Representación histórica, televisualidad y formación ciudadana: contrastes de los biopics televisivos Sudamerican Rockers (2014) y Los Prisioneros (2020)

Abstract

Recent history serves as an inexhaustible source for fictional productions and television biopics (Bignell, 2019), which establish how the “history” of figures that are part of a particular cultural imaginary is represented. Although the narrative strategies of biographical series are articulated around personal stories and represent real events, there is a construction linked to televisuality (Caldwell, 1995) that problematizes how the veracity and similarity of the historical context in which the biographical elements are inserted is constructed. This paper seeks to examine the operations of historical resignification in relation to the conditions of production under which the mediation of television biopics operates and its potential difference in terms of citizenship formation. This proposal contrasts the narrative strategies of two series about the same musical band, the Chilean group Los Prisioneros. Through a narratological analysis (Aumont and Marie, 2009) of the series Sudamerican Rockers (2014) and Los Prisioneros (2020), we identify the differences in the way in which the story of the same musical group is constructed and the impact that the production conditions have on the emphasis of the same “story” and its historical context.

Keywords

• Historical TV Series; TV Biopics; Televisuality; SVOD; Los Prisioneros