Videocracy - why sometimes I am ashamed of being Italian

Booties, tits, half-naked women that wiggle like snakes. The spotlight is on them, the tv is on, Italian families are watching. And in the end, again, young girls dancing, or least moving, swinging, touching themselves in a provocative way. But the music is disquieting, the beats are deep and at regular intervals. The girls look like meaningless puppets. Maybe they are.

I've just come back from a night at the movies and drink with friends. We watched Videocracy, the controversial documentary by Erik Gandini. Presented last year at the 66th Film Festival of Venice, Videocracy's trailer was refused screening in both Rai, the state television, and Mediaset, obviously. The film tells the story of the dodgy intertwining of television, power and politics in Italy. The movie features people like Lele Mora, celebrity-maker, tv agent, proud fan of Mussolini (was he so naif to show on camera that his ringtone is actually a fascist hymn?) and, of course, close friend of Berlusconi, and Maurizio Corona, the gangsta-like self-made-hero that exploits celebrities' mischiefs to make huge profits. And then a swathe of wannabes, from the sexy, albeit often unco-ordinated veline-wannabes to the sweet Riccardo, mechanic with the passion for karate and singing -the Italian combination of Van Damme and Ricky Martin, he says- who cannot find a girlfriend because of his stalking mother and spend his time and money pursuing the easy way to success via castings and auditions.

It was all very depressing. Nothing that I didn't know before. But to see our culture squeezed in 80 minutes of hopeless wannabes dotted by references to our media emperor, who is a clown and our Prime Minister, was quite devastating. And then I started thinking.

Paparazzo... to think that we invented this word. The mythical Paparazzo, a.k.a. Padua-born Walter Santesso, who plays so well the part of the ruthless scoop-seeking photographer in Fellini's La Dolce Vita. Is it there where everything started? That film represented the best of our culture, the poetry, the fun, the entertainment, the music, in our majestic capital, Rome, the Eternal City. And at the same time, the worst of times to come: the debauchery, the exploitation, the ostentation, the showcasing of everything, religion included. Did everything start back then? Was Fellini, perhaps the most famous and appreciated Italian director in the history of cinema, an admirer of that ideology of beauty, which later turned into vulgarity, which later turned into pornography? Is Corona and his clique of Robin Hoods -interestingly enough, they had the same accent from the North-East as the original Paparazzo- the modern embodiments of La Dolce Vita? Are Salvatore and the posse of tronisti from Maria De Filippi's Uomini e Donne the new decadent aristocrats who idle in luxurious villas in Sardinia?

And then I started brooding over my recent visit at the National Gallery. I visited the halls with works from the XIV and XV centuries mainly. Italian and Flemish/German arts in comparison. Italian workpieces flourished with beauty, harmony and colour. The scenes, inspired by the Bible or by myths, abounded in buxom girls, profuse landscapes and curving lines. Flemish and German portraits were austere and cold, the lines harsh, the backgrounds dark, people's expressions had nothing of the sweetness and warmth of Italian subjects. Looking at those paintings I had the feeling that in Italy people dreamt of an idyllic place to live, had fun and enjoyed the pleasures of life. Our Northern counterparts gave me the impression of living in a rather boring and strict culture.
The women that starred in XV century painting, naked and beautiful, shifted from those frames into the magic box. And now we have veline, meteorine, schedine. I still can't decide whether we are just more upfront than other cultures, who are righteous on the outside and just as immoral underground, or if we are a lonely island where celebrities are made like sand-castles. And just as easily as sand-castles are knocked down at the first tide.

Then, there was him, the guy we are fed up with mentioning and nevertheless comes up every time. In this case I must say the fault is of Italian people. Leaving out the fact that his supporters sing whacky songs that make them a mockery of themselves more than the "Saviour", as he likes to depict himself, I wonder how they cannot realise that what makes Berlusconi a successful entrepreneur is exactly why they would be wary of having him as politician. A businessman seeks his and his own profit. And Berlusconi is a businessman, before being Prime Minister. A politician should take care of people's interest. Someone who just cares for his own shouldn't be fit to rule, I would quote from The Economist. The fact that Lele Mora compares him with Mussolini makes it blatant.

It's sad to think that I was born and grew up within this system, dreaming about teenage stardom -I was a huge fan of Non è la Rai- and looking at women's big boobs in Colpo Grosso. It's sad to know that I had to go out of my country to fully realise what's going on, how vain and silly people can be for 15 or even less minutes of fame -a fat fifty-something housewife getting naked with saggy tits and flaming red hair at a casting???!!! The price to pay for living the good life, the Dolce Vita we all dream about, is quite high. The bill is to give up your dignity. No, thanks.

But most depressing of all were the final data about Italy. After the flashing lights, the naked bodies, the tv studio, the frenzy of it all, two terse sentences:

Italy is ranked 77th in the freedom of the press worldwide list*

Italy is ranked 84th in the gender equality worldwide list**

Which is quite gloomy for an Italian young woman who wants to become a journalist, ain't it?





* According to the Press Freedom Index 2009, realised by Reporters without Borders, Italy is ranked 49th.
* The datum refers to the The Global Gender Gap Report 2007, sponsored by the World Economic Forum.