Carmen Miranda (1909-1955): Identity Through Dress

Fig. 1.0

Essay Structure Overview

• Carmen Miranda Biography: The Early Years• The Traditional Baiana Dress• Dress and Appearance• Symbolic Interactionism Theory• Carmen’s Self-Invented Persona: The Latina Bombshell• Successful Film Career in the 1940s• The Foreign Other: Cultural Identity Crisis• Tragic Ending But a Living Legacy• Works Cited

Carmen Miranda:The Early Years

• born in Portugal in 1909, family moved to Brazil when she was a baby• grew up in Lapa, a poor district in downtown Rio de Janeiro• from an early age interacted with Afro-Brazilian singers and composers• became a radio and recording star, popular singer in Brazil for 10 years• ‘discovered’ in a Rio casino and brought to the United States in 1939

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The Traditional Baiana Dress

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Dress and Appearance “Ornament served to present the things or beings that it adorned as culturally

significant. It fulfilled the need for identification, indicating what an artifact was, how it should be used, and for what purpose it was intended. As such, it embodied social rituals or ways of behaving. In giving “sense” to the objects or persons that it decorated, ornament served to contextualize them in time and space, providing information about their historical and geographical location” (Negrin, 119).

“It was given to me the great opportunity and the great honor of being the

interpreter of Brazilian things. This will be the first important chance for our samba. That’s why I’ll employ all my efforts so that everything works out, and that Brazil’s popular music conquers North America, which would be the way for its victory worldwide…And I’m bringing along six keen baianas, six costumes, representing the people of Bahia…I’m doing all that I can do to turn our music and the baiana into a success in that land” (Carmen Miranda quote).

https://www.youtube.com/v/5YpLyD2e1Bc?version=3?&start=1730&end=1916&autoplay=0&hl=en_US&rel=0

Symbolic Interactionism• George Herbert Mead, an important theorist of Symbolic Interactionism• this theory presumes that meanings are derived from social interaction

and modified through interpretation• relates to the concept of the Self and The Other• in terms of dress and appearance, the self is socially constructed by non-

verbal communication • Carmen re-appropriated the image of the baiana and projected it as a

Brazilian national symbol

“We know that through clothing people communicate some things about their persons, and at the collective level this results typically in locating them symbolically in some structured universe of status claims and life-style attachments” (Davis, 4)

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Carmen’s Self-Invented Persona: The Latina Bombshell

The Latina Bombshell

Fig. 1.6 Fig. 1.7 Fig. 1.8

Fig. 1.9 Fig. 2.0

Interview with Carmen Miranda, London Palladium (1948)

Successful Film Career in the 1940s

1940 – Plays Herself Fig. 2.1 1941 – Plays ‘Carmen’ Fig. 2.2 1941 – Plays ‘Rosita’ Fig. 2.3

1943 – Plays ‘Dorita’ Fig. 2.4 1944 – Plays ‘Querida’ Fig. 2.5 1944 – Plays ‘Chiquita’ Fig. 2.6

The Foreign Other: Cultural Identity

Crisis

Fig. 2.7

• Carmen was the allowable cultural Other for wartime Hollywood• constantly paired against blondes who were seen as the epitome of North American

feminine beauty • what US audiences loved most about Carmen Miranda was her extreme Otherness• perceived as simultaneously sexy and comic, a vamp and a joke• however, she was not seen favorably by the Brazilian elite who accused her of becoming

‘Americanized’; they also felt she misrepresented Brazil with her ‘black’ image

Fig. 2.8

The Foreign Other

https://www.youtube.com/v/5YpLyD2e1Bc?version=3?&start=3532&end=3677&autoplay=0&hl=en_US&rel=0

Carmen Miranda Imitators

Fig. 2.9

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Carmen Miranda: A Living Legacy

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Fig. 3.4 Fig. 3.5 Fig. 3.6

Works CitedBarnard, Malcolm. Fashion as Communication (Second Edition). London: Routledge, 2002. Print.Carmen Miranda: That Girl From Rio. Dir. John Cork and Lisa Van Eyssen. Cloverland Productions, 2008. Film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YpLyD2e1BcCooley, Charles Horton. Human Nature and the Social Order. New York: Scribner’s, 1902. Print.Davis, Fred (1992) ‘Do Clothes Speak? What Makes Them Fashion?’ in: Fashion, Culture and Identity. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, pp.1-18. Print.Enloe, Cynthia E. Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Print.Freire-Medeiros, Bianca. “Hollywood Musicals and the Invention of Rio de Janeiro, 1933-1953”, Cinema Journal Vol. 41, No. 4 (2002): 52-67. Print. Freire-Medeiros, Bianca. “Star in The House of Mirrors: Contrasting Images of Carmen Miranda in Brazil and the United States”, Limina: A Journal of Historical and Cultural Studies Vol. 12 (2006): 21-29. Print.Giddens, Anthony. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991. Print. Goffman, Erving (1961) ‘Identity Kits.’ in: Roach et al (eds.) (1995) Dress, Adornment, and the Social Order. New York: John Wiley & Sons, pp.246-7. Print.Interview with Carmen Miranda at the London Palladium (1948). Television: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4zj1fez3G0

Works CitedMandrell, James. “Carmen Miranda Betwixt and Between, or, Neither Here nor There”, Latin American Literary Review Vol. 29, No. 57 (2001): 26-39. Print.Maynard, Margaret. Dress and Globalisation. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004. Print.Mead, George Herbert. Mind, Self, and Society From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934. Print.Negrin, Llewellyn. Appearance and Identity: Fashioning the Body in Postmodernity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Print.Orbach, Susie (2009) ‘Introduction’ in: Bodies. London: Profile Books Limited, pp. 1-14. Print.Roberts, Shari. “The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat”: Carmen Miranda, a Spectacle of Ethnicity”. Cinema Journal Vol. 32, No. 3 (1993): 3-23. Print.Simmel, Georg (1904) ‘Fashion.’ in: International Quarterly 10, 130-55. Print.Stam, Robert. Tropical Multiculturalism: A Comparative History of Race in Brazilian Cinema & Culture. Michigan: Duke University Press, 1997. Print.Stone, Gregory P. (1962) ‘Appearance and the Self.’ in: Roach-Higgins et al (eds.) (1995) Dress & Identity. New York: Fairchild Publications, pp.19-39. Print.Wilson, Elizabeth. Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity. London: I.B. Taurus, 2010. Print.

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and-funk-the-latest-black-art-forms-to-suffer-cultural-appropriation/)Photo Fig. 1.6 (https://www.pinterest.com/explore/carmen-miranda/)Photo Fig. 1.7 (https://www.pinterest.com/explore/carmen-miranda/)Photo Fig. 1.8 (http://blogs.odiario.com/cenafashion/2014/03/03/icone-cf-carmem-miranda/)Photo Fig. 1.9 (http://www.starryeyedtravels.com/2015/02/hollywoods-latin-american-fiesta/)Photo Fig. 2.0 (http://blogs.bgsu.edu/span4890popcult/carmen-miranda/)Photo Fig. 2.1 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_Argentine_Way)Photo Fig. 2.2 (http://mariamontez.org/thatnightinrio2.html)Photo Fig. 2.3 (http://piddleville.com/reviews/week-end-in-a-havana-1941/)Photo Fig. 2.4 (http://www.amazon.com/The-Gangs-Here-Alice-Faye/dp/B000K7VHN2)Photo Fig. 2.5 (http://www.mrqe.com/movie_reviews/greenwich-village-m100026149)

Works CitedPhoto Fig. 2.6 (http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Something_for_the_Boys_(1944))Photo Fig. 2.7 (http://www.oicuritiba.com.br/2014/03/24/hoje-na-historia-243/)Photo Fig. 2.8 (https://storify.com/ngondwe/carmen-miranda-o-que-e-que-a-baiana-tem)Photo Fig. 2.9 (http://dainabethsolomon.com/2013/02/01/miss-chiquita-banana/)Photo Fig. 3.0 (https://www.pinterest.com/rick1951/looney-tunes/)Photo Fig. 3.1 (https://www.pinterest.com/annieb226/i-love-lucy/)Photo Fig. 3.2 (https://thestylewatcher.wordpress.com/2013/01/25/vogue-brasil-carmen-

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