Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture

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Italy reached the World Cup’s final match, both times losing to Brazil. Televized matches

of the national team can attract audiences in excess of ten million people. Important

victories of the azzurri (azzurro means ‘blue’, the team’s nickname from the colour of the

jersey) usually prompt spontaneous celebration by the Italian tifosi (fans) who fill the

country’s streets with long parades of cars, honking and displaying the national flag. This

enthusiasm can sometimes escalate into riots between fans of opposing teams. Certain

sectors of Italian football stadiums are closely guarded by police and are practically off

limits for the regular spectators.

Media coverage of football is extensive and is not limited to the broadcasting of

matches. Three nationally distributed sport dailies (see sports publications) and many

television programmes are dedicated to pre- and post-game reports and interviews. CONI

(the Italian Olympic Committee) has been able to take advantage of football’s great

popularity through two betting games called Totocalcio and Totogol, which are based on

the week’s results and scores. The huge profits made through these games are used by

CONI to support less popular Olympic sports.

PAOLO VILLA

foreign policy

From 1860 to 1945, much of Italy’s history was influenced by the fact that it was ‘the

least of the Great Powers’. However, the disastrous nature of defeat in the Second World

War gave the newborn Italian Republic the blessing of no longer being a state which

must aim to possess an empire or which would automatically demand recognition as a

major player in every diplomatic crisis. After 1945, international affairs were rarely an

immediately decisive factor in Italians’ lives. This diminished importance of foreign

policy paradoxically brought tremendous advantages. Having lost its empire under

Fascism, Italy avoided those pains of decolonization which so marked the postwar

histories of Britain and France and which still afflict Russia. In its happy powerlessness,

Italy could avoid going nuclear. When Italy did spend money on ‘defence’, it was largely

directed into the domestic economy without that waste on international technological

competition which was rapidly reducing Britain to the poorest of the major Western

European states. Italy was able to avoid being directly involved in the Korean and

Vietnam wars and even membership of the United Nations brought few burdensome

responsibilities.

Some commentators have alleged that Republican Italy has been a country of ‘limited

sovereignty’, forced to follow the greater powers in all international dealings. Certainly,

as arranged at Yalta in February 1945, Italy became part of ‘the West’ and by 1949 had

been inducted into NATO, the military alliance of the liberal capitalist nations, led by the

United States. Situated, as it was, on the western edge of the communist world, Italy

would become an important (and well-rewarded) Amer-ican military base. Italy’s

domestic politics, with the permanent non-legitimation of the PCI (Italian Communist

Party) and, therefore, the system of bipartitismo imperfetto (imperfect bipartisanship)

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were severely circumscribed by American power. Idiosyncratic Italian politics might be;

anti-Western they could never become, or even seem to become.

Nonetheless, a certain continuity can be traced between the foreign policy of Italy, the

middle-ranking European Republic and Italy, the Liberal and then Fascist aspirant Great

Power. Dino Grandi, who had served as Fascist Foreign Minister, had once emphasized

Italy’s intention of being the peso determinante or ‘determining weight’ in the Great

Power balance. This idea that Italy should do its best not to be committed too heavily or

too naively to one side or the other in any dispute frequently reappeared in postwar policy

making. Thus, the creation of the European Common Market, solemnized in the Treaty of

Rome of 1957, owed something to the belief of De Gasperi and other Christian

Democrats (see DC) that both their political Catholicism and ‘Europe’ offered a third

way between the rigours of American capitalism and those of Soviet ‘socialism’.

Similarly, in the Middle East, the traditions of Italy, of Christian Democracy and of

Catholicism, suggested an openness to the Arab world and thus a less than total

endorsement of Israel, the USA’s essential ally in the region. In the 1950s Enrico Mattei,

in his negotiation of oil contracts, and in the 1970s and 1980s Giulio Andreotti in his

multifarious commercial and political dealings, would similarly seek a certain

independence for Italy in a bipolar world.

An aversion to bipolarity was also evident in Italy’s relations with the communist

bloc. The presence within Italy of a powerful Communist Party undoubtedly assisted

Italy’s successful trade and investment policy in the USSR and in other parts of Eastern

Europe. It was recognized that in any eventual conflict Italy would side with the West but

until that final moment was reached, contacts in the East could remain and Italy pursued

policies there that were less hostile than demanded by ardent enthusiasts of the Cold War.

Occasional voices were heard protesting that this lack of status and of a public

exercise of power was demeaning to the Italian nation. The signature of the peace treaty

of Paris in 1947 was accompanied by nationalist complaint from such diverse sources as

the liberal philosopher, Benedetto Croce, who talked carelessly of the ‘Paris diktat’ and

the leadership of the Communist Party. Until 1954, the Trieste issue inflamed irredentist

and patriotic sentiments, and few in the political world granted that Yugoslavia had a

case there. The return of Trieste within the national borders did, however, end irredentism

as a serious factor in political life, though Italian diplomatists have continued to fight off

suggestions that the Brenner border with the Germanic world, agreed in 1919 and

confirmed in 1945, is not a just one.

In more recent times intellectuals, generally but not always conservative in their

ideological preference, have complained that the worst sin of the Republic is its loss of

national sense. It is true that opinion polls have regularly demonstrated that Italians are

anxious to define themselves as Europeans and that they trust the institutions of the

European Union more than they do those of the Italian nation state. At the same time,

this flaunted ‘good Europeanness’ is somewhat counter-balanced by the fact that

European legislation is regularly ignored by Italian governments at the same time as

European subsidies are digested.

Another unresolved issue in foreign relations is what might be called Italy’s missing

‘world policy’. Emigration dispersed Italians all over the world, but governments in

Rome have preferred to focus on Europe rather than becoming closely involved with, for

example, South American affairs. In this, as in other aspects of international dealing,

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Italian politicians have taken advantage when it has been offered, but have sought to

avoid the expense of unnecessary involvement.

During the 1990s there have been occasional flutters of a revived nationalism, the

most menacing being from that lunatic fringe who would meddle ‘patriotically’ in the

fate of ex-Yugoslavia. More moderate forces have acknowledged an alleged

responsibility to engage in international peacekeeping efforts in Somalia and Albania,

with decidedly uneven results. But in most questions of international diplomacy Italy

prefers both to keep a low profile, and to favour the sales of Benetton and the rest of the

nation’s export industries. Foreign policy remains the least of its preoccupations.

Further reading

Santoro, C.M. (1991) La politica estera di una media potenza: L’Italia dall’Unità ad oggi (The

Foreign Policy of a Middle Power: Italy from Unification to the Present), Bologna: Il Mulino (a

stimulating structural approach to the subject).

R.J.B. BOSWORTH

Forlani, Arnaldo

b. 8 December 1925, Pesaro

Politician

Arnaldo Forlani entered Parliament in 1958. In a generational coup in 1969, aided by

Ciriaco De Mita, he became DC party secretary despite his own politics being based,

quite unlike De Mita’s, on rigid anti-communism. Forlani remained party leader until

1973. Several times a senior minister, he became prime minister between 1980 and 1981

but was forced to resign by the P2 Lodge scandal. He returned to the party leadership in

1989–92, becoming part of the so-called CAF triumvirate whereby Craxi, Andreotti and

Forlani, as the united heads of the DC and the PSI, divided up all the spoils of the ‘First’

Republic in a thick network of clientelism which encapsulated all its worst features. The

disastrous 1992 parliamentary election and Forlani’s failure to be elected President led to

his resignation. In December 1993 he was humiliated by television coverage of his cross-

examination by Antonio Di Pietro in the Cusani corruption trial, thus abruptly ending his

political career.

MARK DONOVAN

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Forma Group

The Forma group, an art collective, was founded in Rome in 1947, and its original

members included Pietro Consagra, Giulio Turcato, Piero Dorazio, Achille Perilli,

Antonio Sanfilippo, Carla Accardi, Ugo Attardi, Mino Guerrini and Concetto Maugeri,

all artists who played an important role in the development of Italian abstract art during

the late 1940s and the 1950s.

As the name of the group and the title of its magazine makes clear, the artists’ main

interests were focussed on the question of form. A manifesto was published in the first

edition of its eponymous magazine. The opening paragraph stated:

We declare ourselves Formalists and Marxists, convinced that the terms

Marxism and formalism are not unreconcilable, particularly today when

progressive individuals in our society must maintain a revolutionary and

avantgarde position, and not make the mistake of falling into the

blandness and conformism of realism which, in its most recent attempts in

painting and sculpture has shown what a limited and narrow road it is.

The necessity of bringing Italian art to the level of contemporary

European artistic language forces us to take a clear and resolute position

against any foolish nationalistic ambition and against the provincial and

pointless gossip of Italian culture today.

(Forma 1, Rome, 15 March 1947; my translation)

The fight against artistic torpor taken up in Rome by the artists of Forma had a decisive

influence in those years immediately after the war. The fact that a common manifesto

united artists whose work was so divergent, if not diametrically opposed, was an

indication that the said group of artists believed that in order to develop, Italian art had to

conquer certain essentially formal values while at the same time pushing the individual

values of each artist to their extreme.

Although generally influenced by contemporary Art Informel (see L’Informale), the

work of Forma cannot be limited to any one stylistic definition. Turcato, Dorazio and

Accardi experimented at this time with geometric abstraction, influenced in particular by

the work of the futurist Giacomo Balla. Turcato’s paintings tended towards a stronger

narrative element, as can be seen from Political Gathering (1950), in which the bright red

triangles have an obvious political significance. Dorazio’s work consisted of rhythmic,

sometimes calligraphic patterns of interlocking shapes and lines, whilst Accardi’s

canvases were more boldly geometric. On the other hand, Accardi and other painters such

as Sanfilippo and the sculptor Consagra moved towards creating freer, more expressive

works. During the 1950s, Turcato too moved towards a more lyrical form of abstraction.

As well as organizing its own exhibitions (for example, at the Art Club in Rome in

1947), Forma was involved in important international events, including the Venice

Biennale of 1948 and the exhibition Arte astratta e concreta in Italia’ (Abstract and

Concrete Art in Italy) held at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Rome in 1951. The group

also made an important contribution to debate on art through its magazine. Its successor

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was the group Continuità (founded in 1961), which included Accardi, Consagra,

Dorazio, Perilli and Turcato.

Further reading

Merchiori, G. (1948) ‘Il Fronte Nuovo delle Arti’ (The New Front of the Arts), in XXIV Biennale di

Venezia, Catalogo, Venice: La Serenissima Edizioni (exhibition catalogue).

Venturi, L. and Turcato, G. (1957) Painting in Postwar Italy 1945–1957, New York: Columbia

University Press (exhibition catalogue).

OLIVIA DAWSON

Fortini, Franco

b. 10 September 1917, Florence; d. 28 November 1994, Milan

Poet and literary critic

Having earned first a law degree in 1939, then one in art history in 1940 from the

University of Florence, Fortini (real name Franco Lattes) taught history of criticism at the

University of Siena. He was co-editor of Il Politecnico and among the founders of the

political-literary journal Ragionamenti. A prolific and versatile writer, Fortini published

collections of poetry, narrative works, translations from German and French (Brecht,

Goethe, Eluard) and war memoirs, and engaged in militant literary criticism from the

pages of important periodicals such as Nuovi Argomenti and Paragone and daily

newspapers like Il Corriere delta sera and il manifesto.

Described alternately as post-hermetic or anti-hermetic poetry and as ‘neo-realist’,

Fortini’s verse represents a reaction against what was seen as a divorce between words

and their referents in symbolist and neoavantgarde poetics, while maintaining a distance

from formalist lyricism. Fortini’s strong political commitment and his dedication to art as

a means of furthering social and moral values earned him the Montale poetry prize in

1985.

Further reading

Forgàcs, D. (1984) ‘Franco Fortini’, in M. Caesar and P. Hainsworth (eds), Writers and Society in

Contemporary Italy, Warwickshire: Berg Publishers.

SHERRY ROUSH

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Forza Italia

Officially founded by businessman Silvio Berlusconi in January 1994 and modelled on a

football slogan (meaning roughly ‘Go, Italy!’), Forza Italia (FI) achieved immediate

success in the national elections of March 1994, gaining 21.4 per cent of the vote,

establishing itself as the largest party in the electorate and elevating its leader to the

premiership. In April 1996, having in the meantime lost government and contesting its

second national election, FI’s performance was again strong (it won 20.6 per cent of the

vote) but not enough to regain government.

The basis of FI’s 1994 success lay in the timing of its appearance on the electoral

market, the innovativeness of its alliance strategy, its campaigning techniques and its

organizational arrangements. Berlusconi and a small team drawn mainly from his media

corporation, Fininvest, began organizing, more or less secretly, in the autumn of 1993.

Berlusconi’s idea was of a very lightly structured but highly centralized party, supported

by a loose network of ‘clubs’ operating as electoral committees open to citizens’

volunteer participation, presenting candidates with no previous political experience but

with a strong professional (generally self-employed) background and solid social status.

In the post Cold War and post-Tangentopoli context of the time -characterized by

displaced electoral identities, a widespread desire for renovation of the political class,

growing anti-party sentiments and an inexorable weakening of the old subcultural

belongings -Berlusconi indeed succeeded in presenting himself and Forza Italia as the

new, non-political answer to the crisis of Italy’s old politics. In addition, he was able to

create a new system of alliances using FI to bridge two regionalized and divided

electorates: that of the right-wing and southern-based National Alliance (AN) and that of

the separatist and northern-based Northern League (see Lega Nord), thus creating a

brand new national centre-right pole.

The campaign for FI’s electoral launch, organized by Fininvest’s experts in marketing

and communication, was first prepared by mass opinion polls and focus groups and then

developed through a bombardment of political advertisement on Fininvest’s televisions

and on a skilful construction and communication of Berlusconi’s image. FI’s campaign

was highly personalized and centred on the figure of the leader. Berlusconi’s invariable

smile, elegant clothes, polite and non-confrontational manners, self-confidence,

reassuring discourse and ‘man of the street’ language (rich in sporting but also biblical

metaphors) were all elements which contributed to the projection into politics of the myth

of the successful modern entrepreneur, able to create wealth and deliver prosperity, thus

legitimizing Berlusconi as a trustworthy politician.

FI”s neo-liberal programme (pro-religion, pro-family, pro-market economics, pro-

privatization, anti-mismanagement, anti-bureaucracy, anti-Left) attracted wide electoral

support across all social classes and across the spectrum of the traditional Catholic and

lay centrist parties. The average socioeconomic profile of FI voters and their values did

not differ very much from the average profile and values of the whole Italian electorate,

and it was precisely on such an ‘average society’ that FI constructed its identity.

After the extraordinary electoral performance in 1994, however, FI encountered

serious difficulties as a governing party, particularly with its recalcitrant ally the Northern

League. In December 1994 the League abandoned the coalition, causing the fall of the

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Berlusconi government. The subsequent months were difficult for Forza Italia, especially

from an organizational point of view. Its light organizational arrangements, initially

appealing to voters because of their anti-party connotations, proved inadequate to the

long months in opposition. In January 1997, in response to internal discontent further

fuelled by electoral defeat at the national elections of April 1996, FI adopted a new

statute, eventually instituting a diffused and structured territorial organization, collegial

deliberative and executive bodies at national and local level, and a membership

empowered to elect local and national party managers.

At the end of 1997, Forza Italia, with its almost 5,000 elected representatives (at the

various levels), its 150,000 members, 3,500 supporting clubs involving around 100,000

activists, its local headquarters run by party secretaries and its associated youth and

women organizations, seemed to have become rather similar to a traditional mass party

and to be undergoing a phase of organizational institutionalization. Whether this will

prove sufficient to guarantee FI a long term political life remains to be seen.

Further reading

Lyttelton, A. (1994) ‘Italy: The Triumph of TV’, The New York Review, 11 August.

McCarthy, P. (1996) ‘Forza Italia. The New Politics and Old Values of a Changing Italy’, in S.

Gundle and S. Parker (eds), The New Italian Republic: From the Fall of the Wall to Berlusconi,

London: Routledge.

Seisselberg, J. (1996) ‘Conditions of Success and Political Problems of a “Media-Mediated

Personality-Party”: The Case of Forza Italia’, West European Politics 19 (4):715–43.

EMANUELA POLI

fotoromanzo

The fotoromanzo (photo romance) is love story, published episodically or as a single

issue. The plot is narrated through a series of photos, a narrative beneath them and a

dialogue which is contained in speech balloons within the frame. It is similar to comics,

but here photographs replace drawings. Fotoromanzi are directed primarily to a female

readership from the lower middle and lower socioeconomic classes. They have been

enormously successful in Italy and have been widely exported, especially to Latin

American countries. They first appeared in 1947 when two major publishing houses,

Rizzoli and Mondadori, published the two weekly magazines Sogno (Dream) and Bolero

Film. These followed in the wake of Grand Hotel, which had very successfully published

love stories in comic book format the previous year, selling hundreds of thousands of

copies per issue. Other publishing houses copied the formula, which consisted of sixteen

pages in black and white, the cover often in colour, two or three fotoromanzi and a love

story or a literary classic in instalments.

The typical fotoromanzo story has the structure of the classic fairy tale and uses

techniques of the serial novel, namely a complicated plot and the continual succession of

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revelations. It is usually the story of a troubled union of social unequals (she is poor and

he is very rich) which ends up happily as pure love triumphs over social barriers. Men are

always given an active role as opposed to the passive one attributed to women who,

however, are rewarded at the end for their resignation and faith. The moral of the story is

clear: women need only follow their hearts and Providence will make their dream of a

happy marriage and upward social mobility come true. In the fotoromanzo, the visual

element is used to impart veracity to the fairy tale: the characters are beautiful but not

excessively so. They are clean-cut and fashionably dressed but they are not far removed

from ordinary people. Landscapes and interiors are usually easily recognizable and urban.

The characters are portrayed psychologically in a simple yet consistent fashion, their

attitudes and gestures are plausible and symbols are usually avoided. Conversely the

language of the speech balloons and the narrative is pompous as it attempts to lift the

story from its overly prosaic reality.

Fotoromanzi exhibit primitive figurative realism, rooted in romantic melodrama. They

provide erotic escapism and are concerned with private feelings, avoiding comment on

anything that touches on the relation between the individual and society. Their themes are

always the family, honour (which is actually masculine honour and feminine virginity)

and conflict between love and duty. From the outset, the fotoromanzo magazines were

integrated into an urban system of communication, connected to show business, fashion

news and the media. Their humble style interacted with that of the cinema and weekly

news magazines, and there was also some experimentation with detective fiction and

adventure stories.

The production and language of fotoromanzi changed over time but the stories kept

their basic structure and techniques. In the mid-1960s, when Italy changed from being a

backward agricultural country to an advanced industrial one, the publishing house Lancio

had great success with its monthly magazines printed on laminated paper. These

presented previously unpublished stories in full, featuring characters modelled on the

urban youth of the new consumer society. With the diffusion of consumerism, the need

for long-running sagas and popular heroes was accentuated. Lancio responded with the

two magazines, Le avventure di Lucky Martin (Lucky Martin’s Adventures) and Le

avventure di Jacques Douglas (Jacques Douglas’s Adventures), which became extremely

popular.

During the 1980s and 1990s the fotoromanzo went through a crisis due to

socioeconomic and structural changes: rising costs, the advent of colour, the need for a

greater standardization and intensive marketing brought about the end of the proliferation

of production houses and a decrease in sales. The irreversible crisis in the cinema and

television’s success in differentiating and stratifying the public also had a negative

influence on the fotoromanzo, which withdrew more and more into itself. It continued to

be interested only in the private world, in fashion and in love relationships, repressing

any historical reference or admitting it only when it could be linked to basic emotions.

Further reading

Abruzzese, A. (1989) ‘Fotoromanzo’, in A. Asor Rosa (ed.), Letteratura italiana. Storia e

Geografia (Italian Literature: History and Geography), Turin: Einaudi (an acute critical analysis

of the genre).

Detti, E. (1990) Le carte rosa. Storia del fotoromanzo e delta narrativa popolare (The Pink Papers:

A History of the Photo Romances and of Popular Fiction), Florence: La nuova Italia (a short,

popular history of the photo romances with numerous interesting illustrations from the early

issues).

FRANCO MANAI

Frabotta, Biancamaria

b. 11 June 1946, Rome

Literary critic, feminist and poet

Professor of Twentieth-Century Italian Literature at the University of Rome, La

Sapienza, Frabotta contributes to various publications, including Nuovi argomenti, Aut

aut and La Repubblica. In the 1970s she became one of the leading voices of the

women’s movement and the principal organizer of the Marxist branch of the Roman

feminist movement. She drew on these experiences to write Femminismo e lotta di classe

(Feminism and Class Struggle) (1973) and La politica del femminismo: 1973–1976 (The

Politics of Feminism) (1976). Later, her attention turned to more literary concerns. In

Letteratura al femminile (Literature in the Feminine) (1980), for example, she explores

the relationship between women’s writing and women’s place in literary history, while in

the edited collection Donne in poesia (Women in Poetry) (1976), she showcases postwar

Italian women’s poetry. Her experiences as a feminist and as a woman writer also form

the basis of her more introspective works, including the poetry collection, Appunti di volo

(Flight Notes) (1985), and the novel, Velocità di fuga (Speed of Flight) (1989).