Bourgeois and nobles: imagery and ways of life in Copacabana and Petrópolis

Abstract

This work analyses how, in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, a Brazilian elite experienced bourgeois habits in Copacabana and, during summer vacation, weekends and holidays, they experienced aspects of a noble lifestyle in Petrópolis. In the neighborhood of the South Zone of Rio de Janeiro, the novelties of entertainment and consumption provided cosmopolitan airs; in the mountains of the state, the restoration of historic places and the recovery of aristocratic symbols referred to the imperial past. We conducted interviews with informants who lived or attended the two locations and analyzed reports and advertisements from two important publications of the time: the newspaper O Globo and the magazine O Cruzeiro. In short, this study reveals the ways in which an ideology that projected the image of Brazil as a great communitas (DaMatta, 1973) made possible a particular response to the ambiguity typical of the modern world between bourgeois and nobles: to live one time this, another time that, bourgeois in Copacabana, nobles in Petrópolis.