Queering Moby Dick La pornografía como estrategia política en João Pedro Vale y Nuno Alexandre Ferreira

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Published: 2024-07-31
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21134/mhjournal.v15i.2096
Keywords:
João Pedro Vale y Nuno Alexandre Ferreira, art, pornography, same sex marriage, Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick

Main Article Content

Bruno Marques
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9693-0090 (unauthenticated)
Ana Catarina Caldeira
ICNOVA (NOVA Institute of Communication), NOVA University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5417-3324 (unauthenticated)

Abstract

As same sex marriage emerged at centre of the social and political debate in Portugal, the film Hero, Captain, and Stranger (2009), by João Pedro Vale (JPV) and Nuno Alexandre Ferreira (NAF), intersected art, identity politics and pornography in a manner hitherto unseen in Portugal. A homoerotic adaptation of Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, the film confronts a series of aesthetical and political taboos (and prejudices) which have never been analysed in depth despite their topicality. Initially conceived to survey the references to Portuguese seaman from Massachusetts in Herman Melville’s novel, the project by JPV and NAF is an irreverent provocation to a ‘semi-peripheral’ milieu, which still denied juridical recognition of homosexual marriage thirty-five years after the demise of the dictatorial regime (1926-1974).Basing itself on the overcoming of the incompatibility between art and pornography, and the specific nexus between the concept of democratic eros and the model of a more egalitarian gay pornography, this article will address the following questions: what are the political implications of de-metaphorizing homoerotic sexuality in the Great American Novel? And how does gay pornography serve this affirmative purpose?

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Article Details

Issue

Vol. 15 (2024)

Section

MON. Communication and contemporary queer cinema: contents, narratives, aesthetics.
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Author Biographies

Bruno Marques

Bruno Marques is a Full Researcher at the Institute of Art History (NOVA FCSH), Portugal, where he is currently Board Member and coordinates the research group CASt - Contemporary Art Studies and the cluster 'Photography and Film Studies'. Lecturer at ISCE (2010/15) and ESAD.CR (2014), and between 2016 and 2019 invited Assistant Professor at NOVA FCSH's Art History Department, where he taught an undergraduate class in contemporary art and collaborated with the PhD program in Art History. He also part of the teaching team of the I Postgraduate Course in Human Sexuality (Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon). Curated several exhibitions, such as Julião Sarmento: film screening (King's College, 2019), Reis, Damas e Valetes (São Roque, 2020) or Vasco Araújo: LIEBESTOD (Sismógrafo, 2021); and was the winner of the New Initiative Curators in 2008. He is the author of the books Mulheres do Século XVIII. Os Retratos [Women of the Eighteenth Century. The Portraits] (2006) and Cartas fora do Baralho: os retratos imaginados de Costa Pinheiro [Cards out of the deck: the imagined portraits of Costa Pinheiro] (2020). He is coordinator of the volumes Dandelions: Prompting the participation in the arts [vol.2] (2023), Portrait Talks (2023), Sobre Julião Sarmento [On Julião Sarmento] (2012) and Arte & Erotismo [Art & Eroticism] (2012). He published several articles in peer-reviewed high-ranking journals (Photographies, Philosophy of Photography, RIHA Journal, Iberic@l, Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts, Diálogos, Quintana, MODOS, Estudos Ibero-Americanos), chapters in academic and international publishers (such as Routledge, De Gruyter, Editions Hispaniques, CIS.NOVA, ISCTE, CECL/UNYLEYA), and texts in exhibitions catalogues edited by major museums (F. Caja Burgos, F. C. Gulbenkian, Culturgest, CIAJG). Among others projects, he co-edited the special issues 'Sex and censorship in art' (RHA, 2020) and 'Banned Images: censorship and artistic creation in the contemporary Iberian space' (Diálogos, 2022). Principal investigator of the funded seed projects 'Gender Confessions. Self-portraits of Portuguese women artists and writers in the post-April 25th period' (2022/23; IHA/FCT) and 'Narratives of the Self between the public and the private: books by women artists in the Art Library Collection of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation' (2023/24; IHA/FCT). Research member of the funded projects: 'DIGITAL.SELF PORTRAITS. Self-portrait as a Job Interview' (2023, ICNOVA), 'Lisbon her-stories: counter-monuments for womens visibility' (2023; IHA/FCT), 'Dandelions' (2021/23, EEA Grants), 'Printed Photography: Image and Propaganda in Portugal' (2016-2019, FCT). He coorganised several international congresses such as Portuguese Performance Art (Museu Col. Berardo, 2016), Performance, Affectivity, Intimacy (Culturgest, 2019), Julião Sarmento: On the rise of desire (National Museum of Contemporary Art, 2021); Aurélia de Souza. Women Artists at the turn of the 20th century (National Museum Soares dos Reis, 2023), the 2 editions of the biennial symposium Banned Images, 2021 (Lisbon) and 2022 (Alcalá) -, and was an invited speaker at several international universities - namely, the Univ. of Pisa (2022), Sorbonne Nouvelle (2022); Complutense (2022), Clermont Auvergne (2021), Genève (2020), Granada (2019), and King's College (2018). In the scope of a scholarship (2012/3, IHA/CML), he participated in a research project that studied the archive of Quadrum Gallery, having subsequently co-organized an on-line database on experimental art, which led to a publication on the relationship between testimonials and documents in Performance Art. He wrote the script for the documentaries 'Henrique Franco' (2015), 'Francisco Franco' (2016), and 'Gonçalo Zarco Statue' (2017).

https://fcsh-unl.academia.edu/BrunoMarques

Ana Catarina Caldeira , ICNOVA (NOVA Institute of Communication), NOVA University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

Ana Catarina Caldeira (1982) completed her Bachelor’s Degree in Communication and Culture Sciences (2004) and afterwards took a Professional Accreditation Course at CENJOR - Professional Education Centre for Journalists, in order to acquire technical and theoretical knowledge about photojournalism. After several years of work as a freelance journalist and different archives and documentation centres, she decided to continue her academic studies by applying for her Master’s degree in Journalism, Politics and Contemporary History at Lusófona University of Humanities and Technologies. She concluded her Master’s degree (2015) with the dissertation: “The origin of Portuguese photojournalism: a comparative analysis between “Diário de Notícias” and “O Século”, from 1900 to 1926.” Currently as a PhD student in Communication Sciences - Communication and Language at FCSH/UNL, she is developing a thesis entitled "The politics of image: the example of Censorship in Photojournalism during the New State Regime". At present she belongs to the ICNOVA (NOVA Institute of Communication), and to the Observatory in Visual Studies and Media Archaeology.

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5417-3324

 

How to Cite

Marques, B., & Catarina Caldeira , A. (2024). Queering Moby Dick: La pornografía como estrategia política en João Pedro Vale y Nuno Alexandre Ferreira. Miguel Hernandez Communication Journal, 15, 113-137. https://doi.org/10.21134/mhjournal.v15i.2096

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Objetos artísticos, tecnológicos y culturales

João Pedro Vale and Nuno Alexandre Ferreira, Hero, Captain and Stranger, 2009. Video, (B/W, sound, 68 min.). Variable dimensions. Written and Directed by João Pedro Vale and Nuno Alexandre Ferreira. With: Anton Dickson, Tecco Ribeiro, Drako and Thomas McKean. Participation: João dos Santos Martins, Rui Ferreira, Carlos Almeida, Bruno Abreu, André E. Teodósio, Nuno Alexandre Ferreira, João Pedro Vale, Pedro Rodrigues, Luis Royal, Ynaie Dawson, Ana Pérez-Quiroga, Miguel Faro and Tiago Borges. Music: Pedro Gonçalves. Cinematography: Pedro Diniz Reis. Poster: Sylvia Gruber.

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