ABSTRACT
While the insignia of the media spectacle symbolically render the early broadcasters as both the transmitter and the content of their own footage, the documentary’s producers present a voice-over which effects to demonstrate their participation in the broadcast spectacles of the past. Lines such as “we saw,” “we witnessed,” “millions watched on TV,” or even “the whole world was watching” accompany on numerous occasions the presentation of those clips, the visual plane of which arrays the insignia of the broadcast spectacle. The use of “we” fashions a symbolic dimension that complements the language of the pictures: in the way the pictures symbolically integrate their own transmitter-receiver context via the insignia of the spectacle, the fi rst person plural verbally incorporates the spectators into the historical footage.1
