Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture

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accepted standards of impartiality, and that a plurality of political opinions are available

to the electorate. The Italian media system has been exceptional in that it has been

traditionally dominated by a state corporation under the control of the ruling political

parties.

Between 1975 and 1990, the broadcasting system developed within a legislative

vacuum but under the influence and control of the political parties. In the early 1970s a

Constitutional Court ruling ended the public monopoly of broadcasting by asserting the

need for a more pluralist mass media. This triggered internal reform within the RAI

organization and facilitated the establishment of private local television networks. Party

control of state broadcasting was strengthened and institutionalized by the legislative

reforms. An administrative council was created, whose members were nominated by

Parliament on a’representative’ basis in proportion to the number of seats held by each

party. Subsequently, the RAI became subject to the practice of lottizzazione (party

political division of spoils and state resources). The ruling political parties divided the

state broadcasting institution into ‘pillars’ of control, each party controlling a ‘pillar’ of

the network. They had effective patronage over appointment to all levels of the

organization (see clientelism). Competition between the channels reflected party political

competition: the major channel Rai Uno became a fiefdom of the Christian Democrats

(DC), Rai Due under the patronage of the Socialists (PSI), and Rai Tre, a channel

initiated to offer a wider and more ‘plural’ coverage, to the Communists (PCI). The only

three national television news programmes, TG1, TG2 and TG3, supported the political

lines of the DC, PSI and PCI respectively. The control of the political parties over the

state broadcasting media was institutionalized and remained intact until the ‘old’ party

political system fell apart in 1993.

RAI operated according to public service criteria that were established by Law no. 103

in 1975, but the public broadcaster’s ability to innovate and engage in commercial

activities was constrained by an organizational logic that prioritized the interests of the

political parties. This left significant commercial opportunities open to the private sector.

After a 1974 Constitutional Court ruling stating that it was legitimate for private interests

to set up transmitting equipment for radio and television within a defined local territory,

the commercial broadcasting sector blossomed, initi-ally at local levels. It provided a

service based almost exclusively on entertainment. Operating in a regulatory vacuum and

building on advertising revenues, entrepreneurs soon built up networks of local stations

which tacitly challenged the ruling against a national level commercial network. One

such attempt to establish a national commercial network came from the Rizzoli

publishing group. However, the first national commercial network was Berlusconi’s

Canale Cinque, a group of local channels that broadcast simultaneously. Such an example

of selective myopia towards the statute book was a common feature of Italian business in

the First Republic. It also provided an opportunity for commercial business in a rapidly

changing sector to innovate in the face of legislative stagnation. Implementing a market

strategy for importing expensive foreign entertainment to attract high audiences and

generate high advertising revenues, Berlusconi’s Fininvest group of publishing and

publicity interests took control of the commercial television and advertising market. By

1984, Fininvest had bought Italia Uno from the Rusconi publishing group and Rete

Quattro from Mondadori. In October 1984, public prosecutors challenged the legality of

Berlusconi’s national television network and confiscated broadcasting equipment in

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Turin, Rome and Pescara. When the plugs were pulled on the commercial networks,

Socialist Prime Minister Craxi was forced to issue an emergency decree that effectively

authorized national commercial broadcasting. This established the RAI/Fininvest

‘duopoly’ which has been the hallmark of the rather unusual Italian broadcasting system

ever since.

The RAI/Fininvest ‘duopoly’ was legitimated by the so-called Mammì law, the 1990

Broadcasting Act (no. 223). The Mammì law sidestepped the serious structural and

financial problems faced by the state broadcasting organization, which were rendered

impossible to negotiate because of the ‘pillarization’ of party interests. Instead, the

Mammì law focused on commercial broadcasting, establishing a ‘guarantor’ to keep a

viewers’ advisory council and set up minimal regulations on accepted standards of

decency in programming and scheduling.

In the intervening years, commercial television had transformed the medium and the

context of operation for the RAI. Crippled by organizational inefficiency and financial

crisis, the RAI tried to compete with the entertainment-based transmissions of Fininvest

and lost distinctiveness and credibility as a public service. In contrast, Berlusconi’s

introduction of popular programmes challenged the hierarchy and stifled the cultural

elitism of Italian society that was embodied by the RAI. Given the nickname ‘Sua

Emittenza’ (His Broadcastingship), he was prepared to use his public profile and mass

popularity as a resource for backing politicians to defend his commercial interests.

Furthermore, unlike many media moguls, Berlusconi always took an active personal

control of editorial decisions for his media outlets.

In the 1990s, the RAI state television channels came increasingly under competition

for the provision of information relating to public affairs from the Fininvest commercial

channels. Kickstarted by the legal requirement to provide news, the private channels

increasingly developed a commercial strategy for covering public affairs. This came at a

time when public attention for news and editorial freedom were emerging in response to

the Tangentopoli scandals. High advertising revenues that accrued from peak viewing

figures for public affairs programmes brought the Fininvest channels into competition

with the RAI channels. Prior to 1992, the RAI channels maintained a virtual monopoly of

television news broadcasting. After starting to broadcast national news in 1992, the

Fininvest channels rapidly developed their news programming. By 1994 they supplied a

total of 2,961 hours of news (13.7 per cent of net programming) in comparison to the

3,136 (12.8 per cent) supplied by the RAI channels. The viewing figures for the prime

editions of the television news show that in a short time the Fininvest channels emerged

from the shadow of the RAI as the provider of news.

The data on shifts in programming indicate a convergence between the public and

commercial broadcasting sectors, due to competition and the need to respond to a

changing set of public demands. The Tangentopoli crisis bore the seeds of a more active

civil society in which the media have a greater role to play. In 1989, the Fininvest

channels supplied a net programming of 92 per cent entertainment, 4.6 per cent cultural

programmes and 3.4 per cent news and current affairs. By 1993, Fininvest programming

had shifted to 75 per cent entertainment, 8 per cent cultural programmes and 16.4 per

cent news and current affairs, which compared with the RAI breakdown of 50.7 per cent,

22.6 per cent and 26.7 per cent for the same categories. Such trends were indicative of

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broader changes in the broadcasting system which brought RAI and Fininvest into closer

competition for supplying programmes to similar types of audience. In 1987, 23 per cent

of Fininvest transmissions were produced and 77 per cent were bought; by 1993, the

organization produced 46 per cent of its own transmissions, buying in only 54 per cent.

Over the same time span, 1987–93, the proportion of transmissions bought in by RAI

channels increased from 25 per cent to 37 per cent. This indicates that the ‘convergence’

of the quality of private and public supplies of information over time has consisted of a

shift in programming by both the state and commercial broadcasters, rather than simply

constituting a downgrading of the public service to the commercial one.

After the political crisis of Tangentopoli, the cosy Rai/Fininvest ‘duopoly’ was

challenged by the needs of a renewed political system. Reform of the RAI and regulatory

standards for media ownership became high-profile political conflicts. Berlusconi entered

politics as an entrepreneur enters the marketplace, effectively breaking the established

norms of political communication. His personal control over the commercial sector of the

media industry brought charges of a conflict of interests with his leading political role.

This issue was complicated by the fact that at a crucial time for politics, it would

appear that the broadcasting system may have been unable to provide ‘fair play’ to the

competing political parties in the vital function of supplying information. One Fininvest

television channel, Rete Quattro, operated as a vehicle of propaganda for Forza Italia,

supplying a coverage which not only attacked the political opposition, but also

discredited the judiciary for the Berlusconi cause. Suffice it to say that the editor of TG 4,

Emilio Fede, considered standing as a candidate for Forza Italia in the 1996 elections, but

was deemed more useful to the party at the editorial helm of Rete Quattro’s news.

Control over media resources became a field of political conflict, precisely at a time

when the media discourse was itself the forum through which political conflicts were

waged. This further threatened an already ‘weak’ tradition for editorial independence in

Italian broadcasting. A major legislative initiative was required to meet the needs of the

industry, but attempts were politically ‘hamstrung’. The undefined nature of the

regulatory system, high value of public information to political parties, and emergence of

the Fininvest owner as a political leader, ensured that the longrunning uncertainty

concerning the balance and roles of public and private sectors within Italian broadcasting

was a structural problem for which it would remain difficult to find political agreement.

Further reading

Mazzoleni, G. (1994) ‘Italy’, in J. Mitchell and J.G. Blumler (eds), Television and the Viewer

Interest: Explorations in the Responsiveness of European Broadcasters, Media Monograph no.

18, London: John Libbey (an account of the development of the regulatory system for

broadcasting in Italy).

——(1995) ‘Towards a “Videocracy”? Italian Political Communication at a Turning Point’,

European Journal of Communication 10 (3):291–319 (an account of history of media and

politics in Italy with ‘videocracy’ thesis that media may be increasingly controlling politics).

Statham, P. (1996) ‘Berlusconi, The Media and the New Right in Italy’, The Harvard International

Journal of Press/Politics 1 (1):87–105 (an account of the role of media resources in

Berlusconi’s entrance into politics).

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——(1996) ‘Television News and the Public Sphere in Italy: Conflicts at the Media/Politics

Interface’, European Journal of Communication 11 (4):509–54 (an account of the history of the

‘politicization’ of broadcasting with comparative data on public/private television news

coverage of public affairs prior to 1996 election).

PAUL STATHAM

Bruck, Edith

b. 1932, Tiszabhrcel, Hungary

Novelist and poet

Bruck, pen-name of Edith Steinschreiber, survived the holocaust and after the Second

World War lived in different countries, including Israel, before moving finally to Italy in

1954. Bruck’s literary works are mostly inspired by her childhood experiences and by the

haunted memory of the concentration camps, as well as by an existential and

anthropological analysis of human life. One fundamental characteristic of her writing is

her deliberate choice to write in Italian, a language that reflects neither her mother tongue

(Hungarian) nor the learned language of her ethnic background (Hebrew), as a sign,

perhaps, of her need to find a linguistic and cultural inner equilibrium to counterbalance

the painful memories of forced migrations. Bruck’s books are often candidly

autobiographical and do not hide the still-fresh scars etched forever into the author’s

memory. Among her works are Chi ti ama così (Who Loves You in This Way) (1959),

Transit (1978), Lettera alla madre (Letter To the Mother) (1988), Nuda proprietà (Naked

Property) (1992).

Further reading

Cassese, S. (ed.) (1984) L’amministrazione centrale (The Central Administration), vol. 9, Storia

della società italiana dall’Unità a oggi (A History of Italian Society from Unification to the

Present day), Bologna: UTET (the most authoritative history of Italy’s civil administration).

Hine, D. (1993) Governing Italy: The Politics of Bargained Pluralism, Oxford: Oxford University

Press, ch. 8, ‘The Administrative System’ (a clear and informative guide to modern Italian

governance).

SIMON PARKER

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Burri, Alberto

b. 12 March 1915, Città di Castello, Perugia; d. 13 February 1995, Nice

Artist

Self-taught as an artist, Burri’s early experiences as a doctor, handling blood-stained

bandages and sewing up wounds on the Italian front in North Africa during the Second

World War, provided the inspiration for much of his later work. Burri began his artistic

activity during his period as a prisoner of war in Texas and his works display a

fascination with surface texture and use different media such as torn sacking, charred

wood, iron plates and plastic sheets with gaping holes burnt by a blowtorch. Fissures, like

coagulated streams of lava, and bubbling irruptions or ‘wounds’ are the predominant

features of a later major series of works in Cellotex (a compound derived from cellulose).

Burri’s work reflects the philosophy of the Informale movement and it also has strong

links to the work of Spanish artist Antoni Tapies. Today, a foundation which exhibits and

documents Burri’s work is located in his birthplace of Città di Castello.

LAURENCE SIMMONS

Busi, Aldo

b. 5 February 1948, Montichiari, Brescia

Novelist and cultural critic

Aldo Busi’s appearance on the cultural scene dates back to 1984 when he published his

first successful novel Seminario sulla gioventù (Seminar on Youth), which was to be

followed by a number of other comic and provocative narratives. In his highly

controversial writings, characterized by outrageous humour, explicit sexual imagery, the

cutting exhibition of his homosexuality and, in general, the blatant exposure of his self,

Busi displays skilful literary technique and a masterly use of the Italian language. Besides

writing fiction, translating from English and German and constantly turning himself into

a public figure in order to shake up the intellectual establishment, Busi has continued to

promote himself by contributing playful commentaries to a number of popular

newspapers and magazines such as Epoca and IoDonna.

Further reading

Busi, A. (1994) Cazzi e canguri: pochissimi i canguri (Dicks and Kangaroos: Very Few

Kangaroos), Milan: Frassinelli (one of his later novels).

FRANCESCA PARMEGGIANI

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Bussotti, Sylvano

b. 1 October 1931, Florence

Composer, painter, film and stage director

A radical and experimental composer and visual artist specializing in multidisciplinary

art and multimedia works, Bussotti is one of Italy’s most controversial composers. His

works often portray violent, erotic and homoerotic themes, leading critics to sometimes

describe his works as indulgently self-referential and libertine. Performers of his music

are often faced with the daunting task of deciphering complex scores and presenting

dense and confronting works.

Bussotti entered the Conservator him Luigi Cherubini in Florence in 1940 after early

lessons on the violin. During this time he studied piano with Luigi Dallapiccola and

music theory with Roberta Lupi. There followed a number of years abroad, studying

composition in Paris, Darmstadt, the United States (with the assistance of a Rockefeller

Foundation grant) and Berlin (with the assistance of a DAAD award) and a number of

prizes including the All’Amelia Prize (Venice Biennale, 1967), Toscani d’Oggi (Golden

Olive Branch, 1974), and the Psacaropulo Prize (Turin, 1979).

A painter like his uncle and brother, Bussotti has exhibited in galleries in Italy, Japan,

the United States, Germany and France. He has also been successful as a director and

designer of stage works and as consultant to a number of theatres including La Fenice in

Venice and the Puccini Festival at Torre del Lago. He has held two teaching positions,

that of teacher of music drama at the Academy L’Aquila, and teacher of composition and

musical analysis at the Fiesole School of Music.

Bussotti’s early works were influenced by serialism, but he later rejected the strictness

of this method and delved instead into the notation of indeterminacy. However, his

abiding interest has been in multidisciplinary art forms, always tending towards the

theatrical. He has thus been composer, designer and director of stage works such as his

La passion selon Sade (Passion According to Sade) (1965) and Lorenzaccio (1972) and

has introduced extramusical, theatrical devices into his works, such as pianists wearing

thick gloves in the 5 Pieces for David Tudor of 1959. Interested in exploring the

boundaries of sound production and sound combinations, he has allowed performers the

freedom to use fragments and repetitions of music at will and has introduced unusual

vocalizations and instrumental techniques into his scores, which themselves often use a

highly graphic form of notation, including fragments of musical score joined together

with performing instructions and odd illustrations. Something of a musical agent

provocateur and not unlike that other enfant terrible of the Italian stage, Carmelo Bene,

with whom he sometimes collaborated in the 1960s, Bussotti has always created works

that have exploited fantasy and imagination to the limit, resulting in highly theatrical

events that have never failed to arouse strong audience reaction.

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Further reading

Morris, M. (1996) A Guide to 20th-century Music Composers, London: Methuen (a biographical

discussion of Bussotti’s work in the context of other Italian and twentieth-century composers).

Scarpone, G. (1992) ‘Sylvano Bussotti’, in B. Morton and P. Collins (eds), Contemporary

Composers, Chicago: St James Press (for a comprehensive list of works and a discussion of

Bussotti’s compositional intent).

ANDREW SCHULTZ

Buzzati (Traverse), Dino

b. 16 October 1906, San Pellegrino, Belluno; d. 28 January 1972, Milan

Journalist, narrator, painter and mountaineer

Born into an educated and affluent milieu in the northern Alpine region of Belluno—a

mountainous setting that would return often in his fictional works—Buzzati graduated in

law from the University of Milan. In 1928, after two years of military service, he joined

Il Corriere delta sera where he would continue to work for the next forty years, first as

reporter and then as war correspondent, editor, sports writer and finally, in the 1960s, as

art critic. His first forays into fiction, Barnabo delle montagne (Barnabo of the

Mountains) (1933) and Il segreto del Bosco Vecchio (The Secret of the Old Wood)

(1935), two fantastic tales permeated by an eerie air of mystery and foreboding, went

largely unnoticed, but Il Deserto dei Tartari (The Desert of the Tartars), a longer novel

published in 1940 when Buzzati himself was already in Africa as a war correspondent,

brought him national and international acclaim. Set in an unnamed border region in an

undefined time, the novel recounts the story of a diligent young lieutenant, Giovanni

Drogo, as he and his companions spend a lifetime awaiting the predicted attack of the

mysterious enemy Tartars. The assault only appears to eventuate when Drogo is too old

and sick to participate, which makes the novel into a typically Buzzatian allegory for

human life as a series of inevitable disappointments, spent in the vain hope of a great

moment of fulfilment which never arrives except in the form of death.

In the postwar period, Buzzati became ever more drawn to the theatre and wrote

numerous plays, most of which were produced in Italy and several also abroad; his Un

caso clinico (A Clinical Case) was staged both in Berlin in 1954 and in Paris in 1955 in a

translation by Albeit Camus. However, despite his great desire to achieve fame in the

theatre, for which he would also design sets and compose operatic libretti, Buzzati’s

greatest successes would be in the genre of the short story, the form in which he really

excelled. In all he would publish eight collections of short stories, with the anthology

Sessanta racconti (Sixty Stories) winning him the prestigious Strega prize in 1958 (see

literary prizes).

In 1960 he experimented with science fiction in the short novel Il grande ritratto (The

Great Portrait), while also continuing to develop a talent for painting and drawing which

had already become manifest in the self-illustration of earlier narrative works. As well as

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a number of full-scale painting exhibitions, this led to the publication of Poema a fumetti

(Poem in Comics) (1969), a modern recounting of the classical journey of Orpheus to the

underworld, with Orpheus in the guise of a modern guitar player and the story told

through a series of brilliantly coloured comic strip vignettes, creatively mixing elements

of surrealist and expressionist painting and imagery from horror films and pop art. This

powerful and disquieting visual style, which reproduced visually the unsettling surrealism

of his short stories, was continued in a series of paintings exhibited in Venice in 1970 and

subsequently published in book form as I miracoli di Val Morel (The Miracles of Morel

Valley).

A collection of Buzzati’s best journalistic pieces was published posthumously as

Cronache terrestri (Earthly Chronicles) (1972) which was followed in 1973 by a

revealing long interview which Buzzati had recorded with Yves Panafieu titled Dino

Buzzati: un autoritratto (Dino Buzzati: A Self-Portrait). In 1976 Buzzati’s finest novel, Il

Deserto dei Tartari, was made into an equally fine film by the Italian director, Valerio

Zurlini.

Further reading

Buzzati, D. (1984) Restless Nights: Selected Stories, chosen and trans. L. Venuti, Manchester:

Carcanet Press (a representative selection of Buzzati’s short stories)

Rawson, J. (1984) ‘Dino Buzzati’, in M. Caesar and P. Hainsworth (eds), Writers and Society in

Contemporary Italy, New York: St. Martin’s Press (a brief but comprehensive survey of

Buzzati’s fiction).

GINO MOLITERNO

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