HEGEMONY AND CONSENSUS: THE RELkTIONSHIP BETWEEN POLITICS AND CULTURE IN FASCIST ITALY

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1 is HEGEMONY AND CONSENSUS: THE RELkTIONSHIP BETWEEN POLITICS AND CULTURE IN FASCIST ITALY Brian Grfflth I N July 1943, Benito Mussolini was deposed as fascist dictator of Italy and incarcerated by the Grand Council of fascism. Shortly after his liberation by the Germans in September1943, Mussolini fled to northern Italy where he co-founded and administered the Italian Social Republic (Repubblica Sociale ftaliana or RSI), a puppet state of Nazi Germany. Upon the untimely disintegration of the RSI in April 1945, Mussolini, along with a small group of his closest associates, attempted to escape to Francisco Franco s Spain via Switzerland. The group, however, was identified and captured by members of the Italian Resistance, executed near Lake Como, and strung up in Milan s Piazza Loreto for a post mortem public display (fig. 1). The spectacle of Mussolini s dramatic fall from power in Italy was eerily reminiscent of the spectacle of the fascist regime he had so carefully constructed and orchestrated throughout the previous twenty years, often referred to as the ventennio nero (black decades).2 Shortly after the conclusion of the Second World War, a generation of anti-fascist scholars began to characterize the years of fascism in Italy as an aberration in history, or a brief pause in time. Benedetto Croce, for example, famously characterized the twenty years of fascist rule as a parenthesis in history.3 Norberto Bobbio, a prominent intellectual both Fascism as defined by Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile in Foundations and Doctrine of Fascism (1932) a social and political ideology which imagines the State as the locus around which the individual is defined and, ultimately, socially constituted. Against individualism, Mussolini and Gentile write, the Fascist conception is for the State; and it is for the individual in so far as he coincides with the State, which is the conscience and universal will of man in his historical existence. D. Medina Lasansky, The Renaissance Perfected (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), z68. Barbara Spackman, Fascist Virilities (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), ix-x.

2 and such ii6 Brian Griffith during and after WWII, wrote: Where there was culture it was not fascist and where there was fascism it was not culture. There never was a fascist culture. 4 To recognize or acknowledge an ideology, philosophy, or culture behind fascism, as Barbara Spackman has pointed out, would be to dignify it with an intellectual stature that it does not merit. 5 Thus, the historiography of the post-war years is characterized by various antifascist themes, such as partisan resistance to fascist oppression and a general reticence to discuss the topic of culture during the black decades. The so-called linguistic turn that took place within the humanities and social sciences during the 196os influenced many scholars to rethink the relationship between language and power, leading to the develop ment of the fields of social and cultural history in subsequent decades. By the 198os and 19905, the historiography of Fascist Italy included a generation of scholars who were much more open to the notion of a fascist culture and, thus, more interested in examining it. Mussolini s cultural policies, and the efforts led by his regime to shape and mobilize Italians through those policies, became a prime area of historical research. Victoria de Grazia s Culture of Consent, for example, analyzes the leisure-time Dopolavoro (After Work) organization in Fascist Italy. De Grazia explains the process through which Mussolini attempted to create a culture of consensus through the creation of depoliticized recrea tional programs for the masses. Mabel Berezin has studied the relation ship between the fascist regime and public theater, arguing that the regime considered the world of live performance to be an ideal cultural vehicle for diffusing fascist ideology. 6 Ruth Ben-Ghiat s Fascist Moderni ties examines the relationship between Italy s culture makers as authors, playwrights, directors, etc. the fascist regime, establishing a clear connection between the two. Ben-Ghiat argues: because the regime never adopted an official aesthetic stance, intellectuals could convince themselves they were not producing political art when they sponsored the idea that popular contact with aesthetics would create new modern Italians. 7 The scholarship of De Grazia, Berezin, and Ben Ghiat has served as a source of inspiration for many scholars working in Borden W. Painter, Mussolini s Rome (New York: Paigrave Macmillan, 2005), xvii. Spackman, ix.-x. 6 Mabel Berezin, The Organization of Political Ideology: Culture, State, and Theater in Fascist Italy, American Sociological Review, 6, (1991), 639. Simonetta Falasca Zamponi, reviewed work(s): Fascist Modernities by Ruth Ben Ghiat, The American Historical Review, 107, (2002), 653. Ex POST FACTO

3 117 the field of modern European cultural history, including the following authors whose works I discuss in this essay. In Mussolini s Rome, Borden W. Painter examines the physical changes made to the city of Rome during the fascist period as a means of examining the regime s identity and character. The fascist regime, Painter argues, carefully staged a project of renovation in the Eternal City, which sought to eliminate various structures and symbols perceived to be incongruent with fascism s goals, while highlighting the city s imperial past in order to choreograph a specific political and cultural spectacle to both Italian and foreign audiences alike. Similarly, D. Medina Lasansky s The Renaissance Perfected analyzes the ways in which the regime used Italy s medieval and Renaissance heritage to both highlight the social and cultural goals of fascism and promote the development of a unified national identity in Italy. The regime sponsored restoration projects in the towns and cities of the north-central region of Tuscany in order to liberate various medieval and Renaissance qualities from the undesirable layers of subsequent periods, highlighting in the process a legacy of cultural and civilizational achievement shared by all Italians. In Fashion under Fascism, Eugenia Paulicelli locates the origins of the modern Italian fashion industry during the embryonic years of fascism in Italy. Paulicelli argues that the regime used the domestic fashion industry as a means for promoting an Italian style that Italians could identify with and consume, as well as a positive image of fascism abroad. Steven Ricci s Cinema & Fascism examines the ways in which the fascist regime both did and did not manipulate the cinema industry in Italy. Ricci argues that many domestic titles served as a stage upon which the regime could indoctrinate Italian audiences with fascist ideology while the presence of numerous foreign titles, whose contents the regime had absolutely no control over, functioned as evidence of the regime s good will and benevolence towards the populace. By exposing and highlighting the still visible fascist imprint on con temporary Italy, these authors illuminate the legacy of an ideology previously denied any cultural activity, legitimacy, and/or staying power. The regime s careful control and manipulation of the realm of culture was directly associated with its success in controlling Italians and maintaining its power within the peninsula. Thus, by focusing on the strategies and processes by which Mussolini s regime achieved hegem ony8 in Italy, the significance of the realm of culture and its inherent Hegemony, as defined by Oxford English Dictionary, is [ijeadership, predominance, preponderance; esp. the leadership or predominant authority of one state ofa confederacy or union over the others: originally used in reference to the states of ancient Greece, whence transferred to the German states, and in other modern applications. However, in VOLUMEXX 2o11

4 sought as ii8 Brian Grffith political qualities will fully emerge, informing us in the process of the potent, and often dangerous, relationship between politics and culture. In Mussolini s Rome, Borden W. Painter examines the dramatic changes made to the city of Rome during the twenty years of fascism in Italy. Mussolini the Duce, or leader, of Fascist Italy to rebuild the city in his own image by destroying those elements that conflicted with the general characteristics of his regime and liberating those that highlighted its social and political agendas. The changes made to the Eternal City during the ventennio nero, Painter argues, embody the values of the regime and its goal to change Italy through producing a new generation of Italians. 9 Painter quotes the following speech by Mussolini in order to illus trate the way in which the Duce imagined fascism s relationship to Italy s history: Rome is our point of departure and reference. It is our symbol or, ifyou wish, our myth. We dream of a Roman Italy, that is to say wise, strong, disciplined, and imperial. Much of that which was the immortal spirit of Rome rises again in Fascism: the Fasces are Roman; our organization of combat is Roman, our pride and our courage is Roman: Civis ro man us sum. It is necessary, now, that the history of tomorrow, the his tory we fervently wish to create, not be a contrast or a parody of the history ofyesterday.... Italy has been Roman for the first time in fifteen centuries, in war and in victory. Now it must be Roman in peacetime: and this renewed and revived romonitã bears these names: discipline and work. Thus, Mussolini s regime favored the Rome of the emperors op posed to previous or subsequent periods because it was perceived to embody particular characteristics consistent with fascist ideals and goals, such as power and action. Once the seat of the expansive Roman Empire, Rome s imperial ruins became a focal point of the regime s urban renovation efforts. One of the first projects undertaken by the regime was the elimina tion of any elements preventing the revealing of the city s glorious imperial heritage. The period of least importance to the regime was that of unified Italy, spanning from 1870 to As Painter points out, the fascists regarded this period as a complete failure; one that was charac terized by a spiritually bankrupt cultural decadence and the conflicting the case of Fascist Italy, hegemony should be understood to refer to the quality of power with which the regime governed Italy. Painter, xv. 10 Ibid.,. Ex POST FACTO

5 119 interests of opposing political parties. Rome s buildings and churches would have to fall to the piccone, or pickax, of progress, Painter writes, as the regime destroyed the old to create the new and uncover the glories of the imperial past. Thus, architectural elements dating from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries would need to be lifted from the city s visual landscape if the regime were to properly choreo graph the spectacle of a juxtaposed ancient and modern Rome. The Via dell Impero (Road of the Empire, or Imperial Way) a new road linking Vespasian s Coliseum with Palazzo Venezia, Mussolini s headquarters was carved through the forum of ancient Rome, requiring the destruction of numerous run-down apartment buildings and, in the process, displacing hundreds of lower-income families. 2 This new promenade, Painter argues, served as a symbolic link between the Rome ofthe emperors and the Rome of the fascists as the pedestrian would be required to pass through the ruins of Italy s most glorious age on both sides of the street when travelling towards the building from which the Duce leader of the new Rome managed the fascist Italian Empire. 3 The Via dell Impero, Painter writes, embodied the concept of romanità (Romanness) and Mussolini s claim that the new Rome expressed the political revolution that was transforming Italians into a new, energetic, and thoroughly fascist people. 4 In addition to highlighting the imperial ruins of ancient Rome along the Imperial Way, Mussolini ordered the construction of imperial monuments dedicated to himself and the new Roman Empire his regime was building. foro Mussolini today s foro Italico was used by the regime as a sports city to demonstrate its commitment to promoting both bodily health and physical fitness; two key aspects of fascist ideology. At the forum, Painter writes, images of ancient models of physical prowess mixed with modern sports and modern notions of physical vigor and health. 5 further, an indoor pool was constructed on the site, complete with mosaics and frescoes depicting various athletic scenes in the ancient Roman style, serving as a modern interpretation of the public baths of ancient Rome. foro Mussolini, as one contributor to the Aim anacco fascista del popoio d italia (fascist Almanac of the Italian People) has phrased it, was a monument that is linked to the Roman imperial tradition, that wants to perpetuate for the centuries the memory of the new fascist civilization, tied to the name of its Condottiere [military Ibid. Lasansky, 3. Painter, Ibid., Ibid., 40. VOLUME XX 2011

6 120 Brian Grffith leader]. 6 The forum, Painter contends, suggested Mussolini s imperial ambitions, for only emperors had forums built and named in their honor. 7 Other episodes within the regime s massive renovation projects included improving the flow of traffic, preserving and liberating ancient monuments, tearing down buildings of little or no historical value, and demonstrating fascism s ability to follow rhetoric with action. 8 Thus, Painter argues, by commissioning these public works, Mussolini sought to combine both the practical needs of the city with the political and cultural objectives of his regime. Remaking Rome in Mussolini s image Painter writes: Had far greater political and historical significance than making the trains run on time, the constant demolition and construction, the ap pearance of new buildings, streets, and neighborhoods persuaded both Italians and foreigners that fascism meant dynamism and durability. 9 further, by issuing discounted train fares and offering various other financial incentives, the regime hoped to attract both Italians and foreigners alike to the new Rome that was constantly under construction in order to demonstrate the dynamic and positive changes that fascism was capable of realizing. Indeed, domestic tourism played a decisive role in the regime s ability to achieve both hegemony and consensus in Italy. By carefully orchestrating a controlled political spectacle through a selective manipulation of various aspects of culture, the regime was able to seduce the majority of the populace into submission and, ultimately, achieve passive approval at the popular level. While the regime was developing and promoting a sense of romanità in Rome, a similar policy emphasizing a different period of Italy s history was unfolding in the north-central region of Tuscany. As D. Medina Lasansky illuminates in The Renaissance Perfected, the regime adopted a policy towards various cities and towns in Tuscany that emphasized the region s medieval and Renaissance visual qualities in order to promote a sense of both toscanitä (Tuscanness, or Tuscanism) and italianitâ (Italianness, or Italianism) in Italy and to superimpose the values and qualities associated with those periods onto the modern face of fascism.2 Through a process of selective destruction, reconstruction, and restoration coupled with education and publicity, Lasansky writes,,6 Ibid., 46. Ibid.,8 Ibid., 8. Ibid. Lasansky, xxxvi-xxxvii. Ex POST FACTO

7 121 the regime created an image of the Middle Ages and Renaissance that never really existed. 2 This form of cultural and historical deception, [asansky argues, was used by the regime as a tool to engineer political stability in Italy. Lasansky contends that the relationship between urban space and politics in Fascist Italy was a symbiotic one. New streets were designed and constructed with political events in mind while events were con ceived and executed with specific locations and spaces in mind.22 In supporting this claim, Lasanslcy cites the regime s efforts to redesign the festivals of the Siense patio and the Florentine catcio. Both festivals had deep historical roots stretching back into each city s past, but neither were medieval nor Renaissance in any authentic sense. The regime, Lasansky argues, selectively reconstructed these festivals in order to trim them of various undesirable elements and bring into further contrast those aspects which positively suited the ideals and goals of fascism. In the case of the Florentine catico, for example, a parade consist ing of several hundred men immediately preceded the game. Clothed in medieval costumes, the parade s participants (some of them on horseback) led the procession to Piazza della Signoria where the day s events were to take place. The path of the procession, Lasansky argues, was carefully chosen in order to showcase the city s most well preserved medieval and Renaissance visual qualities. As constructions that exploited aspects of different historical periods, Lasansky writes: These festivals conveniently highlighted the communal identity, civic institutions, and crusading chivalric leaders commonly associated with the Middle Ages, as well as the ideas of humanism, statesmanship, ar tistic achievement, and elaborate state ceremony thought essential to the Renaissance.23 further, as Lasansky points out, Mussolini often thought of himself as a modern-day Lorenzo the Great. He was, in his own eyes, a patron of the arts and a great Italian leader; one who was ushering in a modern Rinascimento (Renaissance), or cultural rebirth. The parallels the regime continually established between Italy s past and present were powerful political symbols which served as everyday didactic reminders of the character and identity of fascism. In addition to the changes being made to the Sienese and Florentine civic festivals, the regime also focused its Ibid., xlii. Ibid., 2. Ibid., 23. VOLUMEXX 2011

8 122 Brian Griffith restoration efforts on the architecture of various cities and towns, such as the historic urban center of Arezzo. Arezzo, which lies to the southeast of Florence, was considered by the regime to be an ideal location to restore and stage elaborate political spectacles, such as the mock battle of the Joust of the Saracen. The officials in charge of the restoration project exploited the town s distant medieval heritage in order to create the impression of a wellpreserved historic urban center and a corresponding civic image empha sizing the ideals of the communal city-state of the middle ages. Buildings lining the town s Piazza Grande were restored to a hypothetical medievalism and were assigned new public functions in accordance with the goals of the regime. faux medieval façades and decorations were applied to various buildings while non-medieval styles were eliminated in order to create the illusion of a timeless city center and in conjunction with the various events that were held in the piazza unchanged local traditions. The Joust of the Saracen, which was held in Arezzo s liberated urban center, was a mock battle between crusading knights and the infidel, symbolizing the purification and strengthening ofthe fascist community from outside, or foreign influences. Further, the Joust, Lasansky contends, stood for the regime s rhetoric of imperialism, virile strength, and racial superiority. 25 Thus, the urban restoration efforts and the various political spectacles held in those restored locations were mutually complimentary, each contributing to the larger political and cultural message the regime wished to send to the masses. The message being communicated by these changes, Lasansicy argues, was clear: The civilization that had produced The Divine Comedy and the poetry of Petrarch was still active.26 By participating in the regime s festivities held in the town s newly restored piazza, the residents of Arezzo and the surrounding region simultaneously celebrated a semifictional heritage, creating a shared civic space in which a strong com munal solidarity could be developed, and declared their approval of and commitment to the fascist regime s policies.27 The changes made to Arezzo s urban center were widely praised in Italy s national press. Both the national Popolo d Italia and the Roman Tribune proclaimed that the restorations deserved national acclaim.2b further, as Lasansky points out, these architectural changes and the enormous amounts of press they received fed into the regime s goal of Ibid., 107. Ibid., Ibid., 164. Ibid., 107. I bid., 122. Ex PosT FACTO

9 with 123 promoting domestic tourism to these sites in order to foster a stronger sense of national identity in Italy. As Painter s analysis of Mussolini s architectural reengineering of Rome has already shown, the fascist authorities were extremely concerned with developing national unity amongst the various disparate regions of the peninsula, and utilized the changes being made to the face of Italy s most famous historic sites in order to attract Italians from all over the country to come and witness for themselves the dynamism and action of fascism. The efforts led by the regime to manipulate Italy s visual landscape stand as eloquent testimony to the power of visual culture over the human mind. The various public spaces that emerged during the twenty years of fascism were discursively held together by a constellation of signs and symbols whose exclusive meanings the regime sought to control and manage. And by controlling the horizon of possible mean ings and/or interpretations respect to the physical changes being made to various sites of culture the regime hoped to engineer a culture of passive consensus amongst its populace. The regime, however, did not limit its manipulation of culture to projects of urban restora tion alone. In addition to the dramatic changes being made to the urban faces of Italy s various towns and cities, the regime directed its energies towards a much different, and yet still as profoundly powerful, aspect of popular culture: fashion. For many within the fashion industry today, the Made in Italy label stands for quality, elegance, and, most importantly, high culture.29 In many ways, the Italian fashion industry continues to place contemporary Italy on the high culture map along with the other major centers of haute couture ( high sewing, or fashion), such as Paris, London, and New York. The industry s origins, however, have served as a subject of great debate amongst many post-war scholars. Some argue for the industry s origins in the years immediately following the end of vvwii, comfortably locating the birth of the source of so much of Italy s contemporary national identity and pride well after the ventennio nero. However, others recommend the dates be pushed back twenty years or so, arguing the industry s origins lie within the various cultural policies of Mussolini s regime. In fashion under fascism, Eugenia Paulicelli examines the relation ship between the cultural policies of the fascist regime and the emer gence of the modern Italian fashion industry, arguing that the latter greatly benefited from the interventions of the former during its embry onic years. Fashion, Paulicelli contends, is an important cultural lan Eugenia Paulicelli, fashion under Fascism (Oxford: Berg, 2004), 1. VOLUMEXX 2011

10 the 124 Brian Grffith guage with which individuals or groups communicate to others around them regarding their individual and/or collective identities, political affinities, religious beliefs, etc.3 As an example of the importance of clothing as a visual sign system through which important political, social, and cultural messages are communicated, Paulicelli enumerates the different uses of colored shirts as a political symbol throughout Italy s recent history. The red shirts of the Garibaldians, for example, epito mized the struggle for national unification, while the black shirts of the squadristi (squads) proto-fascist paramilitary groups which formed in Italy shortly after the conclusion of the first World War symbolized the fascist ideals of dynamism, action, and violence. Both were vesti mentary signs, Paulicelli writes, that narrated the political and sym bolic charge of clothing. 3 The Renaissance, Paulicelli contends, has in many ways served as a point of reference in the construction of identity in contemporary Italy, especially during periods of great social, political and economic flux.32 Similar to the role of Italy s ancient, medieval, and Renaissance heritage within the renovations of Rome and various cities and towns in Tuscany, fashion in fascist Italy, Paulicelli writes, aimed at creating a national identity and image. 33 The regime s emphasis on the building of a national identity in Italy was but one part of the larger project of achieving national economic self-sufficiency. The 1935 invasion of Ethiopia led to various sanctions being imposed upon Italy by the League of Nations, which pushed the regime into a position of virtual economic isolation. It was at this point, Paulicelli argues, that the fashion industry first attracted the regime s attention. Mussolini noticed how France had been able to pay off a consider able amount of its crippling war debts through the domestic sales and exports of its fashion-related products and sought to reproduce its impressive economic success in Italy. Further, Paris was, at the time, firmly established as the haute couture capital of the world, virtually dictating the definitions of good taste and chic style with which so much of the West discussed topics of high fashion and culture. In order to firmly place Italy at the center of the haute couture map, the regime would need to control both the language being used to discuss high fashion and the physical materials and processes by which high fashion products were created. One of the efforts made by the regime towards 30 Ibid., 4. Ibid., 7. Ibid., 6. Ibid., 14. Ibid. Ex POST FACTO

11 125 both the development ofeconomic self-sufficiency and a place in the sun for Italy within the international fashion industry was the sponsorship of an official fascist dictionary of Italian fashion. Cesare Meano s Commentarlo dizionario italiano della moda (Italian Dictionary and Commentary of fashion) sought to establish a national tradition of modern Italian fashion by purging the Italian language of all foreign words and expressions used to discuss topics related to high fashion and replacing them with a lexicon that would draw upon Italy s distinctive language, literature, and national heritage from various historical epochs.35 Paulicelli argues that Meano s text was in line with the general fascist project of achieving the emancipation of Italy, by which she means the establishment of a strong national identity, economic autonomy, and a distinctive style recognizable as Italian and admired abroad as such. 6 In addition to the symbiotic language of fashion, the production of the physical materials used to create haute couture products in Italy and the means of promoting of those products to both foreign and domestic audiences also garnered the regime s attention. The development of the domestic textile industry proved to be ex tremely important within the regime s efforts to achieve economic self sufficiency. Paulicelli highlights two directions the Italian textile industry took under the years of fascism in Italy: one traditional, promoting regional handicraft work by local artisans, such as lace and embroidery; the other modern, such as the development of so-called intelligent fibers like rayon. Each of these directions, Paulicelli argues, were strategic within the regime s plan to simultaneously reference Italy s past and forge ahead into the future, demonstrating to both domestic and international audiences the dynamism and action of the regime.37 Paulicelli uses Istituto Luce newsreels of the National fashion Exhi bition to analyze the way in which the regime pitched the domestic fashion industry to Italians. In one of the newsreels Paulicelli reports a large sign hanging over the convention hall reading: The Italian woman must follow Italian fashion. 8 The regime actively promoted domestic fashion products as something not only desirable and modern, but also, and more importantly, as vestimentary signs of approval of and partici pation within fascist society.39 By publically consuming these products, Italians were signifying their approval of the regime and its policies, if Ibid., Ibid., 75. Ibid., Ibid., 100. Ibid. VOLUMEXX 2011

12 126 Brian Griffith only by passive consensus. The attention paid by Istituto Luce the regime s official institution for the creation and dissemination of filmbased propaganda to cultural events such as the National fashion Exhibition serves as a testimony to the growing importance of the moving image within fascist Italy. And with the rise of a mass cinema culture in Italy during the inter-war years, the regime began focusing more of its attention on the new medium. In Cinema & Fascism, Steven Ricci analyzes the relationship between the rise of fascism and the experience of cinema in Italy. In his study, Ricci emphasizes the dual, and seemingly contradictory, policies regard ing the presence offoreign titles and the promotion of a domestic fascist cinema.40 Ricci points out that the regime possessed immense authority to regulate cultural production but appears to have applied that authority in less than totalitarian ways. 4 The limited representation of state officials, uniforms, and monuments in the period s fiction films, Ricci contends, is demonstrative of the regime s goal to garner support for itself by creating what IDe Grazia has adeptly phrased a culture of consent. Those who wish to characterize life under fascism as a repres sive, Panoptic prison house, Ricci writes, must confront the commercial cinema s appearance as a pleasure palace during the inter-war years in Italy. Ricci argues that the regime did not prevent Italians from watching foreign titles because the readership or reception of those films in the country of their origin would not have been the same in Italy. Since Italian audiences were not familiar with the iconography and cultural meanings of the Western, for example, they were limited to taking up positions of curiosity or fascination regarding an imagined other. 43 Readership is a collective activity, and interpretations are determined by an agreed upon range of common meanings laid out within a given society. Thus, Ricci concludes, the regime was glad to provide such a harmless luxury to domestic audiences, as the gesture could only be read as evidence of the regime s benevolence and fascism s progressivism. However, the same cannot be said of the domestic film industry, as the following examples make abundantly clear. As Painter s study ofmussolini s Rome has demonstrated, the regime sought to emphasize the importance of sports and strong healthy bodies within fascist society. The achievements of the Italian National football Steven Ricci, Cinema & Fascism (Ber]celey: University of California Press, 2008), xii. Ibid., 5. Ibid., 6. Ibid., 8. Ibid., 8-9. Ex PosT FACTO

13 127 team at the 1928 Olympic Games and the World Cups of 1934 and 1938, Ricci points out, were given extended coverage in Istituto Luce newsreels, which were required by law to be played immediately before the showing of every film in cinemas throughout the peninsula.45 further, the grafting of fascist ideals and values Onto Italy s national sports achievements was made complete by recurring images of Mussolini as a sportsman in both newsreels and the national press. Almost as often as he performs in the political role of the Duce, Ricci writes, Mussolini was presented to the public as an accomplished fencer, equestrian, pilot, swimmer, skier, marksman, race driver, and so on. 6 Other examples of the ways in which the regime used the domestic film industry to disseminate the fascist agenda abound, such as the recurring motif of the strongman.47 Ricci cites the film Condottieri (military leaders) as an example, arguing that the film is a historical allegory for Mussolini s building of the fascist movement.8 The main character, a fictional military leader named Giovanni dei Medici, orga nizes a loose aggregate of fighters into an ethically motivated private militia, which he names bande nere, or black gangs. After defeating the film s villain, Malatesta, Dei Medici leads his army to a march on Rome. Paralleling the early years of the fascist movement in Italy, Condottieri indirectly reinforced the ethical qualities of the fascist program and highlighted the strength and heroism of the Duce. The film also drew heavily upon images of the Renaissance, which, as we have already seen with Lasansky s study of fascist-era Tuscany, served as a major source of inspiration for the regime s efforts to build a unified national identity. Cinema in Fascist Italy, then, was an integral thread within the political net Mussolini used to unsuspectingly trap the popoio d itatia within the politically charged culture of fascism. The fascist regime achieved unmatched supremacy over the Italian people via a consensual relationship which sought to both normalize and valorize the profound changes that were taking place within Italian society. By controlling specific aspects of culture such as architecture, civic ceremonies, fashion, cinema, etc. the regime controlled the cultural and political context within which these dramatic changes were taking place. These efforts produced a constellation of symbols and meanings which universally referenced itself and, in the process, created the illusion of logic within the culture of Fascist Italy. Jbid., 78; 6o. 46 Ibid., Ibid.,8i. 48 Ibid., 91. VOLUME XX 2011

14 actually Historical familiar 128 Brian Griffith In Mussolini s Rome, Borden W. Painter demonstrated how the lective restoration of the Eternal City was used by the regime to highlight specific aspects of the city s history while minimizing those aspects that hindered the reception of the regime s ethical messages. Similarly, D. Medina Lasansky examined the ways in which the fascists altered the physical and cultural faces of various cities and towns in the north-central region of Tuscany in order to stage elaborate political spectacles in them. In Fashion under Fascism, Eugenia Paulicelli demon strated the importance of fashion in Fascist Italy, both as a means for developing economic self-sufficiency and national unity in a period of severe social and political flux and as a vestimentary sign of one s approval of and participation within fascism. Lastly, Steven Ricci examined the role of cinema within the fascist regime s cultural policies, arguing that the dual and seemingly contradictory policies regarding foreign titles and domestically produced films much like the equally paradoxical dichotomy between tradition and modernity emphasized by the regime served to develop an image of fascism as a progres sive and dynamic form of government while at the same time dissemi nating subliminal messages to the populace regarding the regime s ideals and goals. The monographs discussed above highlight the importance of thor oughly examining the still visible fascist imprint on contemporary Italy s visual and cultural landscapes. Many of the picturesque urban vistas, historic piazzas, civic ceremonies, and high culture of Italy to tourists the world over today trace their origins not to ancient Rome, the Middle Ages, or the Renaissance, but rather to the ventennio nero. This form of cultural illusion, fully achieved by the fascist regime during its twenty-year reign in Italy, continues to influence the way in which we see Italy s pasts and present. for example, one travel-related online blog, titled Discover Florence, mistakenly describes the Florentine calico as an early form of football that originated in i6th century in [sic] Flor ence, Italy, and goes on to explain that the matches used to take place in Piazza Santa Croce, and still do, every third week ofjune. 49 Originally intended to help engineer social and political passivity amongst the populace of early-twentieth-century Italy, these cultural manipulations on the part of the fascist regime continue to color our understanding of contemporary Italy and its relationship to its many, often intertwined pasts. Illuminating these details of Italy s pasts and present is important not only for our comprehension of Italian history in general and the p extent to which the fascist regime was involved in molding and shaping Calcio Storico fiorentino - Florentine football, accessed January 24, 2011, se Ex POST FACTO

15 in or 129 the realm of culture but also for our awareness of how something as unsuspecting and, seemingly, banal as culture can serve as a means for creating consensus for tyranny within a society. fig. a: The bodies of Benito Mussolini, his mistress Clara Petacci, and other members of his entourage, strung upside-down from a gas station in Piazza Loreto (briefly renamed Piazza Quindici Martin Square of the fifteen Martyrs honor of the fifteen anti-fascist partisans recently executed there).5 50 Fondo Magazine Berlusconi a testa in gii? Non vi azzardate, accessed January 24, 2011, VOLUME XX 2011

16 130 Brian Griffith is a graduate student of modern European history at San Francisco State University. His interests include cultural and intellectual history, the politics of historical memory, modern Europe, Fascist Italy, fin de-siëcle Italian Modernism, and the Roma Diaspora. He will be applying to various doctoral programs while completing his M.A. in the fall of2011. Ex POST FACTO