Media Stories in the Falklands-Malvinas Conflict

Here is yet another effect of fog, this time provided directly by readers in order to sustain the necessary suspense of the story. We seem to be halfway between Flatland and Antonioni’s Blow Up. Argentine newspapers were obliged to find another narrative genre, shifting from war movies to spy novels. Who invented the Yellow Submarine? The British secret services, in order to lower the spirits of Argentines? The Argentine military command, in order to justify its tough stance? The British press? The Argentine press? Who benefited from the rumour? The Yellow Submarine was posited by the media, and as soon as it was posited everyone took it for granted. What happens when in a fictional text the author posits, as an element of the actual world (which is the background of the fictional one) something that does not obtain in the actual world? Umberto Eco, from the Foreword