This study investigates the representation of gender and sexuality in Brazilian popular comedies. Due to its responsiveness to contemporary trends, popular cinema is a privileged locus for the analysis of social and cultural change. Comedy, in particular, is a fecund corpus for the study of power relations due to its ambivalent relation with the hegemonic power. While inherently relying on the status quo, comedy constantly pushes the boundaries of the socially acceptable; by transgressing and therefore expanding the boundaries of traditional gender representations, new models of femininity and masculinity emerge in these films in line with the changes of their time. This argument is supported by the close analysis of ten influential films spread across the three most prominent cycles of Brazilian popular cinema history: the chanchada in the 1950s, the pornochanchada in the 1970s and the Globochanchada in the 2000s. In the light of Mikhail Bakhtin's theorisation on the carnivalesque, and with the support of psychoanalytical theory, this study demonstrates that times of profound economic and political change call for a revision of gender models, and that comedy has been the preferred genre for Brazilian directors to provide a means of addressing, and coping with, the new demands on femininity and masculinity.

In this thesis, I present modular and database cinema characterized by nonlinear story and complex structure. I give examples of modular and database cinema, provide different approaches regarding movies with nonlinear narrative and mention basic principles of classical cinema to show the difference. I am taking a closer look at these films and doing a comparison. Modular cinema needs an audience which actively participates in giving a meaning to the particular film. This active audience can be equated to the new media user which can be characterized not only as a recipient of new media products but also as a creator, co-author and explorer. That is why I am focusing on new media from the point of their users, showing the changes in this media-user relation and summarizing what is new about new media. Database cinema reflects a database form which became a necessary part of new media as well as of our daily lives. When analyzing characteristics of new media and complex structure cinema I suggest a potential relation between new media and modular and database cinema from the point of their users.

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