- RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) - Brazilian TV talk-show host Carlos Massa ticks off his
best shows: the deformed "elephant boy," the battered wife with
punctured eyes, the woman whose hand was eaten by a dog. But, truly, the
pregnant man tops them all.
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- "My greatest success," said
Massa, a blustery man TV viewers know as Ratinho, Portuguese for Mouse.
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- Brazilians are captivated by the bizarre
tales Ratinho dishes out every weeknight and his success has shaken up
the TV market. Viewers are switching away from the world's fourth-largest
TV network, Globo, during prime time to catch Ratinho Livre (Mouse Unbound)
on the upstart Record network.
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- Some experts said he provides an avenue
of appeal for people resigned to daily injustices. Ordinary folks, such
as Claudio Conti, have their own take: "Ratinho speaks the language
of the common people. "My wife loves it," said Conti, a television
technician. "I watch it, too. It's not just trash." Ratinho Livre
is, however, often outrageous.
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- One top-rated show featured a woman whose
jealous husband pierced her eyes with a needle and cut off part of her
tongue and ears. Another had a feuding family that began bashing each other
on the set. A bemused Ratinho let them fight, then waded in and took a
couple of licks himself.
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- Weird diseases are a favorite theme,
a child with 26 tumors in his mouth and the "elephant boy," said
to be so deformed Ratinho showed him only in profile through a screen -
to spare the audience from the revulsion and the boy from embarrassment.
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- Ratinho improvises during tapings, bantering
with the audience, brandishing a billy club at the camera or urging a thrashing
for a corrupt politician. The audience cheers and whistles.
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- Ratinho said his shtick is unlike standard
talk show fare, even the more flamboyant ones in the United States. "This
is a very Brazilian show," Ratinho said in a telephone interview from
his studio in Sao Paulo.
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- Ratinho Livre arises out of a need by
poor Brazilians unable to get a fair deal from the system to air their
grievances and maybe even obtain results, the host maintains. "It
won't do much good for us to take a sick child to the hospital," Ratinho
explained. "I put on the parents who went to 20 hospitals and were
turned away. That might get something done."
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- And why do people such as the man who
claims his oversized belly conceals a baby appear on the show? "He
had some serious psychological problems," Ratinho conceded. "But
we're taking care of his treatment."
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- And the woman whose hand was chewed off
by a German shepherd? She went on the show to accuse her mother in-law
of sicking the dog on her. Her mother-in-law's lawyer appeared on the show
to deny it.
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- It's been a remarkable rise for Massa,
42, who has worked as a shoeshine boy, a circus clown, even a congressman
- the latter being the only job he ever regretted. "I couldn't get
anything done," he said.
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- Today, he's got ratings better than any
politician could hope for and one of the top salaries in Brazilian television,
the equivalent of about $500,000 Cdn a month.
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- Experts struggle to explain the Ratinho
phenomenon. "He's an indignant guy in a resigned Brazil. He generates
catharsis," said psychoanalyst Ana Veronica Mautner.
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- Jose Manoel Moran, a professor at the
University of Sao Paulo, said Ratinho blends entertainment with a public
service the government does not provide. "He has an appeal in a country
where justice is too inaccessible for the majority," Moran said. "It's
sad to see that to get action people have to turn to TV."
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