When it comes to brazilian television, there are often pies smashed in faces or other substances. On birthday it is tradition to push the face in cake.

Well, in american TV there are also a few shows with the messy emphasis.
But in Brazil maybe in South-America in general it is more celebrated and widespread.

Could you please tell me how it came to that kind of tradition?

I will explain.
In Brazil has a entrepreneur called Silvio Santos.
In fact Silvio Santos is not his name, is a pseudonym.
He is descendant of Greek.
He started his life as a street vendor, and in the 60s he began to some TV shows as a presenter.
Even those who do not like his programs, find them rude, are forced to admit that he is very charismatic.
At the end of the dictatorship of the early '80s, he got his big dream, to have achieved the Granting a public television network.
Overall his station is very disorganized, it changes tv programs all the time, does not have a fixed grid.
In the early 90s, it showed a television program called passa ou repassa.
Then he introduced this framework in which the person who misses a question, takes pie in the face.
Some people say he copied the double dare, others say it was the double dare used the idea.
A whole generation grew up watching this program, and now many people in Brazil like this idea to play pie in the face for it.
Even in schools, evangelical churches do this kind of play.
Recently passa ou repassa back to television.
Any doubt, you can ask me.

Thank you very much!
It is surprising to me that this is the source of the pie-in-the-face-idea in Brazil.

I thought it would have a much older tradition. Take North-America for example: As far as I know the pie-hype was started with the Laurel and Hardy-films in the early 20th century.

Well, in Germany there was a time (1970-1990) where this pie-joke was popular, too. But it has never become tradition. Today it is almost gone.

I think we can tell that it started with TV. Maybe Laurel and Hardy were the founders? Then Silvio adopted it as well as other TV producers. But it is interesting that it became tradition in Brazil and lasts so long.
Silvio must be a kind of hero there.

In the US, the tradition goes back before Laurel and Hardy. When Max Sennett was using it, it had already been a gag that existed on vaudeville stage. I'm glad it's a thing in Brazil--there are many beautiful women there.

What the heck?

No, no. You guys here at UMD have a very wrong idea about Brazilian TV.

I'm from Brazil. We DON'T HAVE any birthday tradition. This push-face-to-cake thing is mexican, not brazilian. There might be videos out there on YT showing that situation in Brazil, but it is just as common as it would be on US.

The same thing may be said about Mainstream WAM. Our TV stuff is pretty much like yours. It's somewhat rare to have a pie fight scene or anything like that. UMD'ers love that soap opera called Chocolate com Pimenta, and, yes, it had lots of WAM scenes, but guys, that thing DIDN'T REPRESENT BRAZIL. It was a parody of slapstick comedies from the 1930's, hence all the vestuary and scenery of that soap opera.

Yes, we have Passa ou Repassa, and it got quite popular in the '90s, but that's it. It doesn't mean that people here are throwing pies at each other because the show does. The video footages of people playing that game show style on churches, schools, etc is just as common as it is in the US. For some reason, people on UMD started to focus so much on Brazil that it started to seem that we really have mess as a form of culture. We don't, really.

Chega Mais is just trying to get the audience from Passa ou Repassa at a later time of the Sunday.

Our soap operas seldom show pieing scenes. They show just as US shows them in their sitcoms.

Rogio Silva talked about Silvio Santos. Silvio has nothing to do with this topic, dudes. Really. He's just the owner of the TV channel that transmits Passa ou Repassa. Nothing else.

Brazil isn't into WAM as you think we are. And that's it.

Just an obligatory pointing out that "WAM brings everyone together."


Very interesting stuff guys, thanks for sharing =)

I think the issue is that "torta na cara" on YouTube brings up a LOT more hits these days than "pie in the face." That would lead one to believe (incorrectly, I guess) that Brazil is more into throwing pies around than English-speaking countries.

And while Esto es Guerra and Combate and Domingo Legal and Chega Mais might not be much (less a trend than a random assortment of shows)... It's still MILES better than anything the U.S. has done in ages. (I guess we had that show where people pressed a button and something *might* have exploded?? Everyone wore goggles? It kinda sucked and didn't produce much of any value???)

I'd love to get a read on exactly why the cast of Chega Mais (who all appear to be young, good-looking, trying-to-be-models) willingly participates each week in a game where they (usually) get very messy. Since it seems so at odds with how your average American model would try to further his/her career. (You didn't see the contestants of "America's Next Top Model" getting hit with pies every week, for instance...)

SStuff, Esto es Guerra and Combate aren't brazilian shows. I believe they are colombian. They speak spanish, not portuguese (In fact, "Isto e guerra" is the portuguese translation. "Esto es guerra" is a spanish phrase).

As for Domingo Legal, it's the same thing as Passa ou Repassa. PR is a sketch inside Domingo Legal, which translates to "Cool Sunday": It's the sunday tv show regularly transmitted by SBT, the TV channel owned by that Silvio Santos guy.

The models, both in Chega Mais and Passa ou Repassa, are the so-called "sub-celebrities" around here. Think of a bunch of Kardashians or Paris Hilton's wanna-bes, that are just as stupid as they are beautiful. Those girls are begging for some media attention, and willing to participate in anything they are offered to.

EDIT: Just adding that, really guys, you have no idea how EASY those questions from both PR and CM are. The contestants are insanely dumb.

Brazil does not have a pie in the face of tradition, but I believe the Silvio Santos could be considered a precursor of this kind of mentality in Brazil.
It may just be the owner of the station, but he always encouraged this kind of program, it has a program called Topa Tudo por Dinheiro - Accept Anything for money.
This program has several forms of evidence with slapstick.

Ha! Clearly you haven't been following the MONTHS of CM threads. To summarize:
Part 1: Show has beautiful-but-dumb women and reasonably easy questions. Because the guys aren't total idiots, they get 80% of the questions right, so the girls get pretty messy. Girls apparently "rebel" behind-the-scenes.
Part 2: Guys slowly get replaced by himbos... particular the twins (AKA Dumb & Dumber) who might have an 80 IQ *combined*. Despite these efforts, girls still wind up missing questions.
Part 3: Show resorts to beyond-easy questions so each answer becomes, literally, "who can buzz in quicker." Show also allows girls to cheat (keep hand closer to buzzer, etc) so they can stay clean. Show finally becomes 80% guy mess.

At least... Those were the conspiracy theories floating around here. But no one is disputing how dumb the girls (and now the guys) are, or how much the show skews the questions towards their stupidity. (I think everything now is pop culture or YouTube videos??)

With PoR, the argument was, "How can women this dumb be answering more than half the questions right?" The answer was either a) guys equally dumb, b) guys playing dumb during the pie round to ensure the women don't get too messy, or c) Both.

What?! So my hopes of 16 days nonstop pie-throwing among the sexy female athletes at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio are dashed?

SStuff: I say we pit Watson, the IBM computer, in a game of Chega Mais against the entire Chega Mais dimbo cas. Watson might have to intentionally miss a question or too, just to prove he's "playing fair" and "a sport". As long as the slime does not short circuit his circuits.

I would be fine with the entire female CM cast playing "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth-Grader?" against an actual fifth-grader.

Pretty sure that would be the messiest they've ever been.

You were saying?....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqHO62wWiz0 (4:00)

Not actually a very good scene, but it's funny this popped up less than a day after I read your post. Same station as that Xuxa show. (Which is like Ellen in America... But with occasional pies...)

It's a terrible coincidence. Scenes like that are rare.

And, for curiosity purposes, I'd like to add that nobody watches this. Only Globo's soaps have audience around here. I never even heard of "Prova de amor" before.

And the new Xuxa show is somewhat a ripoff from Ellen. She's been on TV for, like, 30 years, and she always associated her image with children stuff. Now that kids don't care about her anymore, she changed from Globo to Record and is pursuing an adult audience. Xuxa only got famous because in the '80s, when she started on TV, she was dating Pele.