This event, which stretches for what seems like an eternity during the last week of the month, is a media intense and heavily scripted “explosion” of excitement. Various competitions are held in different music categories where international unknowns display their talents to a hopelessly bored audience of many thousands (this audience is referred to as “the beast”, supposedly for their total lack of mercy). Sprinkled in between the competition acts are various “big name” acts with small names who are invited to perform on stage. This is what makes the festival watchable…for many. All of this takes place in Viña del Mar, a city only a few miles from Valparaiso, historical port town in Chile’s fifth region. Local television is literally colonized by anything having to do with the event. Who’s coming, who’s not, who’s wearing the thing, who’s not wearing much, who’s showing more of their left breast, whose ass is firmer, and of course, who’s saying what about the others who also said some stuff earlier. It’s very much like what you’d get if you mixed the hoopla of the Oscars and the Grammy’s with a live multi-act concert and then removed anything that might be of interest.
Of course, for Chileans, the festival is where their own "celebrities" come out and stroll onto the red carpet, and therefore the actual event is permeated with a special dreamy aura of glamour, fashion, idolatry, and showmanship, at least that's the impression one gets watching it on TV. On the ground, it's clear that the hype surrounding the event is just an elaborate farce created to hypnotize and sell as much bullshit as humanly possible and as quickly as possible, an environment ripe for making lots of money; from the power-soft drinks, the nescafe instant iced coffee, the instant tooth whitening kit, the newest hair-styling products, the latest digital music gadget, and the next modern shaving appliance…to the designer labels, entertainment acts, music records, films, silicone breasts, and television time slots. Because the cameras are always on during the "Viña party" and the entire country is watching and sucking in every last detail, the marketeers descend with their fresh marketing claws and flock to the “show” like flies on shit.
But for the multitude of "fans" sitting outside the "star-packed" O'Higgins Hotel, the festival hype must appear to be something real. The excitement is genuine, the fans are physically present just outside the carefully designed media cage, the place where these consumers of dreams converge with the illusory products displayed by the farandula industry. “Farandula” literally means “a gang of homeless comedians”. Here in Chile, when you say the word “farandula” you’re probably referring to anything having to do with celebrities. The farandula industry is a relatively new phenomenon in Chile, but it is a rapidly growing industry that capitalizes on the curiosity of home viewers in relation to the rich and famous. The foot soldiers in the farandula industry are the “journalists” who make a living spewing whatever “information” their producers or editors deem marketable, or whatever information might be of interest to an imagined viewer. For example, an actress in a soap opera is dating the producer but doesn’t want to admit it, or the conductor of a program was seen holding hands with an Argentinean model at a closed party. The consumers of the farandula industry are always imagined by its producers to be desperate hoards in need of whatever gossip is available about famous people. Although it may be true that television viewers will suck on anything that’s put in front of them, this is strictly a one-way highway of information where the industry decides what it is that they should suck on. The curious thing, of course, is that the farandula “reporting” just happens to increase ratings as well as the overall success rates of the productions associated with the celebrity subjects. It goes without saying that most of the content that is “reported’ is elaborately planned ahead of time with this in mind.
Sitting at home, waiting for the opportunity to catch a glimpse of their favorite hero or god-like personality, are the hopelessly hypnotized public. Without them, none of this elaborate marketing frenzy would be possible. The festival, in the end, is just a multi-act show with awards and full of artists of no importance, but what elevates it to a higher plane is the Chilean farandula machine. Indeed, perhaps the people who get the most excited about this Festival De Viña are the self-proclaimed “periodistas del espectaculo” who mindlessly regurgitate any and all information about “famous” people. It would be an understatement to say that Chileans are obsessed with famous people, and this hypnotization is fed by the farandula industry. This multi-million dollar industry is a relatively new thing here in Chile and perhaps this is why those soldiers of the industry, those “periodistas”, get so darn excited and even froth at the mouth as they keep glued television viewers up to speed on the whereabouts, movements, confrontations, remarks, hairstyle choices, successes, and failures of those who are presented on television as important people or even artists. Who they meet, when they divorce, how they kiss, how they cheat each other, if they reproduce naturally or artificially, how their liposuction went, whether they had their breasts enlarged or reduced, who they cheated with and how they feel about it.
Not only does this industry make future generations of Chileans increasingly dumber by decree and susceptible to the disposable values it transmits, it also has a dangerous tendency to distract people from the real world, from our families and friends, from real problems that as a society we need to address together and which require our full attention. And perhaps the most alarming thing about the farandula machine is its no shame commercialization of everything, that it manages to convey, knowingly or not, the idea that the products they push every five minutes on the air during the programming are somehow part of this great world of success and “glamour” that supposedly everyone wants to be a part of. These products that are presented to us as our friends; they are part of the everyday fantastic world of the famous and if the public wants to be a bit more like their idols, then they better start buying shit immediately, and in installments.
Obviously, it’s not a secret that the corporations behind the products that are pushed every five seconds on these programs pay a hefty sum so that their products are aired. Less obvious, however, is the fact that more than the products, it is actually the viewers who are being sold. The channel that airs the program is actually selling our attention span to the corporations who want to sell other products. It’s outrageous to think that these corporations pay so much money for what is essentially exclusive space in our consciousness for hours at a time. I suspect that these captains of consciousness are seldom interested in educating the general public. In fact, the last thing they want is for people to think. They only want people to watch and to buy, that’s how the money is made. What better way to induce people to buy things they don’t need than to convince them that they are hopelessly inadequate. The farandula industry fulfills this role almost to perfection by fabricating and cultivating an entire self-referential network of celebrities, semi-celebrities, and quasi-celebrities who are on a daily basis paid to bring attention to themselves, generate controversy and project an image of material success. In essence, it is the industry of the cool, and the celebrities are the products that are put on the stage to dance, smile, look pretty, seem intelligent (and fight) in order to attract viewers who, in turn, become themselves the products sold to other corporations by the media conglomerates. Millions are invested in pumping up the lives of these “celebrities” so that they can seem appealing to the viewers who, after a while, begin to feel that their own lives are boring or unfulfilling in comparison. The farandula is the spectacle on the west side of the Berlin wall intended to impress those on the east side just enough to climb over the wall and join the market.
But West Germany wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be, and neither was the “free world”. In the end, behind all the hype, after the party, when everybody goes home, when the make-up comes off, when the limo is returned to the lot, when the buzz dies down, when the coke wears off, when the gel starts to flake, when the cameras are switched off, what you have left is a decadent, alcoholic, and shallow bunch of clowns who in the end begin to realize (they have to realize) that they’re prostitutes and that they’re being sold by the pimps of the industry in return for a false sense of superiority and a few pesos. Dirt cheap. And what is sold as success on the screens of Korean televisions, which you can buy in installments at the neighborhood megamarket, is really an elaborate puppet show of payasos vagabundos intended to milk you of your consciousness. Because success has little to do with misery, anorexia, lies, suicides, intimate secrets told in detail, jealousy, bulimia, plastic breasts, botox, ridicule, envy, women who look like they have the bubonic plague, laughing at the expense of others, or with money for that matter.
