The Politics Of Melodrama: The Serialization Of Populis In Kirchner’s Presidency
The Politics Of Melodrama: The Serialization Of Populis In Kirchner’s Presidency

Summary/Abstract: As part of a diplomatic tour to the United States in 2012, now ex-president of Argentina Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, gave a series of speeches at various institutions of higher learning. The Argentinean press covering the President’s visits coded their analysis following a melodramatic code reminiscent of popular serialized programming known in Latin America as telenovelas (Soap operas in the Anglo-American media context). Conservative and right leaning media outlets used the telenovela formula to construct Kirchner as a villain, due to her promotion of a populist participatory democracy in opposition to neoliberal economic policies. Journalists followed the Kirchner tour closely, and each of her visits were framed as episodes full of the genre’s markers with clearly delineated cliff-hangers, explosive revelations, and competing dichotomous characters. In order to understand the uses of melodramatic paradigm, I am proposing a close reading of the staging, performance and the speeches Kirchner held at Harvard University. I argue in this article that Kirchner employs the code of melodrama to speak to her constituents, but it is also her adversaries which frame a condemnation of the President usingsimilarly structured telenovela paradigm. I am interested in addressing how the telenovela/melodramatic code is appropriated by both opposing political sides and the implications this has on the television genre as a purveyor of political discourse.

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