Rio de Janeiro: Spectacularization and Subjectivities in Globo’s city

With exuberant nature and wonderful events like Carnival, Rio de Janeiro has always had tourism as a source of funds. However, the ephemeral nature and uneven distribution of these activities required a more structured economical model. In the search for internal development and integration into global circuits, the city lives a process of ‘spectacularisation’. On the one hand, it has become the scene of an endless series of mega events including the World Cup (2014) and the Olympic Games (2016). On the other, it becomes a welcoming landscape of a monumentalization through the construction of three major museums signed by international architects that leverage a strong real estate speculation. All these changes are directly or indirectly related to the Globo Group, the largest media conglomerate (analogical and digital) of Brazil and one of the world's largest. The entire city - from its natural landscape to its cultural and creative outputs - became ‘an immense accumulation of spectacles’ according to Guy Debord and from this scenario emerges, in turn, a kind of subjectivity ‘Globo’, that is not very critical to new forms of exploitation of creative practices.