Reading Televisually: Representing Reality in Barnet, Puig, and Dorfman

Reading Televisually: Representing Reality in MiguelBarnet's La Vida Real, Manuel Puig's Eternal Curse on

the Reader of These Pages, and Blake's Therapy byAriel Dorfman

Susana S.MartinezDePaul University

It's not like normal TV, where viewer's emotions and reactions aremanipulated by a writer. These are real people.

Johnson and Rommelmann, 146

After the first installment, I was hooked, and watching the next two episodeshas left me waiting for more.

Tucker, 59

Watch it to be a voyeur. Instead of watching characters, viewers get toeavesdrop on the lives of real people.

Owen, 125

Okay, I confess. I like to watch. And I know I'm not alone. Reality showscurrently dominate television programming and, as the statements aboveopenly acknowledge, tuning in is no longer something to be ashamed of.

On any given night we can watch real people going about their everyday livesfrom the comfort and privacy of our own homes. Our remote control gives us theoption of witnessing an ordinary person getting a much-needed Extreme Makeover.During an episode of Nanny 911, we can listen in while the British nanny offersparenting skills to an American family in crisis as she plays back scenes of theirchaotic lifestyle captured on tape. On Wife Swap, the domestic space of twostarkly different families becomes a battleground as new rules are imposed andimplemented on tape for our viewing pleasure.

If we grow tired of watching ordinary people in a home setting, we can wit-ness high-stakes competition on Survivor or The Apprentice. In either case, wetune in to watch young, attractive people at their best and worst. The participantsform alliances in order to ensure their survival, until the next episode, that is. Aswe gather from these shows, an essential aspect of reality television's voyeuristicappeal is viewing another's alienation or isolation from his or her community.Reality television teaches us that there is much more at stake than what meets theeye. Although these attractive and adventurous people appear to work togetheras a tribe or team, the viewer knows that ultimately they are competing againsteach other and against the clock. Their torch may be extinguished in a tribalsetting on a faraway island or in the boardroom of Trump Tower, but these loca-

I wish to express my deepest gratitude to Marixsa Alicea, Wendy Baldwin and AnitaGallers for their encouraging feedback that helped shape this essay.

180 Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 25

tions—although remote to home viewers—allow us to watch someone being elimi-nated, and potentially humiliated, on a nightly basis.

The capitalist and consumerist format of reality programming has crossedtransnational borders. Reality television is an intemational phenomenon. Today inLatin America we can find glocalized versions of Big Brother and La Cenicienta—Telemundo's version of The Bachlorette. On La Academia and Protagonistasde Novela, modeled after American Idol, young adults live on a soundstage forseveral weeks competing for the chance to launch a modeling or singing career orland a coveted role in a telenovela. Whether one tunes these programs out,condemning them as the worst that Hollywood, Miami or Mexico City have tooffer, reality television has undoubtedly left its mark on contemporary popularculture. The commodification of Otherness has become not only popular andentertaining, but also highly profitable in today's televisual culture.

My goal in this paper is to read three Latin American examples of what I call"reality-based fiction" through the critical lens of reality television. All three nov-els are written by Latin American male authors and take place in the UnitedStates; two in New York and one in Philadelphia. Like reality TV, they blend factand fiction to represent everyday reality during the 1980s and 1990s. Althoughreality television might often be vilified or outright dismissed in certain academiccircles (Murray and Ouellette 43), I believe that it invites us to reflect on ourtelevisual culture's use of representation and realness, and to critically examinethe power of the gaze. As Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright underscore, thegaze is not the act of looking itself, but the viewing relationship characteristic of aparticular set of social circumstances. In other words, the concept of the gaze isfundamentally about the relationship of pleasure and images (76). Each authorunder review employs different strategies to show 'reality' and yet it is the view-ing relationship and the connection between pleasure and images that Sturken andCartwright point to that underlies their writing.

In the first section I examine Miguel Bamet's La vida real in view of MTV'sdocudrama The Real World. Bamet's text contains the elements of documentaryfiction that established the author as a founding father of testimonial literature.Julian Mesa, the first person narrator of La vida real, is a Cuban mulatto andexpatriate in New York who relies on television as a close companion and connec-tion to the outside world while he dreams of retuming home to the island someday.Bamet, in tum, views Mesa's story as a means to communicate reality by chal-lenging Oscar Lewis's concept ofthe "culture of poverty."

Bamet's invitation to view Mesa's everyday reality stands in opposition toManuel Puig's abrasive strategy of exposing the impossibility of representing real-ity. In the second section of the essay the reader is issued a waming. Before thereader even opens the novel, Puig's Eternal Curse on the Reader of ThesePages condemns our voyeuristic obsession of accessing the intimacy of ordinarypeople. Written as a series of combative dialogues between two men in NewYork City, the novel exposes the thomy issues of voyeurism, mediation and exploi-tation in the personal and professional spheres.

Susana S. Martinez ' 81

In the final section we see that, like Puig, Ariel Dorfman critiques our vora-cious and voyeuristic appetite for realness in Blake's Therapy. In this novel,private life is outsourced and performed as public spectacle. Forty-three-year-oldGraham Blake is given a psychological "Extreme Makeover" when he checksinto the Corporate Life Institute to deal with his chronic insomnia, impotence, andguilt over cutting jobs to increase profits. The extreme prescription for Blake'scrisis is symptomatic of today's corporate culture of globalization. By readingthese texts through the lens of reality television, we enter into a visual and textualdialogue that makes us more aware of our media-saturated culture in which wewatch others to temporarily alleviate our isolation and alienation. Readingtelevisually prompts us as readers and viewers to reflect on the power of popularculture in our everyday lives.

Staging Realness: Keeping It (Hyper)Real in MTV's "The Real World"Before examining the representation of reality in these Latin American novels,let's consider the premises of reality television that inform the theoretical frame-work of this essay. Susan Murray and Laurie Ouellette define reality TV as "anunabashedly commercial genre united less by aesthetic rules or certainties than bythe fusion of popular entertainment with a self-conscious claim to the discourse ofthe real" (Murray and Ouellette 2). The standard format consists of non-actorsproducing non-scripted speech in a contrived and controlled setting. The interac-tions between participants are recorded and carefully edited to produce a sleek,dramatic episode that insures high ratings. As Murray and Ouellette point out,"This fixation with 'authentic' personalities, situations, and narratives is consid-ered to be reality TV's primary distinction from fictional television and also itsprimary selling point" (Murray and Ouellette 4).

Since its inception in the late 1980s and early 1990s, reality television hasspawned an array of labels such as "factual television" (Dovey 1), "actualityprogramming," "infotainment," "confi-ontainment," and "trash TV" (Glynn 2). MTVlaunched its first reality series The Real World from New York City in 1992. Anaverage episode of "The Real World" draws more than 2.2 million viewers (Peyser54). The show's producers typically receive 5,000 applicants per season, demon-strating home viewers' willingness to expose their private lives on camera forpublic consumption. This begs the question, why are viewers so invested in hav-ing a medium such as television represent their everyday reality? How is thisvisual medium shaping our expectations and desires as readers?

The premise of The Real World appears at the beginning of every episode,blending the voices of all seven participants: "This is the true story of seven strang-ers, picked to live in a house and have their lives taped to find out what happenswhen people stop being polite and start getting real." This sentence encapsulatesthe show's objective—to bring together an array of people and allow the viewerto observe their behavior. But what exactly is real about MTV's "The RealWorld"? From the first episode, we see that the setting is highly unreal. The


original cast of seven strangers lived rent-free in a sprawling loft in New York thatthe young cast could never afford under realistic conditions. Since then, the showhas made a home in Los Angeles (1993), San Francisco (1994), London (1995),Miami (1996), Boston (1997), Seattle (1998), Hawaii (1999), New Orleans (2000),New York (2001), Chicago (2002), Las Vegas (2002), Paris (2003), San Diego(2004), Philadelphia (2004), Austin (2005), and Key West, Rorida (2006). Withinthe house, the lights, wireless microphones, two-way telephones, hidden cables,and the hundreds of cameras that capture their lives virtually transform this do-mestic space into a sound stage. All of this sophisticated equipment is necessaryto provide the illusion that we have privileged access to their private space.

How do the MTV producers select the racially and sexually diverse cast?The attractive twenty-somethings are selected because their differences will surelylead to conflict, drama, and thus, high ratings: "But it ultimately comes down towho are the seven best people. All the story has to come from that cast. If youdon't have people with layers that are going to be peeled off throughout the sea-son, you're not going to get your 24 episodes of series television" (Frutkin 26).Producers Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray specify: "We are looking forpeople who were open to the camera... People with interesting lives, who hadn'tworked out all of their problems. We didn't want anybody too well adjusted. Thatwould have been too boring" (Johnson and Rommelmann 26-27). This opennessto the camera and the ability to divulge intimate thoughts is a requirement forparticipation. What are the emotional needs of the people who flock to the castingcalls? Bunim and Murray explain:

We're looking for people without an agenda, people who wouldn't normallylook to do this. And you have to hope they'll trust you enough to let youknow the real person ... I found that most applicants were looking for a wayout, or for an opportunity to connect with people or change their life ... A lotof kids spoke about the alienation they were feeling, they were looking for acamaraderie they weren't getting at home, or with their peers (Johnson andRommelmann 149).

The first season's cast of "seven strangers" is representative of the array ofparticipants: Norman is a white painter that comes out of the closet during thethird episode; Becky is a white film student at New York University and an aspir-ing singer; Heather is an African American rap singer; Andre is a white musicianalways seeking to promote his band; Eric is a white model from New Jersey; Julieis a white virgin from Alabama and an aspiring dancer, and Kevin is an AfricanAmerican poet from New Jersey. This casting formula continues each season.Jos6 Esteban Muiloz describes the Los Angeles cast as follows: "Judd, a Jewishcartoonist from Long Island; Pam, an Asian-American medical student; Mohatnmad,an African-American Bay Area musician and writer; Puck, a white man who wasa bicycle messenger; and Rachel, a Republican Mexican-American from Arizonawho is applying to graduate school" (Mufioz 155). The selection of the cast

Susana S. Martinez 183

makes strategic use of race, gender, and sexual orientation to maximize the poten-tial for conflict. The show's uniqueness rests on the fact that it documents theprivate lives of non-actors negotiating Otherness or "getting real" by openly ex-posing their emotions on camera.

The use of the confessional is a compelling strategy for staging or performingrealness. Once a week, each cast member enters a small room, switches on thecamera, and reflects upon their personal experiences within the dynamic of thehouse. The uninhibited comments during the unscripted video confessions peelback one of the layers of this highly constructed reality. During this moment ofunveiling it becomes obvious that the participants are performing 'realness' forthe camera. Only the viewers at home have access to the casts' personal reflec-tions, meaning that we are allowed to obtain privileged information that the actualhouse members are unaware of. In the secrecy of the confessional, as Jos6Esteban Mufioz points out, "they can perform their selves solo and in private"(Mufioz 145). The purpose of this performance is to draw the viewer into anintimate space, yet we know that the casts' revelations are always already medi-ated by MTV. The video confessionals are a moment of hypermediation in whichthe participant and the public acknowledge the presence of the camera as a me-diating force. The transparency is destroyed by the casts' and viewers self-awareness of the penetration of the media in our domestic space. Given theirawareness of the camera, the participants are surely self-editing, and their wordswill later be edited once again before the show's producers allow the scenes toair. Moreover, there is a level of self-awareness about the process itself that isincreasingly true with every season, since every cast is aware of what happenedwith previous groups. In fact, MTV has staged multi-cast reunions where partici-pants reflect on their experiences in front of a live studio audience of other twenty-somethings. These televised reunions, in tum, demonstrate that the participantsare keenly aware of the notoriety that will come as a result of appearing on theshow. In fact, some openly disclose that they are there to promote their bands orlaunch their entertainment careers. This awareness of their celebrity status andthe pitfalls of fame serve as "an indication that they are neither fooled nor particu-larly troubled by the commodification of their private lives for mass consumption"(Andrejevic 252).

Although the televised docudrama purports to represent the real lives of realpeople, the editing process clearly reveals that we are dealing with constructedand highly mediated realities. Russ Krasnoff, president of programming and pro-duction with Columbia TriStar Television Distribution admits, "At the core, theseshows have to be dramatic ... These shows are made in post-production" (Pendleton42). Jonathan Murray, one of producers of The Real World explains:

We're just really acting as their editors. Sometimes that's an easy process ...Other times, we have to wait for enough to happen in a particular area to tella story (Owen 128) [...] We observe situations - we sit and absorb with our


hearts. What are the specifics and the essence of these people, of thisfamily? We try to see where the drama is, where the comedy is, what'sexciting. You have to be careful of their feelings and not be exploitative. Wenever tell them what to do; we don't create anything for them (Owen 149).

Murray's comment reveals that although MTV purports to provide viewers withdirect access to real people, the editors use their postproduction power to utider-mitie the illusion of immediacy or transparency. This becomes especially appar-ent during the final episode of the first season. As the cast prepares to leave thehouse to reenter real life outside the confines of The Real World, Eric convinceshis roommates to storm the control room that they have never been allowed toaccess. This scene is particularly revealing because it brings the viewer and thecast face to face with the alarming amount of mediation that must take place inorder for us to gain access to the lives of these seven individuals. The invasion ofthe editing room, which the housemates appropriately designate as "OZ," is an-other moment of unmasking:

The door finally gives way, and the kids rush in, a camera crew naturallytrailing right behind. Their eyes go ba-wooooga! when they see the equip-ment lining the walls. "Oh, my God!" Eric whoops. "I can't believe this. Youguys could launch space shuttles from here!" Kevin shakes his head: "Afterthree months in that loft, I feel like I've just gotten off Gilligan's Island."Norm smiles, "I feel like a sperm who just got into the egg." Becky looks atherself on a video monitor, shrieking, "Oh no! I look horrible on TV" (Svetkey29).

The on-camera storming of the editing room is a highly appropriate way to end thefirst season because it calls attention to this mediated domestic space as a stage tofuture casts and home viewers. At this moment, the participants see themselvesas their audience will see them. Here, the editors allow us a fiy-on-the-wallperspective - we witness real life being turned into a commercialized story. Hav-ing gleaned a view into the fabrication of reality from behind the camera, we cannow consider how Latin American authors such as Miguel Bamet, Manuel Puigand Ariel Dorfman represent real life in the U.S. by responding to and engaging inthis postmodern, multimedia dialogue of images and voices.

Representing Real Life:Miguel Barnet's La vida real as Textual DocudramaThe oxymoron "reality TV" is as problematic as the term "novela testimonio."Interestingly these visual and textual genres share important characteristics be-sides troublesome terminology. They share a celebration of first person experi-ence, a search for community to combat modem day alienation, and an interest inrepresenting real life experience in an authentic setting. Like reality TV, thetestimonio, is a postmodern genre with mediation at its core. In 1970 the testimo-


nial genre was officially anointed with a new prize instituted by the Cuban publish-ing house Casa de las Americas. From its inception, the testimonio was con-ceived as a literature of resistance and protest whose explicit goal was to repre-sent the collective experience of the marginalized (Beverley and Zimmerman1990).

The forerunners of Miguel Barnet's particular brand of novela testimonioare the nonfiction novels of Truman Capote and Norman Mailer, New Journalism,the cultural narratives of Ricardo Pozas, and the tape-recorded anthropologicaldocuments on the "culture of poverty," popularized by Oscar Lewis and CarolinaMaria de Jesus' Quarto de Despejo (1958). Barnet's Biografia de un cimarrdn(1966), translated as The Autobiography of a Runaway Slave, is the testimonialgenre's foundational text. This is Barnet's most critically acclaimed work. EstebanMontejo's life story as a runaway slave is of special importance given thetestimonio's mission to challenge "official" history and to empower the voice ofthe underprivileged. In fact, the disenfranchised become the privileged witnesseswho fill the voids of the official story.

Cuban poet and ethnologist Miguel Bamet subverts the "real world" stipula-tions of the testimonio from the onset by shielding his work with fiction. In fact,he claims that his documentary novels or novela-testimonio are all the more realbecause he uses fiction:

I am not a pure writer but something like the cross between a falcon and atortoise. I have tried to bring together sociological-anthropological inter-ests and the literary, convinced that they travel together in undergroundcaverns, seeking each other out and nourishing each other in joyful reci-procity. If I move back and forth between these disciplines it's because Ibelieve it's time they join hands without denying each other (Bamet 1994,205).

In my view, reading La vida real through the camera lens of MTV's The RealWorld enables us to better explore Barnet's bizarre fusion of a falcon and atortoise to consider how the literary and the documentary can travel together andnourish each other in "joyful reciprocity."

La vida real (1986) closely follows Bamet's classic formula of Autobiogra-phy of a Runaway Slave (1966), Rachel's Song (1969), and Gallego (1981).La vida real is the first-person account of Julian Mesa, a Cuban exile who haslived in New York more than thirty years with his Nuyorrican wife, daughter, andtwo grandchildren. Mesa left Cuba before the Revolution for economic reasonsand remains a fervent supporter of Fidel Castro. Jose Marti's assertion, "No haycasa en tierra ajena" is reiterated throughout the text, which ends with Mesastaring out of his basement window, dreaming of his retum to Cuba.

This testimonial novel begins with a brief introduction by the author, a glossaryof Spanglish terms, Bamet's acknowledgements to the Center for Cuban Studiesand the Center for Puerto Rican studies in New York, the Guggenheim Founda-


tion, and ends with a bibliography of seventeen titles.' La vida real is divided intofour sections. El campo describes Mesa's childhood in abject poverty in Cuba,La travesia covers his departure from the countryside to Havana, La ciudadspans the years he struggled to make ends meet in the big city, and La emigraciondescribes his life and interpersonal relationships in New York working as a bus-boy, a waiter, and the superintendent of a brownstone in Chelsea. Mesa describesNew York as a Tower of Babel, an octopus that eats up naive immigrants, and anopen-air madhouse. He offers his views on housing conditions, violence, crime,racism, and the loneliness of immigrants. He describes himself as a slave to thebrownstone's temperamental boiler and its demanding tenants. He escapes thischaotic world by retreating to the basement—his only private space. Here heseeks refuge with a television, a radio, and a collection of Bohemia magazinesconnecting him to Cuba.

Today's reader, accustomed to the author acknowledging the power dynamicwith respect to his or her informant will surely find Bamet's textual silence sur-prising. For several decades now, anthropological studies have assumed that"good ethnography should be 'reflexive'" (Robinson 785). Literary critic ElzbietaSklodowska, for example, finds it highly disconcerting that Bamet does not viewhis intervention in his testimonial projects as coercive or manipulative (Sklodowska90). In this respect, Germaine Greer's observation about reality shows applies toBamet's testimonial approach: "Reality television is not very real. The situationsare contrived and the protagonists handpicked ... It's always the case that al-though the people who volunteer for reality shows may all be exhibitionists, some-one who is careful to remain unwatched is pulling their strings" (Greer 2001:1,quoted in Kilbom 79). While Bamet's silence contributes to a sense of the unreal,in all faimess, it is important to understand that although La vida real was pub-lished in 1986, Bamet is really working under the premises that he established inBiografia in 1966. His brief introduction, for example, does not disclose how hemet Julian Mesa, or why he chose him as the basis for this project. How did theyestablish a rapport? How many interviews took place? Where did they occur?Were the interviews recorded, transcribed and later edited solely by the author?Clearly, Bamet's performative silence speaks volumes about how he views hisauthority and mission:

I aspire to be a sounding board for the collective memory of my country ...The only desire I have is to reveal the human heart, the heart of the men thattraditional historiography has marked with the sign of a proverbial fatalismby writing them off as 'people without a history' (Bamet 205).

Here, we see that Bamet chooses to disappear fi-om the text in order to give voiceto the disenfranchised. Bamet's describes his role as the voice for the disenfran-chised as follows:

Creo que he contribuido a llenar un vacio, a dar una imagen fundamental,hasta estereofonica—mis libros estan Uenos de sonido----de la vida y la


historia de Cuba... Yo soy poeta por esencia, escritor por vocaci6n y etndlogode profesi6n, un hibrido. Lo veo todo desde arriba y recojo todo lo de abajo

Creo que mds que escritor lo que soy es un resonador. Los espiritus meimpulsan a hablar por los otros. Un sacerdote de la santeria me dijo que yoera protegido por espiritus que habi'an sido prostitutas, negros, inmigrantes,gente que sufre menesterosos ... De ahi mi misi6n. Yo debo siempre hablarpor la gente mds sufrida y necesitada (Lantigua 150).

Sklodowska, notwithstanding, has accused him of adopting the role of "anunobstrusive interviewer and self-effacing editor that creates a simulacmm of amonologue that supplants the original dialogue" (Sklodowska 89). Bamet is notconcemed with the reality effect that the recording device could add to his docu-mentary novel. In an interview with Barry B. Levine in 1979, Bamet explains hisparticular use of, and power over, this medium: "The tape recorder is a simpleartifact, a simple object, like a cane. One can lean on it or not. Personally, I findit useful, and I am all for modem technology ... One has to know what one wants,what to look for, what one intends the meaning of his work to be" (Levine 33). Sois it fair to assume that he edited the final text in order to communicate a predeter-mined message? How extensively did he reorganize the material obtained in theinterviews? Did Mesa have any input as to what would be included in the printedversion of his story? Did Mesa receive a copy of the book for which he providedthe raw material by sharing his life experiences with Bamet?

Although these questions remain unanswered, Bamet's performative silencestrives to represent Julidn Mesa's reality in order to challenge previous anthropo-logical claims. By specifically choosing the title La vida real as opposed to OscarLewis' La vida (1966), Bamet refutes Lewis' "culture of poverty" thesis. Lewissummarizes his intentions in La vida as follows:

In this tape-recorded story of a low-income Puerto Rican slum family in SanJuan and New York, I have tried to give a voice to people who are rarelyheard, and to provide the reader with an inside view of a style of life which islargely unknown, ignored or inaccessible to most middle-class personnel -teachers, social workers, doctors, priests, and others - who bear the majorresponsibility for carrying out the anti-poverty programs. It is my hope thata better understanding of the nature of the culture of poverty will eventuallylead to a more sympathetic view of the poor and their problems and willprovide a more rational basis for constructive social action (Lewis xii).

Bamet relies on Mesa's compelling story and his political commitment to the Cu-ban Revolution to silence Lewis' claims. Moreover, Bamet does not include anyof the sordid, titillating details that helped make La vida into a bestseller. Accord-ing to Laura Briggs, "The book left little doubt about the fact that this was adepraved, unhappy existence. These people's lives, argued Lewis, are lonely,violent, tragic. People were sociable without real human connection [...] Parenting,sexuality, and the visibility of the body and its functions are co-mingled in ways

^ 88 Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 25

intended to shock U.S., middle class readers (88) [...] It is a pomography ofpoverty, whose chief pleasures are voyeuristic" (89). Although Bamet might notsatisfy our popular culture's current voyeuristic desires nor critically reflect on hismethodology, Bamet does take an important step by challenging Lewis's contro-versial thesis.

Although Bamet makes only one brief reference to Lewis' work. Mesa'swords and personal experiences in New York are meant to refute Lewis' cultureof poverty thesis.^ In the introduction to La vida real Bamet states: "Esperohaber demostrado con este libro que la vida de los hombres de la llamada culturade la pobreza no siempre carece de una voluntad de ser, de una conciencia historica.Y que aun cuando este anclada en un sentimiento de marginalidad la llama de esavida, alienta hacia el futuro" (Bamet 1984,15).^ Bamet's objective in dovraplayingmediation ultimately serves the same purpose of Lewis' detailed tape recordingsand MTV's use of the hyperreal—to allow the reader to achieve a certain level ofimmediacy with a Cuban exile that endures discrimination in a cold, alienating citywhile holding steadfastly to his dream of one day retuming home:

Mi sueiio seria volver a Cuba, morirme alia, y que me echaran tierra cubanaarriba. A Cuba la llevo en el corazon, y es cuando pienso en ella cuando mealegro un poco. Porque Cuba es como una persona. No pasa asi con otroshispanos. No conozco un cubano que no quiera volver" (88) [...] Nosotros,aunque llevemos 40 afios viviendo aqui, a Cuba no la olvidamos y muchosnos hemos negado a ser ciudadanos norteamericanos (200) [...] Me sientotan cubano a pesar de la distancia (211) [...] Yo tengo las ultimas noticias deCuba. Nosemeescapanada,lesigolapistaalaRevoluci6n. Como si vivieraalia (328).

Interestingly, with this text, Bamet challenges Lewis by reversing the process.He travels to the U.S. to have Julian Mesa expose the dark side of the "Americandream" from New York City, thus refuting Lewis' research on poverty in Cuba,Mexico, and Puerto Rico. Much like MTV's use of the confessional and sleekediting, in La vida real, Bamet fuses raw material gathered from personal inter-views with literary strategies to allow his reader to access Mesa's everyday real-ity. Mesa's haunting experiences with alienation and racial discrimination aremeant to critique economic and social inequality in the United States.

"Inquiring Minds Want to Know":Eternal Curse on the Reader of these Pages and Privileged Access

Truth wants to give herself naked.. . That hopeless striptease is the verystriptease of reality, which 'disrobes'in the literal seme, offering up to theeyes of gullible voyeurs the appearance of nudity. But the fact is that thisnudity wraps it in a second skin, which no longer has even the erotic charmof the dress.

Jean Baudrillard, The Perfect Crime

Susana S. Martinez 1̂ 9

The multiple layers of mediation at work in the representation of the realworld in MTV's docudrama and Bamet's testimonial novel are forcefully over-stated in Manuel Puig's novel Eternal Curse on the Reader of these Pages.The reader is awarded privileged access into the lives of two characters that alsolive in New York City. This novel is based on a tme story and it was originallywritten in English, based on a series of interviews that Puig conducted with ayounger man named Mark during the 1970s. In her biography titled Manuel Puigand the Spider Woman, Suzanne Jill Levine notes that Larry, the fictional char-acter, is based on Mark, a ragged, gray-haired man in his late thirties that hadfailed to achieve tenure. Mark had a Ph.D. in sociology but had lost his profes-sional position and was teaching part time as a lecturer at New York University(Levine 294). The author intentionally translated the manuscript into "fiat" Span-ish and it was published first in Spanish as Maldicidn Etema a Quien Lea EstasPdginas. The fact that the novel is written as a series of uninterrupted dialogues,rather than as an edited monologue or testimonio, is one of the many revealingreversals that the novel takes with respect to the Latin American testimonial. Ibelieve this novel serves as a cautionary dramatization of both the reality televi-sion premise and the testimonial process itself. The reader that risks an etemalcurse is awarded a behind-the-scenes exclusive that reveals what these visualand textual genres relegate to the margins or the cutting-room fioor. Puig's novelwams the reader about a naive, self-serving readiness to categorize others as"subaltem." The novel brings to life Florencia Mallon's stipulation that, "no subal-tem identity can be pure and transparent; most subaltems are both dominated anddominating subjects, depending on the circumstances or location in which weencounter them" (Mallon 1511). From the first page, Puig's novel tears down themythic rapport that MTV and testimonial writers build up. Instead, the readerinstantly notes the lack of rapport and solidarity between eyewitness and mediatorthat typically characterizes the testimonial relationship:

What is this?Washington Square, Mr. Ramirez.I know "square" but not "Washington." Not really.Washington is the name of a man, the first President of the United States.

Yes, I know. Thanks so much.

Washington ...Forget it, it's not important, Mr. Ramirez. It's just a name and nothing more[...] r m paid to push your wheelchair, not give you my philosophy of life.You were hired by the agency, am I correct?Yes, and they told me to wheel you around and nothing else. The pay is

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lousy. And if I also have to give you English lessons, I want more money.The cost of living is high in New York, you know? (3).

From this opening dialogue onward, we witness a relationship of mutual depen-dency that quickly deteriorates into manipulation, exploitation and vengeance. Wewitness human behavior at its worst.

Mr. Ramirez is a seventy-four year old Argentinean who has recently arrivedin New York under the auspices of the Human Rights Commission and lives in aconvalescent home. Larry is a thirty-six year old man who is paid to take Ramirezout in his wheelchair around the Village three times a week. Their starkly differ-ent life experiences and social locations result in heated verbal battles. They useeach other to fulfill their own selfish needs. Ramirez's need for closeness causesLarry to pull away. In hopes of quenching his insatiable voyeuristic desires, Ramirezwants Larry to give him detailed accounts of his battered childhood and difficultmarriage. Larry attempts to guard his privacy but often relinquishes because ofhis own very real economic needs:

Is this an inquisition? Can't we talk about something else?I'd like to talk about the college you attended.

Can't two guys have a conversation without getting into each other's

business? Let's talk about sports or the news. Anything. Earthquakes,books... (8)[...]You're getting personal again. Let's talk about the world, reality, which ismore important (11).

Enough, I'm not going to discuss this. You're being a pain in the ass (48).

Besides presenting the reader with an unsettling lack of rapport, Puig mercilesslyshatters the traditional testimonio bond of solidarity that draws two very differentindividuals to unite in order to denounce injustice. In Puig's novel this complexrelationship is dysfunctional at best due to the lack of tmst between the charactersand their need to lie in order to safeguard their vulnerabilities. Larry occasionallysatisfies Ramirez's need for intimacy by playing along with his fantasies, but hisstories blur the boundaries between reality and fiction when Larry transposesevents of his own life onto Ramirez's family life— a topic Ramirez refuses toaddress. Once Larry gains access to the prison diaries that Ramirez wrote innumerical code over an eighteenth century French novel, he envisions publishing itas a testimony of the political repression in Argentina. Larry would profit profes-sionally and financially from this publication. Orality and writing enter into con-fiict, as often occurs in the testimonio, because both characters negotiate and

S usana S. Martinez 191

manipulate the shifting roles of intellectual and subaltem. The issue of representa-tion complicates their tenuous relationship even further because Ramirez, who isbedridden, cannot conceive of the testimonial project continuing without his directparticipation; isn't it, after all, the story of his life?:

You astonish me...Why?I never thought you would be so ungrateful.What do you mean?

I mean ungrateful. I took you into my confidence ... and all you can think ofis making a quick profit off me.

I was afraid that you might react badly. But you'll benefit from this projectalso. Your contributions and a little more of the history of your country ...will be known ... Yes, it's also important for me personally; the contacts,some money, and most important, a chance for me to work at my profession.What's wrong with all that?I see what you are, a greedy materialistic caricature of an American, all youcan think of is profits (211).

Ultimately, it is Ramirez who exerts control over his encoded words, and thisaction is meant to condemn Larry's academic career as a historian once and forall. Ramirez refuses to acquiesce to the role of subaltem requiring a mediator toobtain a voice and thus gain acknowledgement and legitimacy in U.S. academiccircles. Moreover, Ramirez condemns Larry to silence in the "publish or perish"spirit of the Ivory Tower. In choosing to opt for his own silence, Ramirez takes ananti-testimonial position that stands in stark contrast to Rigoberta Menchu's words:"Personal testimony is something which must be shared with moral courage anddignity by those who have been victims. It is a right and also a responsibility thattranscends the indignation you feel when the value of human life is not respected"(quoted in Brill 229-230). Instead, Ramirez alters his will out of sheer vengeancebecause he is highly suspicious of Larry's tme intentions. In classic Puig form,the novel concludes with a final document—the reader is once again awardedspecial access to witness Ramirez's ultimate revenge—Larry's life is reduced toan unemployment form.

Puig's novel curses and condemns the exploitative use of the Other that hasunfortunately become characteristic of reality programming and the North/Southtestimonial relationship. Larry's efforts to market Ramirez's encoded words arethwarted, which in tum critiques the reader's voyeuristic desires and academia'spower to assign life stories a certain degree of cultural capital. When Ramirezaccuses Larry of being a parasite, traitor, and a vampire, we are forced to see the


real, yet often unacknowledged, extraliterary dimension of testimonio (Moreiras195). Ramirez refuses to be assigned a voice as on reality television; instead, hestorms off the sound stage cursing the mediator and translator of his encodedwords. In this novel, the Latin American "subaltem" takes revenge by silencingthe North American "scholar" that wishes to give him a written voice. This finalact of vengeance challenges us to refiect on the ethical framework of the testimo-nio and the illusion of unmediated access to the Other that has become the defin-ing feature of reality television. Reading Puig's novel through a televisual lenschallenges us to become more attuned to testimonio and docudrama as fact-based genres that owe their success and popularity to their ability to draw us intothe pseudo-intimate space of the Other. Both the textual and visual genres chal-lenge the reader and television viewer to constantly question our codified con-structions of what we choose to interpret as reality.

"You're Fired!":Downsizing "Real Life" in Blake's Therapy by Ariel Dorfman

The TV audience may be, today, the most pervasive type of social community,but if this is so then it is a very special type of community: an anticommunityof a social antimatter—electronically composed, rhetorically constituted, anelectronic mall which privileges the psychological position of the voyeur.

McCaffery,233.

It's not personal, it's just business.The Apprentice

Cue the sun.'"The Truman Show"

Larry McCaffery's hypothesis of a "televisual anticommunity" that caters to thevoyeuristic tendencies of home viewers certainly rings tme for one of the mostrecent, and highly profitable, reality TV shows. According to Laurel Wentz andClaire Atkinson, local versions of The Apprentice are spreading rapidly acrossEurope, Latin America and Asia; "the Tmmp role is being assumed by such dis-parate taskmasters as a German soccer-team manager, a billionaire Arab entre-preneur and a Brazilian ad agency CEO who dangles a job at WPP Group'sWunderman as the prize" (3). In its second season and gamering an audienceshare of up to 18%, with almost one in five people watching, Brazilians tuning in toO Aprendiz have heard the devastating words, "Vofe esta demitido" (Wentz andAtkinson 3). The Apprentice owes its popularity and commercial success to theglossy editing that viewers have grown to expect of reality programming. On aweekly basis, viewers witness the cutthroat negotiations and daring marketingskills of a slick cast of overachievers competing for a position in one of DonaldTmmp's million dollar organizations. While victims of the Enron collapse or the


dot-com industry might not appreciate Tmmp's glamorized representation of thebusiness world, as many as 41.5 million people tuned into the show in 2005. Nowonder Donald Tmmp has been called "the High-Priest of Hype" (Business Week86). Though entertaining, the transactions taking place inside the Tmmp board-room fall short in comparison to the financial and ethical decisions that consumebusiness mogul Graham Blake in Ariel Dorfman's novel.

Jack Shreve characterizes Blake's Therapy as "an allegorical thriller" (132).Lynne Sharon Schwartz describes it as a "harrowing novel" [...] "it is a powerfulshock to the system, like being plunged into a vat of ice" (35). Ana Maria Hemddezdeclares, "Kafkaesque in tone, fiawless in stmcture, seamless in narrative tech-nique, the novel presents a nightmarish world where the virtual, the real, and theimaginary morph and blend into one another" (76). At the age of forty-three,Dorfman's protagonist, Graham Blake, undergoes an expensive and extreme formof psychological therapy to deal with his chronic insomnia and impotence resultingfrom the agonizing decision to close one of his Clean Earth factories. Surely theclosing of factories comes as no surprise in today's globalized economy, but thisparticular plant in Philadelphia holds a special place in Blake's heart because hisfather left it to him before dying. Jessica Owen, his ex-wife and business partnerpressures him to get rid of it. His rival. Hank Granger, orchestrates a corporatetakeover, threatening to destroy Blake's professional and personal lives. Blake'sidentity crisis is reflected in the narrative structure and multiple layers of media-tion. The first section is narrated from Blake's point of view, the second from Dr.Tolgate's perspective, and the third consists of direct dialogue reported to a higherauthority. These multiple points of view urge the voyeur in us to self-refiect onour need to watch and be watched.

Faced with such life-threatening decisions and competitive pressure, Blakeseeks professional help. He checks into The Corporate Life Therapy Institute,the radical psychological institute for the wealthy mn by Dr. Carl Tolgate, whoguarantees his full recovery within one month for $3 million dollars. This unortho-dox and titillating therapy consists of Blake exerting control over his own person-alized reality show. Graham Blake is assigned a family modeled after a real-lifefamily that works for him. He can monitor and manipulate them at all times. Thisgives him the illusion of control; his power as scriptwriter, producer, and ChiefExecutive Officer of the family's future appears to be limitless. He monitors theirevery move and listens to their conversations through the use of hidden videocameras and one-way mirrors. Blake becomes Big Brother and enjoys his ownpersonalized reality production. Not surprisingly, he quickly develops a romanticinterest in Roxanna, the young Puerto Rican woman he observes at all times andhe proceeds to exert his power to win her love.

Graham Blake is representative of today's skeptical reality TV viewers. Hisawareness of the use of hidden cameras and listening devices makes him a disbe-lieving interpreter of his surroundings. Like Blake, the home viewer asks on anightly basis, what exactly is real? Who is really calling the shots? The reader


and television viewer would be wise to heed Puig's and Dorfman's wamings toproceed with caution given the multiple layers of mediation at work. As in the filmThe Truman Show, professional actors passing as ordinary people surround Blake.Likewise, Dr. Tolgate is an egotistic Cristoff-type character that films Blake with-out his consent: "Here, let me fast forward. Rewind to that moment. Now thathe's only an image on this screen. This is all being done— every last horrible thing—for his own good. We're going to save Graham Blake in spite of himself." Likereality TV, Blake's therapeutic experience at the Corporate Life Institute is de-signed to be interactive, confirming Richard Kilbom's assertion:

Reality game-docs claim a certain reality status for themselves by focusingon a series of 'real-life' exchanges between a group of carefully selectedindividuals gathered together in a highly contrived, made-for-TV environ-ment and required to respond to a number of challenges dreamed up bymembers of the production team. Some of the reality game-docs may makenods in the direction of observational documentary, but the core of theirappeal lies in the opportunities they provide for especially intense forms ofaudience participation (Kilbom 59).

Ariel Dorfman's novel raises important ethical questions about our mass-medi-ated and technology-manipulated culture. Ultimately, Schwartz asserts, "Blake'sTherapy enriches the genre of nightmarish social parable; like the best such works,it unfolds in an ambiance of unbearable anxiety, where fragile individual identity iscmshed by huge abstract power. Its corporate setting happens to be supremelypertinent for our age, but this novel's real and enduring locale is the darknesswithin" (Schwartz 36). The darkness that threatens to overtake Graham Blake issymptomatic of our globalized corporate culture that seeks to maximize profitswhile placing human relationships in community settings at risk. By watchingothers, Blake attempts to temporarily reach out to what McCaffery refers to asan "anticommunity of a social antimatter" (McCaffery 233). This unproductiveand unsettling connection heightens the cmelty of Donald Tmmp's televisual motto,"It's not personal, it's just business."

ConclusionBy reading these three Latin American examples of reality-based fiction throughthe lens of reality television, we see that Miguel Bamet, Manuel Puig, and ArielDorfman employ different strategies to show 'reality.' Bamet conceives La vidareal as a means to communicate the reality of a Cuban immigrant in New Yorkwhile also refuting Lewis's culture of poverty thesis. Bamet erases the act ofrepresentation as opposed to the logic of hypermediacy at work in a visual me-dium such as MTV's The Real World that acknowledges multiple acts of repre-sentation and makes them visible (Bolter and Gmsin 329). Both the desire forimmediacy and the fascination with hypermediacy heighten our awareness—asreaders and viewers—that we are in fact consuming a spectacle. Eventually,


these fact-based genres allow their subjects or informants to relate their stories toa wide audience while challenging us to constantly question them as codifiedconstmctions claiming to be real. The different strategies employed by realitytelevision and these three examples of reality-based fiction show the impossibilityof representing reality without Bamet's strange fusion of falcon and tortoise. Ifimmediacy and hypermediacy are in the end simply strategies of remediation, asBolter and Gmsin claim, why shouldn't factual documentation enter in "joyfulreciprocity" with fictionalized dramatization? Reading these Latin American textstelevisually helps us see that hybrid visual and textual genres can effectively nour-ish each other, joining hands rather than existing in isolation. Ultimately, MTV'sThe Real World and La vida real remind us that all attempts to represent realityrequire some degree of mediation and staging.

These three texts also invite us to see that mediation and staging lie at thecore of the viewing relationship. Viewers and readers are drawn into the "pseudo-intimate" space of the Other because of the pleasure of images and the illusion ofprivileged access. The reality television phenomena is "not like normal TV" inthat we are hooked by watching and eavesdropping on the lives of "real people,"as Johnson and Rommelmann, Tucker, and Owen assert. This claim, in tum, begsthe question, how are television and popular culture shaping our expectations anddesires as readers? The cast members of reality television and the first-personnarrators that share their lives as raw material with viewers and readers "getreal" by exposing their emotions before the camera or tape recorder. The televi-sion docudrama audience and testimonio reader are invited to participate in theprocess perhaps by casting a vote to eliminate a competitor, or more importantly inthe case of testimonio, to critically reflect on the experiences of someonemarginalized by larger, less visible forces.

In both visual and textual media, we have witnessed the highly constmctedreality involved in exposing the self during the intimacy of confession that facili-tates the illusion of immediacy. The combative dialogues in Puig's novel point to adesire to connect with the other, and the risk involved since this closeness is neverdisinterested. Likewise, Graham Blake's extreme form of therapy reminds us ofthe larger global powers that threaten to alienate and condemn people to liveisolated lives devoid of meaningful, nourishing connections.

Reading these texts televisually leads us to ask, how will new generations thathave been weaned on MTV's docudramas read reality-based or documentaryfiction? As Clay Calvert points out in Voyeur Nation, this new generation longs tolive its life out in full view for all to see (32). Will this need to feel validated onscreen and have their stories told impact the reader's view of testimoniol Willyounger readers grow intolerant of authorial silence and secrets, demanding in-stead, full disclosure from the eyewitness and the mediator of his or her words?Will reader and viewer's expectations of realness grow more demanding of privi-leged access to another life as we witness in Eternal Curse on the Reader ofThese Pages and Blake's Therapy'? Will these mediated genres survive by form-


ing new alliances with television audiences and readers as in the television showSurvivor! Will they unite viewers and readers in "joyful reciprocity" or threatento further alienate us?

Notes1. Among the seventeen titles that appear in the bibliography, Bamet lists the following

classic texts on the Latino immigrant experience in the U.S.: Jesus Col6n's APuertorrican in New York and other sketches (1961), Ambrosio Fomet's En bianco yNegro (1967), Jesus De Galindez's Puerto Rico en Nueva York (1968), Grupo Areito'sContra viento y marea (1978), Cesar Andeu Iglesias' Memorias de Bernardo Vega(1977), Oscar Lewis' La vida (1965), Nicholasa Mohr's In Nueva York (1979), and F61ixOjeda Reyes, Vito Marcantonio y Puerto Rico (1978).

2. Lewis spent many years conducting research in Latin America. His most importantstudies include Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty(1959), Tepoztldn: Village in Mexico (1960), The Children of Sanchez: Autobiogra-phy of a Mexican Family (1961), Pedro Martinez: A Mexican Peasant and His Fam-ily (1964), and La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty — San Juanand New York{1966). For a detailed study of Lewis' work see Susan M. Rigdon's TheCulture Fagade: Art, Science, and Politics in the Work of Oscar Lewis. Urbana andChicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988.

3. The English version of this statement appears in "The Alchemy of Memory": "I thinkI have indeed shown that the life of men ofthe so-called culture of poverty as definedby Oscar Lewis, doesn't always lack the will to exist, or lack a consciousness ofhistory. And even when such a life is anchored in a sense of marginality the time ofthat life glows towards the future" (Bamet 206)

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Reading Televisually: Representing Reality in Barnet, Puig, and Dorfman

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