Abstract
The Chilean film No (2012) presents the television campaign for the 1988 plebiscite on whether the Pinochet regime should remain in government for eight more years (‘Yes’) or hold democratic elections (‘No’). This chapter explores the portrayal of the shift of attention from past painful trauma to possible future happiness as a form of resistance. Instead of repeating the trauma in a gesture acknowledged as futile, ‘No’ supporters assume the challenge to ‘retemporalize and detranslate’ trauma through a new narrative that Kristin McCartney finds in W.E.B. Du Bois’ articulation of the importance of slave songs. The ‘No’ campaign uses Aristotle’s idea that happiness is an intrinsic value—‘Joy is coming’—and thus the best concept to galvanise a traumatised nation in favour of change.
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Notes
- 1.
No was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year Oscar in 2013, won the Art Cinema Award at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and many other awards.
- 2.
Dzero cites 3000 people killed and more than 80,000 tortured (2015, p. 120). Chile had a commission into human rights abuses resulting in death or disappearance, which delivered The National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation (Rettig) Report in 1991 and the The National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture (Valech) Report in 2004. Thakkar gives figures from the Valech Report as 3225 murdered or disappeared and 37,055 tortured (2017b, p. 248), out of approximately 10 million people.
- 3.
Feierstein explains how during the Argentinian military dictatorship (1976–1983) almost any actual or potential criticism or rebellion against the regime was characterised as criminal subversion (2014, pp. 161–66) and such subversion was treated as defining of the group subjected to genocide (2014, p. 29).
- 4.
For example, Chile has a Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago to commemorate the victims of the civic-military regime. See Rojas-Lizana, this volume.
- 5.
See Di Stefano (2018) for a comparison of No and Neruda.
- 6.
- 7.
Wells acknowledges that ‘Larraín could never tell the entire story’ (2017, p. 514), Cilento also argues that the film ‘catalyses a larger historical discussion’ (2015) and Cronovich defends the value of the film as an ‘introduction to the plebiscite’ (2016, p. 166). See Hirmas for an analysis of the role of television in the campaign as important in reminding viewers of [social, economic, and political] conditions (1993, p. 82).
- 8.
- 9.
Khazan’s article details how the positive theme had also been based on work with focus groups (2013). Hirmas states that the profile of undecided voters were women and young people (1993, p. 87), as represented in the film. In contrast, Cronovich says they were women, poor people, and rural voters (2016, p. 167).
- 10.
It also pointed to a conciliatory mood in another slogan ‘Without hatred, without fear, and without violence, vote “No”’.
- 11.
Hirmas notes that another slogan was ‘YES. You decide. We continue moving ahead or we return to the UP’ (1993, p. 85). Unidad Popular, or Popular Unity, is the coalition of left-wing parties that supported Allende.
- 12.
Jung is an exception in acknowledging the importance of happiness as a substantial political concept and the creativity of the campaign (2015, pp. 127–28).
- 13.
Cilento also sees René as going through an ‘anguishing dilemma’ in both his professional and private life (2015).
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
René also protects a crucial tape by taking it to the censor, while the others leave with empty video boxes. This tape is the one censored. See communication scholar Simón (2018, pp. 110–11), who notes that the only censorship of the campaign occurred on day 8, when the ‘No’ programme included testimony from a judge concerning 50 cases of torture. After a national and international outcry, the Sí campaign self-censored its own programme the following day.
- 17.
James Cisneros observes that Larraín exaggerates the quality of the video by allowing rather than controlling blurring and overexposure (2018, pp. 53–54).
- 18.
Jung notes that ‘Video—U-matic, VHS-C, Hi-8, Super VHS and Betacam—was central for the development of an alternative “imaginary” of Chilean society and, later, as part of the audio-visual battle of the 1980s, as well as the NO campaign’ (2015, p. 120). See Chanan (2013) for an account of the importance of video to resistance in Chile and other Latin American countries and the U-matic Project website http://www.prypecyoidis.org/umatic for documentaries and other films made on video during the dictatorship.
- 19.
It is also referred to in another slogan, ‘We are more’ (Hirmas 1993, p. 91), which can be seen as a response to the ‘Yes’ campaign’s ‘We are millions’.
- 20.
Applebaum notes these aspects of the film (2013) and Wells recognises that Larraín’s films may help viewers to work through the trauma by helping them to see themselves as implicated subjects, as well as acting it out (2017, pp. 517, 504). See Traverso for a discussion of how Chilean documentaries since the regime have involved representations that work through the traumatic memories rather than acting them out (2011).
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La Caze, M. (2020). Chile 1988: Trauma and Resistance in Pablo Larraín’s No (2012). In: Hubbell, A.L., Akagawa, N., Rojas-Lizana, S., Pohlman, A. (eds) Places of Traumatic Memory. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52056-4_14
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