The View from Bologna

Naked ambition gets you nowhere

There was quite a brooha, here, the other week in relation to an opinion piece written by Adrian Michaels in the Financial Times entitled Naked Ambition (brought to my attention by the eagle-eyed ,Shane Barry - thanks)

The article focussed on the obsessive use of the female body in Italian television and advertising, and the implications it has for the wider society.

Now, whenever an important, and thoroughly buttoned up English institution criticises Italian norms it tends to raise the hackles, and so, not surprisingly, there were responsive - or rather dismissive - editorials printed in return.

That the respondent chosen by (left-leaning*) La Repubblica for its editorial on the subject was none other than everybody's favourite Opus Dei physician, Joaquin Navarro-Valls speaks volumes. In an article that would have even the jesuitically inclined scratching their heads, Navarro-Valls partially agreed with Michaels, though pointing out that outside the realm of publicity and game shows, women work with dignity both inside and outside of the home - how thoroughly Escrivanian(?) of them.

Navarro-Valls is right, though, to point out how partial a picture Michaels article (necessarily) paints. Focusing on the representation of Women in Italian advertising and television is complicated by a simple fact - it's not market driven, and therefore can say little about the society to which it is aimed. Televesion and advertising in Italy, more so than any other country in Europe is in the hands of the very few.

Michaels suggests that in countries like America, the gratuitous use of women in advertising produces hundreds of complaints and the withdrawal of the ads (he cites one example). It's worth pointing out that in a system where accountability is noticeably absent, complaining is a futile exercise.

Michaels, in a lengthy and interesting piece, extrapolates from the bare bosoms on show on every billboard and prime-time tv show, and the lack of women legislators, that Italy is the last bastion of chauvinism. True, and yet there's a more complex picture here.

The elephant in the corner of Michaels articles, perhaps, is - with all due respect to her - Marina Berlusconi. Ms Berlusconi, who is the chairman of Fininvest, and holds positions on the boards of a number of Berlusconi companies, was voted the 42 most powerful woman in the world - ahead of Nancy Pelosi, Laura Bush, and Mrs E. Windsor last year.

While Ms Berlusconi's talent and ability is surely above reproach, it can't help but be noted that she is the daughter of Silvio Berlsusconi, himself Italy's richest man (and best loved comedian...).

It's not chauvinism alone that holds women out of the workforce, or the parliament, but rather a rigid system that is all pervasive and anything but merocratic. Ironically, Silvio Berlusconi is doing more than most to bring women into politics, appointing a number of high profile (and predictably pretty) candidates into Forza Italia.

And finally, Michaels is worried that women in television are there to be eye-candy rather than top class journalists. But there isn't room for top class journalists on Italian TV - regardless of gender...

Watching Live Earth

This monkey was one of the few viewers of Live Earth here in Italy. On a blisteringly hot day (something that is not particularly unseasonal - for what its worth), I chose to stay indoors and watch bits and pieces of Al Gore's extravaganza, and after a brief and remarkably unscientific straw poll after the event discovered I was the only one to have taken such a dramatic and ecologically unsound choice (not only the power behind my computer and monitor, but also the continuous whirring of a fan).

There was much to grumble about with Live Earth - private jets, smug superstar moralising (Joss Stone and her 'plant a tree - it only takes five minutes' for example), the lack of any concrete political manifesto, and the underlying suspicion that much of the event was geared to pushing the man of the moment, Al Gore, into running for President. At the same time, concentrating information on a global level, proposing models for change (however vague) seemed like a worthy ideal - and there were some great musical moments (the collaborative efforts put on by Damien Rice and David Gray, and Madonna and Gogol Bordello for example).

It would have been a good idea had the event truly been global in scope - instead in countries like Italy (A member of the G8 with 58million people, many of whom spend their time flipping the coin between driving to work in an SUV or on a shapely scooter), little effort seems to have been made by the organisers to reach a large public. The event was broadcast on the smallest of national broadcasters MTV and La7, and pre-event publicity was next to nil. Would it have been so difficult to have local (green hosted) websites in different languages? Perhaps global warming is just an anglo-american problem?

In truth, far more in the public eye last week here was the launch of the new fiat 500. A spectacular launch party was covered extensively by TV, News, Radio, and all the major newspapers & magazines.

Michelle Sera, in a piece as part of la Repubblica's coverage of the launch pointed out one of the reasons that the new CinqueCento has the power to grab the nation's imagination. "The relief to be able to return to measuring the productive capacity, the creative energy, the economic health of a country against an object, against something made (or robo-made), and no longer against the smoke-filled and worrying moving about by nebulous financiers, of the virtual economy and the immaterial that has dominated the business climate for the last two decades"^[1]

The original CinqueCento has an affectionate place in the nation's history - a small car born in the 1950s to fill an important gap in the market. It made a virtue of necessity, being cheap and small, and became one of Europe's best loved cars.

Fiat could well do with another massive success, but there seems to be little of that imaginative and practical design work that made the first car so much a part of the Italian economic boom. At a time when Climate change is a mainstream argument, launching a new small cheap family car - when there are already dozens of others on the market - seems to be, like Live Earth, missing the point...

[1] "Il sollievo di poter tornare a misurare le capacità produttive, la freschezza creativa, la salute economica di un Paese a partire da un oggetto, da un manufatto (o robot-fatto), e non più dai fumosi e inquietanti spostamenti della nebulosa finanziaria, dell'economia virtuale e immateriale, che hanno dominato il clima degli ultimi due decenni." - Michele Serra - Repubblica

Reza Aslan on Uncle Sam's efforts to integrate Europe

I stumbled upon an interesting dialogue on Bloggingheads.tv between Bruce Feiler and Reza Aslan, author of No God But God (and, apparently, the Brad Pitt of young Muslim commentators...).

It's a lengthy interview, throwing up some interesting points as the two talk about the Iranian community in America, and the political state of play in Tehran at the moment.

Around the 5minute mark the interview swerves to Europe, where Aslan recently toured, courtesy of the American State department, giving lectures and performing works of 'public diplomacy'. And what can Aslan, TBPOYMC™ tell us about European efforts to integrate their migrant communities (many of which are Muslim)?

Aslan: "I will say one thing, that I thought was absolutely fascinating, and it's something we can talk about: Everywhere I went, with the possible exception of the UK - which is a little more advanced with some of its assimilation work - but in the Netherlands, France, Italy, Germany all the assimilation work, all the work on integration, all the conferences that are being put together, all of the reports that are being put together, being written, and the suggestions that are being made to the Government, all of that work is being done by Americans."

Feiler: "Really" (with a tone of happy incredulity)

Aslan: "It's not being done by Europeans. It's our Embassy, It's our citizens - people like me - who are getting paid to go over there and do this kind of work because simply, the Italian government - they're so screwed up they can't do anything let alone work on this kind of tproject; the German government have no history of working towards integration and assimilation..."

Hmmm. Where to begin? Perhaps it was a language barrier or jet lag that made Aslan overlook the efforts of the crazy screwed up Italian government (and it should be remembered that the previous government served for its full term with a majority) and Italian NGO's. Had he taken a brief look at some Italian Association's such as the Consiglio Italiano per i Rifugiati (Italian Council for Refugees), he would find a long list of links to Italian, and indeed European organisations that have a long history of working in the field.

It might also come as a surprise to German politicians and professionals involved in the field that they have no history of working towards assimilation. They've obviously been asleep since the 1950s influx of Gastarbeiters (Italians included).

This is not to suggest for a second that assimilation and integration are smooth and problem free in Italy, or elsewhere in Europe - on the contrary it remains problematic (see this article from the latest edition of Three Monkeys) and a subject of serious national debate, and one which divides the current Italian government for example.

There is an assumption, though, in Aslan's remarks that the Anglo-American community are world leaders in integration. An assumption that is open to question, given that the current political wisdom in America seems to see th immigration 'problem' solely in terms of border fences, and that America's first Muslim member of congress has only recently been elected.

Claims that Britain is far ahead of the European pack in terms of integration are difficult to verify. It certainly has a larger immigrant population than countries like Italy, but whether that population is significantly integrated is thrown into question daily by British novelists (Nadeem Aslam, for example), mainstream musicians (Bloc Party), and indeed the Government (hence the establishment of the Commision on Integration and Cohesion - a commission that has European equivalents in most countries, including Italy).

Perhaps Aslan was just playing to the crowd, presumably mostly American, with his remarks. Perhaps it was a self-justification, working on 'public diplomacy' on behalf of the American taxpayer.

Sadly it calls into question the rest of his interview, on a topic this monkey is less informed about - Iran. What Aslan says throughout seems to make sense, and is both interesting and thought-provoking. But after a State Department Sponsored clanger...