156 | nº 29, pp. 139-159 | doxa.comunicación
July-December of 2019
Portrayal of the journalist in Spanish cinema from 1990 to 2010
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
ions, thus a state of panic begins to spread on the television show with the 7 contestants being kidnapped for their alleged crimes. Although Jaime is the one who gains more prominence in the film and becomes the clear villain, there are other evil journalists in this plot as well: the general director of the channel, Ricardo (Alberto González), the programme director, Alicia (Rocío Muñoz), and the host (Domingo Cruz), who in a cold-blooded way, and only interested in creating a spectacle, are in charge of conducting a sinister game show. On the fourth day, after the apparent first death, there are 4.3 million subscribers and Ricardo analyses the figures:
Ricardo: Come on, fill me in.
Analyst: Within 3 minutes of the execution, 59% of the registered users had paid the fee. In the next two hours, 90,000 new subscriptions were added.
Ricardo: How was the impact?
Analyst: A few days ago, we jumped from internet forums to mass public opinion. We are present in all of the conventional media and there is no talk show that isn’t talking about us. They tear us to pieces, but they all follow us. (TC: 00:47:47)
The tension and harshness of the images continue in this show about human suffering, which is very profitable in terms of audience share, and it transforms those responsible for the TV channel and the young journalist into evil creators of a morbid spectacle that ends in drama. Although the live deaths were false and nobody was supposed to die, at the end of the story one of the contestants who suffered from a mental disorder ends Jaime’s life and then commits suicide.
4. Discussion
The analysis of the 20 Spanish films with our original structuralist approach, inspired by Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale (1928), shows the rich potential for the audio-visual field of the Russian author’s text analysis theories, almost a century after the release of his book. The narrowing down of only ‘unrealistic’ films brings rigour to the sample as well; those that are implausible due to an excess of satire or fiction, and therefore are not found in real life.
With the results obtained, it can be seen that H1 is confirmed. The unrealistic Spanish films of the 1990s and the first ten years of the 21st century with the presence of media and journalists include villains with a lack of journalistic ethics and characters in unreal situations that awaken more laughter or tenderness in the viewer than anger. H2 has also been verified. The morbidity and lies on television programs are characteristic of the work of the villainous journalists in the unrealistic Spanish films of the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century.
In addition to verifying the two hypotheses, the results reveal novel contributions to the role of television in relation to radio and the written press, dominance of the comedy genre, and damage to the image of the woman with more villains on the screen.
When we summarise, the data it can be seen that of the 12 titles from the 1990s, 9 belong to audio-visual professionals. Tacones lejanos features the host Rebeca who confesses on live TV that she killed her husband. Rosa Rosae stars Theo, the host capable of stealing a novel. The star of Kika is Andrea Caracortada, who discovers the worst events of the day in her