In an attempt to archive some academic papers I've written over the past few years (relying on the hard drives of sometimes faulty PCs has left me tired and frustrated), I will be uploading some of my old work to this blog over the next few weeks. Here is one on Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and the way three somewhat recent documentaries depicted his controversial reign and character.
A polarizing force and an archetype for passionate patriotism, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez is a man people both love to love and love to hate. Routinely described as controversial but charismatic, the man who rose from rags to riches off the inspiration of Simón Bolívar has recently taken his rightful place among questionable world leaders. Unique for the amount of people that wanted him as their president and for the amount of people who wanted him out (and just days later, accepted him back in), Chávez's lengthy stay in power says as much about his pull as it does the Venezuelan democratic process. Loved and loathed, Chávez's entire career can be viewed as a curious paradox, one which shows a man who fought for the people and then worked hard to keep them down; the government he adamantly worked hard to replace in some ways mirrors the one has now. Protests and public outcry are as much a part of Chávez's presidential reign as those which preceded it. Three documentaries on Chávez released between 2003 and 2010 help to shape, at least in part, the public image the man enigmatically possesses. After all, this larger than life figure practically demands a visual retrospective. Two of these films were released theatrically in major American cities — The Revolution Will Not Be Televised by Donnacha O' Briain and Kim Bartley and South of the Border by Oliver Stone — while one, the PBS-produced Frontline: The Hugo Chávez Show directed by Ofra Bikel, was presented on public television. Ranging from Chávez's upbringing to his 2002 coup d'état and “hit” variety show, Aló Presidente, these three works help to shape the often sensationalized and dangerous essence of Chávez's presidential career. As to be expected, all documentaries were not created equal however, and while viewing the films, one can certainly note the limited access of some and the openness of others. Two, South of the Border and The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, were created with Chávez's consent, while Frontline's piece is a collection of news clips and scholarly interviews presented as a polemical visual essay. The effects of each film are understandably different. While some are more broadly wide-ranging (South of the Border and Frontline), others are more intimate and personal (given the nature in which it was filmed, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is the obvious winner in this category). Throughout this academic paper, we will review the three documentaries with a keen awareness of how they craft and portray their main subject, Hugo Chávez. Each representing a perspective all their own, these films help to shape (but not define) a man who inspired millions of opinions.
In 2001, Irish filmmakers Donnacha O' Briain and Kim Bartley, set to make a documentary on the influential leader, were granted an unprecedented behind the scenes look at Chávez's daily working life. They walked the streets with him, took plane trips with him, and were given impassioned stories about his night terrors (a recurring dream he has involves his sixteen year old murderous grandfather equipped with a machete fighting for his beliefs; does the apple fall far from the tree?). Chávez, interacting with the people of the streets and of the media, is depicted as a man who is smart and ideological, calm and practical. One such example shows Chávez giving a speech after the September 11th attacks. “You cannot fight terror with terror,” he notes, implying that a more peaceful, level-headed approach would be the way for Americans to see justice. This observation would appear to be quite a change for a man who, only a decade earlier, lead a Bolívarian-inspired attack on the Venezuelan government, leading to his imprisonment for two and a half years. Now president (after only a few years of being a free man), Chávez is less impulsive and radical. He is the ironic protagonist of O' Briain and Bartley's film.
The two filmmakers shape their documentary on the basis that American political officials and Venezuelan oil companies were the ones behind the failed coup that attempted to remove Chávez from office. The reason the film goes with this belief is because this is what Chávez's political ministers imply to be the case. And yet one cannot fully accuse O' Briain and Bartley of being unreliable narrators. Setting out to make one type of film, the coup put those plans on hold and turned their focus in a new direction, one which would be part cinéma vérité and part heist thriller unfolding in real time. The filmmakers were now a part of their own movie, and this is what separates The Revolution Will Not Be Televised from the other two soon to be discussed Chávez docs. The immediate circumstance at the forefront of the film gives it its drama. Thus, it should be required viewing for its remarkable footage of an (almost) historic week in Venezuelan history and less for the conspiracies that inspired it.
This is not to say that its claims that oil corporations and the Venezuelan private media were behind the coup are unfounded. On the contrary, the filmmakers provide us with news footage from the private television stations that concretely show that the opposition was growing and working towards an uprising. Many expressed concern with Chávez's “love affair” with former Cuban president Fidel Castro and felt that he was becoming a dangerous leader. Putting this hysteria in context, the filmmakers imply that Venezuela's head oil company was furious with Chávez's plan to redistribute the wealth by sharing Venezuelan's mass oil profits with all of the nation's people. This idea is not far fetched. As Frontline's documentary would later acknowledge, once Chávez was put back into office, the head oil company's workers went on strike in opposition (this went on for weeks). Only when a billionaire supporter of Chávez offered his personal ship to him to import and export barrels across the ocean did the oil company feel expendable and thus rushed back to work. O' Briain and Bartley also note that what was said to be a peaceful protest of Chávez on that fateful day in April of 2002 was actually intended to work up a rally that would lead to the palace and demand Chávez's resignation. We are later shown a clip that would confirm as much. Observing the fact that Chávez was scheduled to take a flight out of Venezuela for a few days on business, news of the impending protest was broadcast all over the privately owned television stations, hoping that Chávez would stay put. He did, and the coup was then thrown into action.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is, perhaps obviously, most philosophically intriguing when it reflects on the issue of the private versus the publicly owned. As respected film critic J. Hoberman wrote on the film in The Village Voice, “barely considered news worthy in the Belly of the Beast, the Chavez story is a gripping narrative that played out on TV and in the streets, as well as inside the presidential palace, where the filmmakers, working on a Chávez profile, happened to be. In addition to reporting a scoop, Bartley and O'Briain do an excellent job in deconstructing the Venezuelan TV news footage of blood, chaos, and rival crowds. As befits its title, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is nearly a textbook on media manipulation.” (Hoberman) The film does indeed focus on media manipulation, although which side is practicing it more unethically is up for debate. On Venezuelan television, Channel Eight is a public station that the president uses to announce urgent messages to his people. When the coup went into effect, the opposition conquered the television station and cut its power lines. Without a medium, the message was lost. Meanwhile, the opposition used the private stations to announce that Chávez had resigned (although he hadn't), and that despite what people may have heard about Chávez's soldiers taking back the palace and kicking newly appointed president Pedro Carmona out (which had occured), the opposition was still in control of the palace; Carmona gave an audio interview live on television saying that everything was fine when it was clear they had been spent packing. The confusion at the heart of the coup gives the film an intensified atmosphere the other two documentaries can't match.
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