The presence of absence in the American West
Palabras clave:
Brokeback Mountain, The Laramie Project, Theatrical palimpsestResumen
The American West has long been depicted by the media as a place for strong, heterosexual cowboys, but theatre presents a different view of it. Based on a qualitative-comparative approach (Denzin; Lincoln, 2006), this paper demonstrates how theatre is a space for the re-creation of different perspectives on homophobic violence in The Laramie Project (Kaufman, 2000) and Brokeback Mountain (Robinson, 2023). To this end, the concept of a palimpsest (Hellier-Tinoco, 2019) is applied to theatre to understand how past events impact the present. In terms of relevance, it is understood that the theatre unveils the challenges faced by the queer community in the American West. As a result, both plays re-use homophobic violence (a real-life event and a fictional one) to construct the present American West. While queer locals become lonely and afraid of becoming victims, conservative locals reinforce their prejudice based on religious and moral beliefs.
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O texto também conta com uma imagem intitulada The Bronte Sisters (óleo sobre tela), pertencente à National Portrait Gallery, de Londres, catalogada sob número NPG 1725.
