Who’s Afraid of Boi Neon? Fertilizing Utopias in the Sertão

Profound anxieties around gender, couplehood and reproduction, as they stand today, can be felt the world over. Simultaneously a swing towards the political right and the so-called culture wars have escalated, curtailing abortion and LGBTQIA+ rights. The work of Brazilian transmedia artist Gabriel Mascaro enters a dialogue with such anxieties and makes a bespoke, utopian proposition: that the abolition of gender stereotypes goes out with neither a bang nor a whimper but rather as a non-event. I call this speculative proposition utopian because it elaborates an unforeseen possibility, a more auspicious alternative to the current scenario, especially with respect to care practices and familial structures under the sway of late capitalism. This analysis of Boi Neon (2015) situates the film in a transitionary moment: a bellwether of the change in zeitgeist that occurred when the forward-thinking of Lula and Dilma Rousseff devolved into retrograde, reckless leadership or, as many Brazilians call it, the desgoverno of Jair Bolsonaro. My reading of this cultural production situates this film as political in nature and decolonial in reception.