This year was a very big year for Italian politics.
(sorry, I was tempted to use politics with a big 'P', to illustrate the magnitude by which Governmental/Parliamentary/constitutional politics in Italy has pervaded every aspect of normal everyday actions and intentions or 'politics' with a small 'p'. What with all the peeing, I'll have to keep going to lav every 5 mins, and I'm definitely not drinking enough water this Summer to afford to do that. Error.)
I'd heard about the phenomenon that is Berlusconi. Or 'He who must not be named' (in articles or reports that his media companies will just refuse to print anyway.) His comparison to Voldemort is considerably apt because in lessons, we tend to steer clear of politics or religion as topics to break the unbearable silence created, when at 6:55pm, a student has categorically refused to accept that there is no rule for when we should use the gerund of the infinitive in English. (incidentally, it has something to do with intrasitive verbs but future teachers be warned, this attempted explanation does not satisfy personalities that crave order and logic in their universe.) So Berlusconi is rarely mentioned, except in trusted company, i.e., students who aren't afraid to reveal political allegiances. Loudly.
(Silvio himself, above)
Mumble, mumble, something about knowing a person
by the company they keep, mumble, mumble
So aside from the Roman orgyesque 'Bunga Bunga' parties, which initially sounded to me like 'Jenga Jenga' parties, where sharp-suited politicians are publicly ridiculed for failing to build the highest tower of Jenga blocks and so lose their positions (party games meets Darwinism), why are a large percentage of the Italian people waiting for Berlusconi to just...die?
Despite controlling the majority of the country's media - to the extent that demonstrations against his winning a vote of 'no confidence' in the country's recent apprisal of his scandalous affair with Ruby the prostitute (et al) just never appeared in the press or on tv - Berlusconi helped usher in an era of the Italian "macho-man". (You can almost imagine a Bunga Bunga party in full swing, to the tune of 'So Macho', in which Berlusconi decides that every Italian ragazzo should aspire to being 'big' and 'strong' with 'big blue eyes'. Except that most of them are, well, not that.
And so to gay rights, which have become irreparably damaged by a growing culture of machoistic power-suiting and money-hoarding, where those that control the Government and the media saturate it with images of botoxed women, big-lipped women, women wearing not a lot but somehow still smiling through big-lips and botox, and the occasional advert for a gay helpline that appeared for about two months and has not been seen since. If women look beautiful, men might just sleep with them (see recent comments made about Italy having the lowest birth-rate in the EU...) If you are gay, old, young, or not pretty, you might as well have money as a form of social empowerment.
A recent Parliamentary resolution was turned down that would have, in a subtle yet significant way, created that little bit more freedom in society for gay people to exist in: any action or incident deemed anti-gay would have become prosecutable to the appropriate extent of the law. Insert plausible rationale for turning down this most basic of civil rights.
Monica Bellucci: a good example of how best to
turn attention away from a less than credible acting
career and towards what the pundits really
want to
Berlusconi's riposte to the overwhelming evidence of his soliciting the then underage "Ruby" for a night of wild depravity (and one would guess viagra - Silvio is 75 years old): "At least I'm not gay." Because being born a homosexual obviously rates at an all-time zero, whilst being adulterous in the public eye and ensuring your country becomes the laughing stock of Europe, nay the world, is somehow excusable as power-player hijinks. Where are my taxes going again?
So whilst there is an assumption that the men of Italy might not be "real" men (i.e., having copious amounts of extra-marital sex with prostitutes) and might be effeminate/gay and therefore less than 'real' men, they are somehow expected to prove their masculinity by bagging a botox beauty, raising a family when the Government no longer financially supports you with the money to buy a house, money to start a family and to support them yourself. Suddenly staying at home and being a bamboccioni sounds like your only credible, post-recession option.
Going GaGa
11th of June. I've been to many London Pride marches and one Europride event held in the capital myself but nothing prepared me for Rome's first ever Europride event: as the temperature started to soar and expectations were running high, a number of events held at Piazza Vittorio Emmanuelle were held, opening up the public's consciousness about LGBT culture. Which seemed daunting. How much exposure of the celebrating, diverse rainbow of LGBT people would this land of the Vatican be able to tolerate? I pictured bemused priests mingling with drag-nuns, labourers with lady-boys, top-less muscle Marys and ... well, the virgin Mary (again in drag.) Liberation. Fingers up at repressive tradition.
The reality? Better.
My friend TQ had come over to visit and together we met up with our American friends and ventured over to piazza dei cinquecento, which was packed with what looked like demonstrators, the torch-wielding villages but actually turned out to be citizens taking this as their opportunity to support 'the cause' whilst simultaneously defying Italy's dogmatic authoritarianism: the Vatican, the politicians, even the Carabinieri! The street quickly filled and with a reduced police presence, the crowd took formation and started to meander down Via Cavour to the chirping accompaniment of whistles and whoops. No riding on a float above the crowd or standing at the side, watching the colourful brigade of organisations pass by, everyone was together, marching down the street, dancing and celebrating freely. How very Communist.
Various people were recognised amidst the thong (or should I say thong) - hard to spot past the thrusting, gold g-string crotch of some Ancient Egyptian dressed go-go boy, making its way through the masses, a parade of Abercrombie and Fitch models, let loose for the weekend from their plastic factory. We made firm friends with one of the many barrow-boys wheeling through the madness, flogging dodgy German beer and then spraying all of us with water to keep us cool, and when we later stood in the shade of a bar to catch our breath, the surging, non-stop crowds continuing down the street meant our break was short-lived: there was dancing to be had.
We danced behind a float that wound its way in the blistering midday sun towards Circo Massimo, stopping briefly outside the Colosseo as part of a snake-like chain of party wagons. Taking the opportunity, we danced in the street and drew a crowd of Venezuelen transexuals and ravers and a friend of Date's that lived in the area, the actress from Il Pesciolino: it was her turn to see my "performance", instead of Date's which she's had the good fortune to share a stage with each time the two get together to perform the play almost every year. A thespian's thumbs up.
And finally, Circo Massimo at dusk. The stage was set and the crowd seemed to be several hundred thousand strong. We stumbled past people of all description, eyes sagging under the day's events, skin browned from the heat of the day. The atmosphere was still and then, pushing ourselves up against the bodies in front of us, we heard Lady Gaga give a speech about governments around the world that do not yet fully support gay rights. Italy was not mentioned.
Apparently, it later turned out that she didn't have permission to mention Italy as one of these governments - a condition of her appearing at Europride. And so, Gaga has become an almost empty symbol of gay rights in our modern context: money controls even the ability to express the (somewhat controversial) idea that every person on this planet has rights and that those that actively repress those rights should be named and shamed.
Date mentioned that he would have preferred to see gay families camped out in front of the Vatican, sharing a picnic, as symbol of acceptance and forward-thinking: anything but what happened earlier in the day when a gay porn star was invited on stage at Circo Massimo and showed off his arsehole to the assembled masses.
However we all choose to get the basic message of pride and a fight for equal rights across - via celebrities, sex stars or families - there has never been a more important time to push on and remind the world that whilst we've all come so far, there still remains much to be done and that money cannot take away our collective voice.
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