BELONGING AND ARTIFICIALITY: The expressiveness of neon colors in Brazilian queer cinema during the 2010s
Visual culture. Cinema. Aesthetic experience. Neon. Queer Cinema.
Discussions about gender and sexuality in contemporary Brazilian cinema in recent decades have been expanded through queer perspectives. In addition to this study following this trend, it is noted that the materialization of queer in Brazilian films in the 2010s is accompanied by the presence of aesthetic and stylistic manifestations of artifice beyond camp, such as the constant appearance of colors and neon lights. To understand these connections, initially, it elaborates on queer theory, seeking to understand the categorization of this cinema, drawing an overview of the historicity of the term queer and its political propositions. Then, it elaborates more carefully on
cinematographic language, sensoriality and queer spectatorship, reaching aesthetic examples that build the understanding of neon as an element of differentiation and identification of queer subjects. Finally, for the application and argumentation of this phenomenon, film analyzes are developed linking the manifestations of neon with the queer presence in the narratives of the films Neon Bull (2015, Gabriel Mascaro) and Hard Paint (2018, Filipe Matzembacher and Márcio Reolon).