the peripheral black woman, is seen only as a workforce. Ignoring that it is capitalism that objectifies us is a neoliberal/moral strategy that problematizes objectification in sex, but does not problematize objectification at work.
Criticism 3: “Ah, but oral sex indicates the woman’s submission to the man! Everything the male loves!”
Facing the oral sex scene as submission to the man is to place the man at the center of the act! Not everything is about them. This prevents us from seeing oral sex as a mutual form of pleasure.
But, I agree that the scene would be even more questionable if the man was “suckling” Anitta.
Review 4: “It’s just attention-grabbing porn”
A left-wing white man posted the following sentence on his instagram: “feminism without class struggle is a back alley blowjob”. This comment shows how Anitta’s sex scene is being reduced to a “commercial porn product devoid of reflection”, that’s another way of saying that people like Anitta don’t think…
Reducing porn is not seeing the work with the aesthetics of the body and peripheral sexuality; it is not seeing that there is moral and political questioning there. Reducing it to porn ignores the fact that the use of back alleys reflects a lack of money for a motel or other suitable place to have sex. Reducing pornography is not seeing the work of staging as art. And we know that art portrays sex, nude and “feeding”.
See a famous oral sex scene in the Vila dos Mistérios, circa 79 BC
Review 5: “Ah, but Anitta encourages many young girls to do the same.”
This vision is based on the premise that young people from the favela passively receive and accept what is in the clips. Again, it’s like thinking that the favela doesn’t think! Of course, there is the social impact of art and the responsibility of artists, but the myth of passive reception of music videos is a way of trying to censor many funks.
And about censorship, it is worth mentioning that according to the report The state of artistic freedom 2018 of the organization Free Muse, Brazil is the fourth country that most processes artists in the world and 54% of these processes are against musicians.
Furthermore, what encourages many socially reprehensible behaviors is socioeconomic vulnerability… not funk music or Anitta.
Review 6: “Oh, but she doesn’t need that, she already has millions of followers”
Every time we talk about Anitta, we are giving her exactly what she wants: attention and commitment to her work. The pop art world is extremely dismissive of people. There are many cases of artists with thousands and even millions of followers who have very little engagement. They were successful and were forgotten. Something very common in funk. Many succeed, few make a career. Anitta just plays a game very well whose rules are not hers, they belong to capitalism.
And even those who criticize Anitta at the right time are also playing the game of the market.
Review 7: “This sucks”
Many critics still brought the adjectives “terrible”, “bad” and “bad”. But, a more scientific analysis is not made with these adjectives that cannot be explained and hide the white difficulty in dealing with Funk.
Anitta’s work requires less judgment and more analytical work.
Bringing this perspective does not mean passing the cloth to Anitta. The criticism we can make of it lies in individualism. What does the favela gain from all this?
A like-hunting condemnation hides a petty attitude of those who spit in the plate they eat… After all, what generated the whole discussion was Anitta’s own work. Those who produce content must engage with it.
“Spit in the plate” no! To do Anitta’s scene justice, the best metaphor would be “spitting breast milk”.
*Thiagson is a musicologist, professor of music, doctoral candidate in Music at USP, youtuber, defender of peripheral music and writer of books on music.
**This is an opinion piece. The author’s view does not necessarily express the editorial line of the newspaper Brazil in fact.
Editing: Vivian Virissimo
