Abstract: Elke: Mulher maravilha, by Chico Felitti, tells events of Elke Grünupp’s life, a Brazilian artist, born in Germany, highlighted by anarchist attitudes and criticism of the status quo. Surrounding reading and example of criticism of sources and authorial positioning, the book sins by the dominant chronological linearity in the composition.
Keywords: Wonder, woman, and biography.
Elke: Mulher Maravilha explores the life of Elke Grünupp, Brazilian and German media character, prior to the age of social networks, who lived between 1945 and 2016. It is a biography and a book of memories: Elke, the author himself and the readers who They watched it on TV. Initially motivated by a desire little reflected from a journalism student, Chico Felitti conceived it in 2006 as the “biographical profile” of a “polyglot woman, pagan, at the time, in full decay” and, in 2020, the transformed into “Series Audio”. Decade and a half later, 2021, the already professional Felitti thus defined the goals of his work: to show that Elke “was an artist whose platform was the unconscious of a country” (p.7).
Chico Felitti is a young Brazilian journalist (1986), awarded the report and book Ricardo and Vânia: the makeup artist, the call girl, the silicone and a love story (2019), and by Rainhas da Noite (2023). He also wrote the book A Casa: a história da seita de João de Deus (2020) and acts as Podcaster of Lives. In Elke, Felitti, he distributes the experience of the model, secretary, actress of theater and cinema, singer, jury and TV presenter in 32 chapters, in addition to the presentation, introduction and epilogue.
The presentation and the preface announce the motivation and objective of the work (cited above). Especially in the introduction, there is a synthetic profile of biographed, portraying occupations, weddings, high and career points, detailed following the chapters. The text resents a footnote or a paragraph that effectively presents the substantive and methodological choices that guided the author in the construction of the biography.
The chapters are not described as such. There is ambiguity in making the text. The 32 segments are entitled by chronological dates (arranged at the end of this review). Without knowing the reason, they left conjectures: Did he want to avoid breaking the reading flow? Did you want to demarcate change of theme or, on the contrary, to force the perception of a linearity? Did you want to structure the narrative to the taste of biographed?
For good or evil, the reader is free in his attempts at organization and synthesis. The tripartite description is an example. In the first big segment, limited by the “1945–1948” titles and the last “1972” (there are three titles with the same name), the author describes Elke’s parents, grandparents and siblings, the arrival in Brazil, the childhood in Atibaia and Bragança Paulista (SP), participation in beauty contests, the first marriage in Europe, a university student life (letters and philosophy) in Porto Alegre and Rio de Janeiro, participation in fashion shows, political prison and the entrance to the “The Horn of Chacrinha” program.
The second segment The author tells events related to the years inserted in the period “1973” and “1993–2007”. From this time, among other episodes, the author deals with Elke’s coexistence with Silvio Santos, Chacrinha, Zezé Mota, participation in theater and cinema (Xica da Silva, Pixote, among others), early aid to Dzi Croquettes , Angelica, Patrícia Marques, Rubão, style, and designers who conform to her hair, clothing and makeup, experience as an artist Mambembe, the daily life of weddings, vices with lawful and illicit drugs, and financial decay.
Observing panoramicly described so far, I realize that the narrative expands the imbalance in theme and extension and the author goes contradicting the biography idealized by Elke: “I don’t like that biography like that, ah, that day I shit, I fell, I climbed, no . I like it, as we are talking. Timeless. Suddenly, I remember one thing, suddenly I’m here. ” (p.140).
The last segment includes experiences of “2007 to 2016” and extends to “2018–2019”. Despite the elastic temporal landmarks, Scripture is brief and the narrative deals with debts, illness, death by ulcer and Elke’s estate in fashion, cinema and carnival of 2029.
Throughout the work, the author leaves clues about his autonomy in relation to the lines of the biographed. He disagrees and questions statements of cause, time and place, highlighting Elke’s inventions.
Elke Maravilha: “smarter than all biographers” | Photo: Daryan/Folha de Londrina
I must confess that until recently, I wondered if Elke Maravilha was a woman, a transvestite, a drag queen or a TV character. I heard from the book that he was a woman and that her clothes, shoes and props were supposedly a personal taste, which was German and not born in Leningrad in the former Soviet Union as she claimed.
Those who appreciate biographies or autobiographies know that the delicious reading of these genres is the stories that are told and how to tell. According to her own biographed and some deponents, Elke was a free and libertarian woman. But about political links, it cannot be deduced. She hid. In an episode it says anarchist, but it is not known in what respect it is stating: whether from the most general political point of view or from the point of view of individual behavior.
In dealing with these reality games and representation of Elke, the author demonstrates care and journalistic commitment. He has archival, bibliographic counterproofs, announces more than one version for the facts, raises abuse of “not known”, “it is impossible” and “it is likely that” and, often, leaves the issue open or claims Peremptorily: “This is not true […] Elke created a character for herself, and took him to her death” (p.12).
Another plus point is the contextualization effort. Here and there he makes slight, without teacher air, stimulating the reader’s memory about national impact events. Still, the exaggerates the eccentricity of Elke’s life, for example, by stating that he was friends with Jim Jones, the leader of the “collective suicide of 918 people of his worship in Guyana” (p.25) and that a “Only violence” suffered from the “military regime” was a “slap in the face” during an interrogation (p.49). There are expendable passages, such as information about one of Elke’s husbands: he lived in Brumadinho, “which had neighborhoods buried by waste from a Vale dam” (120).
The author demonstrates a lot of respect and passion for the character and the book has a huge potential for discussion about biographies and autobiographies, how they do and redo. This potential, expressed in the metabographic statements, however, are grateful throughout the work, in which the descriptive narration predominates.
With these comments, I can say that the author partially fulfilled the task announced in the principle of the work. Admittedly, he did a big breath research, showed critical attitude in dealing with sources, especially in relation to the lines of the biographed. But the proposition that Elke’s life is a representation of Brazil’s “unconscious” (p.2) figured as a (good) hypothesis, lacking theoretical foundation and complementary investigation.
On the other hand, the book fulfills a witness and formative function, especially for young readers. During reading, the boys will find that there were people like Elke revolutionizing behaviors for a long time and that, in a way, we re -back. He could come to this conclusion when he encounters Elke Child’s (real or imaginary?) Dialogue with his father, where she asked if he needed to behavior as a woman, to which he answers: no, you can be whatever you want.
Elke’s biography, finally, fills the eyes and hearts of ordinary people, but it is never too much to remember what a “unusual” person (according to the spirit of people who read Elke feel “common”) declared about exceptionality of lives. He says Zé Dirceu, in his autobiography, that he thought his trajectory as a differential in prison after the monthly. Later, he found that all lives were extraordinary as long as someone was willing to tell her to someone predisposed to hear her.
Abstract: Elke: Mulher maravilha, by Chico Felitti, tells events of Elke Grünupp’s life, a Brazilian artist, born in Germany, highlighted by anarchist attitudes and criticism of the status quo. Surrounding reading and example of criticism of sources and authorial positioning, the book sins by the dominant chronological linearity in the composition.
Keywords: Wonder, woman, and biography.
Elke: Mulher Maravilha explores the life of Elke Grünupp, Brazilian and German media character, prior to the age of social networks, who lived between 1945 and 2016. It is a biography and a book of memories: Elke, the author himself and the readers who They watched it on TV. Initially motivated by a desire little reflected from a journalism student, Chico Felitti conceived it in 2006 as the “biographical profile” of a “polyglot woman, pagan, at the time, in full decay” and, in 2020, the transformed into “Series Audio”. Decade and a half later, 2021, the already professional Felitti thus defined the goals of his work: to show that Elke “was an artist whose platform was the unconscious of a country” (p.7).
Chico Felitti is a young Brazilian journalist (1986), awarded the report and book Ricardo and Vânia: the makeup artist, the call girl, the silicone and a love story (2019), and by Rainhas da Noite (2023). He also wrote the book A Casa: a história da seita de João de Deus (2020) and acts as Podcaster of Lives. In Elke, Felitti, he distributes the experience of the model, secretary, actress of theater and cinema, singer, jury and TV presenter in 32 chapters, in addition to the presentation, introduction and epilogue.
The presentation and the preface announce the motivation and objective of the work (cited above). Especially in the introduction, there is a synthetic profile of biographed, portraying occupations, weddings, high and career points, detailed following the chapters. The text resents a footnote or a paragraph that effectively presents the substantive and methodological choices that guided the author in the construction of the biography.
The chapters are not described as such. There is ambiguity in making the text. The 32 segments are entitled by chronological dates (arranged at the end of this review). Without knowing the reason, they left conjectures: Did he want to avoid breaking the reading flow? Did you want to demarcate change of theme or, on the contrary, to force the perception of a linearity? Did you want to structure the narrative to the taste of biographed?
For good or evil, the reader is free in his attempts at organization and synthesis. The tripartite description is an example. In the first big segment, limited by the “1945–1948” titles and the last “1972” (there are three titles with the same name), the author describes Elke’s parents, grandparents and siblings, the arrival in Brazil, the childhood in Atibaia and Bragança Paulista (SP), participation in beauty contests, the first marriage in Europe, a university student life (letters and philosophy) in Porto Alegre and Rio de Janeiro, participation in fashion shows, political prison and the entrance to the “The Horn of Chacrinha” program.
The second segment The author tells events related to the years inserted in the period “1973” and “1993–2007”. From this time, among other episodes, the author deals with Elke’s coexistence with Silvio Santos, Chacrinha, Zezé Mota, participation in theater and cinema (Xica da Silva, Pixote, among others), early aid to Dzi Croquettes , Angelica, Patrícia Marques, Rubão, style, and designers who conform to her hair, clothing and makeup, experience as an artist Mambembe, the daily life of weddings, vices with lawful and illicit drugs, and financial decay.
Observing panoramicly described so far, I realize that the narrative expands the imbalance in theme and extension and the author goes contradicting the biography idealized by Elke: “I don’t like that biography like that, ah, that day I shit, I fell, I climbed, no . I like it, as we are talking. Timeless. Suddenly, I remember one thing, suddenly I’m here. ” (p.140).
The last segment includes experiences of “2007 to 2016” and extends to “2018–2019”. Despite the elastic temporal landmarks, Scripture is brief and the narrative deals with debts, illness, death by ulcer and Elke’s estate in fashion, cinema and carnival of 2029.
Throughout the work, the author leaves clues about his autonomy in relation to the lines of the biographed. He disagrees and questions statements of cause, time and place, highlighting Elke’s inventions.
Elke Maravilha: “smarter than all biographers” | Photo: Daryan/Folha de Londrina
I must confess that until recently, I wondered if Elke Maravilha was a woman, a transvestite, a drag queen or a TV character. I heard from the book that he was a woman and that her clothes, shoes and props were supposedly a personal taste, which was German and not born in Leningrad in the former Soviet Union as she claimed.
Those who appreciate biographies or autobiographies know that the delicious reading of these genres is the stories that are told and how to tell. According to her own biographed and some deponents, Elke was a free and libertarian woman. But about political links, it cannot be deduced. She hid. In an episode it says anarchist, but it is not known in what respect it is stating: whether from the most general political point of view or from the point of view of individual behavior.
In dealing with these reality games and representation of Elke, the author demonstrates care and journalistic commitment. He has archival, bibliographic counterproofs, announces more than one version for the facts, raises abuse of “not known”, “it is impossible” and “it is likely that” and, often, leaves the issue open or claims Peremptorily: “This is not true […] Elke created a character for herself, and took him to her death” (p.12).
Another plus point is the contextualization effort. Here and there he makes slight, without teacher air, stimulating the reader’s memory about national impact events. Still, the exaggerates the eccentricity of Elke’s life, for example, by stating that he was friends with Jim Jones, the leader of the “collective suicide of 918 people of his worship in Guyana” (p.25) and that a “Only violence” suffered from the “military regime” was a “slap in the face” during an interrogation (p.49). There are expendable passages, such as information about one of Elke’s husbands: he lived in Brumadinho, “which had neighborhoods buried by waste from a Vale dam” (120).
The author demonstrates a lot of respect and passion for the character and the book has a huge potential for discussion about biographies and autobiographies, how they do and redo. This potential, expressed in the metabographic statements, however, are grateful throughout the work, in which the descriptive narration predominates.
With these comments, I can say that the author partially fulfilled the task announced in the principle of the work. Admittedly, he did a big breath research, showed critical attitude in dealing with sources, especially in relation to the lines of the biographed. But the proposition that Elke’s life is a representation of Brazil’s “unconscious” (p.2) figured as a (good) hypothesis, lacking theoretical foundation and complementary investigation.
On the other hand, the book fulfills a witness and formative function, especially for young readers. During reading, the boys will find that there were people like Elke revolutionizing behaviors for a long time and that, in a way, we re -back. He could come to this conclusion when he encounters Elke Child’s (real or imaginary?) Dialogue with his father, where she asked if he needed to behavior as a woman, to which he answers: no, you can be whatever you want.
Elke’s biography, finally, fills the eyes and hearts of ordinary people, but it is never too much to remember what a “unusual” person (according to the spirit of people who read Elke feel “common”) declared about exceptionality of lives. He says Zé Dirceu, in his autobiography, that he thought his trajectory as a differential in prison after the monthly. Later, he found that all lives were extraordinary as long as someone was willing to tell her to someone predisposed to hear her.
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Margarida Maria Dias de Oliveira has a doctorate in history from the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE), Professor of the Department and the Graduate Program in History of Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN). Published, among other works, Dicionário do Ensino de História (2020), em coautoria com Marieta e Morais Ferreira, e Formação dos professores de História: os desafios de uma profissão em processo de reinvenção. ID LATTES: http://lattes.cnpq.br/5565266295414497; ID ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8542-4173; E-mail: margaridahistoria@yahoo.com.br.
