Silenciamento ou subversão? Representação do papel social da mulher no discurso performático das crossplayers de mangá

Abstract

This thesis is built on the assumption that the erasure of the female body to interpret the male is a mean of acquiring voice and power. The objective is to demonstrate, through the analysis of the verbal-visual discourse of the performances of crossplayers when interpreting male characters, that the figures of the hero and the villain in works of female authors, have power and show that for crossplayers to assume the representation of such figures, the conditio sine qua non is the silencing of the feminine. The corpus of analysis consists of two performances presented by Brazilian crossplayers: the first concerns a clipping from the manga Clover authored by the CLAMP group (composed entirely of women) focusing on the hero Kazuhiko Fay Ryu, and the second an excerpt from the manga Inuyasha, authored by Rumiko Takahashi, aiming at the villain, Sesshoumaru. The work is divided into four chapters. The first discusses concepts of Japanese pop culture, focusing on the manga (comic books). The second presents the world of cosplay practice (activity that involves representing characters derived from popular media, including the manga) and crossplay (segment in which cosplay practitioners interpret characters of the opposite sex). The third is based on the theoretical framework, in which I elaborate on a literature review of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), Visual Grammar, gender studies, fundamentals of Takarazuka Theater (theater company composed entirely of women) and studies on performance. The fourth chapter includes: a) the transformation of crossplayers described from supplementary materials available in a video and tutorials that illustrate the preceding steps of stage performance; b) analysis methodology, based on the model of the pentad of Burke (1973), composed of agent, act, scene, agency and proposal, to which selected categories among the other theoretical axes are added; c) the analysis of the two performances, available in DVD. In order to broaden the informative horizon tangent to the practice of performances resulting from intertextual movements with manga I include an attachment with the testimony of Brazilian crossplayers and an appendix with an account of my own experience in cos/crossplay. Along with the test results, this material is also considered in the search for an answer to the question that imposes itself from the title of the work: "Silence or subversion? The representation of the social role of women in the performative discourse of manga crossplayers”.