Queering Italian Media

Queering Italian Media presents a collection of chapters inspired by the workshop held in 2017 by the Queer Italia Network (QuIR) in New York. In the preface, the editors define this book as “a useful resource for those with an active interest in the topic or a burgeoning curiosity about queerness and/in Italian media” (vii). The six chapters of the book, the editors explain in the introduction, present a variety of perspectives that analyze Italian media in relation to queerness and Italianness. The essays are written by scholars of various disciplines, ranging from queer, gender, and sexuality studies to Italian film/media studies and history. Anatrone and Heim accurately describe the contemporary sociopolitical and geographical contexts from which the analyzed media are extrapolated and dedicate the initial parts of the introduction to defining the codependent relationship between media and the “Italian national identity” (2). They also clarify the terminology used to refer to identity categories, referring to diverse social and geographical contexts, both in Italy and abroad.In the first chapter, “The Lavorini Case,” Alessio Ponzio analyzes the murder of a young boy in Tuscany in 1969, as reported by the media. Particular attention is given to the Italian press, of which Ponzio scrutinizes words and images. Through the investigation of mediatic representations of homosexuality and their reception, the chapter captures the climate of hostility and denigration against a robustly marginalized community. In the last part of this chapter, to this social adverse reaction Ponzio opposes a “counterreaction,” exposing a fervent interaction displayed through the media (21).Alessia Palanti presents an analysis of Alina Marazzi's film Vogliamo anche le rose (We Want Roses Too) in the following chapter, “We Want Lesbians Too.” The essay is structured in three parts, each dedicated to one of the three diarists included in the film, and highlights the need to acknowledge the presence and work of “lesbian activists whose efforts too frequently go unrecognized” (33). Palanti manages to create both a connection and a contrast between the film and other media sources (such as periodicals like Fuori donna), accompanying the readers through history as narrated by Marazzi, up to the current Italian social context.In “A Queerer Road,” Sole Anatrone investigates gender normativity and migration in Italy in the film Corazones de Mujer (2008). The author elaborates on José Muñoz's queer utopianism to identify a “queered future” that connects to the practice of nomadism developed by Rosi Braidotti (57). The Italian film is put in conversation with US productions by Sergio Leone and Ridley Scott's Thelma & Louise (1991). Anatrone studies causes and effects of movement within and outside borders, intended not only as geographical limitations but in a broader sense that aims to embrace the complexity of individual and social identities.Dom Holdaway's essay, “The Queer Potential of Mainstream Film,” examines queer representations in contemporary Italian films, such as Cado dalle nubi (2009), Una piccola impresa meridionale (2013), Tutta colpa di Freud (2014), Scusate se esisto (2014) and Perfetti Sconosciuti (2016). This study focuses on queer presence in mainstream media and their ability to offer the audience a reading that transcends sociocultural expectations. Through the analysis of these films, Holdaway clearly demonstrates how this “potentiality” can subvert normative representations and interpretations (90).In the fifth chapter, “An All-Italian Game of Thrones,” Luca Malici presents a study of the gay version of the tv show Uomini e Donne and the reception of queer representations through social media. The author shows the results of an in-depth analysis of Twitter posts, which amounts to approximately three thousand, supported by visual representations of data. This investigation collects tweets that appeared before the program was aired, revealing the audience's expectations, which are compared to tweets posted when the show was airing. Malici highlights the existence of a “discursive struggle” in queer representations in Italian mainstream television and challenges the normative limitations that they still have to endure (98).The sixth and final chapter, Julia Heim's “Queer Italian Communities and Alternative Televisual Re/Mediations,” takes a more theoretical approach to examine television productions and prosumers’ content creation in web series, remediations and slash fiction. The meticulous analysis of such diversified materials reveals spaces occupied by thriving queer communities that create and legitimize their own type of queerness whenever it is denied by the original sources. Heim invites us to reflect on the modalities of this kind of engagement with mediatic sources, “the interaction between bodies made possible by technology,” and its potential to challenge the social and cultural limitations of the television industry (150).Queering Italian Media is the useful resource declared by the editors in the introduction. They gracefully bring together a bouquet of studies that make a significant contribution to the fields of queer studies, gender studies, and Italian media. The diverse but cohesive interdisciplinary analyses offer valuable insight and inspiration for future research

Aesthetics · Art · Curiosity · Homosexuality · Human sexuality · Identity (music) · Media studies · National identity · Political science · Politics · Queer · Sexual identity · Sociology · European history and politics · Gender Studies · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology