In a heteronormative world, the narrative of a sexual dissident can be comparatively characterized as that of a traveler. The cultural norms, attitudes and expectations threaten to be anything but familiar. A heterosexual hegemony challenges the perceived other to adapt and acculturate in a social milieu that may or may not value their presence in society. In society’s gravest failings, a heterosexist authority reduces this traveler to a marginalized role suffered by that of a vagabond. In society’s most honorable accomplishments, a heteronormative culture becomes self-conscious and the social norms of the past are deconstructed to make a home for the weary traveler. With any hope, the weary traveler of the past will be the prosperous cosmopolitan of the future. Italy has been both a gracious and crude host over time. Cultural attitudes in Italy’s history have at times appeared as temperamental as the winds that brought prosperity and prevalence to the peninsula’s ports. Even before considering the “anxieties of anachronism”, one can at least acknowledge the possible acceptable existence of homosexuality in ancient Rome and the Renaissance. In search of an equilibrium echoing justice, contemporary society turns to the promising stabilizer of globalization. Despite its limitations, globalization offers an opportunity for social consciousness and change. Read more...
The purpose of this essay is to express the issues and flaws that can arise creating a remake of a foreign film. When a director with a different background remakes a film for a culture different to the originally intended audience, the film itself is modified and potentially hampered, this is especially true for Last Kiss (Tony Goldwyn, US 2006)¸ the American remake of the Italian L’ultimo bacio(Gabriele Muccino, Italy 2001). Some changes were subtle, such as the names of the characters; but more dramatic changes also existed (i.e. removing characters altogether or adding or deleting scenery). The Last Kiss was altered to suit an American audience, which greatly hampered the message and quality of the film, primarily in the areas of a college mentality, sex, and the display of emotion. The main issue is that L’Ultimo Bacio is an Italian story through and thorough, which is what led to its significantly higher rating, box office sales, and national recognition over its American knockoff (David Kouroyen). Read more…
“There are
no colorful characters in Gomorrah, Matteo
Garrone’s corrosive and ferociously unsentimental fictional look at Italian
organized crime; no white-haired mamas lovingly stirring the spaghetti sauce;
no opera arias swelling on the soundtrack; no homilies about family, honor or
tradition; no dark jokes; no catchy pop songs; no film allusions; no winking
fun; no thrilling violence....
... Instead, there is waste, grotesque human waste,
some of which ends up illegally buried in the same ground where trees now bear
bad fruit, some of which, like the teenager scooped up by a bulldozer on a
desolate beach, is cast away like trash” (Manohla Dargis, Lesser-Known Mobsters, as Brutal as the OldOnes, New York Times, February 12, 2009).
In late 2007, the Sicilian police found a list of “Ten Commandments”
in the hideout of the mafia boss Salvatore Lo Piccolo.
They are thought to be guidelines on how to be a good, respectful and honorable
mafioso.
1.No one can present himself directly to another of our
friends. There must be a third person to do it.
2.Never look at the wives of friends.
3.Never be seen with cops.
4.Don't go to pubs and clubs.
5.Always being available for Cosa Nostra is a duty —
even if your wife is about to give birth.
6.Appointments must absolutely be respected.
7.Wives must be treated with respect(7.Thou Shalt
Not Commit Adultery)
8.When asked for any information, the answer must be the
truth.
9.Money cannot be appropriated if it belongs to others
or to other families.
10.People who can't be part of Cosa Nostra: anyone who
has a close relative in the police, anyone with a two-timing relative in the family, anyone who behaves badly and doesn't
hold to moral values.
Are we talking about blood ceremonies, obscure
symbols, elaborate codes? Is it the arcane remnants of a defunct culture?
According to Diego Gambetta’s The
Sicilian Mafia: the Business of Private
Protection (1996) Cosa Nostra ten commandments
can be considered norms and guidelines for a well working (criminal)
organization. Gambetta’s main thesis is that Mafia begins to resemble any other
business. In a society where trust is in short supply, this business sells
protection: a guarantee for commercial and social transactions. As you
understand, this is not a “mythical” interpretation.Mafia here is considered the logical response to existing market conditions.
Organized Crime either replaces the State or they coexist in the same
territory.
Cosa Nostra cannot be understood outside its
historical roots in Sicilian society. Mafia arose in mid 19th century
with the collapse of feudalism and landed aristocracy on one side; the
emergence of a new bourgeoisie and the unification of the Italian state on the
other. People belonging to the new upper class did not propose and support new
type of social development for Sicilian society; they just “moved into villas
of aristocracy” and assumed their values. Thus, the class that is the “engine”
of any modernization process, did not provide an economic, political and civic
leadership when aristocracy collapsed. According to Gambetta (and other
scholars) organized crime in Sicily (and in the South of Italy) can be considered
as the answer to the absence of a civil society — in other parts of Italy patronage
absolved a similar function. Therefore, Mafia arose in a liminal, transitional period: the old social-economical structure
was fading away but the passage to a new social-economical order with its legal
apparatus (the state) was not completed. In such historical period, Mafia
provided the needed protection for the emerging business and new landholding
class. Gambetta posits that Mafia protection was a substitute for the absence
of institutional and interpersonal trust. The lack of trust in the state is
considered as the “cultural spring” for Mafia uprise — the resemblance between
Sicily and Russia after the collapse of former Soviet-Union is sticking.
What about Camorra?
This is not
a stalactite in a magnificent cavern close to volcanoVesuvio. This is Napoli
Center underground, and the stalactites are the result of 200 years of waste
disposal exhalations. A strong indicator of the historical presence of Camorra
— and of well “grounded” detrimental social, political and cultural attitudes
toward the public good (to the costs of people’s health, camorristi included). Camorra’s power
structure is horizontal, unlike the hierarchical one of Cosa Nostra. Distinct clans operate largely autonomously
without a single leader — each clan has its own boss. Alliances can be created
between clans; that is when Camorra functions like a single organization. Coalitions
are maintained only as long as there is equilibrium of power and reciprocal
benefits. Sometimes, a inter-organized
crime alliances can be created: the
Casalesi, a group of confederate families, is allied with the Calabria
'Ndrangheta and Sicily Cosa Nostra.
According to the Italian Ministry of Internal Affairs (2009) Camorra counted between 100 and 200 clans, for approximately
10,000 formal members and 50,000
associate: an army. The area of operation in Italy is mainly in the following
regions: Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, Marche, Umbria, Molise,
Lazio, Basilicata. Camorra’s
international ramifications can be found mainly in: Eastern Europe, France, The
Netherlands, Spain, Scotland, Portugal, Latin America (Colombia), United States,
Canada. All of this to say: Camorra cannot be considered just a local
phenomenon.
In its early
incarnations the main illegal activities were local criminal and patronage
structures, escalating to extortion and 'taxes' on illegal activities, such as
prostitution. Later Camorra interests
expanded to counterfeiting, money laundering and smuggling, primarily of drugs.
Camorra’s infiltration of local bodies and public administration is evident:
the province of Naples has had the most instances of city councils dissolving
(44 cases between 1991 and 2007) owing to suspected ties to the Camorra.
One of
the most recent criminal “opportunities” for the Camorra is the waste
management industry. Hundreds of companies contract the organization’s clans
for the disposal of toxic waste; the waste is disposed in a number of ways,
including burying it and burning it. The market cost for disposing of toxic
waste is between USD 0.21 and USD 0.62 per kg. Camorra offers the same service
for a mere USD 0.09 per kg. According to
Italian environmental organization Legambiente,
waste trafficking earns organized crime groups around EUR 22 billion (USD 32
billion) per year. Out of the drug trafficking (mainly cocaine) the sole clan
Di Lauro earns approximately EUR 300 million (USD 439 million) per year. The
annual revenues of the Camorra are around EUR 16 billion (USD 23 billion). Camorristi
define themselves “entrepreneurs”.
From another
sociological point of view, Camorra has of course a locally based identity
which strengthens its social base. The majority of residents have some interest
in maintaining the existing system: the family-based clan structure ensures
that most residents have family or friendship links to Camorra associates,
making it less likely that anyone would betray the group. Camorra offers its
own social network, a sense of community (although illegal), and jobs for
unemployed young people (cigarette smuggling, drugs or minor crime). Now the
approximate meaning of camorra — “organization” — makes more sense. The members
of the Camorra prefer to use the word “sistema”, or system, to identify their
criminal organization, viewing the group structure as analogous to a business
system. Felia Allum, in Becoming a camorrista: criminal culture and life
choices in Naples, points out an interesting qualitative and cultural
analysis. At its origins, Camorra had a code of conduct for its members — values
such as defending one’s honour, respect for all, prestige, personal vendetta
and power. According to Allum, by the 1980s these basic traditional values had
been manipulated and transformed by the Camorra subculture into new values,
based predominantly around business: respect for power and money, strategic use
of friends and family, greed. In a certain way, joining nowadays the Camorra
becomes a “shortcut to success” — which is not a biographical path that can be
relegated only to the organized crime world. The ’50 core values (honour,
family and friendship), where transformed in the 80’s to money, social prestige
and, most of all, power: “Beyond
the craving for wealth which is undoubtedly an important motive in criminal
activities, the Mafia’s paramount aim is power” (Siebert 1996, 61). And this kind of
neo-feudal system of ‘power’, means the control over a territory, over the
lives of the people, over social and political activities, over everything: “in
its abrogation of absolute power to itself, the power over life and death”
(Siebert, 62).
Exhibitionism
is another piece of this cultural mosaic: “Unfortunately, pathologically, we are
exhibitionists, real exhibitionists, you do not undertake a crime if you do
not want people to talk about it”
(Boss Umberto Ammaturo, Tribunale di Napoli 1994).
Allum’s
concluding remark is: “The changes in
motivation for joining
the Camorra during the period we have studied reflect closely those of the capitalist society and culture in which it
operates and of which it has become the very epitome” (2001, 343).
Other
scholarly synthetic propositions, attempting to capture the gist of the South Italy’s social and cultural phenomenology
are: “great social disintegration”
(Gramsci 1930); “amoral familism” (Banfield 1958) ; lack of in “social capital” (Putnam 1993; Fukuyama
1995). Much more can be written about the relationship between organized crime
and others socio-cultural features supporting the Italian modernization process.
I would
like to finish this scattered reflection with a question. To which
statement you feel closer?
1) “In general, it’s worth to trust
people”;
2) “You can’t trust people, they will
take advantage of you”.
The 70% of
young Italians (25-35 years) picked the
second statement (Iard 2007). In Italy, young people have one of the lowest levels
of “institutional” and “interpersonal” trust within the Western world. The
passage from low trust in Otherness, low trust in the future and low trust in
yourself does not sounds as an hazardous conceptual consequential chain to me. Are
these young people proud to be Italian?
In 2007 one
of my students (Georgetown University) wrote about his pride of being American: “I am
personally proud to say I am an American.
I am not proud of everything America does and
stands for. But I have learned to love my home. If I didn't love
it, I wouldn't have any care or concern to try to change it for the better”.
-ALLUM, F. (2001) Becoming
a camorrista: criminal culture
and life choices in Naples, in “Journal of Modern Italian Studies”, 6, 3:
324–347.
-BANFIELD, E.G. (1958) The
Moral Basis of a Backward Society. Glencoe: Free Press.
-IARD (2007) Sesta
indagine dell’Istituto Iard sulla condizione giovanile in Italia. Bologna: Il
Mulino.
-COVINO, M. (2009) La
Malavita: Gomorrah and Naples, in “Film Quarterly”, 62, 4: 72-75.
-GAMBETTA, D. (1996) The
Sicilian Mafia. Harvard: University Press.
-GRAMSCI, A. (1926/1983) The Southern Question, in The Modern Prince and Other Writings,
ed. L. Marks. New York: International Publishers.
-PINE, J. (2008) Icons
and iconoclasm: Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah and La Denuncia, in “Journal of
Modern Italian Studies”,13, 3: 431-436.
-PUTNAM, R.D. (1993) Making
Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton: University
Press.
-SHELLEY, L.I. (1994) Mafia and the Italian State: the Historical Roots of the Current Crisis,
in “Sociological Forum”, 9, 4: 661-672.
-SIEBERT, R. (1996) Secrets of Life and Death: Women
and the Mafia, London: Verso.
-Tribunale di Napoli, V Sezione Penale, RG
3952/November 1992, Contro AlfieriCarmine + 9, verbale di
udienza: Pasquale Galasso (a 15 November 1993), Carmine Alfieri (b 22 April
1994, c 4 May 1994, d 5 May 1994), (e 13 April 1994), (f 17 February 1994),
Carmine Schiavone, Umberto Ammaturo (d 5 May 1994).
“My life is mapped out: it is my destiny to
take a bullet by the Mafia some day. The only thing I don’t know is when… He who is silent and bows his head dies
every time he does so. He who speaks aloud and walks with his head held high
dies only once… The Mafia is a human phenomenon and thus, like all human phenomena, it has had
a beginning and an evolution, and will also have an end” (Giovanni Falcone).
“They will kill me,
but it will not be a mafia’s revenge; mafia do not use murder to get revenge. Maybe
mafia will physically kill me, but he/she who will actually order my murder
will be “others”…The fight against mafia, which is the first problem to solve
in our unfortunate and beautiful land, must be not only a cold repressive
action, but a moral and cultural
movement, involving everyone, especially younger generations, the most fit
to feel the beauty of the fresh taste of
freedom that sweeps away the foulness of moral compromise, of indifference, of
contiguity and, hence, of complicity” (Paolo Borsellino).
Italian people will be able to recover from
this situation? The oldest ruling class in Europe that is responsible for the
condition of our country, will be able to lead us out of this dangerous zone?
The new major of Palermo (the capital of Sicily), is Leoluca Orlando, he was
in charge 20 years ago. Try to imagine Rudolph Giuliani again as the major of New
York in 2021. We can — at least — interpret this as a manifest difficulty to
renew the ruling class of a country.
Giovanni Falcone, the Palermo-born anti-Mafia
judge rose from urban poverty to iconic status during a career that ended on
May 23, 1992, when he, along with his wife and three bodyguards, was blown up
by a bomb hidden on the highway between Palermo and the city airport. Most
evidence suggests that Corleone boss Toto Riina gave the orders for his death.
One of the highlights of his career was convincing Tommaso Buscetta to return
to Sicily from Brazil to testify at the Palermo Maxi Trial (and later at the
Pizza Connection Trial in the United States). Buscetta's testimony led to the
convictions of 340 mafiosi and associates. Falcone recognized that the success
of the trial had sealed his demise, publicly stating he knew he would now have
a price on his head for his victory. Despite the success of the trials, over
the ensuing years political chicanery at the highest levels of government
resulted in most of the convictions being overturned. Falcone's murder, and
that of his fellow magistrate Paolo Borsellino two months later, led to the
creation of the Direzione Investigativa Anti-Mafia (DIA) and
the passage of a witness protection law, which was an overwhelming success as
hundreds of pentiti (informers) came forth to testify against
the Mafia. Crime Fighters (2010), in Contemporary World Issues: Global Organized
Crime: A Reference Handbook.
“Analyzing the stories of local heroes can
provide a wealth of information about the societies to which they belong.
Heroes are the “embodiment of our ideals” (not including the American comic
book hero “Captain Underpants”), and their heroic stories are displays of the
values most celebrated by the society of origin. The stories of local heroes
also reveal societal issues which the local hero must address. In the case of
the Italian magistrates Paolo Borsellino and Giovanni Falcone in the 1980s and
1990s, the local concern was the Sicilian Mafia. At present, Borsellino and
Falcone are Italy’s most recognizable, contemporary heroes” (Kelsey Gifford). Here The Legends of Borsellino and Falcone: a Discussion of Italian Values, by Kelsey Gifford(Sociology of Italian Culture,
Gonzaga in Florence, Fall 2010).
The first
day of Ratko Mladic's trial in The Hague for the massacre of 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica, the first act of genocide on
European soil since the Nazi Holocaust, has ended... Here the article by New York Times.
Who is responsible for the Italian moral,
political and economical crisis? I am
responsible—along with 59685 Italians (the totality of the
population, January 2013 est.). I
cannot be blamed for the denial of the crisis—I wrote books where I was
(directly or indirectly) addressing the Italian social and cultural decadence. Nevertheless, I am responsible.
It was impossible not to see the ongoing civic
and moral dissolution; it was possible
not to see the ongoing degeneration. The negation mechanism is indeed always ready
for us—almost as an instinctive response. The denial is an unconscious defense mechanism (Freud): a person
refusal to acknowledge an unacceptable truth or emotion despite the overwhelming evidence
(simple denial). Minimization is when
we admit the fact but deny its seriousness. Projection
is when we admit both the fact and seriousness but deny the responsibility.
In sociological terms, we can translate 'crisis' with anomie: absence, breakdown, confusion, or conflict in the values
and norms of a society. Nevertheless,
we shall not forget the etymological meanings of Crísis (Latin), and Krísis
(Greek): to separate, decide, judge. In this sense, there is always a constructive
side in any crisis: we can distinguish what is important, what has value in our
life; we can opt for a different biographical path and start over again.
However, nowadays
the potential positive response to crisis faces a major cultural obstacle.
People worldwide identify the “Good Life” with fame, success, money, looking
good and trendy etc. There is nothing new under the Tuscan (Italian, South European) sun. The quandary is that too many persons cannot imagine an alternative Utopia; that hip-and-sexy
idea of a good life is, in fact, the paramount ideology, the fetish of our time.
Too many (young) people who belong to the lower, middle-lower and middle class have no other images of a good life, no political agenda of their own: they want to become rich, famous etc. What is the short cut to this dystopic and
frustrating goal? Easy: to be on TV.
This is the case of Riccardo,
the 26-year-old metallurgic worker who lives with his mom, the protagonist of
the documentary Videocracy(see the trailer): he is nor good looking (for TV standards) nor
talented. Nevertheless, he wants to make it to the screen, where the “real
life” is. He works hard and he has a precise plan. The strategy consists in fabricating
a unique performing character out of two of his adolescent idols: Bruce Lee and Ricky Martin.
Later in the story, we discover that all he
wants is a girlfriend. Riccardo provokes tender and sad feelings in the viewer:
we all wish that he will overcome his infantile fixations and have a good,
decent life.
On the
other side, the ruthless and cynical Fabrizio Corona—although good looking
for the nowadays-predominant aesthetic standard—raises other kind of sentiments. Nevertheless, Corona is the cool winner and Riccardo is
the nerdish looser. So far, the only existing
Italian Dream—clearly delineated,
and that many people believed in—is Berlusconi’s Pleasure Pen-Is-Land. The dream turned out to be a nightmare for
the culturally and morally ignorant people who believed it—as well as for
anybody who lives in the country. Here a clip about Berlusconi's average political campaign video. I strongly encourage you to watch the documentary Videocracy and the BBC documentary The Berlusconi Show along with our ex-Italian prime minister profile, and Citizen Berlusconi.
Because we are cultural animals, the antidote to this bacchanal as always been (and still is) education—good education,
I feel the need to distinguish because I do not take for granted that there is a clear common agreement about what a good education is. Tullio de Mauro, an Italian linguist, in La cultura degli italiani (Laterza,
Roma-Bari 2010) states that only 30%of Italians are able to understand what they
read, if they read at all. It means that 70% Italians are functionally
illiterate. Nevertheless, everybody
watches television.
Below the
results ofPISA 2009 International Student Assessment—mean of reading, mathematical and scientific literacy—for the “West”, Euro-American
Countries (not small as Luxembourg). It’s not by chance that Italy, Spain and
Greece are facing such a huge economical crisis. The correlation between education and economy (development in general) is evident. Other cultural indicators—books and newspapers reading—point in the same interpretative direction. A
qualitative and holistic approach takes into account quantitative data, in this sense European Cultural Values (Eurobarometer 2007) and Cultural Statistic (Eurostat 2011) are two useful sources, among many others (see WWS in this blog).
Thus, good
education is the only possible way out to the crisis. Along with an "educational revolution," Italians
(unfortunately not only Italians, we live in a globalized world)
need to undergo a tough and long cultural transformation. Berlusconi has
influenced profoundly our society, and Berlusconi expresses deeply rooted
attitudes of many (many, more than the people who voted for him) Italians—I
have friends who declare to hate Berlusconi and anything he stands for and feel-think-act as perfect Berluscones. The profound transformation
involves both Italian male and females. In a male chauvinistic culture, women
have played and are still playing an "active" role, whoever they are:
intellectuals, housewives, velinas (showgirls), or Ministers for Equal
Opportunities, like Mara Carfagna.
The first step for a cultural revolution is to make up our mind about what
is important and what is superfluous in our lives; that is: to reconstruct our hierarchy of values.
Milan Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being—
total lightness is not bearable for human beings, in my interpretation —through
the words of the protagonist Tomáš (the
Czech surgeon, intellectual and womanizer) reminds us the inescapable idea of what a value is: values are heavy:“Unlike Parmenides, Beethoven apparently viewed weight as something positive…. Necessity, weight, and value are
three concepts inextricably bound: only
necessity is heavy, and only what
is heavy has value” (1999, New
York: Harper, 11).
The
story, challenging Nietzsche’s “eternal recurrence,” expresses an
alternative to the idea of “heaviness” in our existence (Nietzsche’s metaphor
of “weight”): we have just one life to
live, and anything in our life occurs only once and never again—the
“lightness” of being. Einmal ist keinmal: what happens but once, might
as well not have happened at all; if we have only one life to live, we might as
well not have lived at all. "And again he thought the thought we already know: Human life
occurs only once, and the reason we cannot determine which of our decisions are
good and which bad is that in a given situation we can make only one decision;
we are not granted a second, third, or fourth life in which to compare various
decisions. […] Einmal ist keinmal. What happens but once might as well not have
happened at all. […] History is as light as individual human life, unbearably
light, light as a feather, as dust swirling into the air, as whatever will no
longer exist tomorrow." (5.15.15-20). If you follow (as some people do) this “existential
logic,” life becomes insignificant and decisions do not matter; life becomes light-without-light: what we do has no
consequences. However, an insignificant life— our choices have no effects—is unbearable for human beings: we need to transcend the here-and-now of life in order to be fully human. And
in order to transcend, we need to think that our actions have a certain universal
significance. This is my personal interpretation. We could also move on, and bring at the
center of the reflection Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov): “Each of
us is guilty [responsible] before
everyone for everyone, and I more than the others”. Lord said to Cain “Where is your brother
Abel?”; “I know not,” he replied: “Am I
my brother's keeper”. Although I cannot live completely up to my moral
standards, I sure give it a try. And Cain, let’s put it this way, is not my personal
hero. Therefore, I am responsible for the Italian “midlife”—we are a very
young democracy—cultural crisis. Erik
Erikson writes that people in middle adulthood face a peculiar identity crisis:
Generativity vs. Stagnation (Self-Absorption). Generativity is an extension of love into the future, a concern
for the next generation and for all future generations. Generativity means having and raising children;
it also means teaching, writing, inventing, being socially active, etc.
Generativity means to contribute to the
welfare of future generations. According to Erikson stagnation is self-absorption, caring for no one, no longer
participating in or contributing to society, panic at getting older. The Culture
of Narcissism?
