Realismo Mágico no fim do mundo: representação das mudanças climáticas globais no filme "Beasts of the southern wild"

Abstract

Climate change is a complex phenomenon, whose blurry spatial and temporal dimensions make it a difficult topic to communicate or grasp in its entirety. With this in mind, this work aims to investigate the use of realism and magical realism in the film “Beasts of the Southern Wild”, to discuss how the tools of fictional cinema can be used in an attempt to better “materialize” the phenomenon of global warming in the viewer’s mind. Using the theoretical framework of an aristotelian-based poetics of cinema and literature reviews on the field of ecocriticism, climate fiction and the construction of fictional universes, this work undertakes an analysis focusing on the effects projected in the text of the film, and uses this analysis to develop a discussion on the role of cinema in communicating global warming. It argues that “Beasts of the Southern Wild” presents some good examples of how the imaginative potential of cinema can be used in this sense, both in more “realistic” and “fantastic” ways, but with a concern of not reducing a work of art to a piece of scientific communication.