RTP Portugal

Arches. Portuguese culture is about arches. Crepe paper and painted wood arches held up by marching women in matching outfits with looks of determination more stern than grim.

At least that's what you'd conclude after watching a weekend of RTP. Portugal, you'd be forced to admit, is a country of ornately costumed marchers in one endless parade that occasionally spawns small islands of structured dance, like some kind of fragment of the Mandelbrot parade.

Were I to provide a chronology of my viewing experience, it might go something like this:

5:00 pm	Women in bright green and orange dresses holding yellow arches.
6:00 pm	Women in rainbow dresses holding more stylized rectangular arches.
7:00 pm	Singlemindedly focused children in white and black outfits dancing in a circle.
8:00 pm	Girls carrying stuffed birds and fish on sticks.
7:00 am	Awake from drunken stupor.
7:05 am	Women in blue dresses carrying scalloped arches festooned with giant blue and yellow crepe paper balls.

Eventually, motifs start to pop up, the most prominent being a strong nautical theme that pervades the proceedings ("festivities" seems like an awfully strong word to describe the lockstep marches and pained expressions). Apart from the birds and fish, there are men in sailor outfits. There are women with model ships attached to their heads. There's an old man sitting on a float holding a fishing rod, to which is attached a small stuffed fish that he pretends to catch again and again. They're clearly trying to get some kind of message across.

Perhaps it has to do with Portugal's importance on the world stage, waning since the Spanish domination of the late 16th century. "We may be just a small European country now," they say, "but once mariners set off to discover new trade routes and helped create an enormous empire that, at its peak, extended to India, the Far East, Brazil and Africa. At least that's how the Lonely Planet travel guides would put it.

"And now we've got elaborate fish-themed maypole dances. They will win us back our empire."

There's more on RTP than unending processions to inspire wonder at Portuguese history (wonder as in "I wonder" more than in "I am filled with wonder"). There is, for example, ongoing commentary on the processions. But the network even features some non-parade-related programming, like an ongoing soap opera, ostensibly about World War II and an evil goat.

We know the goat is evil not because I am the sort of writer who thinks that any story about an animal is improved by assigning it malign motivations, but because the goat is shown in lurid blue lighting and always appears with ominous background music. The hero runs from the evil goat.

But while an ungulate villain may transcend language boundaries, RTP's news coverage made me wish for subtitles. Every night, an anchor helpfully identified as a "jornalista" appears to take on tough international news stories. The newscast contains long discussions and few pictures. A segment on South Africa lasted about fifteen minutes — no US audience would stand for that.

Don't they know that's not the way to world domination?

— Julia Lipman (julia@flakmag.com)