Francesco Buscemi, PhD | Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Catholic University of the Sacred Heart) (original) (raw)

Books by Francesco Buscemi, PhD

L'attendente del diavolo: Kappler e l'obiettore, 2024

Carcere di Gaeta, 1969: Sergio, condannato perché rifiuta il servizio militare, tenore amatoriale... more Carcere di Gaeta, 1969: Sergio, condannato perché rifiuta il servizio militare, tenore amatoriale e studente di storia con genitori partigiani, conosce Herbert Kappler e Walter Reder, boia nazisti delle Fosse Ardeatine e Marzabotto, all'ergastolo nell'area Ufficiali. Per una folle legge militare, come accadde davvero a tanti obiettori, il ragazzo diventa una sorta di attendente di Kappler. Tutto separa i due, tranne un'aria di Il Trovatore, che Sergio vuol fare ascoltare al tedesco, innamorato della fidanzata a distanza Anneliese. Gaeta diventa così il posto perfetto per capire il mondo, tra domande di grazia, avvocati pronti a tutto pur di ripulire l'immagine di un boia spietato, guerre di religione tra obiettori, un matrimonio che sa di marketing e le pressioni tedesche sull'Italia. I destini di Sergio e di Kappler si incontrano e scontrano fino all'incredibile fuga del nazista e oltre.

Scritto da chi ha studiato a fondo la vicenda, basato su documenti storici e interviste dell'autore a obiettori che realmente servirono i due nazisti, popolato da persone reali come Enzo Biagi, Willy Brandt e Marco Pannella, L'attendente del diavolo amalgama Storia e finzione e ci riporta a un'Italia
che davanti alle dittature faceva ancora muro. Ma il romanzo non nasconde il “vizio” della Storia, che di generazione in generazione distanzia i fatti più orribili per capirli meglio, sbiadendo però l'indignazione che quegli orrori avevano suscitato.

Red Reckoning: A New History of How the Cold War Transformed American Life, 2023

This chapter focuses on food advertising published between 1946 and 1960 in US newspapers and mag... more This chapter focuses on food advertising published between 1946 and 1960 in US newspapers and magazines.
Theoretically, Susan Murray (2019) has recently examined how colour TV was an ideological technology helping the US to win the cold war by displaying a colourful world in contrast with the grey image of the Soviet Union. Drawing on her, this chapter wants to investigate the role of colours and colourful media representations before the spread of the colour TV, which occurred from the 1960s onward. Moreover, what is examined in this chapter regards food, which was another key-element in the US during the Cold War, with the Western abundance opposed to Soviet Union's scarcity.
Methodologically, the chapter applies visual semiotic analysis to a sample of advertisements which have been selected purposely, according to their relations to the notions of colour and colourful. Visual semiotic analysis finds out how colours, positions, shapes and other visual elements create meaning in relation to social contexts (see O'Neill, Machin and others).
The results show that colours were present in many ads well beyond a realistic representation of food. Leo Burnett's famous campaign This is Life, created in 1945 but also published in the following years, representing read meat on a red background, is only one of the many examples. Honey, hamburgers, fast food restaurants, men end women's clothes and even 'cutified' animals were saturated with colours and contributed to offering an idea of variety and wealth. Finally, co-existence of various objects of various colours in the same image gave an idea of abundance and quantity, to further detach from the grey idea of poverty and scarcity of the Soviet Union.

This book aims to develop a political history of Italian ‘good food’ on national television, and ... more This book aims to develop a political history of Italian ‘good food’ on national television, and the central role of food in Italian culture. The focus is highly original and this is a unique interdisciplinary study at the intersection between food studies, media studies and politics.

The three protagonists of Pasta, Pizza and Propaganda are food, television and politics. These are the three main characters that interrelate, collaborate and fight behind the scenes, while in front of the camera the writers, intellectuals and celebrity chefs talk about, prepare or taste the best Italian dishes.

The book retraces the history of Italian food television from a political point of view: the early shows of the pioneers under strict Catholic control in the 1950s and 1960s, the left-wing political twist of the 1970s, the conservative riflusso or resurgence of the 1980s, the disputed Berlusconian era and the rise of the celebrity chefs, which, for better or for worse, makes Italy similar to the other western countries.

The history of Italy since the mid-1950s is retold through the lenses of food television. This lively book demonstrates that cooking spaghetti in a TV studio is a political act, and tries to uncover how it is possible that, while watching on TV how to make pizza, we become citizens.

From Body Fuel to Universal Poison: Cultural History of Meat, 1900-the present, 2018

This book explores our changing relationship with meat as food. Half storytelling and half histor... more This book explores our changing relationship with meat as food. Half storytelling and half historic work, it analyzes the way in which humans have dealt with the idea of eating animals in the Western world, from 1900 to the present. The story part of the book follows the rise and fall of meat, and illustrates how this type of food has become a problem in a more emotional way. The historical component informs and offers readers key data. The author draws on theories of circular societies, smart cities and smart countries to explain how and why forms of meat production that were common in the past have since all but disappeared. Both components, however, explain why meat has been important and why it has now become a problem. In tracing the fall of meat, the author identifies a host of dilemmas. These include fossil energy, pollution, illnesses caused by eating meat, factory farming, and processed foods. Lastly, the book offers a possible solution. The answer focuses on new forms of meat obtained without killing animals and in a sense resembles renewable energy. Overall, this unique cultural history offers revealing insights into how meat affects social relations, interpersonal relationships, and humanity as a whole.

I testi propongono una lettura critica dei film, fornendo gli strumenti necessari per penetrare n... more I testi propongono una lettura critica dei film, fornendo gli strumenti necessari per penetrare nel mondo espressivo della regista e coglierne i rapporti con la cultura di questo secolo.

Recent Articles by Francesco Buscemi, PhD

The American Journal of Semiotics, 37, 3–4, pp. 329–350., 2021

This article analyses the role of colour in the representation of animals in Nazi propaganda. It ... more This article analyses the role of colour in the representation of animals
in Nazi propaganda. It demonstrates that colour, as applied to animals, was a communicational strategy of paramount relevance in setting boundaries and creating differences between the Nazis and their enemies. Drawing on propaganda studies, colour studies, and representational zoosemiotics, it semiotically investigates visual items published from 1923 to 1945. The results show that Nazi propaganda created an Aryan race of animals via colours. In fact, white animals always supported the regime’s ideologies; dark animals, conversely, very often
symbolised the enemy (the Soviet Union, the Jews, and others). Semiotically, Nazi propaganda represented these animals as symbols, even though the links between signifier and signified were not shared within a community but only within the racist ideology of the Nazis.

Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Philologia., 2022

The Cultural Non-human Animal. Analysing Italo Calvino’s Italian Fairy Tales with Zoosemiotics. T... more The Cultural Non-human Animal. Analysing Italo Calvino’s Italian
Fairy Tales with Zoosemiotics. This article analyses traditional Italian fairy
tales retold by Italo Calvino in 1956 and their relationships to nature and
culture. Zoosemiotics, a branch of both semiotics and animal studies, argues that nature and culture are not separated and in contrast and that, instead, culture is a limited part of nature. This conceptual change envisions different relationships between humans and animals as well as more broadly the end of animal anthropomorphism. Methodologically, the article applies a zoosemiotic analysis to the Italian fairy tales retold by Calvino. The article concludes that some animals in the fairy tales are still anchored to the old view while others move towards the cultural terrain, showing cultural attitudes and inhabiting a cultural area usually reserved for human animals. This shift leads to an inverted semiotic destiny of humans and animals in fairy tales: while animals are traditionally represented as symbols, Calvino’s rewriting turns them into
icons, representing only themselves, marked by a neat individuality and
independence from their species; while humans are, conversely, usually
represented as icons, Calvino’s stories turn them into symbols, such as
ingratitude or jealousy. The article shows the usefulness of zoosemiotics and nature/culture in analysing non human-animals in fairy tales and adds to earlier studies considering non-human animals in Calvino’s fairy tales as an epitome of Anthropocene

Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 28-1, pp. 70-89., 2023

This article focuses on the Italian conscientious objectors imprisoned in the military jail of Ga... more This article focuses on the Italian conscientious objectors imprisoned in the military jail of Gaeta from 1948 to 1972, who shared the prison with the two ex-Nazi officials Herbert Kappler and Walter Reder, responsible for the most pitiless massacres that occurred in Italy during WWII. The study is based on interviews with and diaries and memoirs by conscientious objectors who were in jail for rejecting the military and knew Kappler and Reder. While existing studies on the topic centre on legal and normative aspects of conscientious objection, this analysis concerns the personal experience of the objectors in jail and investigates the relationships between the prisoners and the two war criminals. The interviewees have revealed the many privileges reserved to Kappler and Reder,
adding to what had already been reported by journalistic investigations and political parliamentary interrogations. They have also stated that many of them were pushed to become the orderlies of Kappler and Reder. They carried goods to the apartments of the two ex-Nazis, set the room for Kappler’s wedding and call them ‘Colonel’ and ‘Major, not to worsen their conditions in jail.In conclusion, the article demonstrates that in Gaeta in those years a paradoxical scenario existed: the objectors were deprived of their pacifist identities and inserted into a military structure governed by the military law; the two war criminals, conversely, were allowed to save their Nazi identity by wearing their uniforms, being called ‘Major’ and ‘Colonel’ and continuing to give orders. Symbolically, the official version saying that democratic Italy was constructed on the defeat of Fascism was thus totally upended.

New Techno Humanities, 2022

This article analyses the relationships between text and participant in the mixed-reality film/in... more This article analyses the relationships between text and participant in the mixed-reality film/installation Carne y Arena by the Mexican director Alejandro Inarritu (2017), which I experienced in 2018 at Prada Foundation in Milan, Italy. The film is divided into three sections: the first theatrical, the second based on virtual reality (VR) and the third concerning TV.

Theoretically, the article draws on Boal's spect-actor and on theories analyzing the position of the audience between the opposite poles of passivity and activity; and on conceptualizations of how the digital media have increased participants' activity. Starting from all of this, the article applies rhetorical narratology analysis to the three parts of Inarritu's film to find out what kind of narrative experience the film/installation offers the participant.

The results show that the second part of the installation mostly surprises and excite the participant. In contrast, the materiality of the theatrical part and the informational value of the TV part talk to the participant more completely and concretely. In the end, Boal's spect-actor is more present when the participant deals with old and traditional forms of communication than when they are only apparently immersed in the VR experience. Thus, to bridge its gap, VR needs help from old languages such as theatre and TV. This is the paradox of the virtual mentioned in the title.

Jefferson (NC): McFarland, pp. 224-239., 2021

In Emily Newman (a cura di), The Food Network Recipe: Essays on Cooking, Celebrity and Competition

Études écossaises, 2021

This article aims to analyse the way television has created or recirculated the haggis as the Sco... more This article aims to analyse the way television has created or recirculated the haggis as the Scottish national dish. It draws on cultural studies analyses of food and TV as sources of nation building, Appadurai’s account of the construction of a national cuisine and Belasco’s insight into the way national food cultures are created for political reasons. The article textually, visually and symbolically analyses accounts of the Scottish haggis constructed by celebrity chefs such as Jamie Oliver, the Hairy Bikers and Gordon Ramsay, and by videos on the web.
The results show that the haggis is represented in two ways: on the one hand, it contributes to constructing Scotland as an ancestral nation based on tough nature; on the other hand, the dish is depicted as a tool for measuring the degree of Scottishness of people or as a passport which allows people coming from other countries to feel more Scottish.

Cinema e Storia, 2020

This article analyses two of the Islamic State’s propaganda videos portraying the British journal... more This article analyses two of the Islamic State’s
propaganda videos portraying the British journalist
John Cantlie, kidnapped by the IS in 2012. The videos
promote everyday life in the areas controlled by the IS,
with a language truly resembling that used by the BBC.
Drawing on Bauman’s postmodern propaganda,
on studies by Baudrillard, Uva and others on the
relationships between reality and representation,
and on the concept of remediation, the article
applies multimodal analysis to two of Cantlie’s videos.
By historically contextualising the results, it illustrates
that, like other terror organizations and like the IS in
the past, these videos re-mediate other languages – in
this case that of the BBC, which is particularly
credible for the Western public – in order to legitimise
their propagandistic messages while overlapping
and weakening Western journalistic languag.
Ultimately, however, the IS «simulacrize» a simulacre,
recognising the BBC’s value and the political-economic
model that it implies

Leisure/Loisir, 2019

This article focuses on the Italian chain Motel Agip from 1954, when it was created, to 1973, whe... more This article focuses on the Italian chain Motel Agip from 1954, when it was created, to 1973, when the oil crisis discouraged car tourism. It combines Bourdieu’s idea that leisure and food provide cultural capital and constructivist theories where leisure contributes to modernity and to shaping people’s identities. The article adopts new archival- ist analysis of textual and visual promotional items created or commissioned by ENI and stored in the ENI Historical Archive. Agip motels, in offering relaxation and tranquillity, promised to fight the stress of modern life. At the same time, they perfectly epitomized modernity thanks to their architectural and interior design, in contrast to the subse- quent Italian nostalgic approach to leisure and food, which has fought the problems of modern life with old habits and traditions. Thus, among metallic walls, glass doors and new technologies, Agip motels significantly advanced the idea (unusual in Italy) of fighting modernity with modernity.

History Today, 2019

An invented illness in Nazi-occupied Rome

The Poster, 2017

This article compares Nazi propaganda items to fake news published on Italian social media. Propa... more This article compares Nazi propaganda items to fake news published on Italian social media. Propagandistic fake news in Italy is a hot topic highlighted globally by The New York Times and other international media, as it is widely recognized that this issue is compromising the correct development of political communication. Drawing on propaganda studies, multimodality, Van Leuween’s categories of social semiotic inquiry and Stuart Hall’s analysis of photography, the article analyses propagandistic items published in the Nazi maga-zine Der Sturmer from 1928 to 1942, and memes published on Italian social media and gathered by the website www.bufale.net. The results show that in the Nazi item drawings had the function of inventing reality, while photographs did not lie at the visual level. It was the caption, instead, which invented reality. By contrast, the analysis of the Italian propagandistic items demonstrates that photographs ‘fabricate’ reality, as drawings did in the Nazi case. To quote Stuart Hall, in the past each Nazi photograph did not lie, but showed various potential meanings, while the caption selected one of them to stress it. In the Italian case, photographs lie, as they present a reality that is invented and falsely connected to the topic of the meme. It is the caption, instead, that constructs the propagandistic meaning. In conclusion, the article underlines how propagandistic photographs have changed the relationship between image and caption.

Northern Lights, 2017

This article analyses the representation of the Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on the Instag... more This article analyses the representation of the Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on the Instagram page nomfup, which is managed by Renzi’s spin doctor, Filippo Sensi. nomfup’s photos are frequently published in the Italian media, and thus contribute to the construction of Renzi’s public image. The article draws on Bourdieu’s perspectives on cultural production, on the cultural studies link between media and ideology, and on Barthes’ idea that photography relates to the past. Methodologically, it analyses nomfup’s photos through social semiotics, focusing on images depicting Renzi from the back and in black and white. The results show that first, when Renzi is represented from his back, the viewer sees the world as a Prime Minister does. Second, the images representing Renzi in black and white refer to the 1950s and 1960s, to the old Catholic party Democrazia Cristiana and to an idealized Italy still pre-modern and extraneous to Berlusconi’s excesses and scandals.

Journal of Communication Inquiry, 2018

This article analyzes how Jamie Oliver’s show Jamie’s Great Britain represented Scotland in 2012,... more This article analyzes how Jamie Oliver’s show Jamie’s Great Britain represented Scotland in 2012, when the referendum on Scottish independence had already been announced. It follows Anderson, Bourdieu, Bhabha, cultural studies, and the idea that the nation is a hegemonic construction. Biosemiotics provides useful per- spectives on the representations of Nature and Culture. Semiotic analysis interprets representations of the nation on the show. The results show that, while Oliver identifies English and Welsh food cultural origins with the Industrial Revolution and the Coal Boom, respectively, he finds Scotland’s food origins in the Vikings. Scotland is a land of ancestral habits and people, where Nature is inhospitable. Oliver represents England and Wales through the cultural categories of indices and symbols, while crude iconic representations of Nature are used to depict Scotland. Moreover, the Vikings also originated England and Wales (and Ireland), and in the end, the Vikings are constructed as the common roots of the nation that Oliver celebrates, the United Kingdom. Thus, Scotland is only represented as a part of the state-nation, a kind of ancestral room of the big house of the United Kingdom.

The Poster, 2017

‘In hoc signo vinces!’ is the phrase that the Roman emperor Constantine saw written in the sky ne... more ‘In hoc signo vinces!’ is the phrase that the Roman emperor Constantine saw written in the sky next to a cross in 312 AD: a mystical apparition, shortly before the battle of Milvio Bridge, just outside the city of Rome. The phrase means ‘in this sign you will win’, and it was a good omen, as Constantine defeated Massenzio and put an end to his reign. This phrase has been chosen as the title of this study, which concerns the ‘signs’ that political parties adopted in Italy from 1946 to the present, as these parties have created these signs in order to strike a chord with the citizens and win elections. Apart from the historical account of how these symbols have changed, the aim of this study was to find out to what extent these changes may be read as mirrors of broader shifts, especially in terms of negotiation between the old political language and new, de-ideologized visual languages.

REMEDIA: The history of medicine in dialogue with its present

On January 28, 1932, Mussolini delivered a speech to Medical Doctors at the inauguration of the N... more On January 28, 1932, Mussolini delivered a speech to Medical Doctors at the inauguration of the National Congress of the trade unions of Fascist physicians.[i] The speech was also published in the newspaper Il Popolo d’Italia the following day.[ii] Often overlooked by researchers, the speech adds a relevant contribution to Fascism studies, as it clarifies how the Italian dictatorship conceived of science and the role of scientists.

Comunicazioni Sociali, n. 3, 2016

This article analyses the representation of the social practice of passing on recipes on two popu... more This article analyses the representation of the social practice of passing on recipes on two popular Italian and British web forums, and the power relationships that they produce.
It draws on Foucault’s category of examination; on Rosello’s links between Foucault’s ex- amination and writing recipes; and on Appadurai’s theory that recipes are fundamental in the construction of national culture. Moreover, specific studies on Italian and British food culture highlight similarities and differences between the two countries.
Qualitative textual analysis is applied to the forums La Cucina Italiana and BBC Good Food. They have purposely been chosen in that they represent two ‘food institutions’, and this study wants to focus on mainstream food media in particular. Finally, this analysis addresses the visual structure of the forums.
The results show that the two forums generate different examples of Foucauldian examina- tion. The Italian users (all women, or at least using female names) approach their examination not on the forum, but at home or among friends, before or after writing the posts. The forum is seen either as a place of resistance, in which they ask help from the other users before being examined by relatives, or as a place in which they may show off that they have passed the exam. In Britain, the examination occurs within the forum, and users (men or women hierarchically relating to each other) are both examiners and examined; each user is examined when they post a recipe, and examines the others when comments are made on the recipes of the others.
Keywords
Food culture; Foucault; Internet; recipes; examination.

L'attendente del diavolo: Kappler e l'obiettore, 2024

Red Reckoning: A New History of How the Cold War Transformed American Life, 2023

From Body Fuel to Universal Poison: Cultural History of Meat, 1900-the present, 2018

The American Journal of Semiotics, 37, 3–4, pp. 329–350., 2021

Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Philologia., 2022

Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 28-1, pp. 70-89., 2023

New Techno Humanities, 2022

Jefferson (NC): McFarland, pp. 224-239., 2021

In Emily Newman (a cura di), The Food Network Recipe: Essays on Cooking, Celebrity and Competition

Études écossaises, 2021

Cinema e Storia, 2020

Leisure/Loisir, 2019

History Today, 2019

An invented illness in Nazi-occupied Rome

The Poster, 2017

Northern Lights, 2017

Journal of Communication Inquiry, 2018

The Poster, 2017

REMEDIA: The history of medicine in dialogue with its present

Comunicazioni Sociali, n. 3, 2016

Social Semiotics, 2017

This article focuses on the differences between the official videoclip of a song dedicated to the... more This article focuses on the differences between the official videoclip of a song dedicated to the nation and the remakes uploaded on social media by anonymous users. It argues that social media act as the semiosphere boundary, on which, for Lotman , central dominant texts and peripheral structures meet to generate new meaning. The work draws on Lotman's semiosphere, on nation building, and on the bottom-up construction of reality of social media. Methodologically, semiotic analysis is applied to the images of all the videos. Results show that the peripheral elements theorised by Lotman adapt to and renew the language of the centre. In fact, they adopt the same structure of the official video but expand, revitalise and deconstruct the sedimented versions of Italy that it offers. As in Lotman, the periphery challenges the dominant hierarchy. Finally, all the videos agree on relegating the woman to a secondary role. Social media -Semiotics -Lotman -Semiosphere -YouTube -Nation building -Italy Francesco Buscemi has been teaching media studies since 1994 at the Catholic University of Milan, Bournemouth University, University of Stirling, IULM and La Sapienza in Rome. His research focuses on representations of food and the nation in traditional and new media, and theoretically he draws on semiotics and bio semiotics, Bourdieu, Foucault, and cultural history. In 2013 Francesco was awarded the Santander Grant Fund for the research Edible Lies: How Nazi Propaganda Represented Meat to Demonise the Jews. He has published a book on the Italian film director Liliana Cavani and various articles and book chapters on media and food studies, and is currently a member of the Semiotic Society of America.

European Journal of American Culture, 2015

This article analyses the way in which il caffè sospeso, an old Italian tradition of giving needy... more This article analyses the way in which il caffè sospeso, an old Italian tradition of giving needy people a free coffee, has become ‘suspended coffee’, a current trend in the United States. This study explains the Italian phenomenon through Bourdieu’s ‘classic’ theory linked to food as provider of social distinction, distance from reality and culinary capital. To explain the new American model, this article builds on Bourdieu’s later work on neo-liberalism. This double theoretical approach enables a double methodological approach. The old Italian practice is investigated through Bourdieu’s historical field analysis. The American, neo-liberal model is studied through political economy analysis of websites owned by the companies supporting suspended coffee. The results show that in Italy il caffè sospeso was an opportunity for the donor to gain social distinction thanks to distance from reality, not providing the poor with something more necessary than a coffee. In the United States, private companies have taken hold of this tradition and altered the old relationship between donor and receiver. Giving is no longer spontaneous. Companies advise/force their clients to donate and confer culinary capital to ‘elected’ customers on their websites, with texts aiming to advertise rather than to inform. In conclusion, neo-liberalism exploits old traditions for commercial reasons.

Lexia, 2015

“New meat” is meat obtained either from stem cells or totally synthetically, and promises to dras... more “New meat” is meat obtained either from stem cells or totally synthetically, and promises to drastically reduce pollution and to abolish animal killing, despite raising safety issues. This study analyses how the media have been constructing
“new meat” since , the year of the first test–tube hamburger. Peirce () finds four different ways through which people accept new beliefs; they are based either on past models, or on power and economic interests, or on individual accommodation, or on science. Moreover, new meat is a human artefact that aims to replace a natural product, and therefore it raises foundational issues linked to the relationships between Nature and Culture. While old theories see these two concepts as separate and conflicting, this work builds on newer, bio–semiotic perspectives according to which the two concepts are linked to each other by mutual and ever changing relationships. Articles published in online versions of British and American magazines, newspapers and broadcasters have been purposely sampled and semiotically analysed. The results show that the media represent new meat either as a utopian product able to clean the world of evil (pollution, illness, animal suffering, etc.), or as a dystopian food, similar to GM products and continuing the long list of dangerous techno–foods. The utopian representations adopt Peirce’s power–led fixation of belief; instead, the dystopians rely on Peirce’s a priori method. Thus, Nature and Culture are still considered as two separate entities in conflict with each other. However, further semiotic analysis of the forms and names that scientists and designers are giving to new meat demonstrate that the new perspectives on Nature and Culture as interacting are slowly entering the field. In conclusion, the newer approach to Nature and Culture is more practiced by scientists and designers, while the media lag behind, still anchored to old schemes.

Media, War and Conflict, 2015

This article analyses magazines and books of Nazi propaganda representing meat in order to demoni... more This article analyses magazines and books of Nazi propaganda representing meat in order to demonise the Jews. Nazism adopted controversial policies on meat. On the one hand, it banned vegetarian associations; on the other hand, Hitler and many Nazi officials professed their vegetarianism. Moreover, Nazi Animal Protection Law protected animals from the same tortures that the Nazis inflicted in the concentration camps. The article draws on Bauman’s theory that Nazism may be understood through the opposition purity/impurity, and on Gambrill‘s propaganda studies. Moreover, it is based on Elias’s Civilising Process and on Fullbrook’s ‘uncivilising process’. Finally, it focuses on other studies on Nazism and on ancient myths on animals revived by the Nazis. Qualitative propaganda and semiotic analysis focuses on Jews dealing with producing, selling and eating meat. Magazines and books have been sampled according to maximum variation strategy, and therefore this study focuses on a great variety of propagandistic images and texts. Results show that propaganda targeted the Jewish slaughterers, dealers, butchers and eaters in order to represent them as involved in the uncivilising process. In the end, meat contributed to the representation of the Jew as ‘impure’. Related to this, blood is overrepresented and is often part of a code of violence that depicts the Jew as separate from the rest of the world, as threatening the German civilising process and, again, as impure. Moreover, the symbolic meat eating contributed to the fabrication of the legend of the Jews as human flesh eaters. Finally, propaganda for children conveyed the Nazi criminal message more directly than any other form.

Public Diplomacy Magazine, 2014

This work aims to investigate the gastrodiplomatic objectives of food travelogues on TV, and more... more This work aims to investigate the gastrodiplomatic objectives of food travelogues on TV, and more precisely of the food travelogue Jamieʼs Great Britain, presented by the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver.

Difficult Death, Dying and the Dead in Media and Culture, 2024

This chapter analyses the photographs of mafia homicides taken in the Sicilian city of Palermo by... more This chapter analyses the photographs of mafia homicides taken in the Sicilian city of Palermo by the photojournalist Letizia Battaglia from 1975 to 1982. Battaglia, who died in 2022, is the most popular photojournalist in Italy, to the point that recently RAI, Italian public service TV, broadcast a series about her adventurous life and fight against mafia (Penzavalli 2022). The chapter also links Battaglia’s photos to the general situation of photojournalism in the same period and specifically to the relationships between photojournalism and television. In fact, certainly photojournal
ism suffered from the rise and success of television; however, Battaglia found her way to survive the new medium, as this chapter demonstrates.

Food and Cooking on Early Television in Europe: Impact on Postwar Foodways, 2022

This chapter analyses Mario Soldati's Viaggio lungo la Valle del Po (Journey along the Po Valley... more This chapter analyses Mario Soldati's Viaggio lungo la Valle del Po (Journey along the Po Valley), the first Italian food show broadcast by the public service television Rai in 1957.
Drawing on studies on television and on the construction of food culture, and adopting multimodal analysis, the chapter investigates the relationships between the TV show and Italy's politics and culture in the 1950s.
The results show that the programme was an extraordinary means through which public service television mediated conservative social values and a nostalgic idea of the Italian past. More generally, the chapter highlights the enormous power of food television in negotiating ideologies.

The Rhetorical Construction of Vegetarianism , 2023

This chapter analyses representations of various foods for vegetarians which constantly refer to ... more This chapter analyses representations of various foods for vegetarians which constantly refer to meat and may be found on the supermarkets' shelves in both the US and Europe: meatless burgers, chicken- and turkey-free breasts, salami meat-free sandwiches, and even “Tofurkey Italian Sausage” (see also http://vegetarian.about.com/od/shoppingproducts/tp/Top-Ten-Vegetarian-Meats.htm). All of them do not contain meat but continually refer to parts of the animal and to meat, rhetorically underlying the presence of what is absent: meat.
Drawing on Bourdieu, Adams and Joy point out that consumerist and neoliberal societies construct a system of beliefs based on power that encourages people to eat meat, meant as a cultural product. Related to this, Derrida underlines that there is differance between the signified and the signifying, a sort of hiatus through which we can get rid of logocentrism and presence, and find the contradictions of our system of signification. Finally, Lacan argues that we define ourselves through desiring the Other, even better in his/her absence, as the symbolic can 'give the absence a name'.
The chapter applies visual and discourse analysis to the packaging and the promotional messages of these products, and to the comment on them on the social media, focusing on those parts relating to meat and parts of the animal adopted to promote products which do not contain any animal ingredient.
The results show that for many vegetarians it does not matter the flavour of these products. Rather, they centre on the fact that they resemble meat and can replace it. This means that, for people rejecting meat, they are cultural products, rather than simple items of food. Moreover, the willing to replace meat links to Derrida's theory of the hiatus between signified and signifying. Finally, we can read all of this in a Lacanian way, as in this apparently incomprehensible relationship between vegetarians and meat, we can find the human unconscious desire for the absent Other, in this case the vegetarian unconscious desire for meat, and the ability to give meat its name.

London: Routledge, 2022

In A. Tominc (ed.) Food and Cooking on Early Television: Impact on European Postwar Foodways

Sport, Film and National Culture. Routledge, 2021

This chapter analyses the propagandistic construction of the boxer Primo Carnera as a Fascist her... more This chapter analyses the propagandistic construction of the boxer Primo Carnera as a Fascist hero during the 1930s. It draws on studies on propagandistic nation-building and on the centrality of sport and sports films to political communication, especially in the cases of dictatorships.
Applying social semiotic multimodality, the study textually and visually investigates documentaries and newsreels about Carnera found in the archive of Istituto Luce, the Italian film institute that under Fascism spread Mussolini's propaganda.
The results show that any event of Carnera's life served the Fascist purpose, from fighting in London to training in the US, from being surrounded by the adoring crowd in Italy to attending kids boxing matches in Miami. Textually, the grandiloquent language of the regime extolled Carnera's international fame and devotion to Fascist values; visually, the propaganda highlighted Carnera's strength and italianness. Importantly, when Carnera spoke directly to the camera, he replicated Mussolini's verbal and non-verbal language.
These items were shot before the racial laws, when the regime still hoped to enter the international forum of the western democracies. The boxer, internationally renowned, was thus meant as a sort of passport of Fascism able to improve the uneven relationships of the dictatorship with the other nations.

Proteins, Pathologies and Politics Dietary Innovation and Disease from the Nineteenth Century, London: Bloomsbury, 2018

This chapter focuses on the ways in which three Twentieth-century dictatorships (the Italian Rege... more This chapter focuses on the ways in which three Twentieth-century dictatorships (the Italian Regency of Fiume in 1919-1920, Italian Fascism and German Nazism) constructed eating meat as a moral disease, and abstention from it as a means to achieve sacred purity. This study defines all of this as 'sacred vegetarianism', as opposed to the other vegetarianisms that were already widespread in the Western world but that linked to physical and spiritual health, food security or animal care.
If during the Italian regency of Fiume vegetarians were propagandistically represented as more ascetic, under Fascism intellectuals such as Giacomo Boni and Giuseppe Tucci looked at meat abstention in order to historically and religiously legitimate Mussolini's regime. Finally, the Nazis drew on already existing vegetarian philosophies and cults that linked to purity and primordial naturism, pushed their limits and turned them into racist theories.
In conclusion, sacred vegetarianism transformed a food practice into a food ideology, and was a valid support for the three tyrannies and their criminal plans.

La nuova economia sta spingendo le aziende a operare in maniera circolare, non concentrandosi su ... more La nuova economia sta spingendo le aziende a operare in maniera circolare, non concentrandosi su un solo momento del sistema, ma prendendo in considerazione tutti i vari stadi del processo che porta un bene dalla sua realizzazione al suo smaltimento1. Allargare il campo d’azione significa per queste aziende anche entrare in contatto con settori diversi, misurarsi con nuovi tipi di pubblico e sposare dei nuovi modelli di sviluppo. Nel caso dell’agroalimentare, molte aziende che hanno intrapreso questa strada hanno aperto ristoranti nelle loro sedi, organizzato negozi e mercati di acquisto solidale, approntato siti internet per la vendita in Italia e all’estero, ecc. Nell’intraprendere queste e altre attività, hanno di fatto “sconfinato” in attività turistiche. Il cibo, infatti, sta sempre più diventando un prodotto dell’industria culturale turistica

TERRITORI DEL PEDEMONTE VENETO RACCONTO E PROGETTO, 2017

Il cibo è certamente patrimonio del paesag- gio che lo produce, ma è anche qualcosa in più: na... more Il cibo è certamente patrimonio del paesag- gio che lo produce, ma è anche qualcosa in più: nasce dal territorio, si nutre della terra, e poi finisce dentro di noi, dandoci energia e vita.
E’ questo lo spirito con cui sono andato per un anno alla ricerca di forme di storytelling nella Pedemontana veneta, un territorio che mi sembra valga la pena di analizzare narrativamente.

In Food for Thought: New Critical Perspectives on Veganism and Meat Consumption, Jodey Castricano and Rasmus R. Simonsen eds. , Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

The 1st Biannual Conference on Food and Communication, Centre for Communication, Culture and Media Studies, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, 2018

This paper historically analyses promotional items of communication regarding the restaurants of ... more This paper historically analyses promotional items of communication regarding the restaurants of the Italian chain Motel Agip from 1954 to 1980. These motels were created by the public oil company ENI and by its president Enrico Mattei. Agip motels and restaurants were based on the idea of ‘modernity’, presenting new and stylish forms of design such as steel home-furnishings and aluminum doors, and self-service dishes composed of ‘new’ industrial food. Motels and restaurants were built along important motorways, and aimed to give relaxation to the travelers. They were first projected for lorry drivers but were later adapted to the needs of the ‘new’ massive modern tourism based on the car, which in Italy was promoted by the governments in order to favour the big private car company FIAT.
The research is based on the visual and textual analysis of advertisements, commercials and other promotional materials produced or commissioned by ENI.
The results show that ENI constructed the Agip restaurants as a nest where tourists could escape the stress of modernity. The analysed items continually underlined the stressing character of the modern lifestyle and the necessity for people to escape it. However, the cure to all of this was modernity. Stylish dishes, male professional chefs, new architectures, etc. were the new panaceas put forward by ENI, sometimes in clear contrast to tradition, which was only seen as an unimportant element of the past.
In conclusion, the Motel Agip restaurants represent an unusual perspective in Italian food culture, which frequently see tradition as the sole solution to the problems of modernity. Agip motels and restaurants, instead, were an attempt to present modernity as the only weapon to fight modernity, before the rise of the Slow Food movement’s model, where tradition is the only way to defeat the many problems of modern life.

International Conference on Tourism & Leisure Studies, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Tides Research Center, and EU Turismo de Lanzarote, 2018

The shift from the industrial to the digital way of producing goods has led to the crisis of many... more The shift from the industrial to the digital way of producing goods has led to the crisis of many factories everywhere. However, the digital society has also increased tourism, cultural interests and fragmented lifestyles. The one-year overall project, carried out by five researchers, has analysed how to design a tourist paths for the 'new tourist' (Poon, 1993) in the non-tourist Veneto's region called Pedemontana .
Drawing on theories on the circular society (Lacy and Rutqvist, 2015; Masiero, 2016), and combining interviews, storytelling and political economy, I have focused on how food (producers, shoppers, chefs, restaurateurs and tellers) can become the engine of the network and drive the tourist experience. An old mozzarella plant, for example, makes mozzarella again but is also connected to a restaurant, a B&B, a theatre, a storytelling tour and an old hydro-electric turbine which shows how energy was produced before the centralization. In doing so, these food companies, apart from cheese and meat, in line with the circular society also deliver immaterial goods such as knowledge, trust, respect for nature and wellbeing, and the new tourist may experience a 'different' Veneto, far from the mass-consumed Venice.

References

Lacy, P. and Rutqvist, J. (2015) Waste to Wealth: Creating Advantage in a Circular Economy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Masiero, R. (2016) La Società Circolare: Fordismo, Capitalismo Molecolare, Sharing Economy. Roma: Derive & Approdi.
Poon, A. (1993) Tourism, Technology and Competitive Strategies. Wallingford: Cabi.

This paper compares the multimodal construction of global TV formats in the 1950s-1980s, and tha... more This paper compares the multimodal construction of global TV formats in the 1950s-1980s, and that of the 1990s-2010s.
Theoretically, this work draws on social semiotics, multimodality and political economy (Kress and Van Leeuween, 2001; Kress, 2010). Methodologically, it applies semiotic analysis to four global formats: Wheel of Fortune and The Price Is Right, belonging to the first generation (1950s-1980s), and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and MasterChef, created since the 1990s.
The results show that the first generation's multymodality was somehow bland. The various modes were not much interconnected, and commercial priorities suggested that they were easily changeable and adaptable to the various audiences of the nations where the formats were sold. Semiotically, it may be said that paradigmatic developments (choosing across a range of options the most appropriate element to the specific cultural context) has right of way to the syntagmatic level, that is, the whole narrative structure of the format.
The formats of the second generation are instead based on tight multimodality, and this links to the second aim of this paper, that is to explain the role of the new media. In fact, tight multimodality is the desperate attempt of the format to stay current and compete with the language of the new media and to work as our brain does. Actually, TV cannot reproduce the form of communication of the internet or of smartphones, but interconnecting the modes like our brains much more than in the past helps the new formats not to be disadvantaged in comparison to new media.
Therefore, while in the first generation of format, 'local' writers did the most important job by adapting the original bible to specific national audiences, in the second generation the writer of the original format result much more powerful than the adaptors, and this gives much more power to global producers such as Endemol or Celador (Moran, 2010).
In conclusion, the new media have revolutionised the old way of narrating stories. Since the 1990s, telling stories has meant interconnecting all the narrative ingredients. This has happened with the new media, but the old ones have tried to adapt to the new environment. Thus, if today we want to tell a story in the old or new media, we have to deal with this new rules, and interconnect all the modes as the format of the second generations do. Not only are audiences more used to this kind of narrative, but also tight multimodality, as seen above, increases the sense of suspense and tension, keeping high the attention of the public and thus resulting in a good narrative strategy.
Finally, the fact that big, multinational companies control the format and its meaning-production process implies that prevailing perspectives can hardly be challenged. As already underlined by Bourdieu (2003 and 2005) in relation to the whole society, we may say that also in the case of the TV format, neoliberalism transfers power from national institutions to global concentrations.

This paper focuses on the 'animal origins of meat' (Buscemi, 2014), the parts of meat such as the... more This paper focuses on the 'animal origins of meat' (Buscemi, 2014), the parts of meat such as the head, tail, legs, etc. In the past they were considered scrap, but recently they have come back for two contrasting reasons.
Elias (1939), Goody (1982) and Mennell (1995) argue that since the Renaissance, western people have gradually excluded these parts from their dishes, because they remind the eater that once meat was a living being. Contrastingly, Naccarato and LeBesco (2012) see them as trendy foods that give social distinction.
Ethnographic research in Athens and Rome (two cities hit by the crisis), Bourdieu's analysis of the last food trends in the Western world, and semiotic analysis of food media demonstrate that today the 'animal origins of meat' satisfy two forms of hunger, one biologic, the other social.
On the one hand, because of the economic crisis, heads and legs are sold as cheap foods, for example in Athens, where instead trendy butchers sell meat totally 'clean' from these elements. Thus, when necessity suggests eating these parts, they do not provide any social value, and people must avoid them to acquire distinction. On the other hand, trendy restaurants in 'cool' cities serve 'Pressed Pig's Ear' and 'Lamb Tongues and Green Beans'. Moreover, on many food shows celebrity chefs cook meat-scrap to reinforce human power over animals, national identity, pastness and other dominant ideologies, and on TripAdvisor, enthusiastic customers define eating these parts as exciting as 'eating in an abattoir', increasing masculinity, 'authenticity' and distinctive roughness.

"This paper analyses how Italian food television has represented women in relation to home and pr... more "This paper analyses how Italian food television has represented women in relation to home and professional cooking from the 1950s to the present.
Hollows (2003) and Sanders (2009) find women in the kitchen stereotyped as either housewives or superwomen, but rarely as chefs. Furthermore, Parasecoli (2004) finds that in Italy the (male) chef is not as credited as the housewife cooking for her family. Finally, in Buscemi (2014), I have demonstrated that from the 1950s to the 1990s, Italian food shows represented the woman firstly as a housewife and later as an entrepreneur coping with cooking for her family, but almost never as a chef.
I apply image, semiotic and gender analysis to seven Italian food shows broadcast by the two forms of Italian TV: the so called mainstream TV, formed by the major broadcasters; and thematic channels, achieving much lower ratings.
Results demonstrate that, from the 1950s onwards, 'mainstream TV' has represented female chefs seldom, and mostly to criticise them. Instead, on thematic channels, something has slowly been changing. Many of these broadcasters, in fact, translate British and American shows, also those with female chefs, and therefore this new figure has appeared on Italian TV. In following this imported trend, in current Italian shows Italian female chefs slowly grow in number and are not linked to the housewife anymore. One of them, Laura Ravaioli, even challenges cornerstones of Italian food culture. This is still an emergent element, but it constitutes a potential, wider change in the Italian gender panorama.
"

"This paper analyses the ways in which the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver represents Scotland in rel... more "This paper analyses the ways in which the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver represents Scotland in relation to Britain in his show Jamie's Great Britain, a food travelogue in which Oliver goes around England, Scotland and Wales in search of local food.
In following Anderson, Bourdieu, Bhabha and Johnson, I believe that the nation is a social and hegemonic construction with political aims, and that is formed through a process of inclusion/exclusion. Hegemonic forces negotiate cultural, social, historical and political elements as part of the nation, while other elements are not included. Moreover, I draw on Hall, Morley, Edensor, and their idea that media are requested to construct and reinforce the nation through the representation of its past, tradition and landscape, to give the illusion that the nation is something natural and not socially constructed.
Qualitative image analysis and semiotics help unveil codes and symbols in the programme, while political economy analysis underlines the Englishness of Oliver, his production company and the broadcaster Channel 4.
Outcomes show that, in the travelogue, the English Oliver stereotypes Scotland as a land of ancestral habits and people. In Oliver's Scotland, everything is primordial. First, he visits the oldest restaurant in Glasgow; second, he meets a man who lives alone by the river and smokes herrings as his forefathers in 1700; and finally, he participates in a crude hunt among rifles and dead animals. This while he visits multiethnic food companies and trendy cosmopolitan restaurants in England, and 'Italian ice-cream' shops and industrial buildings in Wales.
Furthermore, Oliver identifies Scotland's origins with the Vikings. Vikings created smoked fish, haggis and the 'Viking super highway' to explore the land and exploit Scottish produce. But Vikings also originated England and Wales (and Ireland), and in the end Vikings are constructed as the common roots of the nation that Oliver wants to celebrate, the UK. Thus, Scotland is only represented as a part of the nation, a kind of ancestral room of the big house of Britain.
"

Everyday television shows construct in depth roles and behaviours by continually reiterating thei... more Everyday television shows construct in depth roles and behaviours by continually reiterating their versions of reality.
This paper analyses the role of the woman in the kitchen on all the three daily Italian food shows broadcast by mainstream television at noon. In Italy, food and women have always been constructed as a whole through the stereotyped housewife, home's queen not interested or involved in external activities. Thus, home cooking has always been associated with women, while professional cooking has always been considered a male activity, not too reliable.
Today this model seems redundant because the boundaries between male and female cooking have been blurring, even in everyday life. Controversial postfeminist readings of Nigella's shows and William's categories of dominant, emergent and residual help understand, in a constructivist sense, how Italian TV deals with this social change. Qualitative, semiotic and gender analyses are applied to the three shows.
Results show that the three programmes mediate the role of the woman by drawing on the model of trattorie, traditional Italian family-run restaurants in which the women cook and the men serve the tables. The three presenters are women but not housewives, cook for their families but continually repeat that they cannot cook, and are celebrities but not professional chefs. Moreover, La Prova del Cuoco also constructs trattoria cooking by housing many women that are trattorie owners; I Menù di Benedetta mirrors the curious and 'nationalistic' approach of the higher classes towards trattorie, by representing the classy Benedetta, passionate about simple food; Cotto e Mangiato, finally, constructs a Slow Food trattoria, in which food must be safe, good and sustainable. This negotiation helps balance gender relations without revolutionary outcomes. In fact, at the same time, it modernises the old model of the housewife and does not move the woman out of the kitchen.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how, in the Western world, the relationship between p... more The purpose of this paper is to investigate how, in the Western world, the relationship between people and meat is changing because of cultured meat. Since the Renaissance, the idea of the living animal is being detached from the action of eating meat. This process occurs through the disappearance from food of the 'animal origins of meat', which are the parts, like the head and legs, that remind us that once meat was an animal. Since the 1500s, they have been disappearing first from meat dishes, second from cooking procedures and finally from food markets (Mennell, 1996), in still ongoing processes.
Goody (1982) finds that humans deal with food in four stages: Production, Distribution, Preparation and Consumption. While Distribution, Preparation and Consumption have been undergoing this detachment process, the stage of Production has not been affected yet. Producing meat still implies direct relationships between humans and the living animal.
Testing on cultured meat will lead to the beginning of the fourth detachment, that from Production. Producing meat won't imply direct contact with animals any more. This means that all Goody’s stages will be involved in the process. Usually considered a shocking novelty, therefore, cultured meat, either obtained from stem cells or totally grown in the laboratory, is instead simply a stage of a historical process.
No one had previously analysed the disappearance of the animal origins of meat relating it to Goody’s stages, and a current issue like cultured meat had never been considered a step of this detachment process.

Italian and British food cultures, as all national cultures, are constructed through processes of... more Italian and British food cultures, as all national cultures, are constructed through processes of inclusion/exclusion of pre-existing elements (Hall, 1992; Johnson, 1993; Edensor, 2002). On the one hand, the Italian food culture was constructed in the nineteenth century, starting from Pellegrino Artusi's cookbook La Scienza in Cucina (Science in the kitchen), whose first edition was self-published and not a best seller. After the unification, Italian politicians realised that after Italy, it was necessary to unify Italians. The book was re-printed by a big publisher with forewords by politicians' wives and popular poets and Italy found its national food culture (Capatti and Montanari, 2003: 27), regional and ignorant of foods from other countries. Moreover, Artusi had not wanted to write a 'national' cookbook, so he had excluded many regions where he had never been (in the following editions, published after Artusi's death, the missing Italian regions were added).
On the other hand, British food culture was constructed when Britain was a powerful nation, during the Industrial Revolution. Many people from other countries went to Britain, while British people moved to big cities losing contacts with their traditional food. Immigrants brought to Britain their food and British food culture was shaped by multiculturalism (Mason, 2004).
A comparative, semiotic analysis of the travelling food shows Ti Ci Porto Io (Italy) and Jamie's Great Britain (Britain) shows that the constructed cultures are still dominant and represented. The chef Gianfranco Vissani neglects the same Italian regions neglected by Artusi, and Jamie Oliver pays homage to the immigrants that shaped the current British food culture, creating an animated logo in which many foreign flags become the British flag. Moreover, when a national culture is built, the nation shapes not only itself, but also its relationships with the others. Italian food culture, constructed without any contact with other countries, may create problems in this sense, especially when extolling 'our food' means also despising others' food. In two identical scenes of the shows, each of the two chefs goes to a Chinese restaurant, in Italy and Britain. Oliver learns to cook Chinese food from a Chinese chef, and in the end serves at table. The Italian chef Vissani, instead, goes to the restaurant with a comedian. They do not learn anything, mock the Chinese chef because he does not understand Italian and, being unable to eat with chopsticks, go away.
It may be just a TV show, detached from reality. But television, politics and culture are continually in a state of flux and always affect each other. In 2011, a famous Italian politician, Luca Zaia, was caught eating at a Chinese restaurant and had to apologise for it. He is an advocate of Italian traditional food and Italian restaurateurs and entrepreneurs considered his Chinese dinner as a threat to the continually celebrated Italian tradition. (http://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2011/01/06/news/
se_anche_il_padano_zaia_va_al_ristorante_cinese-10895983/). Finally, ethnic restaurants have been banned by some Italian historical city centres (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/
2009/nov/16/italy-foreign-food-shops-immigrant?INTCMP=SRCH). However, media, politicians and hegemonic subjects continually re-negotiate national cultures. In the last ten years, ethnic restaurants in Italy have multiplied and also television, in the future, will have to acknowledge it, taking a more balanced position on the long fight between tradition (food nationalism) and transformation (ethnic restaurants).

Jamie’s Great Britain and Mums Know Best are two TV shows that construct, through food, a precise... more Jamie’s Great Britain and Mums Know Best are two TV shows that construct, through food, a precise idea of Britishness. First in terms of space: the hosts, Jamie Oliver and Hairy Bikers, epically cross the whole Britain with lorry and motorbikes underlining the peculiarities of England, Scotland and Wales as parts of a whole. Secondly, in terms of time: following Drummond and Wilbraham, Alcock, and Mason, the programmes find that Industrial Revolution shaped British food culture thanks to immigrants’ foods. Finally, in terms of culture, the programmes acknowledge that in Britain there is currently a food revolution centred on multiculturalism, as underlined by Oliver’s logo.
The figure of the chef is the main character of these programmes (Hansen, Hyman). Masculine hero and socially committed (Hollows), he cooks to improve Britain through food. Masculinity allows him also to handle meat underlining the often forgotten link between the steak and the living animal, a taboo for his female colleagues.
But is this constructed Britishness real? According to Plotkin and Harrison, British food habits have improved at every level; for Blythman and Steel, instead, British food revolution does not have increased British food conscience, and television just creates an imaginary Britain through food.

Until the 1970s, in many European countries, butchers showed hanging dead animals out of their sh... more Until the 1970s, in many European countries, butchers showed hanging dead animals out of their shops, as an invitation. Consumers wanted to see and to touch the flesh, because they were aware of the link between animal and meat.
Today supermarkets hide animals, not showing their heads, tails, or legs on their shelves. Consumers do not want to be aware of the link between an animal and a steak. In small town like Stirling, for example, living rabbits are everywhere, therefore restaurants and supermarkets do not serve or sell rabbit meat, it would bridge the two images. Our mind strives to split the image of a living animal and that of a steak by every means: Masson, food researcher but also psychoanalyst, list all the techniques we use to do so.
This trend is mirrored on TV: every day food TV shows hundreds of dishes, explaining origins, nutritional values, costs and cultural elements of them. But food TV is hiding the animal origin of meat.
Jamie Oliver asks children ‘What is this?’ showing them vegetables but not showing them chicken breasts. In tarts, cakes, pastichos, celebrity chefs are hiding the animal origin of meat. Just Heston Blumenthal challenges the mainstream TV, showing bleeding animals. In Italy also talking of it is dangerous: the gastronomist Bigazzi was fired by public television because said that during the WWII he and his family ate cats, a truth known but inconvenient to be heard.
We are changing our relation to nature and animals.

This thesis makes a new contribution in the field of media studies in the area of food TV, and se... more This thesis makes a new contribution in the field of media studies in the area of food TV, and secondarily, in the field of food studies in the area of culinary capital. By analysing two national TV food travelogues, Ti Ci Porto Io and Jamie's Great Britain, the thesis theorises the existence of a particular form of culinary capital based on national ideologies and beliefs, and terms it as 'national culinary capital'. The study investigates how Italian and British culinary capital creates distinction in relation to class, gender and ethnicity.
Under a qualitative, constructivist paradigm, I draw on Bourdieu's concept of capital in general and cultural capital specifically, and in Naccarato and LeBesco's theorisation of culinary capital. Moreover, cultural studies views of national culture and television, and theories on nation-building contribute to the theoretical framework. Methodologically, by applying political economy and Bourdieu's field analysis to Italian and British TV and food TV, and to the broadcasters and production companies of the shows, the study uncovers dominant agents of these fields and ideologies underling the two shows. Moreover, moving image and semiotic analysis of the travelogues clarify how they represent national culinary capital. An interview with the Italian producer, and a failed interview with the British one shed further light on the national ideologies and beliefs underling the programmes.
The results show that Ti Ci Porto Io constructs sacred culinary capital, which is linked to dominant ideologies in the Italian fields, such as Catholicism, Slow Food, and Berlusconi's neoliberalism. Jamie's Great Britain, instead, constructs two forms of national culinary capital: the cosmopolitan, in which the neocolonialist British middle class welcome the Other in order to appropriate them; and rough culinary capital, stemming from British landscape ideology. In both cases, women are excluded from the role of cook and may only participate in these forms of culinary capital as consumers, thus in a less powerful position.

Carlo Petrini, fondatore di Slow Food, e Oscar Farinetti, fondatore di Eataly, hanno recentemente... more Carlo Petrini, fondatore di Slow Food, e Oscar Farinetti, fondatore di Eataly, hanno recentemente chiesto che le etichette del cibo in vendita nei supermercati in Italia riportino anche i paesi da cui gli ingredienti sono stati importati. Questo in reazione alle polemiche scoppiate quando si è scoperto che Eataly, supermercato di buon cibo 'made in Italy', vende 'pasta italiana' fatta con grano importato dal Canada e da altri paesi.

More at: http://francescobuscemi.blogspot.it/2016/09/viva-il-cibo-made-in-italy.html

Behind Food is a blog discussing social, cultural, historical and political elements hidden behin... more Behind Food is a blog discussing social, cultural, historical and political elements hidden behind what we eat. I will write the posts of more general interest in English, and only those regarding Italian affairswill be written in Italian.

More at:
http://francescobuscemi.blogspot.it/2016/09/what-is-this-blog.html

A couple of days ago, while reading the menu of an Italian restaurant, I bumped into the word fra... more A couple of days ago, while reading the menu of an Italian restaurant, I bumped into the word fracosta, which I'd never heard before. Fracosta was on the page of meat dishes, and I supposed that it was the part between the ribs, as fra in Italian means between, and costa means rib. Actually, things are not that simple.

More at:
http://francescobuscemi.blogspot.it/2016/09/the-mystery-of-fracosta.html

Recently, at a local-organic-fair food market my attention was drawn by a little jar of sauce con... more Recently, at a local-organic-fair food market my attention was drawn by a little jar of sauce containing sardines. The man selling it was also the producer, and told me that those jars came from Campania, the Italian region where this product is “almost a religion”. When I asked how much, without any shame he answered '15 Euros' (about £12 and $16). When I instinctively asked why 15 euros, he answered: 'Because this is identity'. “This is pasta sauce!”, I objected, but it was too late.

More at:
http://francescobuscemi.blogspot.it/2016/09/how-much-is-kilo-of-identity.html

Il caffè sospeso was an Italian philanthropic practice which was really popular in the first part... more Il caffè sospeso was an Italian philanthropic practice which was really popular in the first part of the twentieth century, especially in Naples. The practice was really simple and consisted of buying one-more coffee than the coffees people actually needed. A lone person used to ask for two coffees, a couple for three, etc., telling the barista that one coffee was sospeso, suspended. The suspended coffee was momentarily not served, but saved for a poor person who would enter the bar soon. Obviously, il caffè sospeso was really popular with the Neapolitan homeless people, who used to enter the bars asking if, by chance, there was a caffè sospeso.

More at:
http://francescobuscemi.blogspot.it/2016/09/hands-off-suspended-coffee.html

I nuovi tipi di carne e l'indecisione dei media sul rapporto tra Natura e Cultura :"New m... more I nuovi tipi di carne e l'indecisione dei media sul rapporto tra Natura e Cultura :"New meat" is meat obtained either from stem cells or totally synthetically, and promises to drastically reduce pollution and to abolish animal killing, despite raising safety issues. This study analyses how the media have been constructing "new meat" since , the year of the first test-tube hamburger. Peirce () finds four different ways through which people accept new beliefs; they are based either on past models, or on power and economic interests, or on individual accommodation, or on science. Moreover, new meat is a human artefact that aims to replace a natural product, and therefore it raises foundational issues linked to the relationships between Nature and Culture. While old theories see these two concepts as separate and conflicting, this work builds on newer, bio-semiotic perspectives according to which the two concepts are linked to each other by mutual and ever changing relationships. Articles published in online versions of British and American magazines, newspapers and broadcasters have been purposely sampled and semiotically analysed. The results show that the media represent new meat either as a utopian product able to clean the world of evil (pollution, illness, animal suffering, etc.), or as a dystopian food, similar to GM products and continuing the long list of dangerous techno-foods. The utopian representations adopt Peirce's power-led fixation of belief; instead, the dystopians rely on Peirce's a priori method. Thus, Nature and Culture are still considered as two separate entities in conflict with each other. However, further semiotic analysis of the forms and names that scientists and designers are giving to new meat demonstrate that the new perspectives on Nature and Culture as interacting are slowly entering the field. In conclusion, the newer approach to Nature and Culture is more practiced by scientists and designers, while the media lag behind, still anchored to old schemes.

European Journal of Communication, 2014

Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress, 2018

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Food and Cooking on Early Television in Europe, 2022

This chapter analyses Mario Soldati's Viaggio lungo la Valle del Po (Journey along the Po... more This chapter analyses Mario Soldati's Viaggio lungo la Valle del Po (Journey along the Po Valley), the first Italian food show broadcast by the public service television Rai in 1957. Drawing on studies on television and on the construction of food culture, and adopting multimodal analysis, the chapter investigates the relationships between the TV show and Italy's politics and culture in the 1950s. The results show that the programme was an extraordinary means through which public service television mediated conservative social values and a nostalgic idea of the Italian past. More generally, the chapter highlights the enormous power of food television in negotiating ideologies.

British Food Journal, 2014

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how in Britain, France and Italy the idea o... more Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how in Britain, France and Italy the idea of the living animal is being detached from the action of eating meat. It is an ongoing historical process, which has recently been fuelled by the new issue of cultured meat. Design/methodology/approach – Starting from Goody's developmentalist stages (Production, Distribution, Preparation and Consumption), first this work analyses historically how these stages have undergone the process of the disappearance of the animal origins of meat (animal origins of meat are parts like the head and legs that remind us that once meat was an animal). Second, this paper applies cultured meat to Goody's stage of Production, linking the new product to the historical, above described, process. Findings – The analysis shows that, in the past, Goody's stages of Consumption, Distribution and Preparation witnessed the disappearance of the animal origins of meat, while Production was not affected b...

This interdisciplinary thesis breaks new ground in the fields of food and media studies, in the s... more This interdisciplinary thesis breaks new ground in the fields of food and media studies, in the specific areas of culinary capital and food TV. On food studies, this thesis theorises that the state plays the role of meta-tastemaker, legitimising some foods as a source of social distinction in order to support national ideologies and beliefs. The social prestige that citizens accumulate thanks to these foods is what this thesis defines as national culinary capital. On media studies, this thesis analyses how national culinary capital is represented on television, and how the media and the nation negotiate it. Only by merging the two disciplines has this thesis been able to catch the sense of the complex power relationships between the nation and the media. Through the analysis of two national TV food travelogues, the Italian Ti Ci Porto Io and the British Jamie's Great Britain, this work draws on Bourdieu's concepts of statist and cultural capital, and on Naccarato and LeBesco...

Food and Cooking on Early Television in Europe, 2022

European Journal of American Culture, 2015

This article analyses the way in which il caffè sospeso, an old Italian tradition giving needy pe... more This article analyses the way in which il caffè sospeso, an old Italian tradition giving needy people a free coffee, has become 'suspended coffee', a current trend in the United States. Theoretically, firstly, this study explains the Italian phenomenon through Bourdieu's 'classic' theory linked to food as provider of social distinction, distance from reality and culinary capital; secondly, to explain the new American model, this article builds on Bourdieu's later work on neoliberalism. This double theoretical approach enables a double methodological approach. The old Italian practice is investigated through Bourdieu's historical field analysis; instead, the American, neoliberal model is studied through political economy analysis of websites owned by the companies supporting suspended coffee. The results show that in Italy il caffè sospeso was an opportunity for the donor to gain social distinction thanks to distance from reality, not providing the poor with something more necessary than a coffee. In the United States, private companies have taken hold of this old tradition and alter the old relationship between donor and receiver. Giving is not spontaneous anymore. Companies advise/force the clients to donate and confer culinary capital to 'elected' customers on their websites, with texts aiming to advertise rather than to inform. In conclusion, neoliberalism exploits old traditions for commercial reasons.