Story of your life: a construção da personagem feminina em Arrival.

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to analyze how the character Louise, from the sci-fi movie Arrival, was built. In order to achieve this purpose, the study is based on the five characteristics proposed by Conrad (2018) that defined the first women to take part of the sci-fi movies. Thus, the specific objective is to make a comparison on the extent these characteristics still persist in this narrative of the 21st century. To do so the research is theoretically based on the assumptions of some authors about cinematographic adaptation, such as Hutcheon’s (2013) studies about the motivations to adapt, Mayer’s (2016) studies about proactive characters, Kac-Vergne’s ( 2016) research referring to feminine character in the sci-fi movie and Zinani ‘s (2006) study of the character as mother, among others authors and their assumptions concerning short narratives. One of the justifications is the recurrence of female characters whose participation is still below the masculine, even the cinema proposing that this has been changing. In order to reach the proposed objectives, the research is based on Berman’s (2007) studies of the hypertextual translation. Results indicate that, although the characteristics are associated with the first movies of science fiction, we can notice that in this narrative we still find traces considered standard of productions made at the beginning of the cinema of science fiction. However, the female character here is completely different from the women presented earlier. The proactive performance of the character is associated with the struggles waged during all these years by women whenever they search for space and recognition in the cinema dominated by patriarchy.