A new generation of Italian feminists energized by a 'summer of sleaze', led by slimebucket Berlusconi.
Towards the end of her career as one of Italy's most famous and loved leading ladies, the Roman actress Anna Magnani instructed her make-up artist not to conceal the lines and wrinkles on her face. "Leave them all there," she said. "I spent a lifetime earning them."
Magnani is now celebrated as a role model for a new generation of Italian feminists, galvanised by sex scandals involving prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, and a daily diet of sexist imagery in the media. Archive footage of Magnani's bon mot appears in a short documentary which has become a word-of-mouth sensation online in Italy. Il Corpo delle Donne, or The Body of Women, is an acid critique of the routine sexism that pervades commercial Italian television.
Andate ragazze!
Il Corpo delle Donne.
5 comments:
All praise to the Italian feminists - that is a constant problem both there and here. Watch any of the 'reality shows' and sex pervades the entire fabrics. It is rather an iconic erotic dream to be trapped on a desert island with a gorgeous person of the other sex. It allows for copulation without guilt. See "Surviver" for its' titlating - while all sorts of barely dressed people that just happen to wander past.
See CIS - and note where the camera, to change loation, will follow the barely covered bottom of a passing youngster - or the odd positions the actresses assume, arms back and breasts thrust forward, pertending it is normal.
I am not a big fan of porn ... but I must say that I perfer the real thing to this constant titilating. These shows usually have some warning about under '14s' watching - I must agree there .... to constantly have something promised and not delievered is to create a generation of cynics.
Of course, you're right, croghan, sexism is everywhere. But in Italy, especially on telly owned by Berlusconi, it is on quite another level.
Go to the YouTube link and watch the documentary. You don't need to understand Italian -- though I hope someone does put English subtitles on it -- to see what Italian telly does to women.
When I was last there, in 2001, I watched in gap-mouthed astonishment a game show that pitted two teams of women against each other. My rough approximation of the team names: Beauties/Slutty Bad Girls vs. Dowdy/Goody-two-shoes Girls. They were required to do semi-humiliating tricks, while the audience rooted for one side or the other. Guess which team got consistently louder support.
I'll see if I can find a YouTube of it. It was absolutely incredible.
Italians are finally starting to address clerical abuse in the heart of the Vatican's power too. The official church response has been as caustically dismissive with an undertone of panic as it was everywhere that wave has started, but it will probably build to tsunami level just as it has everywhere else.
Wow. Thanks for that link, Cliff. My co-blogger, dBO, will probably be all over that.
Great mini-documentary--thanks! Just sent the link to my Italian cousin Maria who is awakening to her personhood--a slow and painful process. She's almost 55 and seeking a divorce, which is proving to be extremely difficult. I'm doing what I can to support her. Just came back from Italy and the images of women on TV (programming and commercials both) are still egregiously sexist.
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