These regionalisms are very interesting...
Other important thing that changed a lot our country was the american version of the TV series Queer as Folk. Talk about gays was something almost forbidden in our culture (except for stereotyped homophobic jokes, of course) Suddenly Cinemax had the courage to air a gay tv series. It was shocking at the first moment. QAF had many scenes that would have to be aired only after midnight theoretically, but each episode was aired on primetime and repeated randomly during the following week. Discussion started everywhere, people started to talk about it in schools. Some high school sociology teachers had the wonderful idea to use the series as an educational source and asked the students to watch each episode in the classroom and then discuss it, make essays, etc. People started to realize that personality has nothing to do with sexual orientation.
almost 10 years after, the tv series Lost was a huge success too, but didn't reach even close to QAF. Actually, never a soap opera or movie or sport or other Tv series reached so high share points in the whole brazilian history. The only event that had more share points was the evening news on september 11th 2001. Putting down in words, during 4 years, 96% of Brazil simply stopped on Friday nights to watch QAF.
The plot was so well written that brazilians could identify themselves as at least one of the characters. Forgetting the "gay" detail, it was real life. Many people started using condoms and even more people discovered that AIDS doesn't mean death thanks to Michael Novotny and Ben. Thousands of men finally realized they should take an exam at least once a year to prevent cancer thanks to Brian Kinney. Many people (specially parents) discovered that being gay isn't an option thanks to Justin and a lot of people discovered that a baby can be loved, cared and very well educated by gay couples thanks to Lindsay and her parter (i forgot her name).
Before I forget, never in Brazil so many Jeep Wranglers and Subarus were imported at the same time. LOL
Even I couldn't sleep until I get a black Jeep exactly like Brian's.