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Since the 1980s, softened and positive portrayals of Fascism have become established in public debate in Italy. A key feature in this process of defascistization has been the reduction of Fascism to the cult of the Duce. This article examines how this narrative has emerged, focusing not on the politics of memory but instead on the role of the culture industry, public debate and the media. It examines three distinct but related phenomena: the 'Mussolinization' of Fascism in public narrative as promoted by television and other mass media; the transformation of the electoral system and political language, marked specifically by the shift from the centrality of the collective to that of authoritative and charismatic individuals; the prominent place of the figure of the hero in the popular culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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As historians, historical fiction teaches us what we understand about our past as a society. The French Revolution (1789-1799) is a pivotal period, which is told as much by specialists as by passionate artists and designers. The reception and understanding of the revolutionary era is thus influenced by alternative narratives that escape academic history. This article seeks to present and deconstruct the new mythologies circulating in moving images, cinema, television and video games. Such an exercise seems essential to demonstrate how fictions are political

This article examines how, in the second series of The White Lotus (2022), Sicily is portrayed as a backdrop for wealthy North Americans to live out touristic fantasies. This relies on a stereotypical portrayal of Sicily as a repository of 'pre-modern' gender roles and racial dynamics. The Sicilian setting facilitates the series' critique of white, male privilege. Although the series uses irony to satirize North American attitudes towards, and beliefs about Sicily, it ultimately 'recycles', however knowingly, familiar clichés about the island, particularly ones that recur in twentieth-century films. Thus, while at first glance The White Lotus appears to critique its characters' conception of Sicily as a Mediterranean playground or 'an idealised space of tourism' (Hom, p. 52), upon closer inspection the series is ultimately an extension of a long line of transnational portrayals of Sicily that rely on familiar stereotypes, made by and for English-speaking observers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Italian Studies / Rivista di Studi Italiani is the property of Rivista di Studi Italiani and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

L’autore, partendo dalle ricerche di ordine psicologico, neuroscientifico e sociologico a proposito degli effetti della violenza in televisione, propone una disamina delle ricerche sugli effetti dei comportamenti esibizionistici in Internet soprattutto degli adolescenti. Tali atteggiamenti, spesso collegabili a una tipica sessualità indecisa adolescenziale e a un bisogno di rassicurazione identitaria, a loro volta, facilitano la pedopornografia, che può sfociare in concreti comportamenti pedofili abusanti. L’articolo ribadisce la gratuità del desiderio infantile, il suo significato ludico che non possono essere cortocircuitati in una relazione sessuale con l’adulto.

“Grande festa alla corte di Francia...” è un celeberrimo incipit in Italia conosciuto ovunque e da generazioni diverse, ma che il cartone cui si riferisce, l’anime giapponese Lady Oscar, avesse un “gemello” è un fatto ignoto, o passato in sordina, ai più. Era stata prodotta, infatti, anche la serie animata Il Tulipano Nero - La Stella della Senna, andata in onda due anni dopo il primo (1982 e 1984), la quale trattava lo stesso periodo storico con (quasi) gli stessi personaggi. Alla luce di tali affinità, l'articolo propone un'analisi comparata che mette in risalto le principali affinità e differenze linguistiche, indagando i tratti sintattici, morfologici, pragmatici e lessicali delle due sceneggiature. Dallo studio condotto è stato possibile individuare come il diverso punto di vista dei protagonisti (nobili in Lady Oscar, popolani ne Il Tulipano Nero), attraverso cui vengono lette le vicende, abbia portato ad una marcata differenziazione stilistica nella traduzione della sceneggiatura, che si è pienamente armonizzata coi suoi personaggi, creando un linguaggio piuttosto misurato ed ossequioso da una parte (con anche un notevole rispetto delle norme grammaticali), ed insolente e spensierato dall’altra.

This paper reconstructs the Italian circulation of Border Security, or rather of the numerous TV shows of different origins (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United States, Spain) that Airport Security joins together for the Italian audience. Firstly, we analyze in detail the decision-making and the distribution processes of the linear channels operated by Discovery Networks that broadcast the series. The paper considers ideas and goals of the professionals involved, the thoughts that led to specific choices of acquisition, adaptation, packaging, scheduling and promotion. This first part of the paper is mostly based on evidence obtained through in-depth interviews with some key industry informants. The second part of the paper engages with critical, scientific and journalistic debates, to provide an account of the reception of the program among specialized audiences. The paper looks both at international and Italian published materials and highlights differences and similarities in relation to crucial themes in contemporary sociopolitical debates, such as migration and stereotypes of minority groups.

During the Eighties, electronic art entered Italian television with title sequences, adverts and bumpers, renewing the graphic look of images which had been in colour since only a few years before. However, as artists and theorists denounce, little space was given to broadcast and vulgarize works of video art and computer art, although television would have been their natural fruition medium. Some programs, broadcasted on Rai Uno and born around the cult of video and new technologies, are an exception in this context. Mister Fantasy (1981-84) originated as a program devoted to the “music to be seen” (the novelty of music video) and over the years it payed more and more attention to visual art, also showing the videos of one of the first and most promising Italian computer art groups: Crudelity Stoffe. Similarly, Non necessariamente (1986-87) broadcasted Giovanotti Mondani Meccanici computer videos and, boasting the definition “techno variety show”, used graphic effects in an experimental and dynamic way. The predominance of electronic image was eventually glorified in the program Immagina (1987-88) which spoke about the new aesthetics of appearance focusing on new media art forms and the technologies they use. It’s hard to label all these works as they are in between art for tv and art in tv.

Il rapporto tra arte e televisione è complesso e articolato. Sono diversi gli artisti che ne hanno sperimentato le possibilità sia da un punto di vista fisico, utilizzandola come supporto come fece Mario Schifano, sia da un punto di vista contenutistico come fece, ad esempio, il Luther Blisset Project cercando di destrutturare le “regole” del programma di Rai Tre “Chi l’ha visto?”. In particolare questo saggio si propone di analizzare le opere dell’artista tedesco Christoph Schlingensief (1960-2010) che hanno indagato il tema televisione. Attraverso le operazioni Freak Stars 3000 (2002), U 3000 (2000) e Bitte liebt Österreich (2000) l’artista ha creato una convergenza tra performance, teatro, televisione e spazio pubblico rendendo di fatto impossibile parlarne usando i soli canoni della critica artistica. La televisione di Schlingensief, che venga performata, trasmessa o teatralizzata, cerca di destabilizzare lo spettatore giocando sulla continua confusione dei piani di realtà e finzione. In particolare il format Big Brother viene ribaltato per prestarsi al discorso sull’espulsione di dodici richiedenti asilo politico “confinati” dall’artista all’interno di una casa/container allestita davanti al Palazzo dell’Opera di Vienna. Anche il talent show viene reinterpretato e Freak Stars 3000 diventa il casting per la creazione di una banda di freak composta interamente da persone con disabilità intellettive. Schlingensief performa la televisione incorporandone stilemi e linguaggi ma il corpo dei suoi attori crea imprevedibilità e sfugge alla legge del format e del copione stesso. Al pari del medium televisione nell’era dell’abbondanza, la performatività delle opere di Schlingesief non si eusaurisce nella sola performance ma trova un naturale sbocco proprio nella televisione.

From 1963 to 1972 Rai broadcasts, first on Programma Nazionale (Channel I), then on Secondo Programma (Channel II), the cultural program L’Approdo. Settimanale di Lettere e Arti, originally born for the radio (1945-1977) and as a literary journal published by ERI (1952-1954; 1958-1977), with a board of directors that included, among others, Roberto Longhi, Riccardo Bacchelli, Emilio Cecchi, Giuseppe Ungaretti. L’Approdo for the television was part of a lasting and broad cultural project, for which some of the most authoritative intellectuals of the national scene dealt with the new possibilities to narrate and spread offered by TV. Although the focus of the program was the literary field, visual arts played a fundamental role: the paper reflects on this last aspect, with the goal to analyse the cultural policy of the broadcast with concern to contemporary art, in the light of the educational mission of Italian television in the '60s. Thanks to the systematic consultation of the Teche Rai Multimedia Catalogue, the paper examines the artists, the tendencies, and the exhibitions dealt with by the program. It analyses the models and genres through which L’Approdo addressed and disseminated art of the 20th century, translating it into the specific languages of television, for an audience which was wider and more diverse than the usual actors and observers of the art system. L’Approdo for the television is a particularly significant case study, on the one hand, because the program is itself a useful source for the historiography of art, on the other, because its analysis allows to measure the distance between the historical and critical relevance and the success on television of artists, issues, and tendencies of contemporaneity.

The purpose of the present monographic issue is to adopt a consumption perspective in order to more thoroughly understand the evolution of social dynamics, however, conscious that today, more than ever, use practices might constitute a privileged observatory to interpret social change. According to the scholars who contributed to this issue of Ocula, among the keywords at the core of this reflection appear: gender, genres, and generations, three thematic focal points which might acquire a greater semantic density if interpreted in the light of subjects' use practices.

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With the publication of The culture of Narcissism in 1979, Christopher Lasch had spotted the chararchteristics of a solipsistic attitude which, with the beginning of contemporaneity, would be subjected to a further worsening. Philosopher Byung-Chul Han's reflections seem to carry on Lasch's researches. Han shapes a speech based on contemporary society and its mechanisms in relation to the changes taken by digital screens. The greatest risk, according to Han, is the one which hits the basis of the social living of the man. A man who today is busier and busier in satisfying himself and outdoing the neighbor. Walter Siti's works show the diseases of of this contemporaneity which somehow refer to digital revolution which touches, first of all, TV world and then the one of new devices. In this way, a fundamental discussion can start: the one about reality which is anesthetized and “weakened”. Starting from Lash's reflections and going through Byung-Chul Han's essays, Walter Siti's work can be examined properly. We can try to create a story about contemporary charter of the screens, of narcissism and of narration of reality.

Acuto osservatore di una società sempre più tecnologizzata, Marshall McLuhan definiva la televisione come un medium freddo, in grado di impegnare completamente lo spettatore, coinvolgendone tutti i sensi. Se questo appare oggi un giudizio apparentemente sbilanciato (per molte famiglie la tv rimane sfondo consolatorio e rassicurante della vita di tutti i giorni), non si può negare che vi siano alcuni aspetti di grande attualità: la televisione cala il mito del cinematografo nella realtà quotidiana; offre al fruitore un’illusione di controllo tramite il dominio esercitato sul telecomando; propone sempre più occasioni di interazione e di partecipazione attiva attraverso lo sdoganamento di prodotti per propria natura incompleti, come serial, reality o talent show. Lo schermo televisivo offre il miraggio di un mondo a portata di mano e diventa il veicolo (nell’ottica di McLuhan il medium) più adatto alla massificazione degli ideali, rivelandosi di questo fenomeno ad un tempo causa e dimostrazione evidente. L’intervento si propone di esaminare alcuni scritti in cui questo aspetto emerge in modo sintomatico, mostrando un crescendo di invasività del mezzo nell’esistenza del pubblico: si partirà da un racconto di Mario Fortunato (“La televisione”, 1988) per arrivare a due romanzi più recenti, coevi e per molti versi affini, che saranno oggetto di un’indagine più approfondita, Fiona (2005) di Mauro Covacich e Acide Sulfurique (2005) di Amélie Nothomb. L’analisi tematica e comparata di questi testi permetterà di rilevare come, da semplice mediatore di relazioni sentimentali complesse e strumento per una comoda fuga dal reale, il televisore divenga promotore di un pensiero di massa che, oltre a disindividualizzare il soggetto, lo fa precipitare nell’abiezione senza che egli ne sia consapevole. Lo schermo televisivo cambia così forma: da finestra luminescente, varco ingannevole, ma sempre accessibile, su un esterno fittizio, si muta in specchio oscuro e inquietante della realtà contemporanea.

Purpose Il saggio si propone di analizzare il melodramma, nella sua essenza enigmatica ed eterogenea, a partire da un personaggio femminile: Mildred Pierce, protagonista del romanzo omonimo dello scrittore statunitense James M. Cain (1941), del film Il romanzo di Mildred (M. Curtiz, 1945) e della miniserie televisiva HBO Mildred Pierce (T. Haynes, 2011). La vicenda di Mildred reinterpreta il mito retorico delle unknown women melodrammatiche, eroine alla ricerca di una modalità esistenziale in grado di attestare il diritto a raccontare la propria storia. Methodology Parafrasando Stanley Cavell, autore di una celebre teoria filosofica sui generi cinematografici, quello di Mildred Peirce potrebbe essere definito un melodramma del rimatrimonio, ossia una versione della storia in cui in cui si verifica il ripristino finale del primo matrimonio seppure in un contesto elusivo melodrammatico. Si parte, dunque, da un dato retorico, ossia dalla negazione come strumento (ri)generativo in un sistema all’interno del quale è possibile ottenere un particolare tipo melodramma da una certa commedia. Tale dato viene poi incluso in una più ampia prospettiva filosofica – concernente il linguaggio, lo scetticismo e il concetto di “unknowness” – e messo a confronto con le principali teorie sul melodramma, dalla letteratura al cinema (Frye, Brooks, Elsaesser, Doane, Williams, Cook), fino ad arrivare alle implicazioni legate alla serialità televisiva (Mittel). Results/Findings Attraverso il caso “Mildred Pierce” nelle sue differenti versioni, utilizzando categorie afferenti alla riflessione filosofica, è possibile temprare il vigore teorico del melodramma come modalità essenziale e costante dell’immaginazione moderna, nonché rileggerne le potenzialità di genere intermediale.

Despite authoritarianism, the Brazilian military dictatorship has produced a speech in defense of democracy, according to the Doctrine of National Security (DSN). To legitimate it, the television-scheduling grid assumes a pedagogical role in the constitution of meanings desired by the regimen, mainly those of national integration and modernity. This text sees the television field as an integral part of the group who took up the political power of the country in 1964. However, just like the other forms of solidarity, the one stablished among the TV broadcasters’ owners (a public concession) and the Brazilian military dictatorship is not exempt of disruption. Therefore, the text points to the need to relativize existing readings, which build up a simplistic alliance between this field and the military dictatorship.

TV has played a fundamental role in unifying Italy and the Italian language (cfr. D’Achille 2006: 225; cfr. Maggini 2011: 131) and has recently turned into a medium for linguistic and cultural globalization and colonization. As a consequence, dubbing and “doppiaggese” (a sort of Italian equivalent of dubbese, though carrying a negative connotation) have assumed crucial importance in the evolution of the Italian language, especially if we consider that the great majority of TV products broadcast in Italy are dubbed from English. “Doppiaggese” is not only the language of bad or unskilled dubbing from English into Italian, but also a significant component of the language of fictional TV programs in Italian itself, which often unintentionally use scripts full of calques and influence the everyday spoken and written discourse of Italian speakers. The aim of the present article is to open a window on the mutation undergone by the Italian language often due to inaccurate dubbing, the so-called “doppiaggese”. By taking into consideration the research and surveys carried out by the present writer on some cases of interference (cfr. Sileo 2010 and Sileo 2012), this study aims to convey the image of AVT translation as a window which puts two different linguo-cultural systems in contact and influences the target language system.

According to Günther Anders' thought, in the mass society humanity is no longer in charge: machines have been entrusted with our world's destiny. In his view, the mass media, while entertaining us, are taking away from us the possibility to express ourselves, to have our own desires, to be free. This article has the purpose to show that Anders' opinions are still valid, especially in our days, with the impressive spread of the most important innovation of our time: internet.

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Copyright of Annali d'Italianistica is the property of Annali d'Italianistica, Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The aim of my essay is to show how in recent TV series the figure of a negative protagonist, a sort of tragic hero, has emerged. This atypical protagonist figure highlights the issue of the viewer’s allegiance from an ethical point of view. A possible answer to this question should be found in the perspective of the narrative ethics as outlined by Ricoeur and McIntyre.

Until a few years ago, television seriality was a secondary topic in the academic research, above all in Italy, whereas today, tv series have turned into the main interest of a lively scholarship, mostly belonging to disciplines traditionally not interested in the study of serial forms. Mutatis mutandis, today the central role of tv series is similar to the relevance of the soap opera in the critical debate in the Eighties and Nineties. From being neglected as an irrelevant part of television schedules, in a few years the soap opera turned into the symbol of a rich and polysemic textuality which quickly became the central topic of the newly-born fields of television studies and women studies. Obviously, the parallel between the soap opera and the new tv series cannot be drawn upon narrative or aesthetic dimensions, but (in the maybe provocative perspective proposed by this paper) both formulas demonstrate a basic assumption of seriality: serial forms are shaped by the mediascape they stem from. Therefore, as it happened to the soap opera, today’s academical interest for tv series shows many great opportunities and some deep contradictions, including the old matter of cultural hegemony which seems to appear once again in the evaluative attitude of some critical approaches.