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Culture Planet
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When California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger flew down to Rio to make a film in 1983, he didn’t do it in quite the same way that Bob Hope and Bing Crosby did in 1947 in one of their most famous “Road To” movies. No, Arnold visited Brazil to host a video called “Party In Rio” (later retitled "Carnival In Rio") in which he acts as a leering tour guide to the bawdier aspects of Rio de Janeiro’s famed Carnaval celebration. The mature-rated adventure, directed in 1983 by Shep Morgan and released in 1986 by Elite Entertainment, is out of print today but is a fitting video accompaniment to Schwarzenegger’s notorious “Oui” magazine interview in 1977, in which he discussed group sex at the gym, hashish smoking and other indiscretions. "Party In Rio" shows Arnold groping, leering and acting like, well, a stupid gringo. The VHS tape came my way in the ‘80s when I was a contributing writer to Billboard magazine. One of my specialties was Brazilian music and culture, and I was put off by the exploitative video, which focuses on “T & A” with a frat-boy spirit and is particularly irritating to anyone who gives some value to Carnaval, samba and the beautiful city of Rio de Janeiro. Years after seeing it, I still remembered the actor gleefully saying the Portuguese word “bunda” (“ass”) over and over in the tape. In light of Schwarzenegger’s current candidacy, I decided to revisit “Party In Rio,” which was re-released in 1992 by Playboy / After Dark Video as “Carnival In Rio“ with a few small alterations. Upon watching “Party In Rio” once more, I found it as abominable as ever. It doesn't show Arnold Schwarzenegger in a very flattering light, nor does it do justice to Brazil's great annual celebration. The back cover gushes “Step into the heat of the action with star Arnold Schwarzenegger as he parties non-stop through the streets, beaches and nightclubs of fabulous Rio de Janeiro. Follow him to the wildest, “no-holds-barred” parties in town....Glimpse Arnold in rare, personal moments as he gets acquainted with the sights, sounds and women of the real Rio!” Real, one supposes, in the sense that a strip club is the real Los Angeles or New York. Early in the program, Arnold visits the long-established music-and-dance revue “Oba Oba,” a Vegas-style show for tourists that combines a veneer of Brazilian culture with sexy female dancers in revealing outfits. Arnold sits front row, ogling the women and making inane comments to a mortified Brazilian model acting as his “date.” He learns the word “bunda” and goes on to say “I can understand why Brazil is devoted to my favorite body part: the ass.” He is invited on stage and soon grabs the buttocks of the nearest showgirl and pulls her close, then dances lustily in turn with the other women. Certainly, hedonism and sexuality are on full display in Carnaval ("Carnival" in Portuguese), but in Rio the holiday is also about imaginative costumes, social satire, unabashed frivolity, extravagant parades with thousands of participants, vibrant dances, huge orchestras of rhythm (the "samba schools"), and the rich musical tradition of samba. It's for the old and the young, the wealthy and the poor alike. The video does have a few shots of the Carnaval parades, a quick look at capoeira (a Brazilian martial art), and other touristic highlights, but the emphasis is resolutely on sex and skin. It's a little like visiting the Super Bowl and ogling the cheerleaders, while forgetting about the game and the crowd. After the visit to Oba Oba, Arnold is on the prowl again. He attempts flirtatious conversation with women (models who are part of the cast) on the beach and at a cafe table, attends a Carnaval party in a nightclub, and dances in the street with others. Along the way, there are also innumerable lingering closeups of semi-nude or topless females accompanied by Arnold’s appreciative narration, and one extended erotic interlude of a young woman showing off her breasts in every way possible. "You can feel the sexual power!" enthuses Schwarzenegger at one point. In one of the most lecherous segments of "Party In Rio," Arnold teaches English words to a (clothed) young woman at a restaurant. He bites off a tiny piece of a carrot, then places the carrot in her mouth and she does the same. “Biting,” he explains. Moving on, Arnold says “the next [word] is...” and places the remainder of the carrot in the woman's mouth. She closes her lips suggestively around it and there is a cut to the next scene. As if that wasn't enough, additional footage is included in the '92 version ("Carnival In Rio"). This time, the Repubican gubernatorial candidate works the carrot stick gently in and out of his date's mouth, after which she teaches him the Portuguese word "chupar" ("to suck"). Arnold tries to be charming and funny, but comes across as a clueless gringo on a sex tour. Anyone who loves Brazil will find it painful to listen to Arnold's crude banter and to see an entire country reduced to breasts and buttocks. At the end of the program, Arnold says to a woman, “I learned one word yesterday -- bunda -- that’s good, huh?” Arnold’s enlightened view towards the female sex apparently hadn’t changed much in the six years following his uncensored 1977 interview with Oui magazine. Nor has it, apparently, since 1983. Yet we can be reassured that however vague Mr. Schwarzenegger was on the campaign trail about the economic and social policies he would like to implement in California, he does at least have a handle on one subject: bunda. September 3, 2003 (Updated After The Recall Election) © Chris McGowan 2003 (All Rights Reserved) Chris McGowan is a Los Angeles-based writer who travels
frequently to Brazil. He was a contributing writer to Billboard from
1984-1996, author of Entertainment In The Cyber Zone (Random House
Electronic Publishing, 1995) and
The
Brazilian Sound: Samba, Bossa Nova
And The Popular Music Of Brazil
(Temple University Press, 1998), and a
contributor to The Encyclopedia Of Latin American History And Culture. He edits the Brazilian music and culture website,
The Brazilian Sound. He can be reached at thebraziliansound at hotmail.
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