In September 2014, Ana Rosa Quintana launched the eleventh season of her show in the Gaza Strip, six days after the ceasefire of an Israeli offensive that had left more than 2,000 dead that summer. They broadcast some informative pieces that they could have done without using it as a backdrop for the broadcast four chairs for his group and a floor made of rubble done by a few children. El Mundo Today headlined: “Israel attacks Palestinians by sending Ana Rosa Quintana to them.”
Nine years later, since Mohammed doesn’t go to the mountain of rubble, the mountain of rubble goes to Mohammed. So Al Rojo Vivo began its broadcast last Friday by recreating some of the ruins of the bombings in Gaza using augmented reality on set. Augmented reality, that oxymoron.
We saw the La Palma volcano in augmented reality, we saw the ruins of the earthquake in Morocco in augmented reality, we saw sea level rise in augmented reality. And someone decided to equate a war attack with a natural disaster. And he believed that its dimension would be much more apparent when recreated on set. What a paradox that one assumes that virtual rubble helps to show the horror instead of trivializing it. Inventing war in order to bring it closer to the viewer and make him think can be the subject of fiction; When infotainment does that, it’s more entertainment than information.
In Face of the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag theorized about the graphic representation of war and its consequences, concluding that images of war conflict evoke contradictory responses of rapprochement and desensitization. I have no proof of what the author would have thought when he saw Al Rojo Vivo, but I also have no doubts.
You can follow EL PAÍS Television on X or sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
Get the TV newsletter
All the latest news from broadcasters and platforms, with interviews, news and analyses, as well as recommendations and reviews from our journalists
LOG IN
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits