/ARTS WEEKLY/CHILE: Reality TV Too Real, Too Late

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Aug 12 2003 (IPS) - “Reality shows” have reached Chilean television en masse this year, a bit late in comparison to other countries, with critics saying they add little to already poor local programming. But one show has sparked controversy related to human rights violations committed during the Pinochet dictatorship.

The Chilean television stations have adopted the reality genre after it has already made its impact in most of the rest of the world, adding it to their arsenal as they fight for viewer ratings and popularity. In some cases it has paid off, in others it has brought financial ruin.

“Reaching for the Stars”, the latest reality show of the state-run Televisión Nacional de Chile (TVN), took honours for greatest failure, not only in monetary losses (estimated at a million dollars) but also because it brought into question the channel’s ethics.

TVN executives issued a statement in late July in which, after three weeks of postponements, apologised for the “imprudent broadcast of images of a person linked to human rights violations without explaining his role.”

The reference was to retired army lieutenant José Vargas Bories’s appearance on TVN on Jul. 9. The former intelligence agent of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990) faces several criminal charges, including one for the 1986 kidnap and murder of journalist José Carrasco.

The former agent for the now-defunct secret police is father of Mariana Vargas, one of the semi-finalists on “Reaching for the Stars”, a show in which competitors enter a “school” and vie for the two top prizes: jobs as programme hosts on TVN.

Vargas Bories was shown in a segment that portrayed the families of each of the young contestants on the TV programme.

He was filmed at his home sitting next to a photograph of Pinochet, surrounded by his children, his wife, and the family dog. Critics say he was portrayed as a model father, who even offered some words of advice to the competing youths, and the TV station did not provide any information indicating his history as a dictatorship agent.

The former officer had also been fingered as part of the group that detained and murdered three leftist militants, and stands accused of the deaths of 12 youths during “Operation Albania” in 1987, and is under investigation for his alleged role in the murder of opposition activist Jécar Neghme in 1988.

The Chilean Journalists Association protested the small-screen “whitewashing” of the image of a man who committed human rights violations.

Also voicing protests were three of the eight members of the TVN board of directors: journalist and academic Faride Zerán, actor Nissim Sharim, and Cristóbal Valenzuela, reporter and president of the TVN employees union.

The situation prompted a street demonstration involving around 100 journalists, Jul. 16, after the channel’s executive director, Christian-democrat Pablo Piñera, refused to issue a public explanation.

The protest march on the television station was covered by local news outlets, but TVN did not include it in its own news broadcasts, although its reporters filmed the event and took statements from the marchers.

Guillermo Torres, head of the Journalists Association, then presented the group’s complaints to the Chilean president’s chief of staff and communications adviser, Francisco Vidal, and to Andrés Zaldívar, president of the Senate, the body responsible for ratifying the designated executive of the state-run TV station.

It was not until Jul. 23 that TVN reacted, dedicating less than three minutes of its news show to statements by Olivia Mora, former wife of murdered journalist Carrasco, by Torres and by human rights lawyer Nelson Caucoto. But the station never did broadcast images of the journalists’ protest.

There is some irony in a situation that leads to the questioning of a public TV channel’s ethics based on a reality show, a programming format that the Chilean stations adopted when the genre seems to be on the wane in other parts of the world.

The reality TV experience began with “Big Brother”, which debuted in the Netherlands in 1999 with the much-copied formula of shutting a group of men and women inside a house filled with cameras and microphones to follow their every move and utterance. Based on viewer votes, the contestants were expelled from the house one by one.

In December 2000, the privately run Megavisión created “Refugio Mekano” in Chile, following the “Big Brother” mould, but the biggest risk-taker was the Catholic University’s TV station, which in January premiered “Heroes of Fame”, with 14 young contenders chosen from among thousands of applicants.

The show came under fire when it began to broadcast scenes from the cohabitation of the contestants that tended towards the erotic, apparently to win points in the ongoing ratings competition with other TV stations.

The “Big Brother” approach is giving way to the talent search, following Spain’s “Operación Triunfo” model of training and competition among singers. Chile tried two similar programmes, with limited success.

Megavisión finally staked its bets and bought the rights to “Operación Triunfo”, which turned out to be a smart move. Unlike TVN, “which tried to invent its own format with ‘Reaching for the Stars’ and failed,” mass communications expert Pablo Halpern told IPS.

Alicia Gordon, a university researcher in communications, says the reality shows produced in Chile are neither better nor worse than such programmes in other countries because they are merely reproducing an established format.

“They are a local viewpoint of a global trend, adapted to each country,” she said.

“But I think that overall they diminish the quality of TV programming to the extent that the genre becomes repetitive after just a few viewings,” she said.

Halpern, meanwhile, believes the reality shows have enriched local programming.

It is still a novelty format, and it has provided at least two benefits: first, it is creating turnover in the faces we see on TV and, second, it is creating a new generation of singers,” he said.

Carlos Ossa, expert in communications theory at the University of Chile, recently said in a forum presentation that the “reality” formula is effective “because in the promise of truth the absence of meaning is made evident.”

Viewers know that these programmes are to a certain extent staged, but nevertheless begin to feel a link with the alleged reality they are being shown, he said.

“I would assert that this type of programme confirms what has been said in communications theory for some time: transparency is at the same time opaqueness, because it aims to show everything, but at the same time hides everything,” said Ossa.