I’ve been virtually leafing through Italian online newspapers during the last few days and I’ve been reading with horror about the Gheddafi visit turning into a variety show, with horses, showgirls and cotillons. The journalists of the main Italian newpapers didn’t bat an eyelid, and only talked about the glamour, with a little weak-humored skepticism and a lot of not-so-subtle envy. Not one dared to express disgust and criticism. Just a few remarks were issued, and mostly by Vatican entourage, but it was the usual stolid vaticanisms… I mean, anachronisms. A strong expression of indignation and fierce wrath was what I was expecting from at least some of the major media. It would have been more likely to wait for the advent of Godzilla, ha!
I do not know why I still am outraged when I read about Italy. I read about it constantly and every time I feel the fury swelling inside myself. I should try and read about New Zealand, just to see if it’s an intrinsic conditioned reflex or there is still some rational process involved in this awakening of rage.
When I hear about Italians so eager to go back I have the temptation to destroy everything in the vicinities. I feel the urgency to yell and cry at the utter stupidity of the idea of going back to such a place. Not only with Italians here in Iceland, but with all those people I know for a reason or another that are away from Italy and want for a reason or another to go back. They feel they have bonds, they have a homeland waiting for them. Even if it’s a joke of homeland, they keep on calling it “home” most of the times, and even when they don’t use the term “home”, they anyway regard it as such. You know what I feel when I think about Italy? Shame, rage, contempt, abhorrence. I will go back only if I really have to, and definitely not to stay. I’d rather be kidnapped by aliens from Tralfamadore. When I will go back, it will hopefully be to take back the things I treasure I left behind. Books, books and more books. An object or two. Nothing more.
A few months ago I went to the cinema to watch a film entitled Videocracy by Swedish-Italian director Erik Gandini, that was being shown here at the Bíódagar film festival. Videocracy was heavily boycotted in Italy because it spoke so ill of our Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and of the kind of country he is governing right now. It definitely wasn’t good publicity. All dictators want to be shown in a good light, even if they are terribly bad. Or rather, the worse they are, the more they want to be shown in a good light. Why Berlusconi would represent an exception to this simple rule? In fact he doesn’t, that’s why the film was boycotted. Nobody wanted to distribute and project it, even at the Venice Film Festival. On the other hand, Videocracy had not only been included in a local film festival, but it also had been shown on TV here in Iceland. As a result, more Icelanders than Italians know about the film. In the film, Italy is depicted as the kind of place nobody with a little morals and intelligence would want to live in. A country were corruption and lack of respect, racism, sexism, meanness and total amorality are at all levels of society. They are the norm, not a deviation. Why hiding it? Not only Italian politicians and high-ranking officers, but also your own neighbor and your closest relatives don’t give a damn about anything. They laugh and complain about the state of things, but ultimately they benefit from splashing in that ocean of shit that’s the contemporary Italian society. Berlusconi is not evil incarnate. Sadly, he is the average Italian character incarnate, and even those not voting for him, the presumed dissidents, would gladly sell their souls and those of their loved ones for a portion of his riches and success.
Italians have always been regarded as “peculiar” from anybody. We are the clownish shrewd and cunning allies you can’t really trust in peace and in war. We take what we can whenever we can; we laugh our heads off about it when we have to bring everything home, the good and the bad coming from our attitude; we shrug and tut, and by tomorrow everything will be forgotten. Italians though still had some kind of dignity, in their own ways, just up to a few decades ago. They had a glimmer of values still alit in the depths of their peculiar heads. Right now there is no more of that glimmer. Even the respectable people with a few traits of decency left in their genes prefer to spend time complaining at the bar, thinking in the meantime about how they can avoid paying taxes or bills, and what special offers are awaiting for them at the nearest supermarket. The pro-Gheddafi showcase of shame is just another example of how Italians don’t feel like they have dignity somewhere anymore. Why having a dignity and a conscience? Where will the fun and the advantages go if you have to keep on nurturing a soul? You don’t need a soul in a country where you have a TV keeping a dummy-consciousness alive. It’s easier to complain, but only slightly, when there’s nothing else to accompany the aperitivi at the bar; better to take a day off to demonstrate in the streets just to make the week-end longer. Better to laugh our heads off in public and screw up those laughing their heads off with us when the occasion presents itself.
Nothing is lost as long as dignity is still intact. Take dignity away and all other values, love and respect, empathy and generosity, brotherhood or fellowships of any kind, become nothing more than a sad farce. I’ve seen anybody, people I trusted as well, sinking lower and lower in this cynical mire: wanting to marry and make children to hide boredom and lack of imagination, or wanting to find a steady job in the public administration at all costs just to stop thinking about anything significant till Doomsday. Even the most despicable things acquire a status of legitimacy if routine and use decree they indeed are legitimate. Being practical is what truly counts. To hell with good intentions and moral values.
Italians, other than clownish and cynical, are also very ignorant. They think their judgmental standards, so trivial and spoiled, are valid anywhere in the world. Every country is like their country, only a little worse, like a badly done copy, an imitation, a replica, like those Chinese fakes of brand products you find on local street markets or on eBay. Everything is a replica of their own world, of the pettiness they know and are used to. From food to scenery, to everything else, all the cleverness and the allure, all the best possible in the world belongs to them. Out of ignorance, because they know nothing of the best: first of all they don’t know anymore anything about the good of human nature, of having respect, of knowing what really counts and makes a difference. Of what it means to speak for yourself and at the same time to think not only about yourself. Italy is so decadent that only total implosion and ultimate destruction will bring out some of the goodness there still is around there. Only from ruins will the integrity be free to impose itself again. When the corpse will cease to spread its contaminated fluids around, then timid flowers of hope will be able to bloom again. But I can’t foresee the moment of such a miracle at all.
I see Icelanders and foreigners alike stand in disbelief when we tell them we wish we could never go back, even for a day, to Italy and its rottenness. That we would gladly give up citizenship and all, if it were possible. That we would sever all bonds. They do not understand at first, but as soon as we outline the situation for them, they change their mind and agree with us. They do not feel like shrugging and laughing their heads off, they do not feel what we tell them about Italy is funny. Not everybody has grown used to the temperament of the clown and has become numbed by it. They still have some values and sense of morality standing in other parts of the world, and they still do some maintenance to keep things like this. That’s what “home” truly means to me. Home without homeland, home beyond physical bonds with a country. An imaginary shelter where significance still exists in some form. I am grateful to have escaped and survived the collapse of a physical homeland I never recognized as my own, though it wasn’t easy to endure the sense of disgust all these years. Perhaps I am homeless in the strict meaning of the term, but I’m now encouraged to a little hope.
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