Mitos, messias e salvadores da pátria: sentidos de masculinidade em memes de super-heróis usados no bolsonarismo

Abstract

Bolsonarism aligns with other far-right political movements that plague the world in the early decades of the 21st century. It employs a range of digital strategies on online platforms, including the creation and dissemination of internet memes. Superheroes are a cultural product associated with various media whose popularity has been heightened by audiovisual productions since the year 2000. These characters are often linked to memes produced by the far-right because they circulate meanings related to virility, power, and domination. Masculinist movements related to extremist politicians rely on the circulation of user-generated content that spreads logics of male supremacy. This rhetoric induces physical and symbolic violence against other individuals, especially women and queer people. This thesis seeks to understand, through memes, how bolsonarism appropriates images of superheroes with meanings of masculinism to establish its semiotic territories. The analysis outlined here is based on theoretical assumptions that explain the dynamics of superheroes, bolsonarism, and masculinities in culture, from a perspective of memetics and Yuri Lotman's Semiotics of Culture. The methodology aims to unravel the semiotic territorialities of these memes, that is, to understand the spaces their meanings occupy within semiospheres, the systems that form culture. This research compiled 400 political memes based on superheroes collected through internet search mechanisms. Of the total, 60% of them use figures linked to bolsonarism, and Bolsonaro appears in 52% of the memes. They also present more as diverse images without repetition of a structure. Nationalist heroes like Superman and Captain America are the most used. However, the abundant use of imagery manifestations of hypermasculinity and action characters like Terminator and Rambo surpasses the boundaries of common superhero definitions. A masculinity of ostentation and male complicity were more associated with bolsonarism, while ostentation and the senses of homophobia and misogyny were used to portray opponents of the movement. This result reflects the fact that masculinity is a factor linked to the demonstration of power and, by presenting it in a derogatory manner, associated with homosexuality or femininity, it also means to belittle its target. It is emphasized that this practice is not restricted to the far right, but something that the left also resorts to. The implications of the thesis account for the meanings of bolsonarism and masculinities being worked on from movements of semiotic translation, which allow the use of various meanings and values about images of superheroes. The intention of memes to spread and reproduce through as many minds and spaces of the internet and culture as possible, like a virus, is an important factor in the dissemination of these ideas. Thus, there is an overlap of semiotic environments that provoke overheating in the semiospheres, promoting a deepening and wear in the meanings of masculinities that are sought with more intensity, hatred, and violence.