Offensive affects

the polemic surrounding the kiss in the Avengers comic at the 19th Rio de Janeiro Biennial Book Fair

Abstract

In this text, we will analyze the controversy surrounding the homoaffective kiss in the comic book Avengers: The Children's Crusade during the XIX Rio de Janeiro International Book Biennial, held from August 30 to September 8, 2019. In response to the sale of children's and young adult material at the Biennial, the then mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Marcelo Crivella (Republicanos), requested that the Municipal Secretariat for Public Order of Rio de Janeiro collect it. Considering this polemic event, in the first section, we will discuss the theoretical and methodological assumptions of Dialogical Argumentation Analysis (ADA), proposed by Nascimento (2018). In the second, we will analyze the historical trajectory of Marvel publications involving the themes of gender and sexuality and a dialogue between the characters Teddy and Billy in order to reconstruct the internal or constitutive polemic of the comic book. In the third, we will evaluate the resignification promoted by this Graphic Novel of the historical event that had become known as The Children's Crusade, in the 13th century. In the fourth, we will investigate the establishment of the external polemic based on six posts by Mayor Crivella in an attempt to legitimize his actions. In conclusion, on the one hand, we propose that the Avengers comic book dialogically refers to the trend in recent decades of Marvel itself increasing gender representation among its fictional characters, and on the other, that Crivella's actions aims to reinforce his dialogue with his conservative electorate, promoting moral panic by confusing gender representation with encouraging promiscuity.