Corpo, discursos e carnaval: imagens do corpo feminino no desfile de escolas de samba do carnaval carioca

Abstract

This research proposes a discursive analysis of the meanings that are constructed for the female body in the images of parades from Rio de Janeiro s samba schools during the Carnival holiday as they are produced and broadcasted by media discourse. We comprehend that the body is a symbolic materiality that may have different meanings such as a feminine type, which we are going to explore in this research, by its visibility and the injunction in/by discourse. The analysis brings some media images produced by the magazine entitled Manchete and by Rede Globo TV channel on Brazilian Carnival, especially the parades of Rio de Janeiro s samba schools. These images help create an imaginary female body which tends to be taken as a national stereotype in some discourses. We understand that there are different ways to speak of the body throughout the History of mankind via the subjective identifications in different discourses, such as the discourse of Brazilian Carnival itself, as well as there are diverse interpersonal relationships that are established from the presence or absence of the body, at the level that is optically apprehensible. Thereby, we believe that (1) the images conveyed by some medias about the female body, especially in the parades of samba schools of Rio de Janeiro city, produce some feminine sense by the paraphrastic effect of the images, both for the Brazilian carnival and for a Brazilianness sense; and (2) these body images are snippets constituted by discourses which work to regularize the body types that may (discursively) represent the parades of samba schools in Carnival. The analysis (3) also points out to the idea of an enunciative regularity of/in the images, because the language practices enable the docilization, regularization and organization of women bodies framed as a certain sense of female in the images. Therefore, this enunciative regularity of/in the images produces senses that approximate the Brazilian Carnival party of a female corporeality sense.