Youth, festivity and market: a study on Ouro Preto/MG’s carnival

Abstract

This article intends to analyze how youth and the characteristics socially assigned to them emerge in a festive scenario, very influenced by the entertainment industry, based on the commodification process of the carnival from a brazilian city, Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais (MG). For this, a study about the city’s carnival was made in 2009 using the qualitative approach and combining bibliographic, documentary and field research. Without ignoring the numerous possibilities of appropriation of the individuals can have in the time-space of the festivity, which is plural, we identified youth as being the main product sold in the entertainment market, allied to specific ways of being young, to looks and styles bound to forms of experiencing carnival. The festivity, that until very recently used to happen on the streets of the city with the unpaid participation of revelers, became a paid, private and destined to the young public super production.