Monstros que educam e pouco assustam : diferença e normalização em divertidas animações.

Abstract

Based on a Cultural Studies approach and inspired by Foucault’s conceptual scheme, this work analyses a set of animated movies produced between 2001 and 2013. The research aims to understand how differences are shown the movies and how animations shape the ways they can be understood. The study focused on the analysis of five animations selected according to the criterion of monstrosity: "Monster High" (episode "Thirteen Wishes", 2013), “Hotel Transylvania” (2013), “Monsters, Inc.”(2001), "A Monster in Paris "(2011) and" Frankenweenie "(2012).It sought to identify the way monsters and humans are conceived and represented in the plot of the animations, hence discussing the processes of normalization of differences. The theoretical framework that guided this research was based on authors inspired by the Cultural Studies field of analysis, and discussed those concepts at the light of Foucault’s contributions. The findings brought to light narratives which are built on territorialized spaces, developed through risky adventures and constant border crossing. The rather educative and hardly scary monsters studied in this work suggest that monsters are not outside human’s world, but inside its limits. In this perspective, the limit is neither inside nor outside, neither internal nor external - it is a frontier. This notion of limit challenges both the way otherness is conceived and the understanding of may have of Oneself and the Other.