Imagens Persuasivas:

Masculinidade e autoritarismo na cena política contemporânea

Abstract

This paper discusses the representation of virile masculinity in contemporary politics, and, particularly, the masculinist aesthetics bound to (far) right and, broadly speaking, to authoritarianism. The analysis focalizes on scenes and pictures, spread by mass and social media, where the association between politics and the praise for masculinist aesthetics is synthesized either in the figure of a head of state or his supporters. The analyzed images were produced in Brazil and in the USA between 2018 and 2021. Both by comparing them and by analyzing them separately, it becomes possible to show how, through a syncretic aesthetics, a masculinist international framework has been produced serving as a base for different political groups. Those visual resources are strategically conceived through heterogeneous references ranging from ancient stereotypes to emblematic images of contemporary masculinity. Those images, because of their high incidence in political scenes, can be understood as part of an anti-gender campaign in countries of the global South and North. Those representations, at the same time, foster a neo-fascist view in politics and mean a male chauvinist resented answer to the progressive advance of social gains brought in the last decades by feminist struggle and social movements bound to dissident gender and sexual identities.