The image of the difference: a study of contemporary illustration in children's literature

Abstract

The present article deals with the set of books called Ciranda das diferenças and it focuses on its visual illustrations. Based on the studies carried out by the Italian semiotician Umberto Eco in the sixties about the so called “mass culture”, the article brings up the following hypothesis: contemporary Brazilian children’s fiction addressed to massive consumption makes use of aesthetic and structural strategies that are akin to strategies currently used by other cultural artifacts addressed to a large range of consumers, like e.g. animation or comics. Their two main aesthetic traits are, according to Eco, “prefabrication” and “effect of imposition”, which lead to a kind of “ethics of happiness linked to consumerism”. Therefore, as paradoxical as it may sound, the books that were analyzed turned out to transform the differences they approach into products of entertainment and consumerism.