Alan Bliss, English in the south of Ireland

‘His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his language.’

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist

The topic of language has been fermenting in my brain over the last few days. On Friday night an Italian friend quizzed me following some of my Guinness-laced musings about the differences between the English spoken in Ireland and ‘UK Standard English’. Some clumsy attempts to explain the influence of the Irish language on so-called Hiberno-English followed, but none of my efforts could get to the core of the matter in the manner of Joyce’s quote above.

After reading up on the idiosyncrasies of the English spoken in Ireland (in particular the grammar, syntax and idioms), it became clear that none of the linguists writing had noted that intangible feeling of speaking a language which seems to be guided by an invisible hand. Although this claim could be perceived as travelling dangerously close to folksy Celtic mysticism in some quarters, it is a feeling that I experience on an almost day basis.

On countless occasions over the last three years I have found myself struggling to get to the point as English friends or colleagues wait patiently for my breathless sentence to reach its anti-climatic end. It feels as if the concepts I wish to express have made numerous wrong turns on their way to my mouth; as if I am struggling to master what is, on paper, my first language, but ultimately not my native tongue.

It was apparent to me at an early age that the English I spoke was a variant of the standard international language now being heralded as the 21st century lingua franca. Growing up watching English television and later through contact with English speakers from other countries, especially when working as a language teacher, the marked difference between how we spoke came into stark relief and went far beyond our various regional accents.

The quote from Bliss above suggests that my circumlocutory style of speech is the direct result of Irish’s invisible influence. I didn’t grow up in an Irish-speaking area and was never able to attend one of the numerous Irish colleges which ran in different parts of Ireland each summer. If I’m being honest Irish was top of the list of my most hated subjects as a 15-year-old and I made no real effort in trying to learn the language. Therefore my knowledge of Irish grammar at a conscious level has always been practically zero.

But it has always felt as if there is another algorithm at work when I speak in English. Although it largely disappeared over 150 years ago in the area where I grew up, and despite our previous hostilities during the mid-90s (with a rapprochement over the last few years) it’s becoming increasingly clear that the Irish language has had and will continue to have an indelible effect on the way I think and express myself in English.

This is an interview I conducted with Guy Picciotto of Fugazi, Rites of Spring and One Last Wish fame back in 2006. I was working in the Italian town of Pescasseroli in Abruzzo at the time and Italy had just won the World Cup. Fugazi had been on hiatus for four years at that point and unfortunately over five years after this interview took place it looks as if they may never reform. My friends Anthony and Eugene kindly published this interview in the 10th anniversary issue of their legendary fanzine Loserdom so many thanks to them as always for allowing me to publish various interviews and musings over the years. Below is a video of Fugazi playing at the Friary Hall in Kilkenny back in 1999 – a show  organised by my good friend Gareth Sweeney. The video – which uses an audio feed from the desk – was thought to have been lost, but thankfully it recently resurfaced and made its way to YouTube.

1. It’s been four years since the last Fugazi concert and  each member of the band seems to have worked or be  working on other musical projects: Ian Mackaye is playing in the  Evens, Brendan Canty has been touring with Bob Mould and Joe Lally is playing solo concerts. You played a concert with the group International Silence in 2003 and I read somewhere a few years back that you had been working on music with Eddie Janney. What musical projects are you working on at the moment?

Even though Fugazi itself hasn’t played a show or recorded anything new in a dog’s age, the business of keeping Fugazi’s affairs together remains. It’s kind of like tending to a monument – the landscaping needs to be kept up and the plaques shiny – so, since we are self-managed, that work continues for all of us.
Lately, we’ve worked on remastering most of our old records and we’ve also added 10 more shows to our live archive project (at www.fugaziliveseries.com).

Beyond that, I have been doing alot of production work for various bands. The latest project was a record for the Blood Brothers which I co-produced with John Goodmanson out in Seattle over the last 2 months. It comes out in October I think, and it’s a fucking killer bunch of songs.

I have also been doing some music writing on my own. I did perform a few new songs in Belgium at a film/music festival curated by my friend Jem Cohen late last year – that was the first time I’d sung into a microphone live since Fugazi last played in 2002. It felt good so I want to try and get my shit together and do it some more.

Like you mentioned, I have also played some improvisational shows as a member of International Silence over the last couple of years, ( International Silence is a rotating cooperative of improvisational musicians put together by Mats Gustaffson). For the last 3 years I have also been writing with Eddie Janney, my old bandmate from Rites of Spring, and we’ve amassed tons of material but I’m not sure what will happen with it. It’s not a conventionally ambitious situation but it’s really interesting music and maybe it will coalesce into something more public at some point. But for now, I’m from the Orson Welles school of “no wine before its time”.

2. You have directed two short Super 8 films and I read you had plans to make a third short film on 16mm. Did you ever get around to making it?

Nope. I did work a bit in some capacity on the last Jem Cohen movie “Chain” – I’m listed as one of the producers but really I was more like a sounding board for Jem during the conception, filming and editing. I love film and I hope to do more of it but the Super 8′s I made were strictly goofs – an opportunity to fuck around with friends and try to learn about the process.

3. Are these films available anywhere on the internet?

Not that I know of. Honestly, they aren’t any great shakes. I do however encourage people to see “Chain”. It should be out on DVD soon and it’s really worth checking out. It’s kind of a portrait of the global landscape as it reaches a crisis level of homogeneity as filtered through the experience of 2 women, a homeless American and a Japanese businesswoman working for a theme park corporation.

4. Parts of Fugazi’s recording session with Steve Albini have recently surfaced unmixed on the internet, will those recordings ever be remixed and officially released by the band?

I don’t know. It’s possible that someday they will though it’s been a long time since I heard them and I’m not sure what context we could put them out under. Its kind of a drag that they got leaked onto the internet – if only because I think of them as being incomplete and not a fair representation of what they could be. I mean I’m not huffing and puffing with rage over the leak – but still, I don’t like sneakiness. For the record: We had a blast working with Steve and he remains one of the smartest and funniest people I’ve ever met in my life as well as a masterful recording technician. That session was the beginning point of a longer acquaintance and its been great getting to know the guy, play dice with him and play shows with his band.

The session we did was an experiment for us to try recording outside of our Inner Ear Studio homebase in DC and the original intention was just to go up and fuck around with the latest bunch of songs we were working on. We weren’t in the mind-set of “we’re making an album” it was more like ” let’s go see what happens”- we ended up having a great time but we didn’t really play all that well (or rather sing that well to be specific) so we decided to re-track it once we had the songs down better – and that became IN ON THE KILLTAKER.

5. With Fugazi you played concerts all over the world and got to see many cities and countries, have you ever thought about moving away from Washington DC to  one of the countries or cities you have visited? If so which ones and why?

I’ve definitely thought of living in other places besides DC and being someplace outside the USA, particularly of late when the political environment is so soul-crushingly depressing. I do love DC and having been born and raised here I can see never leaving but I definitely wouldn’t be weeping hot tears if I was told I had to move to either Brazil or Italy. Both countries have amazing spirit, amazing food, amazing people, amazing culture and I’ve felt really at home in both.

I also love Paris and I speak decent French so that would be another one I could definitely handle. Can’t say much bad about Melbourne, Australia either. Or Sydney for that matter. Gotta love Edinburgh, Scotland too. Basically, I think I would be easy to please in the geography department.

6. You have worked with various bands as a producer, what are your criteria for working with a band?

I don’t really consider myself a professional producer, but I also never have considered myself a professional musician. It’s just something I fell into out of my love of music and through relationships made through music. I first started recording other bands out of my old group house which was called Pirate House. Fugazi had set up a small 8 track analog studio in the basement so I just started recording my friends there and taught myself the ultra-low level basics of engineering. I did records for the Make Up, Metamatics, Crainium, Blonde Redhead, Slant 6 and others there. It was really low key and the focus was on doing things cheap and fast, before the neighbors could get too irritated. I was also learning some of the ropes just by working on the Fugazi records with the rest of the band.

Over time other bands asked me to do things in other studios in other parts of the country and when I had some time apart from Fugazi stuff I tried to do it. Mostly, I worked with friends like Blonde Redhead or Casual Dots -people I’ve known for a long time but I’ve also more recently done stuff with bands where I didn’t initially know them that well personally but was more just a fan of what they were doing like the Gossip or the Blood Brothers. At minimum, though, I like to have seen a band live and met them – just so I can get the sense of whether or not it will work. I don’t have that much time to devote to production stuff so when I do it, I really try to make sure its a good fit and that both the band and I will have a good experience working together.

7. In an interview a member of Blonde Redhead said that when you are producing their records you become in their opinion a non-playing member of the band. Is that a fair assessment of how you work with all bands that you produce or just specifically Blonde Redhead?

Production for me is really kind of a promiscuous activity – its total bed hopping -  getting to intensely collaborate with all these different groups for short periods of time – insinuating yourself deeply into the decision making process then moving on once the record is done. You get alot of creative bang without all the dirty hard practical work that goes into keeping a band functioning over the long haul.

And for me, being in the studio with another group is alot like being a non-playing member of the band – I do get very invested in what goes on. Alot of that comes from the fact that I like the music I work on. I come in as a fan of the bands I work with so it’s not just a technical task for me – I really want the record to be as good as it fucking should be cos the band is already fucking great in my mind. It can be a bruising experience because, as anyone in a band will tell you, its not easy to make good records, to take what’s in your head and translate it whole to tape (or hard drive or whatever).

When a band is actually satisfied with the finished product, it’s a great feeling because with every record you are trying to marshal a ton of crazy ass variables and have them line up into something killer which is really nuts.
A good session usually happens if the band feels comfortable enough to let cool stuff happen, to get over the self-consciousness and the anxiety that can come with the process and just let spontaneous cool shit go down. I’ve been really lucky to work with some great engineers and co-producers because, straight up, my technical knowledge lags light years behind theirs = people like Don Zientara, John Goodmanson, and Ryan Hadlock.

8. While Fugazi have released many records and toured extensively Rites of Spring was a short lived band that released just one LP and an EP but is regularly listed or referenced as one of the most influential alternative groups of the last twenty years. Are you ever surprised by the enduring influence of the bands work?

I am pretty stunned considering I think we only played 14 shows and only 2 of those were outside DC. I often wish that Rites of Spring had gotten our shit together and actually toured a bit but it’s kind of a pipe dream considering how volatile the band was. It made for a great energy within the band and on stage but we didn’t have anything close to resembling the kind of discipline it would have taken for us to actually play a series of shows back to back. For one thing, every single show resulted in destroyed equipment so we were always scrambling to get some gear together for our next show.

Also, we were very young and at that age (17-19) your mental landscape is changing every minute – it’s hard to stick to one vision and be satisfied. Just a couple of years later the exact same line-up was re-united as Happy Go Licky and the sound was totally different. We were just pushing all the time so it was hard for us to stay situated in one spot. I do like the first album alot just because we did it in 2 days and it sounds feral, like a time capsule of being young and jacked up out of our minds. And I loved being in a band with all four of those guys. At the time I was pretty wrecked when we couldn’t keep it together. That people still listen to those songs honestly suprises me in a good way and makes me very happy.

9. Musically the Rites of Spring LP is different from any other record made in 1984. It seems deeply personal, innovative and completely uncontrived, for me it’s the musical equivalent of Vigo’s l’Atalante! What music, films and bands influenced that record?

L’Atalante !!! You are completely insane. Let me think – we were really into all kinds of shit. At the time it was like The Saints, The Adverts, Rudimentary Peni, Venom, Blitz, the Zombies, Discharge, the Buzzcocks, Wire, the Wipers ( who Brendan met on the West Coast visiting his sister), the Birthday Party, Black Flag, Bad Brains, Void, the Faith… alot of stuff. The Stravinsky connection was intentional too – we wanted to bust up the genres like that.

But the main thing about the band was our hang – we hung out all the time driving around town in my Chevette Scooter, practicing in our parent’s houses, working the same jobs. We were really close friends so it was almost like we could give a shit if anyone else thought what we were doing was cool or not. We just wanted it to be fresh to us.

10. Finally, I think everyone has a guilty pleasure, e.g. a television show or a band which they know they shouldn’t like, mine is watching football (the English kind), what is yours if any?

I save my guilt for the truly terrible things I’ve done in my life so I take my pleasures freely where I can. I feel no shame for watching the Wizards (DC’s basketball team) religiously. The World Cup was pretty good too this year. I never liked sports when I was younger but now I love them – I hate contingency and time so sports is a deeply masochistic pleasure.

Fugazi – Live in the Friary Hall, Kilkenny, 7 May 1999

The success of the Lega Nord was the real surprise of the Italian elections winning 8.3% of the national vote to become the country’s third biggest party. The Lega Nord per l’Indipendenza della Padania is a relatively young political party – it was founded in 1989. Its raison d’être is to secure fiscal independence from Rome and ultimately the secession of the northern regions of Italy from the rest of the country.

The Lega’s unprecedented electoral success can be largely attributed to its anti-immigrant stance. Up until twenty years ago Italy was a country whose contemporary history was punctuated by emigration rather than immigration. However, today Italy has an ever increasing immigrant population of approximately 4.9 million.

The Italian media cultivates a culture of fear and the majority of crimes reported are those carried out by or attributed to members of the growing immigrant community. Two years ago it was Albanians who were the primary targets of media scapegoating but since the signing of the Schengen accords they have scaled the immigration ladder with attention firmly focused on the rapidly growing Romanian community.

The Lega’s election campaign was characterized by base anti-immigrant rhetoric, e.g. one poster depicted a Native American chief with the slogan: ‘He let immigrants in, and now he lives on a reserve.’ While the Lega has long claimed that it isn’t a racist party its leader, Umberto Bossi, has called Africans ‘Bingo-bongos’ and suggested firing on boats carrying illegal immigrants to Italy while a Lega councillor called for separate train carriages for foreigners.

Rolling headlines leading up to the election such as ‘ROME: SECURITY ALERT’, only helped to increase the level of tension in a country that is suffering not only its worst economic crisis in fifty years but also a general malaise at the state it’s in. And while there have been a number of high profile rape cases perpetrated by Romanian nationals in the last year, according to the Istituto Nazionale di Statistica, 69.7% of rape cases in Italy are carried out by the victim’s partner while 17.4% of rapists are someone the victim already knew. But the Italian media primarily seems concerned with the foreign nationals who form part of the 6.2% of rapists who didn’t know their victim.

The Lega’s tactics worked a treat as the election results testify. Ironically Italy has the second lowest birth rate in the Western World (1.23 children per woman) and if this trend continues the steadily growing influx of foreign workers (primarily Romanians and Albanians) will become the backbone not only of the Italian economy but of the Italian community. Already migrant workers provide cheap manual labour especially in the building industry and as home care workers providing support to the elderly. Often illegal and exploited, migrant workers provide the work force for many of the small businesses which make the Lega Nord’s strongholds of Veneto and Lombardia so wealthy.

Following the elections I was really pissed off. It’s difficult for me to understand how the Lega is an acceptable part of political life for many Italians. Although I have an EU passport and can’t claim to understand what it’s like to be what is referred to here as extracomunitaro- this is the name that Italians give to anyone from outside the EU, well anyone who is not white, rich and English-speaking like the Americans, Australians etc. – but as a foreigner living in Italy the victory of the Lega and its potential bargaining power in the new Italian government was weighing heavily on my soul. So I did what any normal citizen would do and searched out some solace in the chewing gum for the brain that is Facebook.

Having previously vented my spleen about having to write the ‘What are doing right now’ bit in Facebook in the third person, I decided to put this function to good use by adding ‘Pat wishes that the Lega Nord would go and fuck themselves’ before logging out. A succinct and to the point summation of my feelings at the time.

Coming back from a lunch spent failing miserably trying to cheer up my Italian workmates who were all deeply depressed following Berlusconi’s election victory, the numb anger that has sporadically filled my veins since I was a child whenever I feel accosted by injustice began pumping through me. Again I succumbed to drowning my sorrows in the leech on life otherwise known as Facebook.

To my surprise, when I logged there were adverts at the bottom of the page for the Lega Nord‘s Facebook group. Curiosity got the better of me and after resisting the temptation to join the group and tell them to andare a quel paese, I decided to have a look around. Unsurprisingly the group was littered with goodwill messages and the occasional racist remark from the Lega’s Web 2.0 population. A large number of these young Padanians (hardcore Lega supporters don’t see themselves as Italian but as padani) had left their beloved homeland to search their fortune elsewhere. Sadly studying and living overseas didn’t seem to have helped open their minds to the fact that the history of mankind has always been based on patterns of migration.

From the Lega Nord’s Facebook group I followed a link to the official website of the giovani padani or young padanians. The first thing that struck me as odd was the picture of Mel Gibson in Braveheart in the top corner. What the hell does William Wallace have to do with northern Italy I thought to myself? I tried a logical appraoch:  I remembered that the Lega claims that northern Italians are not a Latin but a Celtic people, with Senator Roberto Calderoli even getting married in a pagan ceremony. But what really struck me was finding that the giovani padani have taken two of my fellow Irishmen to their bosom: Michael Collins and Bobby Sands.

No matter what anyone’s view of these two figures may be historically or politically, what the hell had they got to do with the Northern League, I asked myself. An attempt to create links between two so-called ‘Celtic’ peoples? Nostalgia for that trip they made to Ireland with school when they were fifteen? A soft spot for a pint of the black stuff?

My brain was bombarding me with too many ideas at once creating a cerebral experience akin to the Star Gate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Gathering my thoughts I decided that I couldn’t give a fuck if the Lega wanted to hijack the complete annals of Irish history for their own aims, they wouldn’t be the first party to try and do so. They could even try and claim Irish passports for all I cared. Only one thing was clear. Everything that the Northern League stood for was anathema to me.

Silvio Berlusconi is ranked twenty-fifth on the Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest people. His economic empire is based primarily on the media industry. The Berlusconi controlled Finnivest group has a forty-eight percent share in the television group Mediaset which controls three terrestrial stations that enjoy forty-five percent of viewing figures in Italy.

Finnivest also enjoys a forty-eight percent share in the Mondadori publishing group. Mondadori accounts for thirty-one percent of the Italian publication industry and forty-five of magazine publications while Finnivest’s marketing group, Publitalia, accounts for sixty percent of all advertising in Italy. In addition, the Berlusconi family own the daily newspapers Il Giornale, which has a readership of 230,000, and Il Foglio, which has 10,000 readers daily. Moreover, through shares in Mondadori, Finnivest controls the most popular Italian weekly magazine Panorama.

Berlusconi is also the prime minister of Italy. Consequently, he has indirect influence over RAI, the state run broadcaster. While large sections of the national news media are controlled by media corporations in Europe such as Bertelsmann and Kirch in Germany and Rupert Murdoch’s media empire in Britain “Berlusconi’s combination of media power and political power is unique in Europe.” Consequently, the conflict of interests between Berlusconi’s political and business interests has been widely criticised and is perceived as a threat to the pluralism of Italian journalism.

Italy is ranked in fifty-third place out of 139 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ report on press freedom worldwide. This is as a direct result of Berlusconi’s conflict political and media interests. In addition, the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly ‘Report on the freedom of expression in Europe’, 14 January 2003, stated that “the potential conflict of interest between holding of political office by Mr Berlusconiand his private economic and media interests is a threat to media pluralism.” However, both groups acknowledge that the print media in Italy offers a wide range of views which reflect the broad spectrum of political opinions in Italy.

The party press in Italy, i.e. the newspapers of political parties, are a distinctive feature of the Italian press, e.g. the Neo-Fascist paper Il Secolo d’Italia, the communist paper il Manifesto, and l’Unità financed by the Democratici di sinistra. While the importance of the party press in Italy has decreased significantly in the post ‘Velvet Revolution’ world its continued existence ensures a broad range of political opinions are represented in the Italian press. However, the influence of the party press is limited primarily to the adherents of the specific political viewpoints each paper represents. Conversely, it is the commercial press in Italy which has the greatest impact on influencing broader political opinion in Italy

The primary commercial newspapers in Italy are Il Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica. Il Corriere della Sera has a daily circulation of 700,000 making it Italy’s most popular daily newspaper. It is owned by the Rizzoli Corriere della Sera group and is regarded as a centrist newspaper. Notably, the newspaper was critical of the Berlusconi government in the lead up to the Iraq war and with regard to Berlusconi’s conflict of media and political interests. La Repubblicais owned by Carlo de Bendetti and is Italy’s second largest daily newspaper with a circulation of 650,000 copies. Analogous to the de Bendetti group’s weekly magazine L’Espresso, La Repubblica is a centre-left publication. Thus, it is clear that the Italian press offers a broad range of political viewpoints.

However, Silvio Berlusconi’s influence on the Italian press has increased in recent times. Finnivest’s thirty-one percent share in the Mondadori group was utilised for political purposes prior to the Italian general election of 2001. Each household in Italy received a copy of a book Una Storia Italiana, a piece of political propaganda promoting Berlusconi and Forza Italia. In addition, Indro Montanelli, founding editor of the Berlusconi owned daily Il Giornale, was fired in 1994 for his refusal to endorse Forza Italia. Lumley notes that “through newspapers generations of entrepreneurs have sought to exercise their influence” and that “the majority of influential newspapers [in Italy] were, and are, controlled by companies, not by parties or government.” However, while Berlusconi is an entrepreneur he is concurrently the head of a political party and of government.

The adoption of the Berlusconi government’s draft law on telecommunications, i.e. the so-called ‘Gasparri’ law, by the Italian Senate on 29 April 2004 represents a significant threat to the pluralism of the Italian print media. Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi refused to sign the bill in 2003 considering it a potential threat to media pluralism. The law allows for media companies to have shares in more than one news media group. Theoretically, print media groups, which were previously banned from owning television networks, can from January 2009 onwards but into the television industry. However, the financial reality is that only Finnivest-Mediaset is currently in a position to take advantage of this law, thus potentially increasing Berlusconi’s control of the Italian print media.

As previously noted according to Reporters Without Frontiers and the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly pluralism in the Italian media is upheld. However, the author Alexander Stille claims that Berlusconi has been able to exercise increased indirect control over Il Corriere della Sera since his entrance into politics in. Stille claims that Il Corriere della Sera’s editorial position has moved noticeably to the right since the formation of Forza Italia in 1994. In addition, Stille maintains that Berlusconi has dedicated his attention primarily to influencing the section of the print media which has a “broad mainstream centrist readership,” e.g. Il Corriere della Sera, because it is a source of potential voters for Forza Italia.

Notably, it is the commercial press in Italy which has the greatest impact on influencing wider political opinion in Italy. Lumley notes that “particularly in times of sudden change when readers are looking for guidance and when political figures are seeking to construct new alliances and to win support, these newspapers [the commercial press] have played a notable political role.”

In the autumn of 2002 Il Corriere della Serafeatured articles on Berlusconi’s conflict of interests and the prosecution of Berlusconi and Forza Italiasenator Cesare Previti for bribing a judge in the acquisition of the SME food group. Il Corriere della Sera’s editor at the time, Ferruccio De Bortoli, came under increased pressure from Berlusconi’s under secretary and spokesman, Paolo Bonaiuti, to allow Previti the right to reply. Concurrently, Salvatore Ligresti, a Sicilian financier and business associate of Berlusconi, tried unsuccessfully to become a shareholder in the HdP group which controls Il Corriere della Sera. This action was viewed by the staff of the newspaper as an attempt by Berlusconi to “progressively take control of the newspaper.”

In addition, Il Corriere della Serais part owned by the Agnelli family whose Fiat group was undergoing financial difficulty during this period. Stille notes that concurrently Fiat had increased its advertising on Mediaset networks while reducing publicity on RAI. Thus, Stille claims that “keeping the good graces of the prime minister” was fundamental to Fiat’s business and increased the pressure on De Bortoli to resign as editor of Il Corriere della Sera

Although Stille’s claims may be viewed as apocryphal the dismissal of two of Italy’s leading journalists from RAI 1 in 2002 illustrates Berlusconi’s influence in the broadcast media and his potential influence over the print media. Berlusconi’s public criticism of two of RAI 1’s leading journalists Enzo Biagi and Michele Santoro led to the cancellation in 2002 of their news programmes Il Fatto and Sciuscià respectively.

Santoro openly criticised Berlusconi and his government, while Biagi, the elder statesman of Italian journalism, had invited the actor-director Roberto Benigni onto his programme on the eve of the general election of 2001. Benigni proceeded to lampoon Berlusconi. The dismissal of Biagi and Santoro, whose programmes were amongst two of the most popular news and current affairs programmes on Italian television, illustrates the potential influence Berlusconi could have on the print media in Italy.

Moreover, the print media in Italy suffers economically from the dominant position of the broadcast media in Italy. Reporters Without Frontiers maintain that television’s dominance in Italy could ultimately pose a threat to the print media’s independence. In addition, television is the primary source of news for Italians who watch on average 240 minutes of television each day. Furthermore, fifty-seven percent of all advertising in Italy is on television as opposed to thirty-five percent in the UK and twenty-three percent in Germany.

This is to the detriment of the finances of the Italian print media. Consequently, the agenda of the press in Italy has become increasingly influenced by television. Papuzzi states that “anything in the telegiornale has to be covered in the morning edition.” It is too far-fetched to claim that Berlusconi is directly responsible for the increased influence of the television industry on newspaper content. However, Publitalia’s sixty percent control of advertising in Italy and the increase in television advertising over newspaper advertising can be linked indirectly to Berlusconi’s influence.

While the Italian print media industry enjoys a healthy pluralism in contrast to the broadcast media this pluralism is under increasing threat. The De Bortoli incident demonstrates that the strapotente position which Berlusconi exercises over the Italian television and advertising industries can be potentially extended to increase his influence on the pluralistic Italian press. In addition, the passing of the ‘Gasparri’ law further threatens the pluralism of the Italian press and has opened up the possibility of Berlusconi extending his media empire to control the section of the Italian print media which is the most influential with moderate voters in times of political uncertainty, i.e. the commercial press.

Bibliography

Baranski, Zygmunt G. and Lumley, Robert (eds.). Culture and Conflict in Postwar Italy. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1990

Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly. ‘Monopolisation of the electronic media and possible abuse of power in Italy’, http://assembly.coe.int/Documents/WorkingDocs/doc04/EDOC10195.htm#_ftnref12

(document downloaded on 30/03/05)

The Economist. ‘The SME affair’, http://www.berluscastop.it/__artic/econ_en1.htm, (document downloaded on 30/03/05)

Forbes List of the World’s Richest People, http://www.forbes.com, (document downloaded on 30/03/05)

Forgacs , David and Lumley, Robert (eds.). Italian Cultural Studies: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996

Glossarietto della politica e dell’economia italiana. http://www.ucc.ie/italian/resources/glossarietto.html (document downloaded on 30/03/05)

Jones, Tobias. The Dark Heart of Italy. London : Faber, 2003

Ketupa.net Media Profiles. ‘Berlusconi’, http://www.ketupa.net/berlusconi.htm (document downloaded on 30/03/05)

Lumley, Robert. ‘Peculiarities of the Italian newspaper’, in Italian Cultural Studies: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, Pp. 199-215

Reporters Without Borders. ‘A media conflict of interest: anomaly in Italy’, http://www.rsf.fr/article.php3?id_article=6393 (document downloaded on 30/03/05)

Reporters Without Borders. ‘Gasparri law finally adopted’, http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=8695 (document downloaded on 30/03/05)

Wide Angle. ‘Interview: Alexander Stille’, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/shows/berlusconi/transcript3.html (document downloaded on 30/03/05)

Shafts of sunlight pierce the yellow glow of the carriage as the train rattles towards the next station. Taking the Metro B from Termini towards EUR you travel through two thousand years of history, passing under the Coliseum and the Circus Maximus as the train weaves its way southwards.

They started building the EUR district in 1938. It was supposed to hold the World Fair of 1942 which would have celebrated twenty years of Fascist rule. However, WW2 got in the way. Its colossal marble and limestone buildings combine classicism, rationalism and fascist propaganda. Passers by are dwarfed by these austere leftovers of Italy’s totalitarian past.

The Italian director Federico Fellini described EUR as perfect for anyone who creates images for a living. Unsurprisingly it has provided the backdrop to numerous films from Fellini’s own Boccaccio 70 to one of cinema’s biggest flops Hudson Hawk. But it’s another film made at EUR which comes into my head as I make my way to work: the 1968 Spaghetti Horror classic The Last Man on Earth.

Starring one of Horror’s legendary names, Vincent Price, The Last Man on Earth tells the story of a world in which a mystery disease has transformed the human race into vampire-like creatures. Only Price’s character is immune. Every day he follows the same routine: driving around EUR hunting vampires and disposing of their infected corpses. The film explores the loneliness of Price’s character, Dr. Robert Morgan. Price’s vain attempts to make contact with other possible plague survivors end in disappointment as it becomes ever clearer that he is the last of his kind.

The film is punctuated by the monotony of Dr. Morgan’s daily life which is framed by EUR’s monumental architecture. He locks himself into his house to escape the vampire hordes outside; his only moment of pleasure is listening to Jazz records on a gramophone.

Back on the Metro B, the commuters huddle, fidget and battle for space in the overcrowded carriage. The tedium of the journey is broken up by moments of politeness and discourtesy as some passengers battle with their conscience and offer their seats to older travellers while others display their menefreghismo, or ‘I don’t give a damnism’, lounging comfortably while reading one of the numerous free daily newspapers which litter Rome’s streets.

Getting off the train at EUR Fermi, I can already hear the hustle and bustle of the market stalls above. Walking up the damp and newspaper sodden stairs I squint my eyes to adjust to the natural light. The January sun warms my face; the brightness of the never-ending Roman sky stretches out above me as I make my way towards the office. There is something about this place that bombards my mind with memories, forcing me to reflect on the past. Moments of fear, pleasure, and shame come flooding back simultaneously.

Watching the other commuters busily make their way to work, it strikes me that our lives are similar to Price’s character in the Last Man on Earth. The humdrum of our daily existence is marked by a loneliness which we struggle to overcome. Our moments of pleasure come from the MP3 players which ease the uncomfortable silence. We too vainly attempt to make contact with the outside world through conversation, only to be left disappointed by monosyllabic replies, stony silence or ignorance.

It seems that modern life has closed off many of the normal channels of human contact. We rush back home at night to lock ourselves into our houses and apartments, shutting out all others in our own B Movie Horror. Sometimes it really feels like we’re all Dr. Robert Morgan: we’re all the Last Man on Earth.