The Cinema to Come Out of the Closet: Cartography of Homosexual Characters in Brazilian Cinema (1920-2017)

Abstract

The objective was to map the Brazilian cinematographic productions that present homosexual characters in their film plot, identifying them, in order to understand how non-hegemonic sexualities were represented in Brazilian cinema in the period 1923-2017. From a Foucauldian perspective, the cartography of documents was used, identifying 208 productions that present homosexual characters in their plot or that represent non-hegemonic sexualities. When entering the domain of non-hegemonic sexualities, a scenario emerges marked by a multifaceted, dissident and bordering social construct that acts not only as a form of legitimation, but constitutes itself as resistance. It is noteworthy that the perspective of biology acts as a naturalizing agent of inequality in a binary division, socially constructed in order to hide mechanisms that operate in favor of the maintenance of power, erasing all forms of contestation and consequently of social change. As a result, underground memories arise in specific scenarios where representations of abject subjects are influenced by social, political, economic and cultural contexts beyond the struggles in which marginalized groups gain space.