This film is a self-reflective film.The definition of self-reflexivity, as the most explicit consideration of the relations between images and production processes: within self-reflexive films there is a thematized coincidence of the conditions of production and the images produced. To state it simply, there is a camera within a film image which helps to define the relations between the figures “camera” and “image”, collapsing the distance between the two terms. Sometimes, it is called mise-en-abyme, or “a film within film”. The function of this kind of film is to make its audience aware of the fact that they are watching a film so as to let the audience understand the mass media as well as the social realities.
In this film of Bolivar soy yo, this self-reflexivity of the film includes obsession with celebrity personalities. For example, the “actor” Santiago Miranda gets so obsessed with his role as Bolivar that he is unable to kill off his character. He keeps dressing the 19c uniform of Bolivar wherever he goes. He thinks he is Bolivar. “CUT CUT CUT! Bolivar didn’t die this way! I refuse to kill Bolivar in this or any other way!” A familiar example would be the famous Chinese actor of Zhang Guorong, whose suicide was due to his obsession with his last film which is a psychological thriller film, Yidukongjian. He could not go out of the depression and gloominess and ended up with death.
Here is also a self-reflexivity of the prostitute.. From the words of the prostitute here, she always pretends to have the sexual pleasure during the intercourse with her customers. Prostate:”…” Santiago: does not want to do the falsity in the drama anymore. Actually, in my views, their professional nature are quietly the same, both of them have to do the things the society askes them to do.
Let’s move on to the power of mass media through the self-reflexivity of this film. He was invited to give a speech in fully nineteenth-century military uniform at an international summit of Bolivarian presidents. He said to the president
“You take care of the theater and I’ll take care of the politics!”
In this case, the Colombian president’s use of this soap-opera Bolivar is to use the proliferation of media to serve to the fictive nature of the state’s performance of power.
However, in Santiago’s speech, we could see the other side of this power: he became a threat of this political structure. He did not follow the scripts the president gave him and even kidnapped the president.