If one were to define a cultural institution, industry or medium as paradigmatic of postmodernity —although arguably not of postmodernism, which allows for a greater diversity of media— it would more likely than not be television. For not only is television emblematic of consumer society ‘mediocrac[ies]’ (Hal Foster 1983: xi) —that is, of the commodification of cultural production and the consequent propagation of (image-)signs throughout society— but, as will emerge here, it plays a fundamental role in constituting its spectators as both social and ideological subjects. A hyper-medium of communicative, epistemological, political and, not least, entertainment value, television is the ‘Ideological State Apparatus’ (see Althusser 2008: 1–60) which both informs and renews the myths of consumer capitalism on which postmodern ‘societ[ies] of spectacle’ are based (see Debord 2004).

Given the ascendance of television, it is hardly surprising that theatre practitioners and filmmakers have felt the need to scrutinise not only the way in which television functions as a medium, but its role in shaping (postmodern) society. This chapter will examine how a series of plays and films in Argentina challenge television's cultural and ideological hegemony by exposing the manner in which TV manipulates the reality we perceive.