A série 3% da Netflix como distopia crítica: Uma breve análise do protagonismo feminino

 A série 3% da Netflix, desenvolvida ao longo de quatro temporadas (2016-2020), capta a ideia da “distopia crítica” descrita por Tom Moylan no seu estudo, Scraps of the Untainted Sky (2000). De acordo com Moylan, a distopia crítica apresenta, entre outras características, uma perspectiva feminista, a ilusão de um mundo controlado, a possibilidade de ação coletiva, uma preocupação ambientalista e um final aberto (189-194), todos evidentes na série distópica da Netflix. Além de exemplificar o protagonismo feminino, a série de 3% inclui temas centrais da realidade brasileira de raça e de classe que enriquecem sua crítica social. Ora feminista, ora feminina, a série 3% oferece um leque de vivências de gênero e feminilidade atravessadas por experiências diversas, as quais se prestam à questões de interseccionalidade de teóricas como Kimberlé Crenshaw e Djamila Ribeiro.         &nbsp

SIMIOS, CIBORGUES Y REPTILES: LA OVIPARIDAD EN OBRAS DE ESCRITORAS LATINOAMERICANAS DE CIENCIA FICCIÓN Y FANTASÍA

La ciencia ficción en América Latina. Aproximaciones teóricas al imaginario de la experimentación cultural

Spectacular horizons: the birth of science fiction film, television, and radio, 1900-1959

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Eating the Past: Proto-Zombies in Brazilian Fiction 1900-1955

Taking Oswald de Andrade’s 1928 “Manifesto antropófago” [Cannibalist Manifesto] as a point of departure, this article analyzes how zombies in Brazilian literature from 1900 to 1955 represent a kind of cultural cannibalism, consuming bodies as a way of resisting hegemonic power, oblivion and marginalization. Zombies variously represent rural inhabitants, modern consumers, prostitutes and hustlers who often become invisible, faceless, and voiceless, symbolizing the historical silencing of subalterns or “cannibals.” Several Brazilian short stories and legends from the first half of the twentieth century serve to illustrate the cultural cannibalism of the proto-zombie: Lima Barreto’s “A Nova Califórnia” (1910), Monteiro Lobato’s “Café, café” (1900), Murilo Rubião’s “O pirotécnico Zacarias” (1943), Carlos Drummond de Andrade’s “Flor, moça, telefone” (1951), Gilberto Freyre’s “Boca-de-ouro” (1955) and its re-interpretation in comic-book form by Roberta Cirne. Written by canonical authors, these stories have traditionally been considered to be parables condemning greed, horror or madness, yet if we examine them more closely, we discover that they involve the living dead and the contagion characteristic of zombies. I argue that Brazil’s proto-zombies represent these groups’ resistance to collective oblivion as they fall victim to the transition from a rural, agricultural-based economy to an urban consumer society

The Amazon in Brazilian Speculative Fiction: Utopia and Trauma

There are two key moments when the Amazon is used as the setting for Brazilian science fiction, both during periods of dictatorship in the twentieth century. The first takes place during the authoritarian government of Getúlio Vargas (1930-1945), the second after the decades-long push for modernization and technological change imposed by the military government from 1964 to 1985. My study shows that, for writers of the first half of the twentieth century, the Amazon is a place of adventure, a setting for stories whose imaginative events ignore the region’s anthropology, history and indigenous cultures. Among the early Brazilian Amazonian adventure fiction novels studied are A filha do Inca (1930) and Kalum (1936), both by modernist Menotti Del Picchia, and two works by science fiction writer Jerônymo Monteiro, O irmão do diabo (1937) and A cidade perdida (1948). In contrast, authors writing between 1983 and 2008 portray dystopian outcomes for the local populations and the environment. I discuss the presence of the monstrous in three such novels: mainstream writer Marcio Souza’s allegorical science fiction novel, A ordem do dia (1983), Ivanir Calado’s tale of dark fantasy Mãe do sonho (1990) and finally Roberto de Sousa Causo’s novella of alien invasion O par (2008). In other words, contemporary authors choose to depict traumatic events and to focus on the symbolism of the Amazon as “virgin territory,” a term that engages the imagery of rape, vampirism, and psychological and bodily invasion, highlighting the consequences of dictatorship and modernization

Resistant Female Cyborgs in Brazil

In her oft-cited “A Cyborg Manifesto,” Donna Haraway conceptualizes the cyborg as a feminist possibility, emphasizing the need for a self-created, self-engendered female (150). In How We Became Posthuman (1999), N. Katherine Hayles examines the development of cybernetic theory from the 1940s to the present, linking its history to portrayals of cyborgs and artificial intelligence in science fiction. I argue that the combination of change and tradition embodied by Brazilian cyborgs must be understood within the history and paradigms of Latin American culture and its ambivalent attitudes towards modernity. To understand Brazil’s female cyborgs, I apply Bolívar Echeverría’s concept of the Latin American “baroque ethos,” which acts a form of resistance to capitalism in the works by Caio Fernando Abreu, Roberto de Sousa Causo and João Paulo Cuenca, whose female cyborgs question or refute societal expectations, while searching for acceptance in romantic partnerships or family structures. The presence of female cyborgs in Brazil during distinct moments of economic and technological change—from the period of the military dictatorship and state sponsored industrialization in the 1970s to the contemporary digital global economy in the 2000s—illustrates how cyborg body functions as feminized avatars of labor, mourning, survival and resistance