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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 1 Filippo Spreafico 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 Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 2 Filippo Spreafico 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 Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 3 Filippo Spreafico 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. 4 Filippo Spreafico Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 5 Filippo Spreafico 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. Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 6 Filippo Spreafico 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. Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 7 Filippo Spreafico 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. Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 8 Filippo Spreafico 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) Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 9 Filippo Spreafico 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. Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 10 Filippo Spreafico 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. Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 11 Filippo Spreafico 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. Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 12 Filippo Spreafico 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. Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 13 Filippo Spreafico 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 Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 14 Filippo Spreafico 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 Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 15 Filippo Spreafico 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'. Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 16 Filippo Spreafico 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 Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 17 Filippo Spreafico 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. Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 18 Filippo Spreafico Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 19 Filippo Spreafico 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 Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 20 Filippo Spreafico 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. Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 21 Filippo Spreafico 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 Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 22 Filippo Spreafico 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. Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 23 Filippo Spreafico 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 Filippo Spreafico 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, Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 25 Filippo Spreafico 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. Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 26 Filippo Spreafico 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 Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 27 Filippo Spreafico 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 Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 28 Filippo Spreafico 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. Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 29 Filippo Spreafico 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 Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 30 Filippo Spreafico 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 Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 31 Filippo Spreafico 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. Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 32 Filippo Spreafico 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. Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 33 Filippo Spreafico 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”. Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 34 Filippo Spreafico 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 35 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. Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 36 Filippo Spreafico 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 Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 37 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. Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 38 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. Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 39 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, Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 40 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. Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 41 Filippo Spreafico 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) Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 42 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’. Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 43 Filippo Spreafico 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. Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 44 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. Between Theatre and Politics: The Hyper-fiction of Silvio Berlusconi 45 Filippo Spreafico 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'. References Academic References Abélès, Marc (1988) 'Modern Political Ritual: Ethnography of an Inauguration and a Pilgrimage by President Mitterrand'. Current Anthropology 29 (3) pp.391-399 Argy rou, Vassos (2002) Anthropology and the Will to Meaning: a Postcolonial Critique. 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