On the notion of Spectacle
When I started watching the Chilean documentary TVN: 40 Años , the first thing that struck me was how much emphasis the military junta had put in the production of high-end "spectacles" to be broadcasted nationally during the dictatorship: To project prosperity and normality the years that followed after the coup, Pinochet's regime payed for huge international stars like Julio Iglesias to appear on a regular basis on televised national shows. The spectacle was gendered: there was television made for the housewife, then sports and "entertainment" for men, and programs aimed at "the family." And the spectacle was sexualized: it featured both the sexualized bodies of women ( vedettes ) and the eroticized representation of consumption, by linking commodities with pleasure and happiness (consumerism). So, I got interested in the concept of spectacle to analyze post-dictatorship in Chile. In Society of Spectacle (1967), Guy Debord's argument, following