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The Naked Bunch: Italian Satire in the 1980s
| Article
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19897 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1992 |
3,325 Words |
| Author
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Salvatore Attardo
Salvatore Attardo is professor of English at IUPU (Indiana
University--Purdue University) at Fort Wayne. He lived in
Italy until 1988, when he moved to Indiana. He has published
several articles and book reviews, some of them in Humor:
International Journal of Humor Research. His book Linguistic
Theories of Humor is forthcoming from Mounton DE Gruytre. |
Picture the New York Times publishing a caricature of George Bush naked, with diminutive genitals. Or Linda Lovelace elected tot eh U.S. Congress. Or Ted Kennedy appearing on Saturday Night Live arguing with a caricature of James Baker. Or the National Lampoon publishing a face copy of the Wall Street Journal with a huge headline: "World War Three Has Been Declared, Moscow Bombed."
Sound unbelievable? But events as preposterous as these happened in Italy in the last decade. Since the mid-sixties, there has been a remarkable flourishing of satirical cartoonists and writers, one unprecedented in Italian history. This satirical boom has another salient feature: It has been produced, for the most part, by and for the Left.
To understand this phenomenon, we should consider a (very) short history of the tradition of satire in Italian culture. Italian literature has been blessed with many great satirists: Horace and Martial; the populist pasquinate (a humorous predecessor of Russia's samizdat) informal bills that were posted on the walls of Rome; the nineteenth-century dialectal poet Belli; and Scalarini, a political cartoonist of the first half of the twentieth century. However, during Mussolini's twenty years of fascist dictatorship, the connection with the tradition of Italian satire was severed.
Gabriele Galantara and Guido Podrecca had begun publishing L'Asino (The donkey) in Rome in 1892. The magazine--declaredly socialist and anticlerical--lasted until 1925, when it was closed by the mounting fascist repression. In 1924, Alberto Giannini began Il Becco Giallo (The yellow beak), also of socialist leanings, which was forcibly closed y the fascist regime in 1926. Il Becco Giallo began a new series in 1927; it was published from France, where its editor had fled, as had many other socialists. The series lasted until 1931, when the magazine closed for economic and political reasons.
After the opposition press and any remaining satirical papers had been wiped out, the fascist regime tolerated several "humorous" but strictly apolitical magazines. The most famous were Il Marc'Aurelio, started in 1931, and Il Bertoldo, started in 1936. After the liberation at war's end, satire flourished again, but with a strong conservative and anticommunist attitude. The short-lived Uomo Qualunque (The man in the street) and Il Candido (1945-1961) were very popular for a while. Il Candido was founded by Giovanni Guareschi, the literary creator of the priest Don Camillo and his communist arch rival, Peppone, characters
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