Broadcasting Memories: Argentina's <em>Montecristo</em> as Cultural Memory Merchandise

Authors

  • Amy Cosimini University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Keywords:

Mass media, soap opera, Telenovelas, Cultural Memory, Human Rights,

Abstract

How can marginalized and seemingly forgotten memory narratives be fostered from within a nation’s official, institutionalized memory frame? Predicated on defining memory production as an ever-changing battleground of social representations and individual representations, this broad question grounds this article’s central analysis of the groundbreaking Argentine telenovela, Montecristo. Debuting in 2006, Montecristo acts as a unique form of memory merchandising, which sells the institutionalized memory policy of the Kirchner administration (2003-2007) through its adoption of three major cultural memory frames: 1) the pervasive human rights frame of truth and justice, 2) the exemplary memory frame, and 3) the present past frame. By highlighting Montecristo’s act of commercial interpellation, this article brings up doubts of media control and manipulation, while also creating a space for a more complete discussion of the media’s intentions as a relatively new structural memory frame. In this vein, this article concludes by taking a closer look at how these three main cultural memory frames are complicated by the structural characteristics of the telenovela as a visually driven, serial melodrama. 

Author Biography

Amy Cosimini, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Amy Cosimini is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Hispanic and Lusophone Literatures and Cultures at the University of Minnesota- Twin Cities where her research focuses on the relationship between human rights and memory production discourses in Southern Cone literature and popular culture.

Published

2016-05-09

How to Cite

Cosimini, A. (2016). Broadcasting Memories: Argentina’s <em>Montecristo</em> as Cultural Memory Merchandise. A Contracorriente: Una Revista De Estudios Latinoamericanos, 13(3), 222–245. Retrieved from https://acontracorriente.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/acontracorriente/article/view/1362

Issue

Section

Articles / Artículos