Owner of a cheerful way, samba no pé and unparalleled charisma, Zé Carioca, one of the most iconic names in classic comics, is completing 80 years since his first public appearance in the Disney animation Hello, friends, from 1942.
Created in the early 1940s, the first character of Disney Studios has marked generations and still remains relevant to new readers and comic book lovers. The beloved parrot was created by Walt Disney to, in his North American vision, be the personification of the Brazilian people: happy, friendly, lazy, rogue and party-goer.
The birth of Zé Carioca
Hello, friends!, Zé Carioca’s debut film. (Source: Disney)
Went to the release of the new film, Fantasia (1940) — part of the studio’s so-called “golden age” —, which Walt Disney and his team of animators and designers reached Rio de Janeiro. The team would stay in the country between the months of August and September of 1941, following with the tour to Buenos Aires, Argentina, soon after.
However, the publicity was not the only reason for the extensive trip through Latin America. Walt Disney was also interested in creating new characters, this time inspired by Latin American culture , to live alongside the classic Mickey Mouse Club. The initial idea that the designers Franklin Thomas and Norman Ferguson presented was that of an armadillo.
Walt Disney arrives in Brazil. (Source: Disney)
While I was around Brazil, however, the team met with numerous famous Brazilians, such as Heitor Villa-Lobos and José Carlos de Brito e Cunha, and concluded that the parrot would be the ideal animal to represent our fauna and our people. The meeting with Paulo da Portela, a samba singer who marked the Rio scene throughout the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, would supposedly have been the most striking for Walt Disney in the final construction of his character.
Walt Disney’s tour had one more motivation to happen
The following year, in a film that showed the beauties of Latin America to Donald Duck, the aforementioned Alô, amigos, was born Zé Carioca, Disney’s first Brazilian character. The parrot wore a jacket, tie and hat, accompanied by the famous “Brazilian way”: roguish and cheerful. At a time when samba was considered criminal and marginal, the image of Zé Carioca, personification of the carioca sambista, was proudly chosen to represent Brazil worldwide.
Walt Disney enjoy your trip to Rio de Janeiro. (Source: Disney)
Added to that, the Walt Disney tour had one more motivation to happen. They say that politics is present in all areas of our lives, and Zé Carioca’s is no different. Despite being a character created for children, the trip was encouraged by the Good Neighbor Policy, conceived by President Franklin Roosevelt to raise Latin American allies to the United States during World War II.
The “career” of Zé Carioca
As stated earlier, Zé Carioca represented everything that Walt Disney loved most about the Brazilian people. José Carioca, as he is known internationally, was played by the cavaquinista from São Paulo (what an irony!) José do Patrocínio Oliveira in his debut film, soon conquering the public with his swing and humor. Alongside the Brazilian representative, the film also has the participation of Gauchinho Voador, representative of Argentina, and Panchito, a Mexican character.
“The material that existed was very stereotyped”
Zé Carioca appeared again two years later alongside by Carmem Miranda in the film “Você já foi à Bahia?”, which has music composed by Ari Barroso and João de Barro. In addition, Zé participated in some episodes of the television series Disneyland: Two Happy Amigos (1960) and Carnival Time (1962).
However, it was in the comic books that Zé Carioca really shined. Initially designed by Bob Grant and Paul Murry, with a script by Bill Walsh, for the weekly page of Sunday strips, Silly Symphony, Zé was a character who escaped his problems with his “way” trickster . In some stories, Zé Carioca was described living in Rio de Janeiro through coups. It was also in these pages that the first supporting characters were born: Rosinha, his girlfriend, his father Rocha Vaz, Nestor and Zé Galo, Zé’s antagonist.
Zé Carioca and his “group” at Baile dos Caloteiros, one of the Brazilian stereotypes of the character . (Source: Disney)
These first strips were brought to Brazil in February 1943 by Globo Juvenil magazine. After that, he appeared in several stories in the Donald Duck comics. However, the character was brought to life by foreigners, causing the humor and the representation to be, many times, stereotyped and not appealing to the Brazilian public.
Here comes the “Jovem Zé”, telling the story of the parrot before he became what he is today
In the opinion of the screenwriter Gerson Teixeira, who has already written 1,444 pages of Zé’s stories, “when Jorge Kato and other cartoonists made the first original scripts, they had to give it a good ‘seasoning’. The material that existed was very stereotyped and, little by little, Zé became a character that really conveyed our way.”
But it was only in the 1970s that this happened, when Editora Abril began to publish Zé Carioca’s own stories regularly, now with an entirely Brazilian team. “The screenwriters ended up improving the image of Zé Carioca to adapt to Brazil. It was here that he became Brazilian”, says Moacir Rodrigues Soares, cartoonist of Zé Carioca’s stories since 1973.
The new Zé
The comics reached their heyday between the 1970s and 1990s, and Zé Carioca and his gang were a popular phenomenon. Of all the production of Disney comics by Editora Abril, a third had the presence of Zé. But like so many other media, comics have also been affected by the rise of computers and cell phones. “When I left Editora Abril, Zé Carioca sold 70,000 magazines a month. Suddenly, that number dropped to 7 thousand”, according to Moacir.
But no need to worry! Since 2020, Editora Culturama, in partnership with Disney, has taken on the role of continuing to tell the stories of Zé Carioca — Moacir even gave us a spoiler that “Jovem Zé” is coming, telling the story of the parrot before he did. become what it is today.
Zé Carioca returns to comics by Editora Culturama. (Source: Culturama)
Furthermore , work has been done to change the rogue image of the character. If before he had a dubious character, although captivating, in the new stories “he is optimistic, cheerful and, despite being ‘screwed’, he still has hope that everything will work out. As well as a Brazilian.” According to Gerson, who writes the new comics, Zé Carioca, finally, represents what Brazilians were and are.
