Carnival Goes Political.(World Affairs)(Brazilian Carnival)

Byline: Mac Margolis

The floats now take on global warming, the drug trade, even genocide. But dancing Hitlers are out.

Brazil's Carnival has traditionally served as a raucous nationwide party, a time to kick back, dress up and dance away the travails of everyday life. But lately the princes of play have been smitten by a bad case of gravitas, and now the celebration that marks the countdown to Lent has turned into a forum for political statements and causes celebres. Samba troupes have sashayed through the Sambadrome to such themes as world hunger and racism; one year, a popular school even deployed faux thugs toting machine guns to decry the international drug trade. The SA[pounds sterling]o Paulo samba squad X-9 danced to the drumbeat of global warming, topping its floats with giant sea turtles, whales and a polar bear on a shrinking ice floe.

But this year's hand-wringer award goes to Unidos do Viradouro, a 5,000-strong Rio ensemble that paid tribute to everything under the moon that makes the flesh crawl, ranging from Hollywood horror flicks to genocide. The planned centerpiece: a three-story-tall Holocaust float, piled high with sculptured bodies representing Nazi concentration-camp victims, and dancing Hitlers in tow. "My love, look who's coming/It's so cold, you get goose bumps," the revelers sang.

Not everyone appreciated the image. "A musical parade with joyfully dancing semi-nude women and men -- is an abominable spectacle for the [Holocaust] survivors and their families," the Simon Wiesenthal Center wrote in an open letter to Viradouro. The Israelite Federation of SA[pounds sterling]o Paulo took the complaint to court, and on Jan. 31, less than 48 hours before the pageant's start, a judge banned the float from the parade grounds, prompting cries of censorship.

The controversy had mostly blown over by the time the tambourines went silent on Ash Wednesday, but the revelers could be forgiven for wondering: is this the dawn of the anti-Carnival? To be sure, Brazilians are masters at parlaying life's misery into merriment. "Sadness never ends/Happiness does," goes a bossa nova classic. The cleverest samba maestros have always used the streetfest as a stage for sly political parody and droll social comment. But this year's boosterism rose to new heights.

As it turns out, the high-mindedness is not necessarily born of a sincere commitment to set the world right. Mostly it's a ...