Italy
Mondo Marcio - Generazione X
"Tutti pazzi per amore: Gen X, Italian Style" ‘Generazione X’ has enjoyed a particular career in the Italian media. In 1995, it was the Italian title of Kevin Smith’s Mallrats, a movie starring two iconic Gen Xers, Ben Affleck and Shannon Doherty. The reason for the extreme title change was twofold: first, since malls (centri commerciali) were not built en masse until the new millennium, mall culture was completely alien to Italian society in the mid ‘90s; second, the phrase referenced Douglas Coupland’s slacker generation while paying indirect homage to Marvel comics, which play a fundamental role in the film, as witnessed by Stan Lee’s cameo appearance. That same year, Generazione X became the title of two talk shows, airing contemporaneously on two different private networks, Mediaset and TMC. At the helm of both shows were two teenage hosts who faced an audience of young men and women between the age of 14 and 23 and discussed matters of interest to that specific demographic. Of particular relevance to my discussion is that Ambra Angiolini, the popular host of Mediaset’s Generazione X, would often read passages from Coupland’s novel during the show, thus reaffirming the relevance of its words to an audience that seemed, however, fairly younger than Coupland’s original target: while Angiolini’s audience was born between 1972 and 1981, Coupland spoke of men and women born in the ‘60s and ‘70s. And this same shift that widens the limits of the Italian Gen X, as perceived (or instantiated) by the media, may be observed in a ‘Generazione X’ manifesto that went viral on the Internet for the past few years, undergoing reappropriations and permutations that have significantly altered its content." ~ Giancarlo Lombardi, Excerpt from Generation X Goes Global "Generazione TQ in Italy" "In April 2011, as the height of the socio-political controversies surrounding Silvio Berlusconi’s premiership, a group of Gen X writers, critics, scholars, and publishers joined up to form a new avant-garde called Generazione TQ, where TQ stood for the age of its participants, all in their thirties or forties [Trenta Quaranta]. Defining its goal as the promotion of cultural renewal, Generazione TQ calls itself “a group of intellectuals and practitioners of humane letters with the ambition to intervene in the heart of the Italian society, in the lacerated fabric of its material relations”. Their manifesto, from which this passage was excerpted, can be found at http://www.generazionetq.org/" ~ Giancarlo Lombardi, Excerpt from Generation X Goes Global Giancarlo Lombardi. Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at College of Staten Island & Graduate Center/CUNY. He has published extensively on Italian film, television, and cultural studies. For the past decade, he has concentrated much of his research on cinematic representations of Italian political terrorism. He is the co-editor of two volumes, Remembering Aldo Moro (with Ruth Glynn, Legenda, 2012) and Terrorism, Italian Style (with Ruth Glynn and Alan O'Leary, IGRS Press, 2012) and is currently writing a book on the rhetoric of fear in Italian TV drama of the '60s and '70s, to be published by Rubbettino in early 2013. |
Tutti Pazzi Viral Videos
Sci-fi Tutti razzi per amore [All rockets for love],
The horror Tutti sazi per amore [All fed up by love]
The western Tutti lazi per amore [All roped by love]
~ Giancarlo Lombardi
Sci-fi Tutti razzi per amore [All rockets for love],
The horror Tutti sazi per amore [All fed up by love]
The western Tutti lazi per amore [All roped by love]
~ Giancarlo Lombardi
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Versions of the "Manifesto Generatione X" (in Italian) ~ Giancarlo Lombardi Manifesto Generazione X Noi non abbiamo fatto la Guerra, né abbiamo visto lo sbarco sulla luna, non abbiamo vissuto gli anni di piombo, né abbiamo votato il referendum per l’aborto e la nostra memoria storica comincia coi Mondiali di Italia ’90. Per non aver vissuto direttamente il ’68 ci dicono che non abbiamo ideali, mentre ne sappiamo di politica più di quanto credono e più di quanto sapranno mai i nostri fratelli minori e discendenti. Babbo Natale non sempre ci portava ciò che chiedevamo, però ci sentivamo dire, e lo sentiamo ancora, che abbiamo avuto tutto, nonostante quelli che sono venuti dopo di noi sì che hanno avuto tutto, e nessuno glielo dice. Siamo l’ultima generazione che ha imparato a giocare con le biglie, a saltare la corda, a giocare a lupo, a un-due-tre-stella, e allo stesso tempo i primi ad aver giocato coi videogiochi, ad essere andati ai parchi di divertimento o aver visto i cartoni animati a colori. (For more reading, please go directly to the site) |
For further reading:
L’ultimo bacio. Dir. Gabriele Muccino. Medusa, 2001. DVD.
“L’ultimo bacio, generazione di Peter Pan.” 22 January 2010. Web. Sept. 19, 2011. <http://www.tv.mediaset.it/italia1/cinemix/news_4749.shtml>
Lombardi, Giancarlo.“Days of Italian Lives” The Italianist 29 (2009) 227–48. Print.
“Manifesto Generazione X.” N.d. Web. Sept. 19, 2011. <http://www.cannara.eu/2007/06/22/manifesto-generazione-x/>
Modleski, Tania. Loving With a Vengeance: Mass Produced Fantasies for Women. London and New York: Routledge, 1982. Print.
“Nato negli anni 80” (Manifesto Generazione X) N.d. Web. Sept. 19, 2011. <http://blog.nikola.it/?p=144>
Ortner, Sherry B. “Generation X: Anthropology in a Media-Saturated World.” Cultural Anthropology 13.3 (1998): 414–40. Print.
Persivale, Matteo. “Generazione X in crisi di mezza età.” Corriere della Sera 5 June 2010. Web. Dec. 10, 2010. <http://www.corriere.it/cronache/10_giugno_05/generazione_x_in_crisi_di_mezza_eta_matteo_persivale_05b98576-706c-11df-aae4-00144f02aabe.shtml>
L’ultimo bacio. Dir. Gabriele Muccino. Medusa, 2001. DVD.
“L’ultimo bacio, generazione di Peter Pan.” 22 January 2010. Web. Sept. 19, 2011. <http://www.tv.mediaset.it/italia1/cinemix/news_4749.shtml>
Lombardi, Giancarlo.“Days of Italian Lives” The Italianist 29 (2009) 227–48. Print.
“Manifesto Generazione X.” N.d. Web. Sept. 19, 2011. <http://www.cannara.eu/2007/06/22/manifesto-generazione-x/>
Modleski, Tania. Loving With a Vengeance: Mass Produced Fantasies for Women. London and New York: Routledge, 1982. Print.
“Nato negli anni 80” (Manifesto Generazione X) N.d. Web. Sept. 19, 2011. <http://blog.nikola.it/?p=144>
Ortner, Sherry B. “Generation X: Anthropology in a Media-Saturated World.” Cultural Anthropology 13.3 (1998): 414–40. Print.
Persivale, Matteo. “Generazione X in crisi di mezza età.” Corriere della Sera 5 June 2010. Web. Dec. 10, 2010. <http://www.corriere.it/cronache/10_giugno_05/generazione_x_in_crisi_di_mezza_eta_matteo_persivale_05b98576-706c-11df-aae4-00144f02aabe.shtml>