Dispute betweenvisibility regimes in video clips byfather Fábio de Melo

Abstract

This article aimed to analyze the media practices of Catholic agents, particularly priests, in their articulation with the logic and formats of pop culture, with the research question of analyzing whether, in this relationship, significant transformations are produced in the imagery, aesthetic, discursive and performative conventions that historically organize the presence of Catholicism in culture. To this end, two music videos by Father Fábio de Melo, Proteção (2017) and PerfeitaContradição (2015), were taken as objects of analysis. Methodologically, this investigation used the residual, dominant and emerging categories of Williams' culturalist approach (1979) to analyze how the permanence and transformations in the media conventions of Catholicism around this phenomenon and the classifications of the visible as idol or icons based on the assumptions of Mondzain (2015). As a result, it was possible to verify that the appropriation of resources, logic and grammar of pop culture to organize media interaction and develop expressive products in Fábio de Melo signals the existence of a tension between the experiences available in traditional religious culture and the gaps opened on the horizon by new ways of participating in culture.