“Dilma is ugly!”: Manly insult and cordial humor in the aesthetic constitution of the “good citizen”

Abstract

The resurgence of the far right in Brazil has brought issues related to traditionalist values of the motherland and family into discussion, which were referenced in the protests in favor of the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff. Our objective is to analyze how these values were performed in these manifestations and to point out the historical thread to which they adhere and continue. We will analyze three images of the protests, which contain virulent attacks on the government and person of Rousseff and the Workers Party. Our hypothesis is that these imaginaries, tributaries of traditionalist notions of Brazilianness, were translated through a certain performance of conservative patriotism, bringing together elements recognizable to most Brazilians. This performance set the tone for the protests, and therein resides its persuasive force before a large part of the population. Our theoretical-methodological contribution is based on the approaches of Freyre and Buarque de Holanda (2013; 1995) on the national formation of Brazil and on the propositions of Querè and Bazcko (2005; 1985), who claim that the constitution of the imaginaries in contemporaneity it takes place from within the media apparatus. In our analysis, after observing the recurrence of social representations referring to virility and patriarchy in the imagination of the far right, we venture observations on the micropolitical impact of the institutional crisis of democracy, which has class resentment as one of its fundamental drivers.