Videocracy
I spent part of today watching Videocracy. It’s a nightmarish film about the culture surrounding Silvio Berlusconi. Control over 90% of the medium - television - on which 80% of Italians rely for information adds up to significant cultural saturation.
Berlusconi himself, with his easy smile and his fascination with spectacle, isn’t the focus. Instead, the dead-voiced narrator describes the lives of others who are caught up in Berlusconi’s picture of the world: a mechanic desperate for televised fame, a pudgy TV producer in an endless celebrity-rich party, an extortionist trying to stay at the center of the story. There’s a sleek smugness in the one who has made it to the top - the producer - and a crazed absence in the other two. Thousands of young women crowd around the camera, longing to be showgirls. Women sing “Thank God Silvio exists!” in a campaign commercial.
It’s a deliberate, dreamlike, appalling film. You really ought to see it.