Sensaciones y recuerdos: de qué están hechas las imitaciones políticas de Polònia de TV3

Mario Álvarez Fuentes

doi:10.12795/Ambitos.2022.i58.07

Authors

Mario Álvarez Fuentes University of La Frontera

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.12795/Ambitos.2022.i58.07

Keywords:

impersonation, Catalonia, infotainment, political communication, political satire

Abstract

This article describes the main features of a political impersonation crafting process. Data emerges from 29 in-depth interviews with artists producing Polònia, a TV show aired every week in Catalonia since 2006 by the public television network, TV3. The programme offers an account of current political affairs by impersonating the main political figures. Artists narrate their creative work as a sensorial experience that is mediated by their own affective memory. When they approach the politician to be impersonated, actors and actresses try to catch the bodily sensations that observation brings about. Then, those sensations are put together with previous affective experiences materialized in personal memories, social stereotypes or referents drawn from popular culture, among other elements. Impersonating a politician is not the production of a carbon copy out of the original, but the assemblage of sensations and memories that politicians inspire in the artists. This way of describing the creative process carried out by impersonators turns out to be a novelty in the field of political communication research. Studies about political humour have mainly focused on the cognitive effects these genres may cause on audiences as well as on the analysis of their content. Present study sheds light on the very first stages of this creative process, it does so by allowing producers to express themselves in their own words and it reveals the affective dimension of political communication.

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