Mediação e afeto nas narrativas visuais fluidas: Female Gaze em Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel)

Abstract

This thesis takes as its starting point the theory of female gaze, a cinematic theory by Joey Soloway (2016), which is based on the premise that female content creators develop female characters based on their own experiences. As a general objective, this research aims to investigate how the behavior of female gaze (2016) contributes to the understanding of the processes of signification and emotional engagement in comic books, taking the origin story of Kamala Khan as the object of study. Divided into three acts, the theory explores differentiated narrative structures based on the female experience. This study extends this approach to comic books, analyzing the titles “No Normal” and “Generation Why” of Ms Marvel (2014), created by Sana Amanat and G. Willow Wilson, which narrate the origin of Kamala Khan, a 16-year-old American Pakistani Muslim superheroine. The research is based on authors such as Richard Grusin, Fátima Regis, Brian Massumi, Francisco Varela and Sara Ahmed to mobilize concepts about affect, emotion and mediation, seeking to understand how affects are mediated in comic books. Other theoretical references include Isabella Anchieta (2014), to explore the process of identification through images; Donna Haraway (1994), José Gil (2006) and Ieda Tucherman (2004), to reflect on fear and the monstrous body; and Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí (1997), to analyze the decolonial characteristics of the character. The methodology starts from the critical application of the concept of female gaze developed by Soloway (2016), structured by the acts: (1) “feeling seeing”, (2) “showing how it feels to be the object of the gaze” and (3) “returning the gaze”, focusing on the identification of these acts in the narrative and the analysis of the emerging mediations and affects. The results demonstrate that the acts described by Soloway (2016) are observable and adaptable to the comics medium, evidencing their applicability and reinforcing how female subjectivity shapes both narrative creation and reception