Super-heroína (en)cena: representatividade e representações sociais das mulheres e das super-heroínas

Abstract

Since cinema presents itself as a form of language and a source of (de) construction of social representations, this dissertation had as main objective to analyse social representations about: a) women in general; b) superheroines; c) men in general and d) superheroes, taking into account whether elements of the sexual division of roles emerge in these representational contents and whether taking a stand against gender equality is affected. For this, two studies were carried out presented in article format. In the first study, 206 university students participated, 57.3% women, with an average age of 20 years, who answered about the agreement with the current rise of female protagonists in superhero films, their justification for the positioning and the questionnaire sociodemographic. The results showed that there is an agreement of 95.6% of the participants in face of the rise of female protagonists in these films, but the justifications differed based on the anchoring of the participants' gender. They formed two dendrograms of five classes each, the justifications of women being organized in “Representativeness matters”, “Films and reality”, “Potential of representation”, “Visibility, occupation and cinema” and “Participation with meaning”, while those of men organized in “Yes for the superheroines”, “I agree, but with reservations”, “Why not?”, “Female ascension” and “Cinema and feminism”. In general, women bring a possibility of reframing the figure of women in the social imaginary through the characters of superheroines, while men bring more reservations to their participation, as well as their quality. In both groups, the speeches refer to issues such as feminism and representativeness, but under ambivalent perspectives. In the second study, 145 university students participated, 51% men, with an average age of 20 years, who answered the Free Word Association Technique regarding the inducing stimuli “woman”, “superheroine”, “man” and “superhero”. The responses were divided into eight banks according to the respondent's gender and submitted to prototypical analysis made with the aid of the IRAMUTEQ software. The results showed that the social representations of women and men are structured in different ways based on the gender of the participant, while the social representation of the superhero brings a hegemonic image, that is, shared in a similar way by both groups, and it is discussed about the social representation of the superheroine being a non-autonomous representation, that is, encompassed by that of the woman. Thus, it is concluded that the guidelines raised by feminist movements are becoming increasingly present in daily life, but, on the other hand, some more conservative groups will be interested in maintaining an unequal social structure and will feel threatened by the rise of minority groups. In this interface between these groups, we can have cinema as an ally for the construction of more egalitarian social representations, which help to make stereotypes and gender roles more flexible, in deconstructing or reinforcing machismo and sexism.