I am old, but I am not as old as Marilyn Manson. Not so old that I avoid being called ‘girl’ by strangers, but I am old enough that my adolescence passed graciously undocumented by social media. I am old enough to remember when the Berlin Wall came down, but more so, I remember how it was illustrated in a particularly topical episode of Alvin and the Chipmunks. But mostly, I am old (and he is old) in comparison to how young we once were. 

When I called my childhood friend James to report how, in a wild moment of decisiveness, I’d purchased us tickets to the Vancouver show on Manson’s Hell Not Hallelujah Tour, I had to admit I hadn’t heard the new album…or the one before. As it turns out, neither of us was familiar with anything since Manson’s fourth album, Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death) — which was released at a time when my freshman students were listening to the haunting jingles of Dora the Explorer.

“I wonder what Goths look like these days,” said James.

“Hmm, the tickets were $90 and it’s seating only. I suspect they look like us,” I said, rubbing a string of baby drool into the shoulder of a particularly un-Goth sweater.

Carmen Miranda, who died sixty years ago this month, was a star of the 1940s and ’50s — one of the world’s best-paid artists in both the music and movie industries, as famous for her style as for her work. Nowadays, however, she is practically unknown. If people remember her at all, it’s likely due to a Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, or Tom & Jerry cartoon — old references themselves — making fun of her style, her music, her platform heels, her colorful dresses, and her gigantic turbans with the most outrageous props. But sometimes it’s enough to say that she is “the Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat” — that will evoke at least a vague image of Miranda, if not her importance as one of the most famous Brazilian celebrities of all time.

Sixty years after her death, Carmen Miranda is still a polarizing figure in my native Brazil. Some believe, not without basis, that her iconic public persona helped create a distorted view of the country. Others praise her for putting us on the world’s cultural map. Carmen herself dealt with this dichotomy throughout her lifetime — sometimes impatiently, but mostly with good humor. Yes, she did often play to the stereotype of the “exotic Latina,” hot-blooded and extravagantly dressed, singing songs with senseless lyrics (chica chica boom chica chica boom chica chica boom), but didn’t many other artists play to stereotypes as well? This did not mean she was not a multifaceted and compelling performer.

Carmen loved her country and knew how defend it through humor. If uninformed gringos asked her whether snakes roamed freely down the streets of urban Rio de Janeiro, she said:

“Why, yes. There is even a special sidewalk just for them at the Avenida Rio Branco.”

I first got sucked into the weird vortex of Temperance Hymns while checking some facts in a book about the history of the university where I work. The book mentioned that “the program in the closing day exercises of the first term featured children singing, ‘Saloons Must Go’ as they marched determinedly around the room for the benefit of the spectators.”

“Is that a real song?” I wondered. (Yes.)

It’s hard to imagine now, but the temperance movement was a hotbed of feminist and other progressive causes, especially tied to women’s rights and abolishing slavery, with lots of women leaders. Forward-looking in some ways, regressive in others, temperance crusaders had what they thought was, in many ways, the one weird trick that would cure all our societal ills. Get rid of the demon drink, and domestic abuse, poverty, corruption, and all the other sins would just go along with it.

Still, it’s hard for me not to admire their enthusiasm — particularly when I see the great lengths to which their songs go to make the case that you should only drink water for the rest of your life for the following reasons:

1. Alcoholic drinks will turn you into a demon.