While watching the music video for “Chuva, chuvisco, chuvarada” (rain, drizzle, hard rain) on the Brazilian kids’ TV show Cocoricó (cock-a-doodle-doo), which features a rooster puppet, one of my students asked if the show is like Barney and I said yes, but then… while students were doing an exercise in groups and the music continued to play in the background, the video went automatically to another video from the same TV show. This one showed the puppets talking to a piece of poop. Yes, a piece of poop. Why would a kids’ show make a video about poop? It may be because cocô, or cocó, can both be translated as poop or rooster. But the main focus was not the misunderstanding that might arise when one uses the word, but rather that while poop is often maligned, it’s actually a great thing because it fertilizes the land. In the video, the piece of poop actually sings. So, I guess it’s not exactly comparable to Barney after all. Click here to see the video for “A history of poop”: https://www.letras.mus.br/cocorico/862648/ It’s funny, but given the context in which it was produced and viewed, it’s also curious. I’m not sure of the date it originally aired on Brazilian TV, but it was uploaded to YouTube in 2014, the same year that Brazil hosted the World Cup, and two years before Rio hosted the Olympics. Both of these events sparked a lot of discussion about the lack of adequate sanitation services in Brazil. One source, Instituto Trata Brasil, which references data from 2014 to 2016, states that over 50% of Brazilians do not have access to “sewage collection.” http://www.tratabrasil.org.br/saneamento-no-brasil So while it’s true that poop can be useful, one can easily understand why Brazilians would be complaining, as the talking poop in the Cocoricó video complains, that it is stinky and gross. He says he’s used to being “mistreated, thrown down the sewer.” If only that were more true.
Portuguese at NIU 