A memory that weighs

trajectories of the common and the history of the Brazilian dictatorship in the graphic novel Chumbo

Abstract

The article aims to present how the Brazilian history of the 20th century is worked on in the graphic novel Chumbo, interweaving into the fictional daily life of a family routine and historical facts that culminated in the 1964 coup d' état, and its echo in the renewal of proto-fascist conservatism of the first decades of the XXI century. Published in France in 2023 and in Brazil in 2024, the work covers 60 years of Brazilian history, focusing on a fictional account of a family, freely inspired by the family of French-Brazilian author Matthias Lehmann. Combining historical and image research, the novel contributes to understanding the political, cultural, architectural and social transformations in the country during the Vargas and Estado Novo dictatorships, with Belo Horizonte as the epicenter of the reactionary movement in the Brazilian scene. With the inherent plasticity of language, the book allows a complex and aesthetic reading of the cultural development of each decade based on references from design, architecture and urbanism, advertising and media dissemination from each era portrayed. Following the intimacy of each member of the Wallace and Rebendoleng family, we have a panorama of the political game that supported the advance of conservatism and libertarian resistance in its nuances and contradictions, and that tension the delicate thread that connects the need to remember, and the desire to forget.

Keywords: Graphic Novel. Historical Fiction. Visual Culture. History of Brazil. Military dictatorship.