Download Between Theatre and Politics: the Hyper

Filippo Spreafico
University College London
Anthropology 2011
Between Theatre and Politics: the Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi
Filippo Spreafico
Abstract
The paper takes the use of theatrical metaphors in the field of politics 'seriously'. Starting by considering the
Western division between reality and fiction, the article explores the contested nature of the dichotomy in the
context of modern Italy, under the government of Silvio Berlusconi. The argument considers the Prime
Minister's performance of some Italian symbols through jokes, staged discourses and political harangues. It is
argued that Berlusconi effectively uses the theatrical device along with his well-known media-tycoon
reputation. By addressing issues of performativity, intimacy, cynicism and manhood, it is enquired what sort
of connection the terms reality and fiction have in relation to Berlusconi’s performance. The concept of hyperfiction will be introduced so to heuristically explain Berlusconi’s self-aware logic of fiction that is thought to
be essential for the invention of a certain political reality.
Key Words: Silvio Berlusconi – Hyper-fiction – Symbolism – Theatre – Reality – Power
"Between politics and theatre: the Hyperfiction of Silvio Berlusconi" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi
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Introduction: Politics and Theatre?
“Politics can be very boring. One can say many things about Silvio, but he has never been boring.”
(Tony Blair, in Barillari 2010)
“Heavy traffic on the motorway: all cars are blocked. An exasperated driver winds down the window and shouts to a
passer-by:
«What on earth is happening?»
«A group of terrorists kidnapped Berlusconi. They are asking to pay a ten million euros ransom for freeing him;
otherwise they will set him on fire! So we are gathering as many offerings as we can.»
«And how much did you gather until now?»
«Fifty litres of petrol and ten lighters...»”
(translated from Barillari 2010:93)
Just by laughing, the ordinary man takes private revenge against the politician through a goliardic joke such
as this. The “role (of laughter) is demarcating difference, of collectively identifying against an Other" (Carty
& Musharbash 2008:214): joking excludes the politician from the ordinary man’s domain, true. Unless the
joke is the politician's, Silvio Berlusconi.
Put plainly, the purpose of this paper is investigating how this mimicry might happen. More generally, its
scope is to investigate the relationship between power and ‘fictional devices’ (as jokes). This article proposes
that the boundary between real and fictional is negotiated so to justify the concept of 'reality' itself, in this
case a political one. To do so, I will propose a connection between the workings of theatre and the realm of
politics. Recently, the “universalization of televised representations … with … nationalism has powerfully
enhanced the aestheticization of politics”(Weiner 1996:251, own emphasis); this paper moves specifically
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towards this direction and proposes an anthropological analysis of this combination, so to re-think taken-forgranted assumptions on politics. More laterally, this paper attempts to decolonize anthropological thought (as
proposed by Argyrou 2002) by presenting a disenchanted attitude towards Western political foundations. To
do so, I will follow Viveiros De Castro's suggestion that “almost all of the things that we must not take
seriously are near to or inside of us”(2011:133, own emphasis); to show the unexpected and ironical results of
not taking political power ‘seriously’, I will treat with extreme seriousness elements that are usually not:
performance and fiction.
Therefore, I will show that Berlusconi interprets politics as a stage where to perform a certain ideology, by
encapsulating historical memory, fears and desires of the audience/electorate. His strategy will be called hyperfictional, as Berlusconi performs a self-aware logic of fiction that irremediably becomes reality for the other
“actors deprived of their art” (Sennett 1993).
The first three chapters discuss politics from the perspective of the western duet of reality and fiction. The last
three will expand on hyper-fiction and link it to what discussed in the first three chapters. More generally, the
first chapters are devoted to set up a theoretical-historical framework, while the remainder enriches theory
with examples.
The research is based on bibliographic reference, daily and archive news, YouTube videos and movies;
countless material about Silvio Berlusconi is available on the web (blogs, fan-clubs, satirical websites), on
which this research is mostly based.
'Puppet Theatre Politics'
In 1988, Marc Abélès published an article on French “Modern Political Ritual”, illuminatingly describing
former President François Mitterrand's use of ritual to 'talk politics'. Abélès asserted that the opposition
between secular and ritualistic practices are inadequate in unveiling the relationships of intimacy and
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legitimacy accorded to political actors, as folk understandings of modern political power are deceivingly
grounded on the strict application of liberal theory. By 'ethnographizing' two presidential 'ritualized
performances', Abélès points out that ritual is essential to Western societies as much as in more familiar
anthropological cases. Abélès's perspicacity lies in questioning secular assumptions and the re-discovery of
'social drama' and ritualized techniques in Western political activity. Although his conclusions are beyond the
purpose of this paper, as it will be shown, the present discussion shares with Abélès's paper the common
purpose of dismantling a certain aura of 'seriousness' accorded to the realm of politics.
Abélès briefly mentions that journalistic commentaries have increasingly turned towards the semantics of
theatre, as to highlight its fine attuning with politics; nevertheless, his point remains undeveloped, like the
journalistic metaphor, which self-evidently demonstrates itself.
Conversely, here it is suggested to explore the metaphor. Over the years, Silvio Berlusconi, 74 in 2011, has
attacked the members of the Italian opposition by accusing them of practising a “puppet theatre politics”1:
politicians play themselves for the sake of remaining politicians, he argued, so to hold on their benefits
without bringing useful reforms to the people. As the expression has entered onto common usage, tracking
down the metaphor through its intricate developing seems a good and sound endeavour. It is not outrageous
to argue that both politics and metaphors happen to be the contextualised use of imagination and
improvisation. In all fairness, Berlusconi has proved to be right: his political career internationally collected
the crème of theatrical metaphors.
1
2
3
Il Teatrino della Politica.
See
Between
journalistic
Theatre
references.
and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi
Liminality, in the words of Turner, is “a fertile chaos, a fertile nothingness” (1990:12) leading to cultural change.
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Chapter I: Reality vs. Performance
I.i
The Exposure of Fiction
“The clown's mask slips”, “Italy's Catholic Church vs. Berlusconi drama, Act II”, “Berlusconi's drama enters
his final act”, “High drama as Berlusconi faces confidence vote”2: when it comes to Berlusconi, theatrical
metaphors invade newspapers. Theatrical metaphors are used to emphasize a degree of manipulation and
fictionalization state leaders use to divert, increase and direct the electorate attention. The metaphorical
exercise suggests an implicit duality between a 'real' world, made of “furniture and death” (Potter et al. 1994),
and a farcical political cabaret that conceals the inexorability of social injustice, economic trembles and
corruption practices. In Abélès words, the recent siding of media to political power has immersed the latter
“in a sea of appearances that effectively masks the realities of conflict and domination” (1988:391). Two
parallel worlds run together, transported by media reports and journalistic metaphors.
Arguing that there are two sides of the same coin in politics is far from new. Secrecy and power “share a
sociological dynamic” (Ferme 2001:162). But in Italy, the camouflage of corruption and clientelism is
assumed, as presented later. At the onset of the mani pulite scandal of 1993, judges talked about
'environmental corruption', supposedly rooted in Italianness (Cavalli 2001). Corruption was abruptly,
visually exposed, as those spectacularly televised days showed members of the parliament appearing in
television to defend themselves in front of the judges.
However, the defacement of political respectability did not kill the public secret, as this was “not a matter of
exposure which destroys the secret, but a revelation which does justice to it” (Taussig 1999, echoing Walter
2
See journalistic references.
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Benjamin). Interestingly, in a social background where political corruption, and consequently political
disbelief, is an exposed public secret, Silvio Berlusconi managed to dominate the Italian political arena despite
his numerous active judicial trials in the past twenty years. It is suggested that Berlusconi is the defacing
subject, exposing the public secret of political disbelief, bridging the ordinary man and the politician.
Berlusconi's personal interpretation of politics exploited the public secret of political corruption and redefined
the boundary between private and public thanks to his imaginative and creative performance. The quoted
joke in the introduction is nothing but the expression of his strategy: the genial appropriation of the comical
against politics to make politics.
I.ii
Theatre in Anthropology
Some years before Abélès, Victor Turner attempted to break with symbolic anthropology (1979), devoted to
the study of meanings, by insisting on the performative concept of 'social drama' (1982:9). Social drama, a
liminoid moment3 that originates through the transgression of a certain set of social boundaries, connects
ritual and theatre, in short bridging 'sacred' (non-Western) and secular societies, the way Abélès approached
Mitterrand's rituals. Turner holds on the conceptual tenets of Western dualism, by which performance is
segregated in the realm of theatrical expression. Play is culturally generative in sacred societies, while it is lost
in advanced industrial societies. Social drama and social crises pervade every national or international event,
but their recognition is downplayed in the West. This asymmetry, Turner notes, lays on the Western
conceptual separation of the performative from the social (1990:16).
Relegating performance to the level of the meta-commentary, in the way the Western divide is structured,
denies the value of dissimulation and disguised knowledge (verkleidung), as participative play and playful
3
Liminality, in the words of Turner, is “a fertile chaos, a fertile nothingness” (1990:12) leading to cultural change.
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mimesis are just seen as “subversive by most of the institutions on which our societies are built” (Fabian
1999:28).
I.iii
Lampedusani
Turner attempts at threatening the bounded notions of real and fictional, but he finds it hard to substantiate
his observations with a convincing Western example. He would see his theorization put into practice if he
attended one of Berlusconi's “shows”, as described by leading Italian newspapers.
In March 2011, Berlusconi went for a visit in the heat of Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island between Sicily and
Tunisia, overpopulated due to the wave of immigration from Northern Africa. Standing on an improvised
stage, he assured that the immigrants would have been relocated within three days, and that in sign of
appreciation for everyone's effort, he would have proposed Lampedusa for the following Nobel Prize.
Holding the microphone with extreme confidence, he conquered the crowd as soon as he smilingly
announced that he bought a villa in the area to become a “Lampedusano” too. In order to boost the island's
economy, he proposed to build a golf club and a new school. When a woman from the crowd shouted that
people in the island are also in need of a new boat service, Berlusconi replied: “Do you know how to play
scopa4? Well, I'll invite you for a game and we'll discuss that”.
The Lampedusani cheered to Berlusconi's effective performance, pregnant with reassuring smiles and
promising declarations. In politics, performances are valued and acknowledged to determine a certain
judgement, however the 'reality of the fiction' is denied, as the political vote is understood to be a matter of
practical decision. A separation of realities occurs when thinking back the political event, as the performative
4
An Italian card game.
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side is buried under the political agenda. As Taussig writes about the “magic” of the State, “only people with
a superb talent for the theatre could pull this (state) off” (1997:6-7).
I.iv
Italian Parallel Realities
Similarly, there are two 'Berlusconi'. One is accused of bribing lawyers, instigating prostitution and
fraudulent tax evading, in a word promoting “anti-politics” (Prospero 2010); the other is victim of judicial
conspiracies, ceaselessly persecuted and envied, but despite all joyful, funny and, most importantly,
hardworking (“I was joking about Napoleon: I am the Jesus Christ of politics, a victim. I bear everything, I
sacrifice for everyone” [2006]). The constant denial of the former model and the reassertion of the latter are
publicly proposed not simply through declarations, but performances. For the sake of clarity, let it be said
that the exposure of damaging information is partially blocked by Berlusconi's media ownership (Italy is 50th
in the World Freedom of Press Ranking completed in 20105); additionally, Berlusconi justifies special laws
made to protect him from the law as he performs trustworthiness.
In January 2011, the New York Times website opened a discussion debating over the reasons why Berlusconi
has governed three times since 1994; the deadly mixture of accusations and unorthodox declarations exposed
him to the international media interest. The NYT featured Italian commentators offered general explanations
based on the issues of charismatic leadership and the lack of alternatives6 and 'Berlusconian' outspokenness,
along with his undeniable influence on the media thanks to an enormous business empire (see Ginsborg 2005
for a detailed discussion).
On the same wavelength of the centre-left newspaper La Repubblica, the NYT Italian commentators overtly
5
6
Source: Reporters Without Borders
“Given the lack of effective official opposition and the strong centre-right contingent which continues to support the coalition government, it is
unsurprising that the world is starting to fear for the sanity of Italians”(Watters 2011)
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addressed the issue of “distorted reality” (Morra 2011), this time not simply in the form of theatrical
metaphor, but as pure modality of power7.
This thesis is proposed in Michele Prospero's Il comico della politica (“The Comical in Politics”), discussing
the role of the farcical in political communication. Comicality is morally condemned as it deviates from the
magisterial formula of 'self-criticism' (Habermas 1984), which allows political debate. As comical conviviality
in politics increases, Prospero argues, the relevance of the accusations decreases. Again, on the one side, reality
is made of what Berlusconi actually does (corruption, tax fraud...) and how the country actually is coping8,
while the fiction is made up of carefully staged performances. Berlusconi, on the other side, inverts the terms
in question, by exposing the biases of the ones attacking him. The two claims to reality, nevertheless,
converge in Berlusconi's performance, a free styling of cabaret, national symbolism, television and politics.
As realities run parallel to each other, a negotiation of reality takes place. For instance, Berlusconi fabricates a
personal Other to prove the truthfulness of his reality. Countless, since the extremely famous 1994 discesa in
campo9, are the references to the true threat of Communist Party members 'masked' as social-democrats,
about whom he recently declared that they “truly exist and want to get rid of me by manipulating the
magistrates” (2011). Berlusconi juxtaposes a reality made of entrepreneurial expertise, self-declared sincerity
and spontaneous gayety against the “deformation of reality” 10 operated by the 'envious', 'moralizing',
'unattractive', 'inefficient' opponents.
As we can see, the Berlusconi and the anti-Berlusconi model (supported by the international press) are
partners in promoting a utopian reality in which a crystalline, unproblematic political debate would shine and
represent 'thing as they are'.
7
8
9
10
Typing 'farsa', farce, in the search engine of larepubblica.it produces a result list mostly composed by political commentaries.
“In the years since 2001, only three minor countries (Zimbabwe, Haiti and the Ivory Coast), and no major ones, have fared worse that Italy on
the usual measure of economic performance (growth in real income per head)” (Young 2010:13).
Literally, “descent in the football field”, that indicated the readiness to fight for “Italy, the country I love” (as formulated in the famous January
26th 1994 first 'Video-message' to the Italian people recorded to communicate the decision to leave all entrepreneurial duties to dedicate himself
to the res publica). For the full statement (in Italian), see http://www.cini92.altervista.org/discorsoberlusconi.html.
Countless references. See http://www.financialpost.com/opinion/lies+Berlusconi+says+scandals+ahead+summit/1767830/story.html for a good
example before the G8 summit to be held at L'Aquila in 2009.
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Along the lines of Western dichotomous thought (i.e. Strathern 1980), the real/fictional, good/evil divide
includes the permutation true/fake, by which truth will arise once freed of 'misrepresentation'. Berlusconi's
performance purposely aims at the successful negotiation and management of an apparently stable reality.
Berlusconi's power is a personal mise-en place of the Wagnerian aphorism “the description of reality is no
more and no less than the reality of the description”(2005:227). Berlusconi diligently orchestrates a symbolic
real, in which facts and interpretations act accordingly.
As first effort towards an ethnography of political performances, I propose a short historical digression
starting from post-WWII Italy, when the affair of political performance and media interests developed
through a trajectory which benefited Berlusconi's use of today's politics. In effect, both dualisms here
proposed exploit historical perspectives founded on the affiliation between politics and television, which
nevertheless polarized conceptions of real and fictional. After that, the following chapters will be expanding
on the issues of theatricality, fiction and reality 'management' with the aid of several examples.
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Chapter II: Historical Foundations
Cavalli (2001) asserts that the crisis of civil society in Italy is due to an intrinsic disbelief in the institution, in
the lack of honourable conduct of the leading classes, following ethnographies demonstrating the lack of
tendencies towards solidarity and cooperation, as with Banfield's (1958) notion of amoral familism,
summarized with the dictum “maximis(e) material, short run advantage of the family and assume that
everybody else is doing the same” (Cavalli 2001:119).
Many commentators pointed out that democracy is unfit for Italy, as the distance between the 'leaders' and
the people is culturally vast. People assume the corruption of the ones in power, and in a way they expect
them to behave so, while leaders do not take responsibility for their leadership and consider the position of
accounting for somebody else as disastrous in principle. As to say, ordinary people do not 'dirty' themselves
with politics.
II.i
The DC Years and the Attacks Against Communism
When accusing the magistrates, Berlusconi indirectly stimulates the Italian historical memory on the period of
the Christian Democrats (DC), the encompassing party that ruled the country through different set of
alliances from 1948 to 1993. Listing the Vatican, local parishes and individual civil servants amongst its nonparliamentary allies, the DC obtained consensus through its tentacular network of alliances, which, once the
party became virtually as big and as durable as the democratic apparatus itself, resorted to Mafia collusion to
keep the “good governance” of the country11. This tactic worked until the explosion of the Bribesville
scandal in 1993, when the collusive character of the ruling party was under public evidence, catalysing a
stream of disillusionment with democracy. People saw in the magistrates’ Court the only institution able to
11
With illegal funding and the selling of votes. See Paolo Sorrentino's Il Divo (2008) for a detailed account on Mafia collusion.
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respect the ideals of democracy, although they felt resentment in realizing that magistrates completely
demolished a political world that had fully brought Italy into 'modernity'.
Berlusconi entered politics at the collapse of DC, once the 'white whale'12 enchantment vanished (Duggan
1994).
Drawing from the disillusionment with politics that pervaded the country, Berlusconi came year after year to
embed that very popular cynicism by means of accusing the institutions once his authority is under the arm of
the law. The latter is constantly accused of following a 'subversive plan'13, as seen earlier, precisely because
the magistrates provoked a political coup. Berlusconi's media influence and, more importantly, his daily
performance, produce a symbolism that is based on a parallel reality exploiting the mani pulite scandal.
Italy also had the largest communist party of the Western world. The PCI became pervasive after the end of
WWII as it came to play the same social-strategic role of the Vatican in small communities. With the advent
of the Cold War, communism became more and more polarized against the Catholic Church.
Most importantly for our argument, communism became a field of symbolic and ideological battle in the
First Republic (1948-1993). Political affiliations were profusely institutionalized and cut deeply in the social
fabric of Italy. The term partitocrazia (partitocracy, or 'rule of many parties') was used to explain the
horizontal stretching of political identity, which flooded through its boundaries with social identity. In a
sense, being a communist was comparable to have a denoted ethnicity. A strong essentializing process came
into place, pigeon-holing everyone depending on political affiliation. Political parties represented the
multifaceted particularism of Italian provinces, sometimes acquiring an identity 'on their own' (Shore 1993).
Nevertheless, communism was identified with Stalin's deeds and atheism. Joining the Western block also
contributed to the popular demonization of the PCI.
12
13
A DC nickname due to its immense proportions.
For an effective demonstration of Berlusconi's reality argument in Italian cinema, see the final scene of Nanni Moretti's 2008 The Caiman.
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DC party domination reinforced through the lottizzazione, notably the partition of jobs extending beyond the
domain of politics to party representatives (banks, state industries, television, public corporations). This led to
a spiralling practice of clientelism and convenience relationships articulating throughout the public sphere.
For this reason, the distancing between the people and the political class is nowadays perceived as a 'given' of
Italian democracy. People identified with the party system, but the caste of the powerful betrayed the
populace and ate up all top jobs.
As Berlusconi (2005) too puts it, “there is a Real State … and a parallel one”, but when Italian sociologists
define it as a “gap between interpersonal trust, which has strengthened over time, and trust in institutions,
which has remained quite low” (Cavalli 2001:128), Berlusconi defines it as the contrast between the
institution that he represents and the public institutions (schools, magistrates’ Court, televisions) still caught
up in the lottizzazione process which are still under the 'red' influences. Such was also the argument that
Berlusconi brought on the table when 'descending the football field of politics': his entrepreneurial expertise
would have completely swept away the leftovers of the tentacular multi-party system that afflicted the
existence of the young republic. Berlusconi pushed on two open nerves of the Italian political consciousness of
the early 90s: the distrust in the institutions (as in Cavalli 2001) and the proven dangerousness of the old
partitocracy. Berlusconi could benefit from both ideological and political support: on the one side, he
presented himself as the stereotyped 'cynical' common citizen, while on the other as a 'different' politician (or
not-politician), able to sustain his own party thanks to his enormous private patrimony.
By playing on the anti-communist sentiments that of the Cold War, Berlusconi did not simply exploited a
global ideology, but rather applied it to a national one. Communism is still 'practised' (using Berlusconi's
terminology) and poses a threat to liberalism. Berlusconi associates communism to the most stereotyped ideas
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during political debates and party meetings. Berlusconi's predilection for stage performance brought the most
spectacular attacks to the loosely conceptualized category of Communists, which comprehends centre-left
wingers, public institutions (as explained earlier) and magistrates.
II.ii
Not Eaten, but Boiled
A party meeting is held during the electoral campaign for the 2006 vote in Naples. Berlusconi is acting
serious: “I have been repeatedly accused to have said that the communists used to eat children (but) why
don't you read (referring to the clapping audience) the Black Book of Communism. You would discover that
in Mao's China communists did not eat, but rather boiled children and used them as fertilizer for the fields”.
It goes without saying that this provoked a minor diplomatic incident with China. Besides, in 2006, China
celebrated the Year of Italy14.
Clearly, Berlusconi's intent was not to offend China, as much as all his jokes do not intend to bring offence
to the ones attacked. Berlusconi 'simply' uses with efficacy slices of historical and ideological memory in order
to fit to his own. At the end of year 2005 press conference he even brought a copy of the newspaper L'Unità
(a left-wing newspaper) published the day after Stalin's death, to support his anti-communist stances, and
joked: “You see? You communists, you'll never change...”15.
After another glorious show in Cinisello Balsamo (near Milan, 2009), he asserted that 'us' (generally who
votes for him) and 'them' (the disguised Communists) are “anthropologically different … even in terms of
football” and concluded with the joke, “Silvio Berlusconi hugs you all, and twice the women”. Berlusconi
essentializes all opposition as Red. Berlusconi's essentialization plays on partial characteristics of the First
Republic that go hand in hand with popular representations: corruption and collusion.
14
15
http://www.sinoitaenvironment.org/ReadNewsex1.asp?NewsID=2420
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7607177379497368743#docid=-2521783662262190089
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II.iii
Televisual Reality
However, Berlusconi did not start influencing the collective imaginary through his unorthodox
'argumentation' in the realm of politics. He is both entrepreneur and politician, and media is his prevalent
field of influence.
The first Italian television was marked by twenty years of political monopoly (1954-1974). Television
broadcasted from 2.30pm to 11pm on a single channel, as stipulated in a 20-years contract between the
Christian-Democratic government and the public company RAI (Hibberd 2008). With 40% of illiterates
among the population in the 50s, the government took precautionary measures, preventing the liberalization
of broadcasting in order to assure the highest levels of neutrality, so to “remain a public service of
dispassionate and impartial information, to which all listeners, whatever their beliefs, can draw upon” (Arturo
Jemolo, President of RAI and Parliamentary Commission for Culture, ibid.:66). Advertisement was relegated
to a half-hour program alternating consumer goods with cartoons.
By the end of the twenty years pact, the RAI became the cultural guide of Italians, although its didactic
function silenced open confrontations, also because of the tacitly accorded broadcasting monopoly preventing
pluralism. Italy’s outside reality, beating with violent attacks to public personalities involving Mafia, the
justice and the political bodies and the 'tension strategy' of the 70s and 80s (when the DC allegedly silenced
left and right extremisms to reinforce itself), were unilaterally translated into television. TV became the
focolare 16 domestico, the 'domestic hearth' where the family gathered. Television became the perspectival
centre, for at least 30 years considered as the 'mirror of reality' (Brizzi 2010).
In 1976, through a magistracy deliberation, the RAI lost its monopoly. Private broadcaster mushroomed, and
16
Coming from the Latin focus, meaning also fireplace, family, and home; by extension, attention, 'focus'.
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regional networks acquired local relevance. However, the national broadcasting was still under the RAI
dominion. These were the “Wild West years” of TV (Hibberd 2008), mirroring the localism of the different
provinces against the monolithic dominance of the Christian Democrats at the government. However, in the
middle of the 80s, a technical trick, the lack of clear rules, close political connections and money allowed
Silvio Berlusconi to take three networks (Italia 1 owned by Rusconi and Rete 4 owned by Mondadori, plus
his already owned Canale 5).
By the end of the 80s, way before Berlusconi's mingling with politics, Italy had a duopoly as Fininvest
(Berlusconi's company) was allowed to go national. Initially, the introduction of private television
contributed to the rejuvenation of the Italian broadcasting system: newly developed schedules included
afternoons and late evenings; new groups of watchers such as pensioners and housewives, traditionally not
covered by RAI programmes, had greater access to TV; quiz shows, soap operas, talk shows, TV-movies and
cartoons, but most importantly, consumer goods were finally appearing in front of the dinner table.
Umberto Eco (1983) identified the transition from the monopoly to the duopoly as the transition from
paleo-TV, accounting for a certain, 'outside' reality (although questionable in terms of objectivity) to the neoTV, which talks about itself and its connection with its own public. Needless to say, this increased confusion
between reality and fiction, or at least the perception of these two parameters radically changed.
Berlusconi acquired the support of the public because he managed to combine his business with the people's
need of leisure. In his words, “viewers avidly desired things that were different from those which the RAI
offered”(Hibberd 2008:65). Until then, Berlusconi exploited the lack of consumerist modernization through
advertisement and the institutions' neglect for the audience's desire.
Crucially, Berlusconi was able to play on the deep identification between TV and politics when he became a
politician. He represented the alternative, both in politics and in television. His success was based on his fine
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understanding of the stage, his 'political football field'. But as Schechner notes in the field of theatre, “the
stage –and I don't mean only the physical place, but the time/space/spectator/performer aggregate– generates
a centripetal field that gobbles up whatever happens on it or near it.” (1981:84). Berlusconi the politician was
then just the natural becoming of Berlusconi the TV-entertainer so to increase his take on the ultimate stage
–Italy.
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Chapter III: Social Imaginary, Performance, and Cynicism
Under this historical light, I deliberately stress the importance of the 'social imaginary' (Castoriadis 1997),
and the contested nature of what happens to be called 'reality', so to expand on the argument of Chapter I.
III.i
Social Imaginary
Lacan (in Žižek 1991) introduced the concept of the imaginary, indicating a human innate predisposition
towards the illusion of wholeness, allowing the configuration of a cohesive, 'whole' reality. While elsewhere
(Strathern 1992) the very idea of wholeness (embedded in the notions of 'group', 'society', or 'culture') has
been seen as an illusory self-evident premise in anthropological sciences, Lacan sees the imaginary as a
“successful misunderstanding” (Žižek 1991:32) of the otherwise arbitrary human dimension.
Famously, Cornelius Castoriadis (1997[1975]) proposes that society comes to be constituted through a
certain imaginary; creativity is the dominant factor that the rhetoric of transparency, of globalism and
institutional powers attempt to deny. His theory challenges the individual-state machine dichotomy. As
impersonal, creativity is a combination of different instances of society, but does not crystallize into a
monolithic artefact as its different parts internally negotiate a society. In our case, Berlusconi's rants against
the communists are firstly acting on the imaginary, rather than on a certain socio-political truth. Castoriadis
supports the idea that a society is of course constituted historically and through an act of self-creation, but
that this creation depends on human action, understood as performance rather than the pure actualization of
ideas and strategies. It is a triumph of the unforeseen but not through simple casual happenings, as
“symbolism can be neither neutral nor totally adequate, first of all because it cannot draw its signs from just
anywhere” (ibid.:121). A clear example of that in the case of Berlusconi is the effective metaphor he adopts
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when entering politics, described as a 'football field'. Berlusconi had bought AC Milan football team in 1986
and became the patron of the team's following success. Berlusconi conquered a good slice of the electorate by
comparing his descending 'in the football field of politics' with a game to be won. Not casually, his first party
name, which he personally founded, was called Forza Italia (go Italy, shouted to support the national team).
A sort of symbolic collusion between popular and political symbolism challenged ideas of hegemony and
control (contra Foucault and Gramsci, as noted in Moore 1993:6). When Berlusconi appropriates the
supporting shout to the national team, he works on a symbolic domain that is translated into the political. In
this way, he bridges popular disbelief in politics with the cohesive, 'good' function of the national team
(Favero 2010). Nevertheless, disbelief in politics is maintained as politics comes through obliquely; the
'goodness' of Berlusconi's new politics laterally reaches consensus through the camouflage of the successful
football symbol.
Clearly, Castoriadis refers to this idea when he indicates the a-rational character of cultural change, which
originates new symbolisms replacing extinguished ones, bringing forward a new conceptualization of the
institutions. The rejection of a grand narrative of cultural change proposes the identification between what is
accounted to be real and what is its representation, or, as Wagner would say, cultural symbolism is made of
“symbols that stand for themselves” (1986).
Because the fiction (the symbolic order in Lacan) cannot be seen as other than reality, the symbolism that
constitutes the reality that Berlusconi proposes is precisely seen as a 'distorted' one from his opponent's
symbolic organization.
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III.ii
Cynicism and Performance
“If "to be or not to be" is the question, then "to be and not to be" –to me the most succinct conception of
performance –might be the answer”
(Francis Bacon [the painter] in Fabian 1999:28)
Having laid out a provisional framework to clarify the terminological value of reality and fiction, I explicitly
assert the preferential route for the latter element, if not as analytical category, at least as heuristic tool. As it
will be shown, the same Berlusconi utilizes fiction by exploiting people's cynicism.
Navaro-Yashin (2002) uses Žižek's notion of cynicism as starting point for her discussion on Turkish
secularism. For Žižek, cynicism indicates the awareness of the fictiveness of a certain ideology, which,
however, is followed in everyday practices as if it really existed (ibid.:161). Crucially, the contradiction that
unifies fiction and reality is the doing, the everyday performance of the given ideology, understood as fiction,
practised as reality. In Žižek's words:
“[What needs to be illustrated is] the mise-en scène of the fantasy which is at work in the midst of socia reality
itself: we all know very well that bureaucracy is not all-powerful, but our 'effective' conduct in the presence of
bureaucratic machinery is already regulated by a belief in its almightiness...”
(Žižek 1995:36 in ibid.:162)
Navaro-Yashin builds up his argument out the notion of the imaginary constitution of the state, which
disguises its ideological character. Again, voicing Žižek, she argues that
“in contemporary societies, democratic or totalitarian, that cynical distance, laughter, irony, are so to speak,
part of the game. The ruling ideology is not meant to be taken seriously or literally … the cynical subject is quite aware
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of the distance between the ideological mask and the social reality, but he nonetheless still insists upon the mask …”
(Žižek 1995:28-29, in ibid.:160)
Cynicism ties well with the reduction of politics to theatre, as we have seen with Berlusconi's statements.
What I am aiming at, at this stage, is to prove the effectiveness of the performative model as effective social
practice and focus of enquiry, in order to explain the case of Berlusconi's pro and counter realities.
Rosen (1984) emphasizes the on-going creativity of social relations in Sefrou, Morocco, through the use of
language. Castoriadis's idea that the imaginary is performed is very similar to Rosen's observation that
“language may be constitutive of the very reality it seeks to describe” (ibid.:3). Rosen observes that the openended quality of Arabic language in Sefrou, Morocco, allows for the extreme flexibility of meanings, to the
extent that words seem not to follow any a priori logic. Therefore, the incredibly fluid nature of language
seems to be the mirror of the contextual use of concepts that shape reality. This reality is 'on the making' as it
requires indeterminacy in order to be. The lack of a fixed definition for the use of a term allows the redefining
of every slice of reality surrounding a social encounter, to the degree that culture is infinite negotiation, a
Wagnerian invention (1981).
Rosen indirectly suggests the possibility that a true reality is purely the result of negotiated concepts through
the open-endedness of language and the performance of various standpoints. In terms of my discussion, I
propose that Berlusconi's use of reality and fiction are themselves constituted through a negotiation of
concepts, where the arbitrariness of symbols is hidden away and grounded on the very notion of a 'unified',
fundamental reality (cf. Argyrou 2002). The split dimension between description and action falls by
considering the mutual constitution of concepts of reality and fiction, both 'invented' to defend the
'seriousness' of a fundamental, underlying idea of unified reality.
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Berlusconi has worked on the collective imaginary, or at least he has done so by consolidating his persona
through his televisual empire. Consequently, once entered into politics, he made the Žižekian notion of
cynicism his own, by deploying perfectly staged performances acting as both actualization of his power and
meta-commentary on the ideology that he himself represents. In this respect, he differs from Mussolini, as he
not simply, as Fabian puts it, exploits theatricality. This is not new in politics. What is more powerful is the
automatic negation, in the form of banality and obscenity (as in Mbembe 1992), of the institution he
represents, while still representing it. It is, if you will, a double negation that produces an affirmation. This
idea is analogous to Taussig’s concept of defacement. Going beyond the negative connotations in the acts of
disclosure, negation and destruction, Taussig identifies the power inherent in negative acts and all the
unexpected effects that may be released when an object is defaced. Taussig posits that the act of defacement
releases a strange surplus of negative energy, ultimately affecting a powerful form of social knowledge. Cynical
mockery of the institution produces its very affirmation, providing a truth which “is achieved through a
'drama of revelation’, which, like unmasking, amounts to the transgressive uncovering of a ‘secretly familiar’,”
(Taussig 1999:51).
It is not claimed that Berlusconi does not 'think Western' or that he overcame the dichotomy, but that the
'unserious' take on reality allows him to perform cultural invention through what I call hyper-fiction. He
exploits the disenchantment with politics, typical of the Western ordinary citizen; he transforms critiques in
merits, by interpreting politics as an improvised play; he believes in the power of the narrative, which precedes
and changes any pre-constituted reality; he does it all to the extent of transgressing traditional thresholds and
reshaping the boundaries between what is true and false. Reality is therefore a negotiation of words and
symbols. Significantly, this psycho-geography of power is based on the collapsing opposition between ideology
and
cynicism,
and,
more
interestingly,
Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi
between
reality
and
fiction.
24
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Chapter IV: Intimacy and Performance
IV.i
Intimacy as Cynical Survival
In his words, Berlusconi is the best prime Minister of the 150 years of Italian democratic tradition (2008).
True, he put a halt to the shaky left-wing governments reshuffling every year during the 90s. However, one
might point out that while in office, he did all he could to hold it by favouring his business. One of his first
legislative acts was to decriminalise false accounting; he made money laundering harder to trace; He offered
amnesties to tax dodgers and illegal builders; he is relentlessly insulting the judiciary, and helps defendants
move their trials to other cities if they proved the judge was biased against them (Popham 2006). Despite all,
Silvio Berlusconi is no less deserving of trust. He is, according to many, an ordinary man, who relied on his
own resources, built a media empire, and then proposed himself as the depoliticized alternative to a corrupted
political class. In the collective view, he embodies what Banfield (1958) identified as amoral familism during
his fieldwork in Southern Italy.
The contents of the edited book that he himself financed and distributed to all the Italian families during the
2001 electoral campaign, Una Storia Italiana ('An Italian Life'), describe this kind of Italian individualism
mingling with the Western self-made man archetype. Skimming through the pages describing his life, from
his school years to his entrance in the world of politics, Berlusconi is shown not to have lost his genuine
popular background (hyper-modesty is one of his weapons: “during these years I had the chance to set aside a
modest amount of money...”[2009]); to retain a je ne sais quoi of Mediterranean charm despite his age (about
his meeting with Finnish President Tarja Halonen in 2005: "When you seek a result, it's necessary to use all
available weapons and therefore I brushed up all my playboy skills, now from the distant past, and I used a
series of tender pleas to the president."[2005]); to ineluctably accept his moral duties (in a park, mourning
and whispering to journalists: “it is an immense sacrifice to candidate again as Prime Minister, an enormous,
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enormous, enormous sacrifice”[2005]); but, most importantly, to emulate the ordinary man's cynicism, as the
disillusion with the institutions while representing them (solemnly, at a party meeting: “I spend every
Saturday morning … with my lawyers preparing the defence for the two or three trials against me that come
out every month. Those false accusations come out of those left-ideologue procurators that are a metastasis of
our collapsing democracy”[2008]).
Since he is a faithful believer of the cathartic role of laughter, Berlusconi’s mimetic strategies and multipersonality are essential to his dogma. In his words, “laughing releases the tension” (Berlusconi in Barillari
2010:11). But his comical modality does not simply occur to interfere with the normal workings of the
institutions. Those innocent jokes are no jokes at all. “I do not tell jokes and I do not respect who does so. I
use short, simple stories (storielle) to carve concepts” (ibid.:13). These storielle, however, have strong political
functions to legitimate premiership while mimicking the Italian cynical desire: representing the institution
while joking about it; criticizing the state fiction, making it work it as reality.
A joke can be effective, as it emulates intimacy in institutional occasions. Berlusconi managed to 'release the
tension' by making the French president Nicolas Sarkozy smile during the latter's speech at a press conference
in Rome. Gently approaching Sarkozy while answering to a question, Berlusconi whispered in the French
president's ear by means of important memorandum: “moi, je t'ai donné ta femme”, alluding to Sarkozy's wife
Carla Bruni17.
At this stage is important to introduce two crucial comments. Firstly, Berlusconi uses the doing (as seen with
Žižek) of performance to 'carve concepts', and this inevitably produces intimacy (as we will see with Sennett
[1993]). Secondly, the doing is mostly based on banality and the grotesque, promoting affiliation with the
17
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EIufNygLjU. In French and Italian.
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people, following from Mbembe's formulation (1992). However, Berlusconi's performance is in the form of
conformity with the obscene, which exploits obscenity itself (of which Berlusconi also accused in private life)
in order to reach consensus. Berlusconi's performance brings the doing and the meta-commentary on the
ideology at the same level, and possibly this is why he is ever-presently condemning satire and factious
political talk-show debate (Mazzetti 2008).
IV.ii
Performing Intimacy
Clifford Geertz's remarkable book Negara (1980) deals with state power constitution in XIX century Bali,
and one might ask what has this to do with today's Italy. In actual facts, along with his fascinating narration,
Geertz provides an essential corrective to Western political analysis, in his opinion inflexibly based on
administrative and coercive modalities of power. Geertz formulates the notion of theatre-state, so to
dramatically re-formulate the concept of power by relativizing Western notions that Foucault's and Gramsci's
philosophies rendered universal. In Bali pomp created power, and for some invisible mechanism the more one
“moved towards imagining power, the more one tended to distance oneself from the machinery controlling
it” (ibid.:132). Power constitutes itself through the spectacle, rather than utilizing drama and theatricality as
medium to assert itself, contrarily to what many commentators did in the analysis Mussolini's 'festival state'
(Berghaus 1996, Gentile 1996). The constitution of power, therefore, appears undeniably focused on its
actuation, on its unfolding, ultimately on its performance.
Performing power means empowering performance: the harshness of real power becomes its fiction. This does
not dissolve power into farce, but rather dignifies it. This is valid in the case of Berlusconi as he fabricates
power out of his intimacy with the public, rendering daily cynicism powerful.
The hyperbole of cynicism is rendered through the occasional jokes about himself, as seen in the
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introduction. When telling certain barzellette (jokes) about himself, Berlusconi 'obviates' (à la Wagner) his
political self to side with the citizen, as in the following joke, a crafty adaptation of a popular joke-model
(Barillari 2010:170):
“Obama, Berlusconi, the Pope and a Pope's assistant are flying on a plane. The plane's engine breaks down. The
pilots decide that everyone needs to jump off the aircraft. But, alas, there are only five parachutes. The pilots grab
two parachutes and jump off, leaving the poor four to find a way to survive with only three parachutes.
Unquestioningly, Obama grabs the first parachute: he must survive, as he is the most powerful man on earth.
Berlusconi (everybody knows how he is) grabs the second parachute and says, «I am the most intelligent man of
Europe, I deserve this», and jumps. The Pope tells his assistant, «Look, I am the Pope, but you are young, take the
parachute», and the assistant, «No, your Holiness. There are two parachutes left». «Why is that so?», asks the Pope.
«Because the most intelligent man of Europe jumped with my rucksack».”
Berlusconi exported this barzelletta to the European Parliament to regain his colleagues' benevolence after the
embarrassing debacle with the German delegate Martin Schulz, which will be analysed later. Berlusconi 'sides'
with the citizen through self-criticism so to ask for the European commission's forgiveness. Again, Berlusconi
uses theatrical devices and mocks the institution to increase its credibility.
IV.iii
A Bad Day
A classic example of the performance of cynicism is a version of one of Berlusconi's most famous storielle,
which he purposely adapted to support Renato Soru, a party member running for Sardinia regional elections
in 2006. At the party rally, Soru and Berlusconi are on stage: the relationship mimics cabaret TV programmes
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in which the comedian is called by the conduttore, the TV presenter, on stage. Comedians subvert the
authority of the presenter by joking about his unpreparedness, and to him counterpoise the 'intrinsic
goodness' of the audience, bearing the hideous unfolding of the TV program. Audience and presenter laugh,
as both of them are entertained for opposing reasons: the former for being complimented with and being
offered fun, the latter for being the centre of the attention. Once his performance ends, the comedian
suddenly leaves, greeted by the crowd.
In this case, the barzelletta is about Soru, waking up in his house in Sardinia. The beginning is idyllic, as he
enjoys smelling the perfume of flowers coming through the window, feeling the warming touch of the sun on
his skin and observing the beautiful Sardinian landscape from his balcony. Harmony is suddenly broken once
Soru touches his face, and realizes he needs to shave. As he enters the bathroom, he looks at himself in the
mirror “and he realizes from early morning that he is going to have a bad day!”18. Without adding any more,
Berlusconi leaves the stage while receiving the audience's applause and Soru amused approval.
First of all, Berlusconi, as the comedian, pleases the audience by describing the innate goodness of Sardinia,
and by extension its people. The technique of flattering the population is implicit in his populist agenda also
in different occasions (“you know why in my televisions there is neutrality? Because people have all kinds of
political orientations, and favouring this or that politician would be an offence against them!”19 [2005]).
Moreover, Soru is celebrated as he is at the centre of the attention and receives the cameo visit of the Prime
Minister. However, crucially, Berlusconi's joke sides with the people, and not with Soru, the incompetent
presenter/politician.
Berlusconi is allowed to mock the institution by sounding transgressing and amusedly inappropriate. The low
18
19
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJ_vKT2o1rg&feature=related.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5np9lE5HeY4.
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quality of the joke is unimportant, as the relevance is on the exorbitant effect of mocking political allies on the
stage in front of their people. Soru is not incompetent because politically inept, but because he cannot mirror
the beauty of the people. This puts Berlusconi in the enjoyable position of producing intimacy both with the
audience and with the political ally. As we can see, Berlusconi directly stages disenchantment with politics,
acting reversely as much as his mockery of Soru does. The Geertzian notion of pomp producing power is
spectacle in the form of intimacy and grotesque, while an unexpected identification of the king with the
buffoon takes place.
IV.iv
Performance vs. Intention
Berlusconi's creative use of intimate relationships to fabricate a persuasive attachment with his public is based
on the doing. This act of acting, performing is opposed to the intention, to the description of action.
Sennett (1993) uses Nixon's public declarations after the Watergate scandal to illustrate what he sees as the
'fall' of public man, notably prospective narcissism. According to Sennett, the rise of the notion of self in the
West promoted (or followed) the conceptual split between person and behaviour, and, by extension, the strict
differentiation between seriousness and play. Sennett sees the fall of public political engagement in 'mirroring
the self', maintaining the status quo, that have become the recent role of political leaders. In his words,
“Narcissism is now mobilized in social relations by a culture deprived of belief in the public and ruled
by intimate feelings as a measure of the meaning of reality. When issues like class, ethnicity, and the exercise of power
fail to conform to this measure, when they fail to be a mirror, they cease to arouse passion or concern” (ibid.:326).
For these reasons, Nixon would justify himself after having been accused of illegally receiving money from
businessman to fund political parties by stating his good intentions. In public declarations Nixon played on
his being 'a person', making 'human mistakes', and being sorry 'to have let people down'. Despite political
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tactics, he described himself as a 'good person' while having “nearly persuaded the American people that
political crime was normal”20.
On the other hand, Berlusconi would not directly describe himself through intimate chat, but rather perform
intimacy to assert his humanity.
20
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=fawn_brodie_1
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Chapter V: The Hyper-fictional Prime Minister
V.i
Counter-mirroring
“Yet we shouldn’t be fooled: behind the clownish mask there is a state power that functions with ruthless efficiency”
(Žižek 2009:5)
On 13th February 2011, a popular demonstration asking Berlusconi to resign due to the impending trials for
sexual scandals (called Rubygate, after Ruby, the name of the minor involved in the investigations) and his
chauvinist attitude towards women. As the article by Libero (the PDL21 propagandistic newspaper) states, on
the following day the PDL Party members will be in the streets protesting against “the political use of justice”,
aiming at destroying Berlusconi's reputation by 'mounting' mock trials, as in the Fascist era, therefore
bringing the nation on the brink of a 'civil war'.
The article dubbed Berlusconi, who a day before declared “these practices [judiciary investigations] go against
the parliament … since the offence did not happen. These accusations are factious, and I am sorry that they
have brought shame to the country, the government and the institutions, and internationally usurped my
dignity. I am just wondering who is paying in order to carry on these investigations, which, in my humble
opinion, have solely subversive purposes”. Suddenly, while another journalist was about to ask him another
question, he added up to the previous declaration, his tone becoming pathetic. A remarkable, short
mimicking of the Žižekian cynical subject is enacted. Disillusioned with the institutions but hoping to obtain
his vendetta against the state pervasiveness, he says, looking compassionately at the previous journalist: “It's
shameful. In the end, nobody will pay for this”. And suddenly, with a spark of hope: “Actually, only the State
21
Popolo Della Libertà (people of freedom), Berlusconi's Party name since 2008.
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will pay, as I will bring charge against it”22.
Again, cynicism is enacted, and simultaneously the accusation transforms into a weapon. Berlusconi's
multifaceted mimesis resonates with the logic underneath the theatrical device of the 'broken mirror effect'
(found in Little 199323), by which Berlusconi 'becomes' his representation according to the magistrates, and
then reflects it back to the accusers. Secondly, the reversal of accusation works only, as Castoriadis (1997)
points out, if the novel symbolism comes out of the reworking of a previous one. I call Berlusconi's a countermirroring technique.
V.ii
European Show
To prove the 'counter-mirroring technique', I propose a classic of Berlusconi's shows, the inappropriate joke24
against the German European delegate Martin Schulz, member of the German Socialist Party.
It's July 2, 2003 in Strasbourg, one day after Berlusconi took over the rotating presidency of the EU Council
of Ministers. After Berlusconi's initial discourse about the goals of the six months of Italian presidency, other
politicians, including Martin Schulz, expose their points in reply to Berlusconi's proposals. Speaking last after
his colleagues, the German delegate does not spare Berlusconi a heavy critique of his internal policies, not to
mention the highly suspected 'conflict of interest', Berlusconi's double occupation as media-tycoon and PM.
Later on, Berlusconi relies. Briefly commenting on the policies which were brought up by other members,
Berlusconi generally answered to the accusations by denying that he controls the media, as the presidency of
TV and publishing company were shifted to members of his family who have an 'independent view' on his
business. To shut the disagreement noises that had slowly rose up during his speech, and finally offering a
22
23
24
http://tv.repubblica.it/politica/faro-causa-allo-stato/61694?video=&ref=HREA-1
The performance exploits the concept of hyper-conformity. One clown is 'real', while the other personifies his 'represented' counterpart through a
mirror frame. The effect that comes out is that the real clown becomes the represented as it starts moving like the second clown, believing in the
truthfulness of the supposed mirror.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMxPvcMIhg0.
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direct answer to Schulz, Berlusconi grabbed the microphone and thundered:
"Mister Schulz, I know of a movie producer in Italy who is making a film about Nazi concentration camps. I will
recommend you for the part of a Kapo (concentration-camp inmate). You are just perfect!"
Schulz simply paled. He did not get a political answer, but a personal offence. The joke obviously caused a
brief diplomatic rift between Italy and Germany.
Berlusconi did not act as instinctively as it might seem. The joke might have been a product of his instinctive
imagination, but he psychologically calibrated his answer to fit Schulz's accusations, which were no different
from the ones Berlusconi receives at a regular basis from members of the opposition in Italy.
The chasm-like counter-mirroring technique might not appear straightforward. Accused of basically being an
autocrat, since controlling information from the highest position of power, Berlusconi replies with scarce
political and diplomatic wit, but manages to shut the contester down by comparing him to a member of the
SS. Schulz's reaction of incredulity means Berlusconi's victory, as the latter completely dismissed the former
accusations by not even taking them seriously. Berlusconi drawn from the implicit meaning of Schulz's
argument and similarly insulted him by means of a qualitatively low joke. Obviously, Berlusconi declared he
just meant what he said ironically. And clearly he meant so, as his point was not to provide an evident claim:
his goal was to emphasize Schulz's 'nonsensical' critiques by making them appear unreasonable. Subtitles to
Berlusconi's statements would most likely go like this: “Mr Schulz, your accusations are so ridiculous that
they would be comparable to me considering you having personal inclinations alike to a member of the SS”.
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V.iii
The Berlusconi Effect: Hyper-fiction
“it is clear that the successful performance of selfhood depends upon an ability to identify the self with larger
categories of identity”
(Herzfeld 1985:10)
Seeing Berlusconi as a performance actor is the surface of a more complicated issue. His opponents already
tried to question him by saying that he is “a comedian devoted to politics” (Barillari 2010:20). He is neither
politician nor comedian. Berlusconi is, rather, self-aware of playing the comedian devoted to politics. If we
imagine the institution as the framework within which the self-Berlusconi acts, and its reiteration of a certain
style of political enunciation, it might become clear that the way in which he retains power is through the
hyper-fictional performance of the institution. Butler (1993) argues that the 'free' self lies within the
framework of power to which the individual is making opposition. Berlusconi 'makes' and wins the
opposition by 'freeing' himself from the accusations (of corruption, of inappropriateness, of autocracy) by
reiteratively performing their reflection or negation. The self-Berlusconi comes to be constituted “as a
reiterative and rearticulatory practice” (Butler 1993:15).
I argue that Berlusconi uses his position as if he was staging it, therefore having the awareness of moving into a
play visible only to his own eyes. Butler's idea that people perform 'pre-constituted' characters in order to
become themselves is matched with the notion of hyper-fiction.
V.iv
“Bunga-Bunga”
In a February 2011 press conference, Berlusconi performs hyper-fiction on the Rubygate scandal. As a
corollary to his reply to a journalist questioning his fitness to govern the country, Berlusconi jokingly says: “I
Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi
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Filippo Spreafico
have been to the parliament today, and you know what? I realized that also left-wingers want to do BungaBunga25. They all shouted Bunga-Bunga” he smiles and nods, “and you know what that mean … it is to have
a good time … my way of life has conquered them! … you know, [I do] a lot of work but also...”. The
audience is pleased, laughs, cheers. With Aristotelian precision, Berlusconi respected plot (the Bunga-Bunga
affair), the other character role (playing the left-wing journalist) and the audience by simply reinstating his
style: intimacy, entertainment, banality, and theatrical awareness. The Bunga-Bunga expression, a parody on
his sexual appetites, is turned upside down and satirically deactivated by being counter-used against the ones
accusing him. The Bunga-Bunga ‘counter-mirroring' epitomizes Berlusconi capacity of performing himself:
drawing jokes that appear spontaneous from his comical charisma by means of politically mocking the
opposition. Moreover, his successful character is admired to such an extent that, in his words, even his
antagonists decided to join his “way of life”.
V.v
Being good at being Berlusconi
Although the discourse on male honour and female shame has been seriously questioned as anthropological
invention of Mediterranean identity (Herzfeld 1984), ethnographic material on Southern Europe offers
interesting insights that resonate with the argument here presented. Honour is a social evaluation, and it is
attached to a different set of performances.
Herzfeld (1985) exemplified the 'content' of male honour among the Glendiots, inhabitant of central Crete,
showing the constitution of their self-image through rhetoric, discourse and performance. Crucially, it is
possible to integrate the argument until here brought forward in order to hit the nail of Berlusconi's mode of
performance.
25
A world-famous mockery against Berlusconi after the scandal that saw him accused to have sex with a minor. Bunga-Bunga
originally comes from a popular joke that Berlusconi firstly duly re-adapted in political context, and then passed in the hands of
the opposition as instrument of mockery.
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Herzfeld notes that Glendiot men assert their own identity through eghoismos, of which the English 'egoism'
is no substantial translation. In a sense, deriding others and asserting one's superiority is not synonym of
unsocial individualism. Eghoismos works “on behalf of the collectivity” (ibid.:11), as the assertion of the self
involves the positioning within a set of social strata. A good performance of the self means to call into
question social opponents, historical memories and values: “the performance that captures the greatest
number of levels of social bounding at once will be taken the most seriously” (ibid.).
Ultimately, Herzfeld concludes that in Crete, it is not about “being a good man”, but “being good at being
man” (ibid.:16). Herzfeld illustrates the parameters of manhood are embedded in everyday life. Nevertheless,
it is not about learning those values. The most important point is to perform them in an effective way.
In many interviews or talk shows, Berlusconi exclaimed “I am invincible”, or “I am not sick, I am superman.
Actually, superman does not give me a damn (superman mi fa un baffo)”. Herzfield suggests that the shifting
of the everyday into a performative context that challenges the very social context inspiring the performance
produces a “sudden significance”. Berlusconi included various social fields in stating that “he does not give a
damn about superman”.
First of all, he indirectly replied to his wife Veronica Lario, who asked for divorce after the 2009 El Pais's
publications of photographs of the wild parties at the Prime Minister's villa in Sardinia. In a famous letter to
“La Repubblica”, she stated that Berlusconi was 'sick' and needed 'help'. With the Superman joke, Berlusconi
firstly performed his masculine resilience to the accusations by enacting a metaphorical self-regard with
reference to popular culture. Secondly, Berlusconi asserts his own inextinguishable energy, both as leader and,
more indirectly, as playboy. Thirdly, as a Prime Minister, he comes to perform his legitimacy as guide to the
country especially in front of the male electorate by the very assertion of his ultra-biological powers within the
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Filippo Spreafico
'frame' of the institution. Everyone expects Berlusconi to demonstrate his invincibility. The way of
performance, be it desecrating or spectacularly funny, will make the difference.
The same goes for the Bunga-Bunga example described earlier. As Italian sociologists understand it, “instead of
raising doubts about his commitment to the interests of the public as a whole, Berlusconi's demonstrable
success in pursuing his private interests leads a large part of the public to express confidence in his ability to
pursue their interests as well”(Cavalli 2001:134).
In a nationally famous interview in the 80s, when Berlusconi became popular as successful businessman, he
jokingly stated, “If I was born in Saudi Arabia I would have been a sheik, if I was born in Treviso they would
have called me Berluscon, if I was born in Naples they would have called me Berluscòni”26. This statement
revolves around the notion of outspoken performance of what Berlusconi is. Everyone already agreed on the
undeniable success that Berlusconi was having as businessman, but the reiteration of his already consolidated
fame through a novel, comical contextualization focuses the attention on the performance of the social
imaginary of the successful entrepreneur itself, which he already embeds. By disregarding space-temporal
constrictions, Berlusconi's successful 'essence' would have been just the same anywhere in the world.
Following Herzfeld (1985), his intrinsic 'goodness' is convincingly demonstrated through performance as he
is good at being good (ibid.:16, see also Favero 2010 on Italian 'intrinsic goodness').
V.vi
Manhood and Performance
Herzfeld's careful analysis helps mine thanks to its detachment from notions of ritual while describing
performances, as “commonplace occurrences” (1985:18) are at the base of the immediate performance.
Berlusconi's capacity of performing a set of defined concepts in novel contexts also entails the slowly carving
26
Said by adopting different dialects.
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Filippo Spreafico
anew of those very notions the performance is inspired from, recursively producing self-legitimation, therefore
a certain reality (Rosen 1984).
Herzfeld irremediably leads us to theatre theory. Kirby (1973) brings the example of Oedipus, a New York by
John Perreault. In the play, the character Oedipus is dressed up and does actions referable to Oedipus but he
does not perform Oedipus. He 'carries' the dress of the character and does actions that can be traceable to him
if the audience knows his history, but he acts as 'the actor' before being actor. We both see the person and the
actor. But rarely we do see the character.
How does this link with Cretan villagers and Berlusconi? We could imagine that the clothing and actions
correspond to the Glendiots' embedded manhood, and to Berlusconi's quality as Prime Minister. While the
Glendiots perform their manhood by means of its inextinguishable reassertion, Berlusconi goes to a higher
level. He performs himself and the institution while at the same time performing the character with Italian
cynicism. In this way the Italian audience/electorate recognizes his genuineness. Kirby notes that it is hard to
tell if the Oedipus way of performing is deliberate, or simply acted badly. The dissonance between
'background' and performance brings a certain level of doubt. Once this background (in our case, symbolic)
and the performance are in harmony, no doubts are expressed about the performance.
Berlusconi's advantage is to subvert the rules of theatre, if you will. His environment is the institution he
represents, while his agency perches on in his awareness of the institutional framework and the performance of
cynicism. In a way, he is an actor aware of being an actor who is aware of not being perceived as an actor.
This is, in a nutshell, 'hyper-fiction', Berlusconi's agency.
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Filippo Spreafico
V.vii
Hyper-fictional Performativity
“All effective performances share this "not-not not" quality: Olivier is not Hamlet, but also he is not not Hamlet: his
performance is between a denial of being another (= I am me) and a denial of not being another (= I am Hamlet).”
(Schechner 1981:88)
“Certain reiterative chains of discursive production are barely legible as reiterations, for the effects they have
materialized are those without which no bearing in discourse can be taken”(Butler 1993:187). In this sense,
performativity is not an arbitrary taking up of roles, but it follows a specific set of symbolical and historical
pre-constitutions. Performing oneself is therefore invisible once the performance complies with the specific
social 'background'. The performance is therefore invisible, as it constitutes people themselves, who do not
consider themselves as part of a performative matrix. In this sense, we are expanding Castoriadis's idea that
the exploitation of symbolism is not arbitrary. Performativity carries with itself the notion of motion,
epitomized with Berlusconi’s ever-presence in the public sphere.
Phone calls to popular TV programs, cameo appearances in regional electoral campaigns, and, most notably,
football and media commentator: the pervasive nature of his performance is both strategy of consensus and
medium of survival. The Berlusconi without the performance of himself would not be the Berlusconi
everybody knows. When Berlusconi refers to himself as 'being superman' or 'smelling of sanctity', he asserts
the divine, or superhuman quality of his performance. Superhuman as his implicitly recognized capacity of
orchestrating reality as if he suggested Butler her theory. In addition to that, the performance of the selfBerlusconi becomes, in a Butlerian sense, the articulation of major Italian commonplaces: l'arte di arrangiarsi
(“the art of fixing things for oneself”, Herzfeld 2004:1), the popular critique of corruption (as in Cavalli
2001), “love for football, love for life and for entertainment, for the others and especially for beautiful women,
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Filippo Spreafico
as all good Italians do” (2009).
Nevertheless, the specificity of Berlusconi's performative adventure is the development of a third stage of
analysis, as synthesis between the conflicts of realities outlined at the beginning of the discussion.
Once performativity and cynicism are put together, hyper-fiction comes into place. If performativity
constitutes the object it performs for while drawing from pre-existent models, cynicism brings awareness of
the deceiving practice of performing 'ideologies'. As a result, Berlusconi's move is to perform as good as
himself through the transmutation of the accusations he receives (counter-mirroring). So to speak, Berlusconi
is both the reality and the performance of himself. He constantly renders his legitimacy self-evident as he
reproduces a symbolic order, which he is aware of reproducing.
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VI.
Conclusion
As final example, in 2005, Berlusconi indicted the publishing of a book through his company, Mondadori,
called Berlusconi ti odio (I hate you Berlusconi), which collects 500 insults against his persona. The book
included terms such as 'megalomaniac', 'bandit', 'drunken hooligan' and 'premier Pinocchio', or locutions
such as “mad and anthropologically different from the rest of the human race”27, or “Berlusconi is like Aids: if
you know him, you avoid him”28. The publisher published insults against the publisher himself. Berlusconi’s
technique is here put in print. Another double negation produces an affirmation. Back to Taussig’s logic of
'defacement', Berlusconi unleashes new positive energy for his purposes.
VI.i
Hyper-fiction is Reality | Reality as Hyper-fiction
As his career began out of the political trajectory29, Berlusconi encountered the world of politics through the
lenses of the businessman who tried to get away with the strict regulations of TV networks in the 70s and 80s.
I have not intended to illustrate the various reasons that determined his entrance into politics (companies
bankruptcy, P2 masonic lodge's democratic plan, Mafia collaborations), as this is clearly laid out in specialists'
books30. The present discussion aimed at showing that Berlusconi's background allowed him to interpret
political power through performance. Berlusconi brought entertainment and consumer goods to an
advertisement-less and austere televisual tradition, along with a 24/7 service. He came to embed the focolare
domestico in many families, establishing an indirect relationship though the private channels shaped on his
27
28
29
30
Giuseppe Giulietti
Antonio di Pietro
Enrico Vaime, playwright, knows Berlusconi who, right before entering politics, usually said: “but now I need somebody who can give me some
good advice, 'cause I don't really know anything about politics”. Interview for 'La Stampa': http://blog.alibertieditore.it/2011/02/12/enricovaime-dico-la-verita-cala-la-satira-vola-la-passera-intervista-di-bruno-gambarotta-ttl-la-stampa/
i.e. Marco Travaglio's 'L'odore dei Soldi' (2001)
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Filippo Spreafico
symbolic understanding of Italy, the one “of the warm sun, of the good food and of the beautiful women”31
His disbelief in politics brought him towards politics, and enacted the deployment of cynicism from the
position of power. His tendency to enjoy and entertain extended to a national scale as he assisted at all the
stages of two generations, both in media and politics.
The way in which he obtained the support of a good part of the population has been carefully staged, surely
through the personal use of information and censorship, but most essentially by being omnipresent in
everyone's life. Performance and laughter, reversal of the institution, carnivalesque mimesis and disguised
technocracy provided the electorate vote.
Berlusconi self-consciously uses a collection of ideologies to deny political ideology itself. He is cynical
because he actively produces what he denies, simultaneously offering a meta-commentary on the proceedings
of the political world. In a word, he embeds hyper-fiction.
Berlusconi has a point in deploying such outrageous disrespect for the institutions: he despises politics that
tends to monopolize power by preventing personal enterprise to break free, in a word, he worships extreme
liberalism. This is part of his biographical life, understood as struggle against outmoded institutions. His role
is not the politician's, but the man acting as such. This observation accounts for his determination in escaping
processes and protecting his power from the law, therefore promoting the perpetuation of his 'reality'.
Berlusconi symbolically accounts for lifestyle, information, entertainment, politics, business, football,
employment, and foreign relations for the country. Moreover, he also represents a commentary on these
spheres and himself. In short, he is the symbol and the symbolized, he is 'scale' and 'object', he is
measurement and the thing measured. He contains what people do and people are, as he is those people and
31
At the European Commission, during the infamous ‘Schultz speech’.
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Italy. The symbolism of his power is the performance of the attitudes he instilled in people through television.
VI.ii
The Thing and the Scale
The discussion increasingly emphasized fiction and the negotiation of the two Italian parallel realities.
However, threatening the hard reality of the Realpolitik by 'fictionalizing' it makes it no less real. Political
hyper-fiction might as well be a Western mode of invention, proving the negotiated nature of what is called
reality. Indirectly, I have attempted to suggest that anthropological accounts of Western 'realities' can reveal
to be significant for a novel understanding of what anthropologists call West, and how this comes about as a
negotiated concept.
Berlusconi knows the frame in which he is acting (ideology, historical memory, and politics of manhood) and
acts accordingly. He not only knows that the stage in which he is playing is the political arena, but he is aware
of the frame of the frame, Italy. Berlusconi might have excelled in anthropology, as he interpreted a whole
country by both providing cultural change and accounting for it; or, simply, his personal drive exceeds his
capacity for self-reflection. Speculations notwithstanding, I showed that hyper-fiction assumes a lucid
understanding of reality, whatever that comes to be.
Inserting Berlusconi's performance in the collective memory, therefore seeing Berlusconi not entering politics
for a specific ideology, makes the Prime Minister's agency a result of the system in which he himself was
'created'. As a result, his performance has to be perpetual in order to keep up with reality. In a tragic sense,
Berlusconi is the only actor aware of being as such among the vast crowd of actors “deprived of their art”
(Sennett 1993): Berlusconi, the aware actor, is condemned to keep the show running while everybody else
thinks that the stage is the real world, and the acting is their real life.
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Filippo Spreafico
If this works as metaphor, it cannot be regarded as any less explicative than a strictly political perspective. The
extenuating performative exercise of reiterating the cynical style, or memorizing an infinite list of jokes, hyperfictionally keeps up with reality.
Both replicating and mocking the institution, both absorbing it and releasing it in subtly modified versions by
reiterating and performing small changes, Berlusconi brings about a new reality. Berlusconi is the aware actor
who found the formula to change the stage by replicating it; Berlusconi is representative of the extreme
consequences of anthropological practice: understanding to the extent of becoming the 'field of enquiry'. As
Marilyn Strathern would put it, Berlusconi became the thing and the scale: he became Italy and the measure
of Italy.
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Acknowledgements 2011
Many people are behind this brief paper, even if they don't know it. I am indebted to Charles Stewart, Chris
Pinney and Martin Holbraad for guidance in the development of my thoughts and the support offered.
Thank you also to the members of the research group 'Performance Theory and the Ethnography of the
Imagination', especially to Dan Sherer and his brilliant style, and to my anthropology companion and
excellent friend Sammy Weaver. A big thank you to the people who engaged in countless conversations about
Berlusconi, I know I bored you: the attractive Ruari Lane, Tashi Yangzom, Adam Sadiq, Mical Nelken,
Guillemette Martin, Angelo Dos Santos, Martina Saorin, Kate Evans, Michael Baumann, Luke (sky)Walker,
Kate Nichol, Ana Baeza and Cristian Sandulescu (especially you, Chosen One). Thank you to the friends
abroad, the beautiful Wanda Orme, Aidan Un, Ino Agrafioti, Diego Ibanez, Grzegorz Czaplicki, you will all
do great, I am sure. Thank you to the warehouse crew, you know you are just right. Thank you to the special
support of the Fox Reformed staff in moments of need. Thank you to the natives, Chiara Masic, Matteo
Auriemma, Daniele Vanoli, Carlo Corti, and also to Duccio Facchini, there is some of you in this
anthropological attempt of mine.
Thank you, Anna, to have showed me a way.
Thank you to my family, one of the best “theatre crew” I know. Thank you to my mum and dad, and sorry, I
know it would sound better in Italian, but I guess you are getting used to it. I love you.
Thank you to the many people I exchanged life with, we all made it great, and we will keep on.
Silvio Berlusconi inspired me to keep on writing every time I doubted my work. He showed me that fiction
(as involved in producing any kind of creation) is stronger than any hard 'reality'.
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Watters, Clare (2011) ‘Decadence and Democracy in Italy: What does the tolerance of Silvio Berlusconi's
hedonism say about Italians?’ in NYTimes.com January, 26th
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/01/26/decadence-and-democracy-in-italy/how-italianschallenge-berlusconi. Accessed 27th January 2011.
Mora, Miguel (2009) ‘The pictures vetoed by Berlusconi’, in Elpais.com, June 5th.
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nt_3/Tes. Accessed 15th December 2010.
Morgoglione, Claudia (2011) ‘"Silvio Forever", 100% di puro Berlusconi…Ci dispiace ma non è un film
militante..."’ in Repubblica.it, March 22nd. www.repubblica.it/spettacoli.../silvio_forever_anteprima13949859/ . Accessed 22nd March 2011.
Popham, Peter (2006) ‘Silvio Berlusconi: The laughing Cavalier’, in independent.co.uk, March 5th.
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Accessed 15th February 2011.
Reporters Without Borders (2010) ‘Press Freedom Index’. http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index2010,1034.html. Accessed 15th April 2011.
Repubblica.it (2005) ‘L’Unità nel mirino di Berlusconi: “Siete complici di milioni di morti”’, December
23rd. http://www.repubblica.it/2005/l/sezioni/politica/berluconfe/unimorti/unimorti.html. Accessed
December 15th 2010.
Reuters (2009) ‘Italy's Catholic Church vs. Berlusconi drama, Act II’. September 16th,
http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2009/09/16/italys-catholic-church-vs-berlusconi-act-ii/. Accessed 14th
January 2011.
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Filippo Spreafico
SkyTG24 (2009) ‘Berlusconi ai contestatori: poveri comunisti, fate pena’, in sky.it, June 19th.
http://tg24.sky.it/tg24/politica/2009/06/19/Berlusconi_ai_contestatori_poveri_comunisti_fate_pena.html.
Accessed 23rd January 2011.
The Times Editorial Board (2009) ‘The Clown's mask slips’, in The Sunday Times, June 1st,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article6401859.ece. Accessed 14th January 2011.
Tito, Claudio (2006) ‘"Proposte scritte sull'acqua" Berlusconi attacca Prodi’, in Repubblica.it, February
12th. http://www.repubblica.it/2006/b/sezioni/politica/versoelezioni23/gesuberlu/gesuberlu.html. Accessed
March 15th 2011.
Unita.it (2011)‘«Anche la sinistra vuol partecipare al bunga bunga»’. February 25th.
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Zucconi, Vittorio (2009) ‘L’interletta’, in Repubblica.it, September 5th.
zucconi.blogautore.repubblica.it/2009/09/05/linterletta/ . Accessed 16th March 2011.
Video Resources
Corriere.it
Guardian.co.uk
BBC.co.uk
Repubblica TV
Telegraph.co.uk
YouTube
Film References
Moretti, Nanni, Dir. (2008) Il Caimano. Starring Orlando, Silvio. Sacher Film.
Sorrentino, Paolo, Dir. (2008) Il Divo: la Spettacolare Vita di Giulio Andreotti. Starring Servillo, Toni.
Lucky Red.
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