Subterfúgio e subversão: o fantástico no romance O Labirinto do Fauno (2019) e sua relação com a protagonista Ofélia.

Abstract

Guillermo del Toro is one of the most renowned directors of fantasy and horror cinema, with one of his most prestigious works being Pan's Labyrinth (2006), which won three Oscars. The genius of its plot, among other factors, is due above all to the interweaving of historical reality with fantasy. Thirteen years after its release, the feature film was adapted into a novel by Cornelia Funke, proving its relevance and relevance. The 2019 novel provides an expansion of the film's universe, both horizontally, through the addition of new material, and vertically, through the subjective deepening of the characters facilitated by the genre. In our analysis, we focus on this last point, specifically, on the protagonist Ophelia. Therefore, we chose as the general objective of our research to analyze the forms of intervention of the fantastic and their impact on the protagonist in the novel Pan's Labyrinth (Del Toro and Funke, 2019). As specific objectives, we list a) investigating the contrasts and similarities between the planes of reality and fantasy and b) analyzing the protagonist's subjectivity(ies) in the face of the dichotomous planes that permeate her. Among the theoretical subsidies used for this, we highlight the studies on fairy tales by Coelho (1987; 2012), as well as the historical path traced by Darnton (1986) from pre-modern Europe to the Brothers Grimm; and two distinct conceptions of fantasy literature, namely the more traditional and formalist perspective of Todorov (1970) and the revisiting of this from an updated perspective carried out by Roas (2014). In this journey, we realize that the planes of reality and fantasy — also called, respectively, Surface and Underground Kingdom — are complementary insofar as they are built on their contrasts, and, furthermore, that, although structured based on distinct narrative strategies, they have several points of tangency. The protagonist Ophelia, who acts as a “bridge” between these two worlds, finds herself divided between them into two personas, with Ophelia being her identity corresponding to the Surface, and Moanna that of the Underground Kingdom. Thus, on the one hand, the Underground Kingdom can be seen as an alternative for Ophelia to escape the suffering that her life represents, a subterfuge — at certain points, one realizes that the narrative takes on an escapist tone, making the reader doubt even its veracity. On the other hand, it is through it that Ophelia faces her fear of the unknown and subverts the labels that are given to her by the adults around her. In short, the fantastic in Pan's Labyrinth (2019) is, above all, a space where the protagonist comes into conflict with her perception of reality and herself.