Minha vida, meus heróis: o Homem de Ferro como expressão ético-estética na relação com o discurso das habilidades e competências na Base Nacional Comum Curricular

Abstract

This study is part of the Educational Policies Research Line of the Postgraduate Program in Education at the Federal University of the Southern Frontier (UFFS) and aims to understand the layers of meaning that constitute the discourse of heroification, present in the Iron Man films, and how they reflect and refract within the educational sphere. To build an understanding of this general objective, four specific objectives are presented: i. To outline an analytical panorama of the hero/superhero myth and how it has been constituted as an ethical- aesthetic discourse, sometimes hegemonic, throughout human history; ii. To examine the meanings attributed to the ethical-aesthetic personifications of the hero/superhero myth in discursive expressions within the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU); iii. To discuss aspects of the ideological basis of the discourse of skills and competencies present in the BNCC; iv. To compare the discourse of the hero-superhero with the discourse of skills and competencies to investigate possible reflections and refractions in the materiality of the BNCC and in the films Iron Man (2008), Iron Man 2 (2010), Iron Man 3 (2013), and The Avengers (2012). The study can be characterized as analytical-interpretive, guided by the contributions of Bakhtin and the Circle. By examining two different spheres of human activity – the cinematographic sphere and the sphere of educational policies – and comparing them, I aimed to understand the discursive movements that shape the heroification in the ideologies of life in a particular society, at a specific time and place. As a methodological procedure, I employ comparison to achieve a broader and more interconnected understanding at the interface between the sphere of art, the sphere of life, and the sphere of education, which are intertwined in this research, with the discourse of heroification in cinema as the entry point. I listen to other voices and express my own in an unfinished dialogical movement. In the educational sphere (BNCC), the ideology of competencies has been used to confer prestige and distinctions, rendering social class contradictions invisible. One of the challenges of this study was to closely examine these materialities and how the discourse of heroification is constituted. Supported by Bakhtin (2010; 2011), Barthes (2018; 2022), Brait (2021), Volóchinov (2018), Ponzio (2021), Miotello (2018), Caracelli Scherma (2017), Maues (2021), Saviani (2008), Stan (2003), and Turati (2016), I conducted the investigative journey, from which I conclude that the skills and competencies that underpin and guide the discourse of heroification in the sphere of art also occur in the educational sphere. The study shows that the BNCC materializes a modulation of the right to education, converted into a right to essential learning, to be accessed through the acquisition of skills and competencies. These, as the literature demonstrates, represent a limited, restricted, and elementary package of useful-useless skills – a survival kit – for people’s most pressing everyday needs. In this sense, education ceases to fulfill its function of ensuring access to knowledge that can promote social inclusion and becomes an instrument of selection between the competent and the incompetent, further intensifying social exclusion.