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Kelly Lundquist
MC 385
December 17, 2009
Final Research Paper
The Brazilian Bombshell:
Carmen Miranda and her role as a transnational export
“Carmen Miranda carried her country in her luggage and taught people who had no idea
of our existence to adore our music and our rhythm. Brazil will always have an unpayable
debt to Carmen Miranda.”
–– Heitor Villa-Lobos
Adorned in flowing skirts, platform sandals, and an iconic turban of fruit, Carmen
Miranda appeared on the international stage just prior to U.S. involvement in World War
II as the “Brazilian Bombshell”. Recording over 300 singles in Brazil, she continued to
appear in eight Hollywood musicals and two Broadway musical revues, all of which were
highly successful. However, Miranda is perhaps more famous and controversial for the
role she played on the international stage as an envoy of Brazilian, and later Latin
American, culture to American socio-political thought. Throughout the development of
her career, the way in which Miranda negotiated between her national and transnational
identity – her role as a Brazilian cultural ambassador to the U.S. and her international
super-stardom through American Broadway and Hollywood productions – reveals her
function as a transnational character in economic, political, and social negotiations during
and after World War II. However, unlike other minority actors of her era, Miranda
participated in her own cultural stereotyping, further complicating her transnational role
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and positioning herself as a highly debated and politicized pawn in the process of nation
building in these post-war societies.
Miranda’s role as an international ambassador between the U.S. and Latin
America is complicated, however, when one considers the origins and meanings behind
her music, costumes, and personal upbringing. After immigrating to Brazil from Portugal
at a young age, Miranda found national fame at age 19 with her tango and samba
recordings (Roberts 12). Her lyrics were versed with nationalistic praises and supported
by heavy African rhythms. In “Aquarela Do Brasil” [“Watercolor of Brazil”] her patriotic
lyrics are reminiscent of romantic ballad:
If I had to live without you
What kind of life would that be
How do I get through one night without you?
Need you to hold, you're my world, my heart, my soul
Oh and I, I need you in my arms
Everything good in my life
If you ever leave baby you would take away (1938)
While tangos and sambas turned the Brazilian national spotlight on her, the samba in
particular is often considered a “black” dance in Brazilian culture, originating from
African dance traditions; it would seem only Brazil’s flexible construction of identity
would allow a European woman to become an international symbol of samba (Solberg).
Similar cultural ambiguities continued as her career moved to an international stage. In
her first film, Down Argentine Way, a pervading American, and thus culturally
ambivalent, interpretation reveals itself. For example, she sings “The South American
Way,” as a rhumba, a traditionally Cuban dance, set to Brazilian rhythms with Portuguese
lyrics.
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Similarly, her characteristic costume resembles that of the bahiana, a woman of
lower classes who is almost always black or of mixed race1 (Mandrell 27). Coming from
a European, middle-class family, Miranda’s origins are far from the typical Bahian
woman. However, her “Bahian look” of big costume jewelry, platform sandals, full
skirts, and a basket-like turban served to launch her career both in terms of defining
herself as a national symbol of Brazil and as an exotic and vivacious personality to
American audiences. As such, the fluidity of cultural identities both between U.S. and
Latin America and within Brazil itself is apparent in the very composition of Miranda’s
transnational identity.
It is from this platform of contradiction that an analysis of her career within the
political, economic, and social contexts of the United States, Brazil, and Latin America
came to define her transnational identity. Before and during World War II, the United
States and Brazil had specific agendas regarding the improvement and security of their
political, economic, and social climates. While Brazil anxiously exported Carmen
Miranda and her representation of Brazilian culture to the United States in hopes of
improved economic relations, the United States sought to address the policy objectives of
Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy. The respective social climates of the United States
and Brazil, and later of Latin America more broadly, provided a foundation for policies
and practices that further carved her transnational identity. Simultaneously, Miranda
participated the creation of her ethnic identity by adopting the bahiana persona,
amplifying her accent and sexuality to maintain her role as a non-threatening other, and
Building upon the idea of the “professional mulata” put forth by Kia Lilly Caldwell.
Representations of mulata women reveal the complexities of Brazilian discourses on race,
gender and beauty. Specifically, this concept of radicalized beauty stresses the
significance of the color and texture of one’s hair.
1
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insisting on the cultural integrity of her music. The culmination of these interpersonal,
social, and national domains intersects to reveal Carmen Miranda’s transnational identity
as a masquerade of cultural understanding between the United States and Latin America
during the 1930s and 40s.
Carmen Miranda: The Diplomat
Carmen Miranda’s most famous film, The Gang’s All Here, directed by Busby
Berkeley in 1943, opens with the scene of a New York City port. As the camera pans
across the crowd, we find ourselves dockside with the cargo ship S.S. Brazil. The music
that started as a languorous version of Ary Barosso’s “Aquarela do Brasil” is now fully
up-tempo (Mandrell 30). The ship unloads well-dressed passengers and Brazilian exports,
including sugar, coffee, and an abundance of fruits and vegetables, which eventually
“metamorphose into the hat of the foremost Brazilian export, Miranda herself”(Mandrell
30).
The following scene takes us to an elegant nightclub where Miranda adds her
characteristic shimmies and shakes to her performance. With the crowd’s roaring
approval, Mayor Fiorello, played by Phil Baker, presents Miranda with a key to New
York. The exchange brings on the next musical number forging Brazilian and US culture
into one song and dance. Upon its conclusion, Baker, the nightclub host, succinctly sums
up the film’s political statement saying of Miranda and her performance, “Now that’s
what I call a good neighbor policy”(Mandrell 30).
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Baker’s statement can be extended to characterize Miranda’s career and her role
as a transnational ambassador of Latin American diplomacy in the 1930s and 40s. As the
scene incorporates American political and economic goals into one opening sequence, it
functions to present the American cinema’s complicity in promoting the ideals of
commercial and cultural unity between North and South America while positing Miranda
as a negotiator of cultural difference between and United States and Brazil. Dancing
along side Phil Baker the audience is presented with two culturally opposed characters
(Roberts 17). However, through the harmony of the lyrics and the symmetry of the steps,
the wiggle and shake of Latin America unites with the hustle bustle of New York City to
create the illusion of cultural compatibility.
Both the U.S. and Brazil saw the potential economic and political advantages to
this cultural exchange. It was clear that in order to maintain U.S. economic prosperity,
constructive interaction between the economies of the United States and other countries,
particularly those of Latin America, must be fostered (Roberts 19). Hence, Roosevelt’s
Good Neighbor Policy sought to improve international hemispheric relations through
economic and cultural contact.
Implemented in 1933 by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Good Neighbor Policy
marked a departure from traditional American interventionalism. The “policy of the good
neighbor” was principled on the idea that as a good neighbor, the United States, “respects
himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others”(Rosenman). Seeking to
maintain hemispheric unity in the face of foreign invasion, it promoted a shift from
military intervention to other methods of influence; this included Pan-Americanism,
support for strong local leaders, the training of national guards, economic and cultural
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penetration, Export-Import Bank loans, financial supervision, and political subversion
(“Good Neighbor Policy,” 1933). Carmen Miranda and her explosive popularity among
international audiences allowed the U.S. this cultural contact, rather than intervening
directly in the internal affairs of Brazil and other Latin American nations.
Similarly, President Getuilo Vargas saw Ambassadress of Samba’s career as an
opportunity to extend international economic goals for Brazil. By asking Miranda to
perform in the Brazilian pavilion in the 1933 World’s Fair, he solidified the idea of
Miranda as an object of economic exchange between cultures to maintain hemispheric
hegemony through the importation and cooperation of a significant cultural figure. GilMontero explains:
The goals of the Good Neighbor Policy’s campaign to conquer the hearts and
minds of citizens south of the border meshed nicely with President Getuilo
Vargas’s reinvigorated propaganda drive to win a larger share of the American
coffee market. While the United States State Department took the initiative in
fostering rapprochement between the North and South, the President of Brazil felt
the Ambassadress of Samba’s trip to New York might improve diplomatic and
economic relations between the two countries. Perhaps some new understanding
might encourage the United States to increase its coffee imports and open new
markets for other Brazilian goods, and in return the Brazilian dictator could yield
to the American’s requests for authorization to build military bases on Brazilian
soil. (70)
Thus, the cultural exchange provided an opportunity for both nations to export their
respective political and economic agendas in hopes of achieving their respective national
objectives.
Her diplomatic function in World War II international relations was largely
governed by the intersection of Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy and the production
studios that promoted her popularity, specifically Twentieth Century Fox Films. This
policy subsequently became a part of the Office of War Information guild lines for the
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film industry. John Hay Whitney, head of the Motion Picture Division of the Office of
the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, urged, “wherever the motion picture can do a
basic job of spreading the gospel of the Americas’ common stake in this struggle [against
‘the menace of Nazism’], there that job must and shall be done”(Black). Thus, the “good
neighbor” films produced during the 1930s and 40s incorporated pro-U.S. involvement
messages both directly and indirectly into films, urging spectators to buy war bonds in
film credits, participating in the production of pro-U.S. newsreels and short subject films,
and encouraging actors to participate in U.S.O. tours and Hollywood canteens (Roberts
5). Furthermore, filmic war support proved not only patriotic but also profitable; Fox
might have distributed pin-up photos of Betty Grable free to service men, but any cost
incurred by promoting the war effort was made up in profits achieved as she became the
most popular star of the wartime period.
According to Bosley Crowther of the New York Times, Miranda was the
“ambassadress of Latin America.” Miranda, as “an advertisement for Roosevelt’s good
neighbor policy… [was] worth half a hundred diplomatic delegations”(Waldorf).
Through an exchange of good will orchestrated by Miranda’s characters and the female
stars of these films, Fox films achieved the illusion of international, economic, and
personal harmony. By establishing a falsely simplistic us/them, United States versus the
foreign other, dichotomy, this sub-genera of wartime exotic fantasy musicals finds its
structure from the resolution of cultural differences through the “universal language” of
love, represented here through music.
Miranda’s role throughout these films constantly pushes this concept of U.S.Latin American harmony. Under the assumption that through music and dance a
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universal language is achieved, many of her songs involve a “getting to know you” theme
in which the main characters representing Latin America and the United States
demonstrate the ease with which one can learn the songs, dances, and language – can
acquire another country’s culture. For example, in Weekend in Havana, directed by
Walter Lang, Miranda plays a nightclub headliner named Rosita Rivas. In “The Nango,”
she gives the audience, filled with American vacationers, a tango lesson.
Let’s have fun and do the Nango,
Ev’ryone should do the Nango,
It is done in ev’ry smart café.
Even though you can’t pronounce it,
When the band begins to bounce it,
That’s your cue to dance the Cuban way.
Ev’rywhere you’ll see the gang go
Simply wild about the Nango,
‘Specially when it’s Fiesta day.
You’ll adore the innovation,
Stopping for a conversation,
But you’ve got to learn just what to say;
Just tell her that you love the gleam in her
dreamy eyes
And then pronto, she’ll kiss you senor;
Then tell her it was grandioso, so amoroso,
And pronto, she’ll kiss you once more.
Then you’ll know the reason
It went over with a bango,
From New York to Pango Pango,
You will yearn to get your turn to
Learn to do the Nango.
Let’s have fun and do the Nango,
Ev’ryone should do the Nango,
It is done in ev’ry smart café.
There’s a kick in ev’ry movement,
They found out what in the groove meant,
Now they hep and jive the Cuban way.
You’ll see lots of lovely creatures,
Boston debs and Brooklyn teachers.
Go to town with ev’ry Don Jose.
First you dance, then walk a little,
Then you stop and talk a little,
But you’ve got to learn just what to say;
Just tell her that you love the gleam in her
dreamy eyes
And then pronto, she’ll kiss you senor;
Then tell her it was grandioso, so amoroso,
And pronto, she’ll kiss you once more.
And you’ll know the reason
It went over with a bango,
From New York to Pango Pango,
They all yearn to get their turn to
Learn to do the Nango.
Beneath her heavily accented English, the cultural lesson is much more complex than the
simple lyrics of the song. While they provide a handy guide to Cuban culture, they create
the allusion that cross-cultural harmony can be achieved with the ease and speed of a
couple of choruses; by simply feeling the beat of the drums, you’ll find a beautiful lady in
your arms ready with a kiss.
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Similarly, in a 1942 radio broadcast called, “Hello Americans: Brazil,” Orson
Welles and Carmen Miranda jointly introduce the U.S. listeners to the people, culture,
and music of Brazil. In the opening of the broadcast, the audience is reminded that
“America” does not exclusively mean the United States: “That’s a big word, America.
It’s easy to forget how much it means… we need to remember that America is two
continents… we the people of the United Nations of America now stand together. We
ought to know each other better than we do”. The broadcast continues by teaching
various Portuguese words and Welles and Miranda sing an ideologically and melodically
harmonious duet. This is significant because, like her films, Miranda helps an
(authoritative) American explain away the ease of which cross-cultural difference can be
solved.
Inhabitants of Rio, or cariocas, are made to seem less alien through a comparison
to “Hoosiers,” the inhabitants of Indiana; and the samba is presented as “the old
two-step, really, with a South American accent… roll up the parlor rug, grab your
best girl, and see what you make of it. (Roberts 6-7)
Through such how-to demonstrations, both within and beyond her films, Miranda’s
constructed transnational identity encourages the assumption that ethnic differences
merely present surface agitations that can be assimilated into a U.S. discourse of unity.
Carmen Miranda: The Social Negotiator
As a review of Miranda’s songs, film, and shows thus far, her character implies
her role as a socio-cultural interpreter between the United States and Latin America. By
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contrasting sharply against American social practices and gender cognitions, she defined
herself, and Latin America, as a non-threatening yet sexually suggestive other.
The specific historical moment within which Miranda became an international
icon of Brazilian culture provides important context for understanding her social role.
During World War II, the Axis powers were portrayed in the popular press by ethnic
stereotyping that stressed dark hair and dark skin2. Blond, therefore, came to be perceived
as the most unquestionable "American" hair color. As such, it is not surprising that
Miranda’s studio supported a golden blonde policy (Roberts 4). To accommodate
Miranda to this blonde “policy”, she was “ideologically linked and filmically paired with
Betty Grable, the feminine, all-American ‘norm’” posited by 20th Century Fox Films
(Roberts 4). Positioning her as Grable’s ethnic counterpart, Miranda became the
allowable cultural other for wartime Hollywood playing the dark but comic and,
therefore, unthreatening foil to all the wartime female musical starts (Griffin 34).
Latina actresses in Hollywood films generally fit neatly within one of two
stereotypes of the foreign other: the exotic sex object or the ignorant comic actress.
Miranda is unique in that she initially straddled both categories: a vamp and a joke. The
split created a tension between her hyper-sexualized visual presence available through
performance as spectacle, foregrounding her body, and her comic oral presence available
through interviews, foregrounding her words, her “paprika English”3 (Roberts 11).
Miranda was well aware of this ethnic typecasting in Hollywood cinema and thus,
2
While the Japanese were caricatured as generic racial stereotypes in popular cartoons,
Germans were represented by Hitler, and Italians by Mussolini. These racially
stereotyped caricatures are self-evident in war-era cartoons, comics, propaganda, films,
and other material. (Shull et alt)
3
Louise Levitas coins this term for Miranda’s exotic and almost uncomprehendible
speech patterns.
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actively participated in her cultural stereotyping. For example, she recognized the
“cartoonish” appeal of her fruit turban next to the somberly dressed Americans she
entertains in her films.
Miranda’s dark hair and dramatically red lipstick contrast starkly with the cool
blonde demeanor of the women in the club, thereby remaking through images
what is never said: that the hyperactive Latinas, dark and funny, but still
extravagantly sexual, couldn’t be more different from the remote ice queens of the
U.S, who are veiled from and buttoned up tight against the open sexuality
embodied by Miranda. (Mandrell 31)
This costume worked to characterize her persona but also draws a careful line between
North and South. Catering to this, Miranda insisted on her own costume design and
accompaniment in every role she played (Freire-Medeiros 56).
Similarly, she highlighted her comic persona by appealing to the idea of the naïve
Latina in interviews with American press. The New York Post quotes Miranda:
‘Always I eat in dis countree. De eat is verree, verree good. I most stop him!... I
walk in de street,…and my eyes dey jomp out of de head. Sotch life! Sotch
movement! I like him verree, verree motch. De men dey all look at me. I teenk
dat’s lofflee and I smile for dem… I know p’raps one honderd werds – prettee
good for Sous American gerl no? Best I know ten English werds – men, men,
men, men, men and monnee, monnee, monnee, monnee, monnee’ (Roberts 8).
Indeed, what audiences loved most about Carmen Miranda was her extreme Otherness,
especially the difference enunciated by her Other language. While this point will be
returned to later, it is important to note that Miranda knew this most of all, and thus,
projected herself to American audiences as simultaneously the national symbol of
Brazilian culture and a cultural other ready with a joke and a hint of sexual innuendo.
Further aiding in the construction of a non-threatening cultural Other, the 1930
Production Codes of Hollywood set forth guidelines regarding sexual content for the film
industry. Also known as the Hayes Office, the Production Codes warned about the type
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of “sin which by nature attracts” and sought to enforce codes against promiscuity, overt
sexuality, and vulgarity. The Codes set forth the following provisions regarding sexuality
in film content and costume.



The more intimate parts of the human body… the male and female
organs and the breasts of a woman… should never be
uncovered…[and]…should not be clearly and unmistakably outlined by
the garment,
Costumes should not be cut to permit indecent actions or movements or
to make possible during the dance indecent exposure… especially when
permitting a) Movements; b) Movements of sexual suggestions of the
intimate parts of the body; c) suggestions of nudity, and
Sexual perversion is prohibited (Mandrell 32)
Considering Miranda and the characters she was famous for playing, both her characters
and her transnational identity present an opposition to this social policy.
In The Gang’s All Here, Miranda plays the role of a nightclub singer. In “The
Lady in the Tutti-Fruiti Hat,” Miranda is both the lady in the hat and a controversial
object of sexual temptation and desire. The scene begins with the same type of sweeping
camera movement seen at the opening of the film. The camera pans down a row of
banana trees, each with a monkey, as the nightclub stage expands to include a view of a
seaside banana grove filled with sleeping young women in swim attire. The contrast
between the two major production numbers tagged in the nightclub couldn’t be more
pronounced. The space that held the dockside harbor scene in urban New York is now the
“site of a sea-side banana grove filled with nubile young women”(Mandrell 33).
Awakened by Miranda’s arrival, the ladies run to greet her as she is brought in with a
cartload of bananas being drawn by two oxen. At this point the song takes off in a
confusing array of her paprika English and sexual innuendo.
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While the lyrics contribute to the song’s message, Miranda’s non-verbal
communication makes plain that the tutti-frutti hat is as much “about what’s below the
neck as what’s on her head”(Mandrell 34). As the song progresses, we learn that the Lady
in the Tutti-Frutti hat took it – the hat – off once for Johnny Smith and that he’s “very
happy with” her. Moreover, we see that the Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat doesn’t just wear
fruit, she plays with it too, as she proceeds to play a circular banana marimba. While
Miranda is always winking suggestively or throwing out flirtatious smiles, the images in
this number clearly portray the sexuality implied in her persona.
Critical reviews of this song in The Gang’s All Here took quick notice to these
sexual implications. A reviewer for the New York Times sensed the implications of this
number immediately, commenting, “… One or two of [Busby’s] dance spectacles seem to
stem straight from Freud, and, if interpreted, might bring a rosy blush to several cheeks in
the Hays Office” (qtd in Gil Montero 150). Other critics attribute her sexuality to the
costume she made famous. While it follows the provisions put forth in the 1930
Production Codes, her outfits “always cover her thoroughly with the exception of a space
between the seventh rib and a point at about the waistline”(Sullivan). The Boston Evening
Transcript coined this section of bare midsection as the “Torrid Zone,” drawing a
comparison between a Latina’s midsection and the equator in Latin America. Thus, the
“torrid zone” of South America is where “it’s hotter than the rest of the planet and where
the natives are stereotypically wilder, sexier, and more naked than other people”(Roberts
11). Later, the reporter refers to numerous contemporary article which comment on
Miranda’s sex appeal saying, “Call it ‘oomph,’ ‘yumph,’ or go ‘way back to Elinor Glyn
and call it ‘it’. That is Miranda”.
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Cultural Reception and the Legacy of her Transnational Identity:
Thus far, sufficient evidence has been presented attesting to the favorable
American reception of Miranda’s cultural baggage and ethnic otherness. Just as the media
showered standing ovations for her performances, “Miranda fever” swept the nation and
women’s fashions – hats, jewelry, dresses – were quickly given elements of Brazilian
style popularized by Miranda. “Once Carmen Miranda was just a name, now she is
vogue”(Solberg).
However, the constant contradiction between her nationalistic roots and the
demands of her transnational role in diplomatic and economic relations between the U.S.
and Latin America complicated her relations and reception in Latin America. The cultural
ambivalence of the American media, in particular, inspired scores of reprimand from
Latin American audiences claiming Miranda had become “Americanized.” For example,
the representation of Argentina was deemed ridiculous in Down Argentine Way: “Carmen
Miranda, a Brazilian star, sings in Portuguese a Tin Pan Alley rhumba which speaks of
tangos and rhumbas being played beneath a pampa moon”(Gil Montero 97). Similarly,
Cuban reviewers were offended by the presentation of Miranda as Cuban in Weekend in
Havana (1941): “Carmen Miranda talks, not sings,… and stomps around, not dances,
something imported from Rio that has a bit of Hawaiian mime”(Gil Montero 121). In her
effort to bring cultural awareness and understanding to American audiences, the result is
a homogenization of Latin American cultures resulting in the erasure of specific
nationalities and cultures.
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This negative reception was made impossible to ignore upon her return tour in
Brazil in 1940. Brazilian new reports describe the reception of her performance as
extremely negative, the crowd booing and whistling. Reviewers claimed Miranda had lost
her voice, had changed her style and her soul; Miranda had become Americanized (Gil
Montero 106). With typical savvy, Miranda incorporated this negative reaction into
subsequent Rio performances by adding new songs such as “They Say I Came Back
Americanized” and “I’m Back in the Morro,” thereby salvaging the remainder of the tour.
Not surprisingly however, the negative reception Miranda received did little to
affect the legacy achieved by her transnational identity. In Brazil’s annual Carnival
festivities, Miranda is still considered a poignant representation of Brazilian culture and
identity. In the United States, Miranda’s performance of gender has found greatest
salience over the decades. Miranda’s performance of gender focuses on the “overlapping
categories of femininity and masculinity, and by extension heterosexuality and
homosexuality”(Mandrell 35). Allan Berube notes in his study of gay and lesbian soldiers
in World War Ii that the “female character most impersonated by GIs, whether they were
gay or not, was also the campiest movie star of the early 1940s –– Carmen Miranda…
[who] became the idol of gay drag queens and soldier-performers alike”(89). Moreover,
the role is parodied and satirized, on occasion viciously, by the likes of Imogene Coca,
Milton Berle, Albert Graves, Curly Joe of the Tree Stooges, Lucile Ball in I Love Lucy,
and a variety of cartoon characters including Bugs Bunny. Helena Solberg’s quasi
documentary Carmen Miranda: Bananas is My Business portrays this gendered legacy
and how this identity lends itself to questions of gender and sexuality; Brazilian actor
Erick Barreto in drag performs the elusive memory of Miranda.
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Solberg’s documentary also addresses the economic legacy that Miranda has left
behind. Returning to the idea of her transnational identity as a conflation of geographies,
cultures, and perceptions between the United States and Latin America, Miranda’s fruit
turban will forever be associated with the import of bananas to the United States. Thus, as
Miranda came to represent nations of Central America within American discourse, the
United Fruit Company modeled its “Chiquita Banana” character on Miranda at the height
of her career in 1944 (Enloe 128). As a new product in grocery stores, the United Fruit
Company sought to appeal to American housewives. Because Miranda was already a
familiar household name, likening the Chiquita brand to her already tropical personality
made the new fruit seem less exotic4. Not only did Miranda lend her image in Chiquita,
but the first commercials also feature her voice as viewers get a quick lesson on how to
prepare this new fruit:
I’m the Chiquita Banana and I’ve come to say
Bananas have to ripen in a certain way.
When they’re flecked with brown and have a golden hue,
Bananas taste the best and are the best for you.
You can put them in a salad… No not you my dear
The greenish way your looking means that you are right for cooking.
No, no! And you are fully ripe my dear when little flecks of brown appear.
You’re most digestible my friend, Delicious from end to end.
You can put them in a pie, ay ay.
Any way you want to eat them, it’s impossible to beat them.
But bananas like the climate of the very, very tropical equator,
So you should never put bananas in the refrigerator.
Bananas are a solid fruit that doctors now include in baby’s diet.
Since they are so good for baby, I think we all should try it.
Si, Si, Si, Si! (YouTube, The Original Commercial)
4
The ad campaign was so successful that, for the first time, brand-name loyalty for
United Fruit was attached to a generic fruit (the banana). (Enloe)
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Later advertisements provided recipes to incorporate bananas into traditional American
meals giving birth to creations such as scalloped bananas, butterscotch banana pie, and
buttery baked bananas to be served a vegetable along side your favorite meat dish.
While actively participating in her own cultural stereotyping, Carmen Miranda
was able to achieve unprecedented success for an ethnic female of her time. This is not to
say, however, that she had complete control over her masquerade. As an ambassador of
political, economic, and social negotiations between the United States and Latin America,
she too became subject to policies, norms, and perceptions of these public domains.
Ultimately, the audience is left with the mask that Miranda wore stringing together
complex and competing ideas of nation, culture, gender, comedy, and parody. Because
Miranda’s aural and visual presentation of herself as out-of-control excess is in fact a
demonstration of her hyper control over her own voice and image, we never meet the
person behind the character. As Miranda finds herself trapped in the persona she so ably
represented onscreen, she also finds “herself betwixt and between, neither here nor there”
(Mandrell 36). Inasmuch, we wonder, after the song is over, have we ignored the
complexity inherent in her transnational identity and simply danced along in the “‘Sous’
American Way?”
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Works Cited
Black, George. The Good Neighbor: How the United States Wrote the
History of Central America and the Caribbean . New York, NY:
Random House, 1988. 59. Print.
Buchman, Harold, Adapt. Doll Face. Dir. Lewis Seiler." Perf. Blaine,
Vivian, Dennis O'Keefe, Perry Como, and Carmen Miranda.
Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation: 1945, Film.
Berube, Allan. Coming Out under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World
War Two (New York: Free Press, 1990; New York: Penguin, 1991), 89.
Caldwell, Kia Lilly. “ ‘Look at her Hair;’ The Body Politics of Black Womanhood.”
Negras in Brazil: Re-envisioning Black Women, Citizenship, and the Politics of
Identity. (New Brusnwick: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 50-106.
Enloe, C ynthia. Bananas, Beaches & Bases: Making Feminist Sense of
International Politics . 1st. Berkeley, CA: Pandora Press, 1989. 124 150. Print.
Freire-Medeiros, Bianca. "Holl ywood Musicals and the Invention of Rio
de Janeiro, 1933-1953." Cinema Journal. 41.4 (2002): 52 -67. Print.
Gil-Montero, Martha. Brazilian Bombshell: The Biography of Carmen
Miranda. New York: Donald I. Fine, 1989.
Griffin, Sean. "The Gang's All Here: Generic versus Racial Integration in
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Lundquist 19
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