The Rise of Ricardo Araújo Pereira: Portugal’s Political Entertainment Star

Among the differences between France and Portugal, cheeses and television stars can be mentioned. If the journalist Éric Zemmour became the white hope of the far-right French who censored Marine Le Pen for being lukewarm, the comedian Ricardo Araújo Pereira (Lisbon, 49 years old) is sweeping Portugal with a political entertainment program, Isto É Gozar Com Quem Trabalha (This is laughing at those who work), who has refused to whitewash André Ventura, leader of Chega, the far-right party that has become the third political force in the Assembly of the Republic.

Although the comedian satirizes the representatives of Chega in his space, as well as those of other formations, during the special programs he presented for the 2022 elections he refused to invite André Ventura to the set, unlike what he did with other candidates. The president of Chega demanded to be interviewed and accused the presenter of being “a coward sold to the system, afraid of being dismantled live and direct.” After studying the complaints about the exclusion, the Regulatory Entity for Social Communication recommended to the SIC television channel, which broadcasts the program on Sundays, that it try to compensate “the imbalance” in the rest of the grid. The chain rejected the petition and defended the freedom of Ricardo Araújo Pereira to exclude “the defense of ideas that, in their opinion, violate the dignity of people, equal rights, freedoms and guarantees.”

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In a long interview on the public channel RTP, the comedian explained his position: “I don’t invite him because I don’t want to. I have an entertainment program and there is no right to be invited to an entertainment program. It is a difference with journalism. I invite people with whom I have profound disagreements but who accept the game we play, which is democracy. The fact of agreeing or not with me is not the reason for inviting them to the program, the reason is that André Ventura considers himself anti-system and the system is called democracy, which I consider very satisfactory because I can’t find any better”.

Ricardo Araújo Pereira has several characteristics that explain why he has become a television star. One is charisma and the other is the tables. Although he studied journalism, he always opted to live laughing. His career ranged from writing scripts for Herman José, another comedian idolized by the Portuguese, to creating the mythical Gato fedorento, a program that made its way to television after being born as a blog for four stand-up comedy regulars. He has written several books, such as the one dedicated to the coronavirus crisis (Ideias concretas sobre vagas. Uma história da pandemic), and is a media columnist in Portugal and Brazil, a country where he is widely recognized. His interview on O programa do Jô, where he sipped several custards and confessed that he liked to provoke convulsions in others without touching them, deserves an Internet search.

Part of his triumph has to do with his betrayal of a certain Portuguese essence that identifies with restraint and restraint. Each program is a revenge against “respeitinho”, that submission propped up by decades of dictatorship that still refuses to disappear. The comedian pokes his finger in the eye with a wide smile and mischievous expression. His imitations of the President of the Republic are a classic. Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, that type of politician that comedians in crisis fantasize about, helps him as much as he can. The same thing bathes in a lake with alligators that goes out at night to pay bills at the cashier after the Assembly of the Republic knocked down some budgets that led to early elections.

The success of the program has been maintained since it premiered in March 2020. In each episode, the average audience was 13.5% and the screen share was 24.4%, which has made it the leader, according to data of the SIC chain. Last season closed with a special session recorded at the Altice Arena in Lisbon with 10,000 viewers. “It is natural that 10,000 people would rush to see this, to watch a guy who talks for half an hour about parliamentary committees of inquiry. Who wouldn’t? It was for this that this auditorium was built”, joked the comedian that night.

Ricardo Araújo Pereira, Portuguese comedian, in the special program of ‘Isto É Gozar Com Quem Trabalho’, recorded in the Altice Arena in Lisboa.SIC

It is fair to recognize that the Portuguese news since the Socialist Party premiered its absolute majority in 2022 has generated situations so crazy that not even the eight screenwriters of Isto É Gozar Com Quem Trabalha would have dared to imagine on a night of excesses. The shadow of corruption of some senior officials, ephemeral appointments, resignations, a commission of investigation on the TAP airline turned into a kind of series of the season and an embarrassing episode that occurred in the Ministry of Infrastructure, with the theft of a laptop, struggles Between advisers to the minister and police intervention, it has supplied top quality material. António Costa’s annus horribilis has been a party for Ricardo Araújo Pereira and his team.

In October 2022, the weekly Expresso came to publish a front page with the million dollar question: “Will Ricardo Araújo Pereira be the true leader of the opposition?” The precedents for comedians who jump into politics begin to accumulate, from the Italian Beppe Grillo to the Ukrainian Volodimir Zelenski, and the Portuguese has never hidden his sympathies for him, neither for the left nor for Benfica. However, he makes it clear that his thing is laughter and not politics.

He often refers to himself as a “clown,” turns down offers to act, and renounces being labeled an “artist.” The only concession that is made seriously is this: “Perhaps our great contribution in this moment of bipolarization and fanatical radicalism is the demonstration that people who do not think the same can disagree with cordiality and humor.” On September 3, he will start a new season with a live program at the Altice Forum in Braga, which has already sold out all the tickets.

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2023-08-28 03:17:17
#Portugal #laughter #serves #democracy