By EUGENIO BUCCI*
It was in the name of the same prejudice that the president's tantrum came
Last Thursday morning, a young right-wing digital activist, Wilker Leão, went to the entrance of the Palácio da Alvorada and cursed the President of the Republic as “Tchutchuca do Centrão”. (The rhyme in “ão” should not be in vain.) What followed was a regrettable riot, which everyone has already seen on cell phones or on the news.
The president left his residence for his daily work. The provocateur, who defines himself on the networks as an “adherent of militarism”, repeatedly shouted the odd word, trying to approach the official car of the head of state. Cell phone in hand, he filmed everything. In the muque, the security guards tried to contain him.
While the pushing and shoving was going on, the ruler heard the nickname addressed to him and got irritated. He ordered the car to stop, stormed out the back door and advanced towards Wilker Leão. With one of his hands, he tried to grab the young man by the collar, but there was no collar at all – the victim was wearing a cheap São Paulo Futebol Clube T-shirt, in whose collar the irate authority closed his fingers. With the other hand, the representative tried to take the São Paulo's cell phone, an attempt in which he failed.
It wasn't difficult to see that the ruler was possessed. After containing the tempers of one and the other, it is true, the two even exchanged harsh words with each other, without slapping each other, but, in that first act, when he burst out of the vehicle in a furious state, the man threw a historic tantrum.
I wonder why? They've already called him a denialist, a fascist, a genocidal and he just grimaces and grumbles, at best. This time it was different. Why such an unmeasured style? How can we understand instinctual sources of presidential siricutic size?
These questions necessarily lead us to a reflection on the essence of the mysterious entity that responds to the name of – you already know – “tchutchuca”. What defines this strange being? In other words, what is its ontic nature?
In the funk culture, in which the term became established and later became popular, the entity was consecrated by a hit, released years ago by the Rio de Janeiro group called Bonde do Tigrão. The lyrics have a far from sublime way of translating the poet's affection for his muse: “Come, come, tchutchuca / Come here to your tigrão / I'll throw you on the bed / And give you a lot of pressure”.
(No, the rhyme in “ão” should not be in vain.) Playing his lyre with a bang, the minstrel then says that he wants “a hot rale” and asks his beloved to listen to the “chorus”.
Enough has already been said about the onomatopoeic character of the noun in question. Its sonority, its prosody, evokes the verb “chuchar”, which is pure onomatopoeia, suggesting that the love of bodies is like a cylinder that sucks a piston. (Now the rhyme will come in profusion.)
This mechanical metaphor of a combustion engine is a kind of exaltation of a form of domination that the male exercises by giving “pressure”, certain that the woman, overcome with passion, takes pleasure in servitude. The male's name is "Tiger".
The “tchutchuca”, by definition, delights in submission. Her femininity lies in full concession, acceptance, eager passivity, unrestrained objectification. It goes from there that the president would accept being cursed with everything, but not that. Of that, never. To make matters worse, the offense sounded even more serious when he heard the addition: “from Centrão”. Not there.
At this point, it is necessary to take into account the unbearable weight of the masculine augmentative, in “ão”, to confer a sign of hombrity to whatever it is. Especially in politics. The Brazilian Communist Party, for example, the old PCB, began to be called the “Partidade”. The nickname made him more manly, more unappealable.
The same linguistic principle applied to corruption: a monthly fee would be bearable, more or less like a chopinho, a torresminho – not a monthly allowance. Having been called monthly, by the simple suffix, the episode acquired something dark, apocalyptic, scandalous. In terms of perversity, or perversion, it lost only to petrolão.
For the Alvorada tenant's nightmare, Centrão is called Centrão, resoundingly, like a curse, and, in this courtship, his relationship with Centrão, the role that fits him is not quite that of Tigrão. Let there be damnation.
With that, we come to the end of our very brief ontological investigation. It is more than evident that the insult directed at the subject passing by in the car is, before an offense to him, an offense to the female condition. The semantic load of the noun that gave title to this modest article already brings, without saying anything else, an atavistic prejudice of all sizes, a prejudice: woman is a subaltern, heteronomous being, who melts when feeling the pressure of the macho man.
Because it was in the name of the same prejudice that the faniquito came, as if the guy was putting himself in pride: “What? Are you calling me a woman? Come here, you asshole!” In that magical instant, the far right fell into the far right's trap. All of a sudden. What a service Wilker Leão rendered to the nation.
* Eugene Bucci He is a professor at the School of Communications and Arts at USP. Author, among other books, of The superindustry of the imaginary (authentic).
Originally published in the newspaper The State of S. Paul.
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