The impact of media spectacle on Peruvian politics: the case of Jaime Bayly’s El francotirador

• Alonso, Paul ^[1]
  1. [1] Georgia Institute of Technology

     Georgia Institute of Technology

     Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, ISSN-e 1469-9524, ISSN 1470-1847, Vol. 21, Nº. 3, 2015, págs. 165-186
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
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• Resumen

  • n 2009, Jaime Bayly, one of the most influential Peruvian TV journalists, announced that he wanted to be the first bisexual, impotent, and agnostic president of Peru. He launched an atypical electoral campaign, fueled by his irreverent and popular TV show El francotirador (The Sniper). Bayly’s yearlong virtual campaign increasingly gained importance and local and international media coverage. He even polled at 10% in Lima, the capital city, but he ultimately dropped out of the race a few months before the elections. This paper analyzes how Bayly constructed his ambiguous and contradictory media persona during his 30-year media career and how he capitalized on its political appeal in his electoral run while revealing social tensions in contemporary Peru. His intense, controversial, and sometimes transgressive life in the media is read as a symbol of how entertainment replaces other argumentative and informative forms of political communication in Peru, a deeply divided society with fragile social institutions, precarious democracy, and a discredited political class. Bayly’s life in the media also illuminates how massive media spectacle became a contested arena to negotiate political power both during and since President Fujimori’s authoritarian regime (1990–2000). Finally, this research connects the “Bayly phenomenon” to part of a global trend towards satiric infotainment as a consequence of spectacle.