Sentidos das masculinidades em vídeos do canal do YouTube Porta dos Fundos

Abstract

This master's thesis aims to investigate the construction of codes and meanings related to masculinities present in videos from the YouTube channel Porta dos Fundos. The main concepts that underpin the study are: cyberculture, heteronormativity, and masculinities understood through gender performativity. Online cartography, grounded in post-structuralist approaches, was the methodology adopted to track the informational flow created/posts in one of the largest YouTube channels in Brazil. My cartographic journey compiled 10 videos from the Porta dos Fundos channel published in 2020 and 2021, which focus on issues related to masculinities. The videos were transcribed, and the statements were categorized into five lines of meaning: 1) toxic masculinity, 2) deconstructed man, 3) dissident masculinities, 4) penis size, and 5) fatherhood. The statements were analyzed through the theoretical framework of language and gender performativity. Among the findings of the dissertation, I highlight that toxic masculinity was understood as performances of masculinity in which the reiteration of the norm appears more prominently than its displacements. By comically addressing normative masculinity through parody, one potential performative effect may be the tensioning of the supposed stable ideal of masculinity. By "deconstructed man," I refer to the performances of masculinity of heterosexual men who seek to displace the norm in contrast to its reiterations. Although we can observe some advancements in these performances of masculinity, it is still possible to see the constant negotiation of these subjects with (hetero)normative aspects. Dissident masculinities appeared through subjects who perform their sexuality in a non-heterosexual manner. Whereas humor was once used in cultural productions to mock these subjects, in the analyzed videos, they emerge as legitimate possibilities. Penis size was analyzed as a signifier of the masculinity of these subjects, and I observed that the larger the penis, the greater the masculinity attributed to these individuals. Finally, the meanings of fatherhood present in the videos were analyzed. It became evident how much the patriarchal model of bourgeois family still influences traditional conceptions of fatherhood, which align with the normative model of masculinity. I concluded the text by proposing a consideration of an inside-out education that destabilizes heteronormativity, promoting a multiplicity of ways to understand the constitution of masculinities.