Under the Sign of Oppression: Pre-Teens Visual Texts

Abstract

We analyze seventeen pictographic representations that express and communicate the violence on (and of) young people, with the following objectives: (1) The knowledge of the teachers of each student, and potential family conflicts and disputes with colleagues; and (2) the design by the authors of a comparative script of the seventeen mixed texts (visual and written). RPEA [16] The participants were two teachers and a group of 12 girls and 5 boys, of the 2nd cycle of basic education, coming
from urban and suburban of Braga. In the first phase of the interdisciplinary project, the two teachers, one of Portuguese Language and another of Visual Education, discussed with the students the differences between a non-explicit journalistic event and a poetic event, evidenced in the (visual) metaphor, present in the Poem of Violence, by Bertolt Brecht. Artistic productions elucidated gender issues, plenty of feelings and emotions (contempt, fear, guilt, retaliation/revenge, cowardice, laziness, physical discomfort grips, and impotence), prohibitions, and rebelliousness with parents, a teacher and classmates. Young people represented figures running away from home (and threats them), doing wickedness and telling lies. The scenarios were indoor (home, school) and outdoor, urban and countryside. Visually, the young expressed cultural, and religious rituals (a procession and a marriage), with natural, figurative, and symbolic elements (doors closed, sticks in the air, explosions...)