Abstract

No presents the television campaign for the 1988 plebiscite on whether the Pinochet regime should stay as the government for eight more years (‘Yes’) or hold democratic elections (‘No’). The ‘No’ campaign uses the Aristotelian idea that happiness is an intrinsic value and thus the best concept to galvanise a traumatised nation in favour of change. My paper examines the film’s presentation of how a response to the trauma of the regime becomes transformed into resistance through the idea of a possible future happiness.