Beautiful Male Bodies: Gay and Male Homoerotic Relationships in Caio Fernando Abreu's Morangos Mofados
2015; CIESPAL; Volume: 44; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2327-4247
Autores Tópico(s)Gender, Sexuality, and Education
ResumoThe works of the Brazilian writer Caio Fernando Abreu (1948-96) deal with a variety of topics, amongst which issues of love, hate, identity, truncated relationships, AIDS, and homophobia play a major role. This essay focuses on how the short stories Terqa-feira gorda and Aqueles dois, from Morangos mofados (1982), portray gay and male homoerotic relationships. Regarding the first short story, I argue that it promotes positive affects towards the main characters and attacks homophobia by showing how harmonic, beautiful, and genuine their relationship is. For the second short story, I propose that the main characters' harmonic and homoerotic relationship questions the heterosexual agreement of homosociality. In Abreu's short stories, gay and homoerotic relationships challenge hegemonic discourses and heteronormativity. Additionally, my analysis contends that these texts construct politics of desire based on harmony and on positive affects that expose and attack homophobia and homofear. These politics of desire, although based on a traditional view of male bodies, are part of Abreu's agenda of promoting queer relationships by showing them as beautiful and opposing them to the ugly homophobia of his Brazilian context. In order to carry out this examination, I first establish the theoretical frame that informs the study of homophobia, homofear, and affects; second, I analyze the harmonic similarities between both short stories and I define homoeroticism; third, I discuss how beautiful male bodies and homophobic bodies and voices are narratively displaced in the texts and, lastly, I elaborate on the politics of desire proposed by both texts. In Between Men, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick studies the presence of homosocial desire in the English literary canon, as well as the homophobia that has permeated it. This critic contends that homophobia is a fear and hatred of homosexuality (1). (1) Nonetheless, Sedgwick recognizes that homophobia as we experience it has not always existed, which means that it is socially constructed, historically contingent, and subject to change. As a matter of fact, according to Byrne Fone, in by 1975 homophobia came to signify an extreme rage and fear of homosexuality (5). This rage and hatred came from the idea that gay, lesbian, bi, and trans practices, desires, identities, and sexualities, disrupt the order of things. This disruption distresses legal, social, political, ethical, and economic areas, as well as moral values and norms. Regarding the order of these areas, Judith Butler, in Gender Trouble, argues that hegemonic ideologies have created norms and rules that aim to repeat themselves in order to project a stable image of the world. In order for these ideologies to succeed, this constructed and stable image of the world has to seem natural and logical. Thus, hegemonic ideologies present an imposed and artificial world that pretends to be natural. This natural feature is what Butler describes as a natural(lized) order (xxii-iv). In this sense, because of the disruption of the natural(ized) order that gay, lesbian, bi, and trans relationships and sexuality bring, homophobia cannot be limited to a dislike or hatred-phobia-feeling. Furthermore, as Gregory Herek discusses in homophobia involves group conflicts, and it has been used to benefit a hegemonic group (553). Because of this complexity, homophobia extends beyond the area of gender discrimination. As Sedgwick notes, homophobia can be related to fear, as well as to a desire for power, privilege, and material goods (219). Another issue to consider when referring to homophobia is the creation of the idea of manhood. Referring to it in the context of the U.S. in Masculinity as Homophobia, Michael S. Kimmel argues that the great secret is that men are afraid of other men because they constantly have to compare themselves to other men (277). Based on this argument, two requirements of manhood-competition and jealousy-can have a correlation to homophobia, as male bodies are compared, envied and/or rejected. …
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