Post-war Italy has seen a modest proliferation of tiny political forces, mostly operating outside the country’s institutions, which believe that there is scope to continue Mussolini’s project even after the regime’s defeat in the last war. These forces seem unable to understand that history and historical context determine ideas and their acceptance or rejection.
I am hardly interested in these neo-Fascist forces and their promoters. My interest lies in the claim that history shapes world views and determines ideas, because this has practical relevance to us.
It seems that, after the Second World War, Malta accepted its colonial status from an ideas point of view. The competition between Rome (the neighbouring country) and London (the far-away metropolis) as the cultural point of reference was finally resolved in favour of London. It is therefore not surprising that, despite more than 50 years of independence, people still follow internal British politics (as opposed to British foreign policy) as if it were of direct relevance to Malta. I regularly observe people on Facebook posting about Jeremy Corbyn, say, but very rarely, if ever, about Matteo Renzi.
The point is probably important because whereas the British configuration of power allows politicians to think and act more or less simultaneously, the Italians have to deal with Mussolini’s legacy and therefore with a system intended to avoid concentrating power in the hands of one man or one party. They thus have to separate thinking from action. Many of them can only talk, because action is literally beyond the realm of possibility for them.
Why should this be of import to us? Because of the shift Malta went through after World War II – from looking at Italy for inspiration to embracing Britishness.
This reduced affinity with Italy is a real pity, as we miss out on the opportunity to reflect on the many insights floated around by Italian thinkers and artists, who are usually highly sophisticated.
We face similar, if not even identical, problems in Malta, but we seem not to have the time to do our own theorising (the discussion in Parliament on same-sex marriage seems to point at a lack of autonomous political theory/philosophy in the country). So, at least, we might benefit from following what others are thinking – particularly those who lived through the first, masculine incarnation of Fascism and whose experience would therefore be useful for a proper understanding of the second, feminine incarnation of it.
Because the way things are going, we have opened our doors to Liberal Fascism – the second incarnation of Fascism – the neo-liberals and their lack of patience with non-liberals.
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In the meantime, the Patriots’ Last Burger-and-Pizza Supper initiative had a lighter aspect to it in which, as far as I am aware, whereas the controversy was sort of religious, the surnames of the protagonists are deeply and eerily connected to religion. The “anti-patriot” is called Diacono (a deacon) while the “patriot”, Battistino (a small baptiser)! A Maltese Jung would have a field day speculating on whether this is a causal but meaningful coincidence...
But then, since we look only at Britain for cultural inspiration, we were oblivious to the “hidden” meaning of these two surnames.
Possibly, but on a more serious level, in the same way we are too distracted to notice other elements and thus keep taking everything either at face value or else strictly from a (neo-colonial) British-inspired perspective.
Distraction is one facet of the Fascist way of managing a people. I’m not saying that somebody is doing it on purpose. What I’m saying is that, to my mind, it is happening and we should be aware of it. By understanding the spirit of the times, we can react intelligently.
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Paolo Villaggio – the man who created and interpreted Fantozzi – passed away a few days ago, on 3 July, aged 84.
While rarely paying any attention to Italian politicians and thinkers, the Maltese are, however, open to Italian popular culture. Everybody in Malta knows Fantozzi and his wife Pina, because of the movies’ grotesque and slapstick humour devoid of linguistic virtuosity but replete with direct and straightforward vitriol and irony.
Villaggio’s immortal creation, the below-average, mediocre accounts clerk Ugo Fantozzi, represents the humiliated and exploited worker slaving for the ‘Mega-Company’, where the ‘Mega-Galactic Director’ sits on a human-skin armchair and keeps an aquarium in which employees chosen by lots snorkel and dive.
Fantozzi enjoys nobody’s respect, neither of his employers nor his colleagues, and many address him as ‘Fantocci’, Italian for puppets’. He is married to Pina, a woman who could not be more uneasy on the eye. Every time he asks her whether she loves him, she replies that she has a lot of esteem for him. Their daughter Mariangela (played by a male actor) is the missing link in Darwin’s theory of evolution, and she finally marries a gorilla.
And yet, Fantozzi is a happy supporter of his favourite football team, and he is almost proud that he is poor. He seems passively to accept his predicament. To be sure, he does find himself rebelling against his destiny every now and then, like when he leads the staff revolt against the forced viewing of La corazzata Kotiomkin (a reference to Battleship Potyomkin, a Soviet movie which criticises oppression and that is, ironically, imposed on Fantozzi and his colleagues by one of the company’s oppressive directors) or when he kidnaps the mother of another one of the bosses. All his attempts end in tragic failure.
Before transposing Fantozzi to the big screen, Villaggio had already written a book about the downtrodden accounts clerk. The character caught the public’s imagination and the book sold more than one million copies. In the 1970s, people could recognise many of their co-workers, neighbours, or family members in Fantozzi. By the noughties and 2010s, that view had evolved and many people began recognising themselves in the mask.
One wonders how many Maltese share the Italians’ evolving view on the Fantozzi caricature and its political meaning.