Cecilia Brioni | University of Aberdeen (original) (raw)

Books by Cecilia Brioni

Manchester University Press, 2022

Fashioning Italian youth examines popular media representations of Italian young people's style t... more Fashioning Italian youth examines popular media representations of Italian young people's style trends and bodily practices from 1958-75. By looking at visual and written representations of transnational youth trends - like urlatori, amici, beats and hippies - in Italian teen magazines, Musicarelli films and youth-oriented television programmes, it investigates changes in the social construction of Italian young people's political, generational, national, ethnic and gender identities. The monograph connects the emergence of youth-oriented transnational trends to the national and global history of young people, and explores the dynamics that contributed to the construction of a specifically Italian youth culture in this period.

Articles by Cecilia Brioni

Journal of Urban Cultural Studies

Since the end of the 1970s, Bologna has represented an ‘urban mythscape’ for left-wing subcultura... more Since the end of the 1970s, Bologna has represented an ‘urban mythscape’ for left-wing subcultural youth in the Italian cultural imaginary. This article examines representations of spaces of encounter and conflict for young people in Bologna in Silvia Ballestra’s La guerra degli Antò (1992) and Enrico Brizzi’s Jack Frusciante è uscito dal gruppo (1994). Set in the 1990s, these novels mark a significant change in Bologna’s urban mythscape, in that they do not refer back to the 1970s like the majority of cultural representations of youth set in Bologna. The protagonists’ desire to ‘leave society’ and withdraw into private spaces reflects an evolution in representations of Italian subcultural youth, which mirrors the emergence of Italian ‘Generation X’ and their experience of social and political commitment.

Modern Italy

In the period between 1965 and 1967, a series of acts of violence took place against Italian cape... more In the period between 1965 and 1967, a series of acts of violence took place against Italian capelloni (young men with long hair). These attacks frequently ended with an attempted or actual cutting of these young men’s hair. This article analyses how these incidents were represented in newspapers, teen magazines, and in the short film Il mostro della domenica by Steno (Stefano Vanzina, 1968) featuring Totò. Drawing on literature about the shaving of French and Italian collaborationist women in the aftermath of the Second World War (Virgili 2002), it explores the potential gender anxieties caused by young men’s long hairstyles, as represented by the media. The attacks on the capelloni are interpreted as a punishment for the male appropriation of a traditionally feminine attribute of seduction: the cutting of young men’s hair symbolically reaffirmed an ideal of virile masculinity in a moment of ‘decline of virilism’ (Bellassai 2011) in Italian society.

This article aims to contribute to the debate about critical race studies in the Italian context ... more This article aims to contribute to the debate about critical race studies in the Italian context – and especially in the 1960s and the 1970s – by focusing on the construction and negotiation of race in the career of the prominent Italian meticcia singer, television host and producer Silvana Areggasc Savorelli, also known as Tanya from 1960 to 1966 and Lara Saint Paul from 1967 onwards. Through an examination of Savorelli’s career as a singer, television host and Italian diva, this article shows how the meanings of Savorelli’s meticcio body have been constantly adapting to the shifting perceptions of blackness in Italy and other Western societies. Lara Saint Paul’s media representations illustrate a change in the social construction of Italianness in terms of race from the early 1960s to the early 2000s.

Italian Studies, 2017

This article analyses how Italian young people were represented in the Saturday night television ... more This article analyses how Italian young people were represented in the Saturday night television programme Studio Uno (1961–1966). It defines i giovani as a performative identity: i giovani are not described as a specific age group, but rather as a normative identity constructed in popular media through the reiteration of bodily practices defined in opposition to ‘adult’ practices. Firstly, the article connects the emergence of discourses around i giovani with the educative function of RAI. Secondly, it outlines to what extent 1965 can be considered a turning point for representations of i giovani in Italian media. Thirdly, it compares the two young Studio Uno 1966 co-hosts Mina and Rita Pavone, to highlight the practices through which the latter was constructed as giovane. Lastly, the article suggests how the giovane identity was presented to an audience of adults and youths respectively through a different spatialisation of giovani performers on the show.

Book Chapters by Cecilia Brioni

Italian Contemporary Youth Television

This chapter explores how contemporary Italian youth television problematises today’s moral panic... more This chapter explores how contemporary Italian youth television problematises today’s moral panic about young people online, by using representations of social media and mobile app use in the Italian version of the transnational format SKAM as a case study. Like other contemporary Italian TV series, SKAM Italia is characterised by the use of mobile app screenshots as diegetic extensions in the narration (Antonioni, Barra and Checcaglini 2021), which help defining the relationships between characters and the main characters’ subjectivity. Firstly, the series successfully displays the community-building opportunities allowed by different social media, which facilitate communication within close friends (WhatsApp), interaction with secondary characters (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram) and relationships with characters who are away from Rome (Skype). Secondly, representations of homosexuality and ethnicity in SKAM Italia show that social media are not only used to derogate and bully, but are also fundamental to self-interrogate and express the main characters’ identity.

Italian Contemporary Screen Performers. Training, Production, Prestige

On 15 January 2022, Margherita Buy turned 60. This celebration often entails an evaluation of age... more On 15 January 2022, Margherita Buy turned 60. This celebration often entails an evaluation of ageing stars’ past and present career in the media. By looking at accounts of Buy’s 60th birthday in Italian online periodicals, I argue that her prestige is validated by referring to both extraordinary – Buy’s status as one of the most award-winning Italian screen performers – and ordinary – her ‘antidiva’ and demure attitude – aspects of her on- and off-screen persona, in line with Richard Dyer’s theories on the presentation of stars in the media (1998). This prestige, together with Buy’s longevity in the Italian star system, sometimes allows a destabilisation of the stereotypical power dynamics between (male) directors and (female) actresses, as she is not only passively described as her directors’ ‘muse’, but also commended for having actively helped emerging directors become affirmed. Media accounts of Buy’s career ultimately reveal the impact of ideas around ordinariness, femininity, and age on Italian cinema stars’ perceived prestige.

Cinema e identità italiana. Cultura visuale e immaginario nazionale fra tradizione e contemporaneità, 2019

Questo intervento analizza le rappresentazioni dell’identità giovanile italiana nei film Musicare... more Questo intervento analizza le rappresentazioni dell’identità giovanile italiana nei film Musicarelli, una serie di film musicali prodotti per un pubblico giovane negli anni Sessanta. In questi film, i giovani vengono rappresentati come soggetto docile, e lo scontro generazionale tende ad essere risolto attraverso una riappacificazione tra i giovani e i loro antagonisti adulti. Tuttavia, i Musicarelli presentano anche strategie quali l’uso di parodie e il riferimento a fatti di cronaca che introducono un ribaltamento dei rapporti di potere tra le generazioni. Il film Rita la Zanzara (Wertmüller 1966) viene utilizzato come case study per discutere questa duplice funzione.

This paper analyses the popular media construction of Italian young people’s identity in Musicarelli films – musical films aimed at a young audience that proliferated in Italy in the 1960s. In these films, young people were represented as docile subjects, and the generational struggle tended to be resolved through a reconciliation between youths and their adult counterparts; however, comedy and references to current news were often used to overturn the dynamics of power between generations. The film Rita la Zanzara (Wertmüller 1966) is utilised as a case study to demonstrate this dual function.

Papers by Cecilia Brioni

Street art is often used as a tool of resistance, to express opposition to political systems and ... more Street art is often used as a tool of resistance, to express opposition to political systems and social issues around the world (S. H. Awad & B. Wagoner, eds., Street Art of Resistance. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). This paper explores how street art both appropriates and helps resignifying the concept of resistance in Bologna, where this idea constitutes a fundamental part of the city’s cultural 'accent' (Glynn 2020). Bologna’s historical centrality during the Resistenza is commemorated in both legal and illegal street art. At the same time, new forms of resistance are celebrated in several murals depicted since the mid-2010s in Bologna city centre. For example, leftist grassroots movements have used street art to demarcate ‘resistant’ areas of the city like via Zamboni and the city’s numerous centri sociali. In these spaces, murals have depicted current local, national and international stories of resistance, such as the recently erased murals #OccupyMordor (2013), Bologna è meticcia (2015), and Kobane resiste (2014). By visually offering new meanings to the concept of resistance, which draw on contemporary local, national and international experiences, the political street art in Bologna contributes to resignify ideas around resistenza in Italian culture.

This paper provides an overview of the emergence and development of youth television programmes i... more This paper provides an overview of the emergence and development of youth television programmes in Italian national television during the period 1962-1970. In particular, it analyses how Italian young people’s age, national and gender identities were represented in the musical television shows Alta Pressione (Siena, 1962), Stasera Rita (Falqui, 1965), Diamoci del Tu (Siena, 1967), and Speciale per Voi (Ragionieri, 1969; Siena, 1970). Previous studies on youth-oriented television programmes have argued that in the early 1960s a ‘strategia aziendale’ [business strategy] was used by RAI to decrease anxieties connected to the emergence of young people as social and political subjects in Italian society (Morbidelli, 1998). By looking at specific aspects of the mise-en-scène of the above programmes, such as the set design, the role of the hosts, the space and role reserved to the (young) studio audience, and the content of the programmes, this paper demonstrates that representations of youth in Italian television adapted to the changing social and political role of young people in Italian society during the 1960s, provoking an increasing circulation of subversive discourses around youth. Youth-oriented TV shows featured original approaches – like comedy – to the discussion of the ongoing generational struggle in Italian society. Moreover, media narratives increasingly promoted representations of Italian youth as a non-docile subject, and facilitated the creation of a distinctively Italian youth culture by endorsing the popularity of young Italian stars such as Adriano Celentano, Rita Pavone, Caterina Caselli, and Renzo Arbore.

Italian Teachers' Day - Francis Holland School, London, 02/03/2019

In the period 1965-67, Italian young men started to adopt long hairstyles. This trend soon became... more In the period 1965-67, Italian young men started to adopt long hairstyles. This trend soon became widespread, to the point that the term ‘i capelloni’ – literally, men with big hair – was often used to generally describe young men. Although being celebrated as an element of generational belonging in teen magazines such as BIG, the fashion of long hairstyles was not easily accepted by the older generations. For example, articles in newspapers such as La Stampa testified to several episodes of public cutting of young men’s hair, either by an undefined crowd or by the police. This paper explores the multiple significations of these attacks by looking at the narratives emerging from both newspaper accounts and letters written by young men to teen magazines. It also compares these episodes with other examples of public shaving of hair in recent history such as that of the ‘shorn women’, French women who at the end of the 2nd World War had their heads shaved in public because of their potential collaboration with Germany.
Print media discourses demonstrate how young people’s public shaving of hair could denote a symbolic punishment for two on-going conflicts in Italian society. Firstly, long hairstyles represented the male appropriation of a traditionally feminine feature: during the mid-1960s, the Italian capelloni reflected preoccupations about a change in the conceptualisation of male beauty standards, which often created anxieties about male homosexuality. This tension was also amplified by the on-going crisis of Italian virility, caused by the post-war emergence of the consuming man. The cutting of young men’s hair can therefore be seen as an attempt to symbolically restore and affirm Italian men’s heterosexuality. Secondly, the cutting off of hair exposed the dynamics of power between young people and the older generation: these acts showed the desire of controlling youth in Italian society, especially when long hairstyles were associated with political and social activism.

This paper will reflect on the educative function of 1960s’ Italian entertainment shows by concen... more This paper will reflect on the educative function of 1960s’ Italian entertainment shows by concentrating on the role played by television stars in representing normative identities. My case study will be that of Rita Pavone as a representative of Italian young people on the Saturday night programme Studio Uno in 1966. Young people in this period were particularly subjected to transnational influences: this is why the role of television in nationalising young people fitted into RAI’s social function of creating a common national identity. Moreover, stars were particularly effective in broadcasting a homogenised version of youth and thus the values of disengagement and consumerism embedded in this representation: as Morin (1961) and Dyer (1979; 1986) have demonstrated, cinema – but also television – stars are significant in reflecting social values and favouring the imitation of the audience. This paper analyses how, through her musical performances, her attitude towards guests, and the physical space she occupied in the programme, Rita Pavone’s persona was beneficial for the instruction of both adult and young audiences about the meaning of 'youth' in the 1960s.

This paper aims to establish gender theory, and in particular the concept of performativity (Butl... more This paper aims to establish gender theory, and in particular the concept of performativity (Butler 1990; 1999), as a useful tool in understanding i giovani as an ideological identity represented in, and constructed by, Italian popular media. The use of the Italian term, i giovani, comes from the need to distinguish it from the merely age-related meaning of the expression ‘young people’. Firstly, I will define i giovani as a social category directly interpellated (Althusser 1977) by Italian popular media. I will then characterise i giovani as a performatively constructed category, arguing that discourse produced the giovane identity through the reiteration of specific practices which were performed in opposition to naturalised ‘adult’ practices, with community building and normative effects. Secondly, this paper aims to show how this theoretical framework can be useful to guarantee to (young) women their ‘place in history’ (Grisard 2014): while generational analyses often overlook gender specificities, investigating the social construction of il giovane allows to untangle specific issues pertaining to giovani masculinities and femininities. To this end, an analysis of how differently the ‘growing up’ of male and female giovani is represented shows the permanence of normative discourses on the social expectations towards women. To explain my use of this theory, I will make several examples taken from my PhD thesis on representations of i giovani in 1960s Italian popular media.

Questo intervento mira ad affermare il genere del Musicarello come strumento utile per analizzare... more Questo intervento mira ad affermare il genere del Musicarello come strumento utile per analizzare l’incorporazione dello scontro generazionale degli anni Sessanta nella popular culture contemporanea indirizzata ad un pubblico di giovani. A fronte dell’assenza di studi accademici su questo genere, il paper dimostrerà come, diversamente da quanto suggerito da diversi autori (cfr. Arcagni 2006; Magni 2012), il Musicarello non sia un semplice contenitore di performance musicali. Un’analisi più approfondita può rivelare, infatti, le strategie attraverso cui lo scontro generazionale viene ideologicamente veicolato e trasferito da questo medium sui principali elementi di consumo dei giovani, in questo modo riducendo il potenziale politico e sociale delle richieste giovanili e favorendo, allo stesso tempo, il consumo di massa.
Attraverso una breve storia del genere si osserverà come lo scontro generazionale venga convertito in scontro musicale: il mondo adulto è rappresentato dalla musica classica o da quella melodica, mentre i giovani sono gli alfieri della “musica nostra” (Tomatis 2014). Si farà inoltre notare come, in particolare nel secondo periodo del Musicarello (1965-67), i film introducano alcuni temi ricorrenti del dibattito giovanile dell’epoca. Questo processo risulta evidente, ad esempio, nella scelta di ambientazioni identificate come “repressive” dai media diretti ai giovani (la scuola, la caserma, la famiglia), e nel riferimento a episodi di attualità particolarmente sensibili all’attenzione giovanile. Per esemplificare questa tesi si analizzerà il film Rita la Zanzara (Wertmũller 1966), in cui i tre aspetti sopra citati (la conversione dello scontro generazionale in scontro musicale, la rappresentazione attenuata delle istituzioni repressive, il riferimento a fatti di attualità, nello specifico l’affaire de La Zanzara) compongono la trama della storia.

Web pages by Cecilia Brioni

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Blog posts by Cecilia Brioni

Interdisciplinary Italy Blog, 2021

Interdisciplinary Italy Blog, 2018

Conference Presentations by Cecilia Brioni

AAIS Annual Conference (Online), 2021

This paper introduces my current research project, which analyses the image of contemporary Itali... more This paper introduces my current research project, which analyses the image of contemporary Italian society that emerges from (self-)representations of Italian young people on YouTube. The research addresses three main themes: 1) the self-representation strategies of Italian YouTube content creators; 2) the intersections of age, ethnicity, sexuality and gender in discourses around these content creators’ national identity; 3) how YouTube representations affect young people's ideas about contemporary Italian society. First, the paper will outline the preliminary findings of the research. Second, it will start to address how these findings could be used in Italian culture and language teaching. Indeed, one of the proposed outcomes of the research is to design five undergraduate teaching activities based on interviews with YouTubers or YouTube content, aiming to enhance students’ listening, comprehension and speaking skills at an intermediate and advanced level. I believe that the generational specificity of YouTube access allows for a greater proximity between students and content creators, in terms of interests, themes and language. Moreover, using original videos created by, or starring, Italian YouTubers as teaching material would bridge the gap between culture and language teaching, enhance the intercultural competence of students, and help overcome stereotypes about Italy and Italians.

Talks by Cecilia Brioni

University of Bristol, Italian Department Research Seminar, 2022