Espelho, espelho meu: um retrato da identidade nacional e pertencimento nos quadrinhos da Marvel Comics

Abstract

Comic heroes are flying high. Cinema and TV series are two formats where you can find many of your favorite characters. However, the pages in which they have been published since 1938 continue to be the most relevant media in their time due to the characteristic of being a monthly magazine. With a bigger space to ask deeper questions, these comics, besides being entertaining, also paint a portrait of the society that surrounds them and problematize its customs. Focusing on this characteristic of the comics and using the nationalist hero Captain America as the main character of this analysis, this work aims to examine how the comics discuss and problematize the cultural issues on national identity and belonging; how the hero created almost 75 years ago to represent the society and to portray the American national identity, Captain America s case, can keep this job throughout this period; how it is possible for the character to represent a nation that changes faster or slower during the course of the time; how a nationalist hero fights the crisis that causes the rupture of the concept of nation in the contemporary world and survives it (if he does so); and how the comics, and its new characters or old ones in a new leading role, adapt to this new reality so they can keep relevant the discussions that have always permeated the media. To achieve these goals, this analysis uses the theoretical support of authors like Eco (2011 [1964]) and Bauman (2013 [2011]) in the discussion of the role of the comics as a vehicle of culture. In relation to nationalism, nation and its narratives, this work is endorsed by Craig (2002), Barbour (2000), Said (2003), and others. The study is also based on the ideas of Hall (2005, 2009 [2003]), Toro (2010), García Canclini (2008), Almeida (2013) and Butler (2010) for the issues on identity presented in the comics of Captain America and the heroes that came after 2011. Throughout this work, the analysis uses the studies of various scholars on comics such as Santiago García (2012), Knowles (2008), Dittmer (2013) and Dalton (2011) to establish a relationship between the comics and questions from Literature and Cultural Studies. It is possible to notice, thus far, that the nationalist hero constantly adapts himself to the never-ending changes of the narrative of the nation and contributes to increase the diversity in the representation of the American society. Nowadays, this multiculturalism is embraced by highlighting new heroic identities that appeared after 2011 and others created by the fragmentation of the nationalist hero, all of them more aligned with the current times and that look on the cultural diversity of the United States