Representations of gender and sexuality in Brazilian popular cinema

Thesis

This study investigates the representation of gender and sexuality in Brazilian popular comedies. Due to its responsiveness to contemporary trends, popular cinema is a privileged locus for the analysis of social and cultural change. Comedy, in particular, is a fecund corpus for the study of power relations due to its ambivalent relation with the hegemonic power. While inherently relying on the status quo, comedy constantly pushes the boundaries of the socially acceptable; by transgressing and therefore expanding the boundaries of traditional gender representations, new models of femininity and masculinity emerge in these films in line with the changes of their time. This argument is supported by the close analysis of ten influential films spread across the three most prominent cycles of Brazilian popular cinema history: the chanchada in the 1950s, the pornochanchada in the 1970s and the Globochanchada in the 2000s. In the light of Mikhail Bakhtin's theorisation on the carnivalesque, and with the support of psychoanalytical theory, this study demonstrates that times of profound economic and political change call for a revision of gender models, and that comedy has been the preferred genre for Brazilian directors to provide a means of addressing, and coping with, the new demands on femininity and masculinity.

Authors: Gregoli, R

• Publication date: 2013
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Brazil; cinema; gender; media
• Subjects: Visual art and representation; Women; Gender; Brazilian