O imaginário sobre o sujeito brasileiro em episódios de “Os Simpsons”: uma análise discursiva

Abstract

This study aims to analyze, from the perspective of Materialist Discourse Analysis, the discursive functioning regarding the imaginary of the Brazilian subject in episodes of the animated series "The Simpsons." The research seeks to understand how the effects of meaning present in discourses about Brazilians contribute to the formation and perpetuation of cultural imaginaries concerning Brazilian national identity. The episode "Blame it on Lisa" (2002), in which Brazil is portrayed in a caricatured manner, serves as the primary corpus for analysis. Based on the concepts of Michel Pêcheux (1997) and Eni Orlandi (2015), the study examines how the meanings generated in the audiovisual text function to produce sense regarding the "Brazilian" subject. Our analysis reveals that the series, albeit ironically, reproduces images that echo throughout history, marked by perspectives that illustrate the imaginary of the Brazilian subject, thereby reinforcing hegemonic discourses about Brazil on an international scale. Through humorous elements, Brazil is portrayed as a nation that is simultaneously vibrant and dangerous, festive and unstable. Aspects such as soccer, carnival, dance, ginga, and sensuality are intertwined with elements like crime, urban poverty, social disintegration, and political corruption. This combination generates an effect of meaning that links Brazil to constant contradiction, as if the country were poised between aesthetic enchantment and structural collapse. Discourse Analysis enables the understanding that these representations are not neutral: they are embedded in ideological formations that, throughout history, have shaped the perception of the Brazilian imaginary as exotic to foreign eyes