A EXPERIÊNCIA VIVIDA: UMA ANÁLISE MULTIMODAL DA SEXUALIDADE NA REPRESENTAÇÃO DA RELAÇÃO MÃE-FILHA NA GRAPHIC MEMOIR “VOCÊ É MINHA MÃE?”

Abstract

Alison Bechdel is a cartoonist and memoirist from the EUA, who published in 2013 her second graphic memoir entitled Are You my Mother? A comic drama. In the graphic memoir she recreates memories of the relationship with her mother inviting the readers to perceive this profound relationship through her work. Therefore, this work aims to analyze how the artist represents the experience of sexuality while recreating the memories of mother-daughter relation within the mobilization of visual and verbal resources. To analyze the mobilization of visual and verbal modes, we used as the theoretical framework the theoretical-instrumental publication The Grammar of Visual Design (GVD), developed by Kress and Leeuwen (2006). During the analysis, we move through the three metafunctions of language proposed by the authors: the narrative metafunction, the interactive metafunction, and the compositional metafunction. Regarding the discussion about the experience of sexuality, we took the theoretical concepts proposed by the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (1967) and published in the book O Segundo Sexo: A Experiência Vivida, selected in a correlated reading based on the main themes of this analysis: motherdaughter: object-love, the social experience of sexuality, church and melancholy, and mutual cathexis. The results reveal the mobilization of visual resources to represent sexuality correlated with the mother-daughter relation, indicating the deep-felt power of this bond in the subjective construction of sexuality and the effect on interpersonal and romantic relationships. In this sense, we highlight the influence of a hegemonic and heterosexual expectation about gender and sexuality in the socio-cultural perception of lesbianity. The impact of religious thoughts on the self-perception of identity and expression of sexuality. The charges of psychic and libidinal energy that penetrate the relationship between the child and the maternal figure, influencing the development of autonomous existence, identity and sexuality.