Actually, it makes for a pretty good read…
I started watching as a lark but became fascinated with the show when I realized, with some unease, that it was the most real reality TV I’d ever seen. Most shows called “reality TV” are marked by a strong measure of fakery. Strangers are stuffed into a house together or “stranded” on an island. Bachelors artificially vie for the affections of a surgically enhanced bachelorette. Chávez’s show not only reflects reality, it also affects reality. Whatever he says on air, whatever he orders his inferiors to do, however he decides to spend public money, becomes law and policy right away. It’s not Monopoly money that he’s throwing around. In that sense, it’s the only really real reality show out there.
Caracas Chronicles 
The article–and the present context– makes me think of a great Soviet-period short story, “Govorit Moskva” in which the citizens of the USSR listen to “Moscow Speaking” on radio to hear the latest policies affecting them. Things go off the rails when the authoritative voice begins to act oddly, culminating with the announcement that Monday has been designated as “the Day for Open Killing”, in which citizens are urged to kill off as many of their neighbours as they like, “without any repercussion whatsoever.”
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Yes, a true reality show ;)
In ‘Alo Presidente’ the fakery of the usual reality show was replaced by a REAL lesson in fakery : how to create a false image of a lie, instead of just presenting a fake picture of reality.
With Chavez we enter the twilight zone of faking the fake, which goes one step farther out there than just faking the real.
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I agree with that. I would call him a “fakin’ faker” as well.
Seriously, I have always suggested to everyone-just turn off the TV and do not watch
that garbage. Watch it and you immediately know Chavez is a raging lunatic.
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In one of the original, televised Re-constituyente plays, the stage Hugo (Rolando Salazar I think played him) thanks and praises a mentor figure, Don Francisco (of the famous Saturday show) and for a while becomes him. This is Hugo’s style. But he should have been a presenter not a president.
Yeah, fascinating from another country and if you are not affected. Like war in some faraway country and gladiator games. Vicarious power and vicarious violence, for the Venezuelan and Roman “masses” (a mass is amorphous and unthinking).
Gladiator games were also “reality” shows, in fact the most real ever, death was real. There is something quite sick (also to many a critical mind of that era) in staging real death and suffering for entertainment and in handing down capital punishment in a farcical manner.
Politics, policy (war included) and ideology are even more serious than individual death. All but the mildest kinds of politics, policy and ideology, wherever the government is involved deal in threats of violence that can escalate all too quickly into real and deadly violence if the targets of such threats think of resisting or do not submit. Their effects can cause the ruin of many a life and the death of many a person. Every “Expropiese” is the life work and savings of someone going up…
So, how much sicker is this than making some prisoners hack themselves to pieces? How much sicker is it to package and trivialize violent policy and ideology as entertainment and for entertainment?
Some blame the explosion in criminality from 2000 on some messages by Hugo Chavez at the start of his mandate. Imagination need not go that far. You can imagine the Colombians taking the threats at face value and preparing a serious response to the joker. Nobody needs imagine the first half of April 2002 because it happened for real. There he was in his best form. He used a whistle and said “YOU ARE FIRED!”. Hilarious if you were not Venezuelan, I guess, or if you did not work in the oil industry at any rate.
Hilarious as being a slave-gladiator or a doomed prisoner and getting to hear some jokes, lighthearted observations and tongue-in-cheek review of yesterday’s games. Fun!
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I loved the article and its perspective.
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The article has some good TV criticism points, but could used a lot more contact with reality.
– This reviewer has obviously never talked to anyone who worked on the show. It’s not unscripted — every show is scripted. It’s not “ad hoc.” The decisions are made to look spontaneous but I know that at least some are the result of months, even years of consideration. Anyone who thinks the famous “expropíase” exclamations were ad hoc is a dupe.
– “…there is no real way of knowing how many people, even among his supporters, follow him on TV”: no, there is no real way of knowing why the New York Times, with all its cash, can’t pay Nielsen Ratings a couple thousand dollars to find out the answer to this question.
– Correa, at least, continues to do a weekly show — there was nothing “briefly” about it.
– There aren’t 29 million people in Venezuela but 27 million. Is it that hard to check the INE website?
– She says that it’s the only show on the air in Caracas on Sunday. Alo Presidente isn’t always in “cadena nacional.”
– The decisions made and announced on the show do not, repeat not, immediately get implemented. If they did, there would be a canal from the Orinoco River to the Caribbean at Puerto La Cruz, for example. Even Chávez’s own staff knows that there are decisions and there are decisions.
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Well said, Setty. I was about to point at several of the items you mentioned.
The only thing I would not be sure about is Venezuela’s population. I have grabbed enough INE(S) data for now and compared that with the CNE records to come to the conclusion it’s a complete mess and the people working there are complete morons or thugs or both.
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Well, I think she was refreshingly honest about the shallowness of her engagement with the material – she never claims to have gone to Venezuela, or to know more than she can find on YouTube. She’s upfront about it, and fair’s fair. Are there a ton of little mistakes like that? Yup…still, it doesn’t bill itself as anything more than what it is: a sideways glance at a crazy thing. I think it succeeds.
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She pretty much got it down, I thought, for a casual observer. But what’s she doing watching chavez reruns anyway? Man, that’s brutal. Some of us are compelled to for personal reasons. But not even that much….yikes. She working on the obit?
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a couple thousand? :P
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Yeah, I once inquired about the data, and I recall that the rates were between $800 and $3,000, but I don’t remember exactly.
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I still think it was pretty witty. I.e.,”The difference is that Mrs. Mouth wasn’t the autocratic leader of an oil-rich country of 29 million people.”
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