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- Volume 3, Issue 1, 2015
Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies - Volume 3, Issue 1-2, 2015
Volume 3, Issue 1-2, 2015
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Targeting the parents through the children in the golden age of Italian television advertising: The case of Carosello
Authors: Sarah Annunziato and Francesco FiumaraAbstractCarosello debuted on Italian airwaves on 3 February 1957, where it would remain for the next twenty years. The programme was an early format of televised advertising, which presented commercials that consisted of two parts: light entertainment clips followed by brief sales pitches. Carosello quickly became a household favourite, due in no small part to its appeal for children. In fact, the programme was so popular with youngsters that advertisers targeted kids in order to persuade their parents to purchase certain products. Copywriters did this by crafting advertisements that appealed to the cognitive capabilities of children and adhered to the same structures as traditional folk and fairy tales. This effectively transformed each episode of Carosello into a memorable collection of bedtime stories for the consumer age. This article will explore how copywriters targeted children, the success of this approach in marketing merchandise to adults, and the role of Carosello during Italy’s economic boom.
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Making a star on the small screen: The case of Mina and RAI
More LessAbstractAnna Maria Quaini (née Mazzini), or Mina as she is more commonly known, is a prolific Italian pop singer who rose to fame in the late 1950s. She was particularly dominant from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, before her retirement from television appearances in 1974 and public performances in 1978. In particular, it was her relationship with and continued appearances on Radiotelevisione Italiana/Italian Radio-Television (RAI) programmes during this dominant period, which helped to cement her popularity with Italian audiences. This article examines Mina’s celebrity status through a detailed analysis of the construction of her star persona in a televisual context, taking as case studies her appearances on three RAI television series: Studio Uno/‘Studio One’ (1961–1962), Canzonissima 1968/‘Lots of Songs 1968’ (1968–1969) and Teatro 10/‘Theatre 10’ (1972). A comparative reading of her performances on these variety shows enables us to evaluate the extent to which RAI facilitated the construction of Mina’s star persona according to a specific set of cultural and ideological values. Ultimately, this article demonstrates the ways in which Mina’s evolving celebrity came to challenge the homogenizing mission of RAI during the period.
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Programming democracy: Neorealism, popular TV and improvised humanity of the Chi legge documentary series
More LessAbstractWhile scholarship increasingly positions Italian as the seminal movement in the post-war realignment towards liberal humanist democracy, the approach to early Italian television has remained rigidly national and insulated from these currents. This article examines the stylistic continuities between cinematic Neorealism and early television styles. It argues that early Italian television participated in the creation of a new notion of citizenship that was highly compatible with Neorealism’s own project for post-war Italy. Using the example of Cesare Zavattini’s documentary series Chi legge? Viaggio lungo il Tirreno/‘Who reads? A voyage along the Tyrrhenian Sea’ (1960), which abandoned traditional documentary motifs and took up what Zavattini described as popular, participatory programming’s ‘improvised humanity’, this article explores how the series restructured the engagement between subject and audience to give everyday Italians unprecedented sense of participation in national culture.
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The final days of the RAI hegemony: On the sociocultural reasons behind the fall of the public monopoly
Authors: Giuseppe Richeri and Gabriele BalbiAbstractThis article examines contributory factors and main influences that made a pivotal contribution to the fall of the public radio and television monopoly in Italy in the second half of the 1970s. Four reasons are more relevant than others: changes in post-World War II Italian society; political issues such as the role of Constitutional Court and the establishment of the regions; economic factors such as the rise of industrial groups, pressure from advertisers and mass retail; and finally, technological elements such as new video-recording devices and the rise of cable television. Based mainly on secondary sources, this article pinpoints a series of reasons that go beyond – or are only partially linked to – the media world to explain a phenomenon that revolutionized Italian and European radio and television. Understanding them means understanding Italian culture at that time and, specifically, the significance of phenomena whose ramifications are still felt in the country’s contemporary media ecology.
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RAI narrates Italy: Current affairs, television information and changing times
Authors: Mihaela Gavrila and Mario MorcelliniAbstractTelevision news broadcasts and in-depth information programmes have been among the most valued and typical characteristics of Italian Public Radio-Television (RAI), the Italian Public Broadcasting Service, since its early years. This article focuses on the television identity of programme hosts, the evolution of media language, and analyses the strengths and weaknesses of RAI’s strategy in dealing with in-depth information programmes. This article also offers an informed assessment of the future of the Italian Public Broadcasting Service by discussing both the past and in-depth information programmes. Only an RAI that focuses on cultural and technological upgrading will be able to celebrate its 60th anniversary and to continue as ‘mother’ of the Italians and of all those who appreciate reliable and professional television reporting of current affairs.
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Sixty years of political talk shows on RAI: From educating viewers to party-democracy to entertaining them with social television
More LessAbstractThis article retraces the evolution of RAI’s show schedule for political talk-shows, a heterogeneous and motley macro-genre of programmes that includes journalistic programmes and debates that recall squares or public places: there is a laid-back atmosphere on a television set where the private and personal side prevails over the public one, creating personal moments within entertainment programmes and satire shows. From the first Tribuna Elettorale/Electoral Forum (1960) up to the recent Ballarò (2002–) or Che Tempo che fa/What’s the Weather Like (2003–), the article analyses the production and formal aspects – like formats, staging, scenography, direction – as well as the messages and meaning either directly or indirectly related to the different programmes. The aim of the article is to demonstrate that RAI has played an important role in the education of Italians to the rules of democracy as well in the formalization of the different models of public debate that have taken place over the years. Initially, RAI was subordinate to the needs and requests of the political parties and institutions, thus strengthening them; in a second stage it started to being increasingly more autonomous until it brought about changes both within the rules of the public arena and in its protagonists, moving from an educational role to becoming a form of entertainment; in a third stage it started competing with the political system for the representation of public opinion and legitimizing new ways of political participation and behaviour.
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L’Isola dei Famosi: Minority politics in Italy via reality television
More LessAbstractThis article interrogates the potential for reality television shows to serve as outlets for the representation of social and political issues on Italian television. To this end the article offers an in-depth critical analysis of selected episodes of two editions of the popular Italian reality television show L’Isola dei Famosi/Celebrity Island, which aired on public television channel RAI 2 from 2003 to 2012. In particular, the article focuses on the 2008 season, characterized by the victory of Vladimir Luxuria, a transgender entertainer and activist of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual and Queer (LGBTQ) community in Italy; and on the 2010 season, which featured the participation of homosexual writer Aldo Busi, who was expelled from the show for his remarks against religious and political institutions. A close analysis of these two seasons reveals the ways in which popular prime time entertainment programmes such as a reality television show can generate significant public exposure for marginal identities and controversial political topics.
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Multiplatform strategy on Italian Public Service Broadcasting: The role of Rainet and its relationship with traditional professional profiles
Authors: Sara Zanatta and Milena ZoppedduAbstractNew technologies have greatly affected, among other things, the television industry and its organizational structure, which has become increasingly competitive. To keep up, Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) has needed to cope with this changing scenario in order to maintain their market relevance and their ‘social’ legitimacy. In that respect a multiplatform strategy has been one of the main responses. RAI, for instance, has developed its own multiplatform portfolio, thanks both to the Rainet subsidiary and many other professionals. The former has managed to develop the technical platform for multiplatform delivery, whereas the latter showed a proactive attitude and experimented autonomously content production on the Internet. The interaction between traditional production processes and new ones for different platforms (especially for Internet) is investigated in the article; we consider in particular the impact that RAI’s multiplatform strategy has had on the working practices of two different editorial staffs. Our case studies are the political talk show Annozero/Yearzero (2006–2011) and the long-running soap opera Un posto al sole/A Place in the Sun (1996–).
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Interventions, productions and collaborations: The relationship between RAI and visual artists
By Laura LeuzziAbstractOn 17 May 1952, before RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana Studios began their regular broadcast from Milan, the Spatialist painter and sculptor Lucio Fontana broadcast his own experimental ‘artwork’ on Italian television, beginning a fruitful relationship between RAI and visual artists. For some, it provided careers as designers and art directors, such as the painter Mario Sasso and the Arte Povera artist Pino Pascali, while for others, who were given unique access to RAI’s television apparatus, it was an opportunity to explore their own artistic experimentations with an expensive and exclusive medium, such as Carlo Quartucci and Gianni Toti. RAI also hosted seminal artists’ performances on-screen including John Cage and Fabio Mauri. This article, based on documents and interviews collected during the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project REWINDItalia, discusses these and other seminal cases as well as tracing and assessing the history of this fruitful and complex exchange between RAI and visual artists.
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RAI beyond national boundaries: The case of ‘Comunità Radiotelevisiva Italofona’/‘Italophone Broadcasting Community’
More LessAbstractIn 1985, during a decade of many transnational television experiments in Europe, RAI launched a project in cooperation with public service broadcasters of neighbouring countries; the collaboration involved the Swiss public service (RSI) and the Yugoslavian experience of RTV Koper. This project was called ‘Comunità Radiotelevisiva Italofona’/‘Italophone Broadcasting Community’ because the aim was the promotion and development of Italian language and culture all across the world. The experience of Comunità Radiotelevisiva Italofona represents one of the clearest examples of the so-called ‘Italicity’, as defined by Bassetti – that is, the admixture between Italian culture and the foreign cultures with which it blends. The aim of this article is to retrace the history of this experience following multiple perspectives: an overview of the most significant transnational broadcasters that arose in Europe; the concept of ‘Italicity’ and the role of Italic and Italophone media in the world; the key stages and the most important changes in the history of Comunità Radiotelevisiva Italofona. Ideally, the result would be a complete overview of a project that has been primary in making Italian public service (and its international branches) and Italian culture known beyond national boundaries.
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Book Reviews
AbstractThe Italian Cinema Book, Peter Bondanella (ed.) (2014) London: British Film Institute (Palgrave Macmillan), 380 pp., ISBN: 9781844574049, p/bk, £25.99
Il prisma dei generi. Immagini DI donne in tv, Milly Buonanno (ed.) (2014) Milan: FrancoAngeli, 220 pp., ISBN: 9788891706041, p/bk, €29.00
Reframing Italy: New Trends in Italian Women’s Filmmaking, Bernadette Luciano and Susanna Scarparo (2013) West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 245 pp., ISBN: 978I557536556, p/bk, $45.00
Da Ercole a Fantozzi: Cinema Popolare e Società Italiana dal Boom Economico alla Neotelevisione (1958–1976), Giacomo Manzoli (2012) Rome: Carocci, 254 pp., ISBN: 9788843048632, p/bk, €25
Migrant Memories: Cultural History, Cinema and the Italian Post-War Diaspora in Britain, Margherita Sprio (2013) Oxford: Peter Lang, 290 pp., ISBN: 3034309473, p/bk, £45.
Tempo di Fiction. Il racconto televisivo in divenire, Milly Buonanno (ed.) (2013) Napoli: Liguori Editore, 168 pp., ISBN: 9788820761295, p/bk, €16.99
Italian Women Filmmakers and the Gendered Screen, Maristella Cantini (ed.) (2013) New York: Palgrave, 284 pp., ISBN: 9781137336507, h/bk (also available as an ebook), $95
The Cinemas of Italian Migration: European and Transatlantic Narratives, Sabine Schrader and Daniel Winkler (eds) (2013) Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 326 pp., ISBN: 9781443846240, h/bk, $85.00
Il cinema specchio della realtà. Modelli culturali a confronto, Francesca Borrione (2013) Rome: Aracne, 108 pp., ISBN: 9788854855663, p/bk, €11
La Glocalizzazione digitale dell’audiovisivo. Nuovi Paradigmi nel Panorama Mondiale, Paolo Sigismondi (2014) Milan: Franco Angeli, 203 pp., ISBN: 9788820458324, p/bk, €22.50
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