I remind you that this second day of our conference is dedicated to “The image of the United States in Italian education.” If by “education” we mean the official school curriculum, I cannot see why this topic should interest us. Italian students should know that New York is on the East Coast, and that Oklahoma is a state and not just a musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein. But if by “education” we mean what the Greeks called “paideia, “our task becomes more exciting. “Paideia” was not just the transmission of knowledge: it was the ensemble of social techniques through which young men were initiated into adult life after an ideal education. To achieve this “paideia” was to become a mature personality, a man, someone who is “kaloskagathos, “beautiful because good and good because beautiful. In Latin “paideia” was translated as “humanitas,” which the Germans translate, I believe, as “Bildung, “which is in turn more than just “Kultur.”
In ancient times “paideia” was transmitted through philosophical conversation and a homosexual relationship. In modern times we use prescribed texts and school lessons. But recently “paideia” has also become involved with mass communication. Not only in the sense that the circulation of books is a feature of mass communication, but also because choosing one’s own curriculum in the jungle of the mass media can constitute an instance of constructing one’s own ” humanitas.” What I mean is that Woody Allen has something to do with “paideia,” while John Travolta does not: but we must not be so dogmatic. If I think about my own growth in “humanitas,” I would have to put on the list of my Spiritual Sources The Imitation of Christ, No No Nanette, Dostoyevsky, and Donald Duck. No place for Nietzsche or Elvis Presley. I agree with Joyce that “music hall, not poetry is a criticism of life.” Ripeness is all.
It is with this idea of education in mind that I would like to chart in broad terms the history of three generations of Italians who, for different historical and political reasons, somehow considered themselves, or ought to have considered themselves, anti-American; and who, in some way, on their own, working against or indeed even in support of their anti-American ideology, created an American Myth.
The first character in my story signed the articles he wrote in the 1930s as “Tito Silvio Mursino.” This was an anagram of Vittorio Mussolini, II Duce’s son. Vittorio belonged to a group of young Turks fascinated by cinema as an art, an industry, a way of life. Vittorio was not content with being the son of the Boss, though this would have been enough to guarantee him the favors of many actresses: he wanted to be the pioneer of the Americanization of Italian cinema.
In his journal Cinema he criticized the European cinematographic tradition and asserted that the Italian public identified emotionally only with the archetypes of American cinema. He talked of cinema in terms of the “star system,” with a certain frankness and without any aesthetic concerns. He genuinely loved and admired Mary Pickford and Tom Mix, just as his father admired Julius Caesar and Trajan. For him American films were the people’s literature. And Oreste del Buono, in the Almanacco Bom piani 1980, noted that Vittorio was somehow, albeit unwittingly and in a different key, repeating Gramsci’s theory of a “national-popular art,” except that he went to find the roots of “national-popular” in the area between Sunset Boulevard and Malibu.
Vittorio was not an intellectual, nor even a great businessman. His trip to the USA to establish a link between the two cinematographic industries ended up as a fiasco: political gaffes, sabotage by the Italian authorities themselves (his father looked on the initiative with tremendous skepticism), irony from the American press. Al Roach said to him that after all he was a decent guy, why didn’t he change his name?
However, let us reread some of Vittorio Mussolini’s statements:
Is it perhaps heresy to state that the spirit, mentality and temperament of Italian youth, despite the logical, natural and inevitable differences in another people, are closer to those of the young people across the Atlantic than to the youth of Russia, Germany, Spain and France? Moreover, the American public loves films with broad horizons, is sensitive to real problems, is attracted by the childish but happy sense of adventure, and if this youthfulness is given to them by not having centuries of history, culture, systems and philosophical laws behind them, it is certainly much closer to our bold generation than to those of many old countries in Europe.
This was written in 1936. And this model of America remained valid until 1942, when the Americans became official enemies. But even in the case of the most violent wartime propaganda, the most hated enemies were the English, not the Americans. The radio propagandist Mario Appelius coined the slogan “Dio stra-maledica gli Inglesi!” (God doubledamn the English!), but I do not recall an anti-American slogan that was as virulent and widely broadcast as this. In any case, popular sensibilities were certainly not anti-American. But perhaps the most interesting indication of this widespread feeling is to be found in the writings of young Fascist intellectuals who wrote for the journal Primato. Primato came out between 1940 and 1943, with one of the most contradictory figures of the Fascist regime as editor: Giuseppe Bottai.
A liberal-fascist and anti-Semite, he was also an Anglophile who was regarded with suspicion by his German allies; he even authored an educational-reform program that was inspired in part by John Dewey. He was a supporter of avant-garde art but an enemy of the vulgar classicism that was official Fascist art, an aristocratic champion of human inequalities but opposed to intervention in the Spanish civil war. Bottai tried to gather the best young intellectuals of the time around Primato, filling the pages of the journal with the maximum amount of dissent that was compatible with the situation. Among the young contributors to Primato we find not only representatives of liberal anti-Fascism (Montale, Brancati, Paci, Contini, Praz) but also the best of what would become future Communist culture (Vittorini, Alicata, Argan, Banfi, Delia Volpe, Guttuso, Luporini, Pavese, Pintor, Pratolini, Zavattini).
It is striking to notice that, in February 1941, a brilliant young intellectual like Giaime
Pintor could publish in the journal an article on the robotization of German soldiers, warning that
Europe would never return to freedom so long as it was dominated by the dark shadow of German flags. Giaime Pintor had been brought up under Fascism, and day by day, article after article, he developed a lucid and courageous critique of the European dictatorships, writing in 1943, a few months before he died during the Resistance war, an article that he was unable to publish at the time:
Germany has gradually presented itself in our reflections as the natural antithesis of this world and by extension of this world’s mirror in Europe. No people is closer to the Americans in the youthfulness of its blood and the openness of its desires, yet no people celebrates its own legend with such different words. Here too the roads of corruption and of purity are perilously close; but a constant folly drags the Germans off course and overwhelms them in inhuman and difficult exploits.
On either side there are forces capable of altering the course of our experience, of throwing us into a corner like useless scrap, or of leading us to safety on any shore at all. But America will win this war because its initial élan is following truer forces, because it believes that its goal is easy and right. “Keep smiling”: this peace slogan came from America with a whole complement of edifying tunes, when Europe was an empty shopwindow and the austerity of behavior imposed on totalitarian countries revealed only the desperate and bitter face of Fascist reaction.
The extreme simplicity of American optimism at that time might have enraged all those who were persuaded of the duty to wear mourning as a sign of humanity, and those who placed pride for their dead before the well-being of those who were alive. But the great pride of America in her children today will be the awareness that they have run up the steepest road in history, that they have avoided the dangers and ambushes latent in a development that has been almost without any holdup. Enrichment and bureaucratic corruption, gangsters and crises, all this has become part of a body that is developing. And this is the only history of America: a people that is growing, compensating with their constant enthusiasm for the mistakes they have made, and offering rescue from future dangers with their goodwill. The most hostile forces—illness and poverty—could meet on American soil, but the outcome of these risks and fears was always a positive mood, reiterating each time the exaltation of man.
The stupidity of one phrase hangs over America: a materialist culture. A culture of producers: this is the pride of a race that has not sacrificed its own strength to ideological ambitions and has not fallen into the easy trap of “spiritual values.” It has made technology its own way of life, has felt new affections emerge from