Italian Science Fiction

The Other in Literature and Film

Simone Brioni, Daniele Comberiati

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9783030193256
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030193263
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Film & Video
• Index: Literature

This book explores Italian science fiction from 1861, the year of Italy's unification, to the present day, focusing on how this genre helped shape notions of Otherness and Normalness. In particular, Italian Science Fiction draws upon critical race studies, postcolonial theory, and feminist studies to explore how migration, colonialism, multiculturalism, and racism have been represented in genre film and literature. Topics include the role of science fiction in constructing a national identity; the representation and self-representation of "alien" immigrants in Italy; the creation of internal "Others," such as southerners and Roma; the intersections of gender and race discrimination; and Italian science fiction's transnational dialogue with foreign science fiction. This book reveals that though it is arguably a minor genre in Italy, science fiction offers an innovative interpretive angle for rethinking Italian history and imagining future change in Italian society.

© The Author(s) 2019

Simone Brioni and Daniele ComberiatiItalian Science FictionStudies in Global Science Fictionhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19326-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Simone Brioni¹ and Daniele Comberiati²

(1)

Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA

(2)

Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, Montpellier, France

Simone Brioni (Corresponding author)

Daniele Comberiati

End Abstract

The Other in Italian Science Fiction

In many Italian mainstream movies, characters who are interested in science fiction (sf) usually have dreams that are impossible, or destined to fail. In Steno’s (Stefano Vanzina) Totò nella luna [Totò in the Moon] (1958), Achille Paoloni (played by Ugo Tognazzi) unsuccessfully attempts to become rich and famous by writing sf novels. Rosalia Cefalù (Daniela Rocca) in Pietro Germi’s Divorzio all’italiana [Divorce Italian Style] (1961) reads sf novels and dreams of running away with a lover, at a time in which divorce is not permitted. In Federico Fellini’s 8½ (1963), Guido Anselmi’s (Marcello Mastroianni) writer’s block impedes him from finishing his sf movie. Tommaso Cantone (Riccardo Scamarcio) in Ferzan Özpetek’s Mine vaganti [Loose Cannons] (2010), dreams of becoming a sf writer, and of coming out to his family regarding his homosexuality. By regularly portraying sf fans in situations of failure, these movies could seem to suggest that—at least in Italy—those individuals who like sf are somehow unlucky and uncool.

Although the above-mentioned movies suggest that the expression “Italian Science Fiction” is a contradiction in terms, many canonized Italian writers such as Dino Buzzati, Italo Calvino, Primo Levi, and Paolo Volponi, just to name a few,¹ and directors such as Pupi Avati, Alessandro Blasetti, Liliana Cavani, Marco Ferreri, Elio Petri, and Gabriele Salvatores have employed this genre.² According to Gianni Montanari, between 1952 and 1979, Italian sf works were published in consistent numbers: 71 collections, 20 magazines, and 2256 books (1981: 456). These publications—and the ones that came before and after this prolific period—testify to a very lively scene that had an influence on diverse areas such as popular culture, technology, natural science, medicine, human anthropology, and political messaging in Italy.

Just to give a few examples of the latter, a 1943 leaflet employs the classic “time machine” expedient in order to show continuity between the Italian wars of independence at the end of the nineteenth century and the Allied invasion of Sicily at the end of World War II. This poster shows the flags of Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, and it features Garibaldi saying, “Sono giunti i nostri amici” [our friends have arrived] (Fig. 1.1). In 1999, the collective group of authors called Men in Red published the essay Ufologia radicale [Radical Ufology], claiming that a fairer society on Earth is needed in order to make contact with aliens (1999). Men in Red—whose literary models might be traced to the transnational interconnections between sf and Marxism, which are analyzed in Mark Bould and China Miéville’s edited collection Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction (2009)—argued that:

È giunto il momento di portare il conflitto lì dove nessun terrestre è mai giunto prima. È giunto il momento di estendere la rete antagonista a livello interplanetario, poiché, ove più avanzati sono i livelli tecnologici e più incerta la gestione dei rapporti a livello di Capitale-Terra, maggiori sono le contraddizioni e le possibilità di trasformazione radicale dell’esistente. UFO AL POPOLO! (Men in Red 1999: 6–7)

[The time has now come to take the conflict where no terrestrial has ever been before. The time has now come to extend our network of resistance to an interplanetary level, because the more technology is advanced and the relationship between the Capital and the Earth is uncertain, the more oppositions and possibilities of radical transformation are possible. UFO TO THE PEOPLE!]

Another example of the political use of sf tropes is the poster publicizing Alfredo Iorio’s 2016 candidacy for mayor of Rome, representing the neofascist parties Movimento Sociale Italiano—Fiamma Tricolore [Social Movement—Tricolor Flame], and Forza Nuova [New Force]. This poster compared Muslim immigrants to the Salafi jihadist terrorist group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and their arrival in Italy to an “alien invasion” (Fig. 1.2). As Giuliano Santoro has argued, the success of the Italian political party Movimento 5 Stelle [Five Star Movement] is based on the utopian idea—perhaps one of the most widespread sf myths in contemporary society—that the internet is

destinata ad aumentare la partecipazione democratica e la redistribuzione economica, […] un’ideologia semplice e di facile presa, che ripropone in chiave postmoderna la celeberrima storia della “mano invisibile” del mercato che alloca le risorse—informative ed economiche—nel migliore dei modi. (2012: 182)

[destined to improve democratic participation and redistribution of wealth […] a simple and catchy ideology, which proposes in a postmodern flair, the famous story of the “invisible hand” of the market, which manages resources—informative and economic—in the best way possible.]

These examples seem to indicate that Thomas Disch’s claim that sf themes, motifs, and symbols that have permeated the US culture and society can be extended to Italy (1998).

Fig. 1.1

1943 leaflet celebrating the Allied invasion of Sicily. Picture by Simone Brioni

Fig. 1.2

Poster supporting the 2016 candidacy of Alfredo Iorio for mayor of Rome. Picture by Simone Brioni

The aim of this monograph is to trace the history of Italian sf literature and film, focusing on how this genre represented the Other. The use of the terms “Science Fiction,” “Other,” and “Italian” in the title of this volume needs to be discussed and clarified. Sf scholars do not agree on a clear-cut definition of the genre: writer Ursula K. Le Guin defines it as “what [I’m] pointing at when [I] point at it” (1979: 21); scholar John Rieder wrote an influential article questioning whether it is necessary to define the genre at all (2010). Because of “the hybrid nature of many sf works,” David Seed argues that one should think of this genre “as a mode or field where different genres and subgenres intersect” (2011: 1). Definitions have widely changed throughout time as “sf today is certainly very different from sf in 1970, let alone 1930” (James 1994: 2). Moreover, genre labels seem to depend more on the cultural market rather than on theoretical reflections (Cornea 2007: 5).

Consequently, this chapter does not attempt to comprehensively define the genre, but instead to offer grounds for reflection about some of its constitutive features through discussing Lino Aldani’s definition in La fantascienza [Science Fiction] (1962), one of the first critical volumes about sf in the world. Anticipating Le Guin and Rieder, Aldani first ironically defines sf as “ciò che tutti sanno che cosa sia” [what everybody knows it is] (Aldani 1962: 5). He argues that “oltre che un genere letterario, è un fenomeno di costume […] complesso” [is not only a literary trend; it is a complex social phenomenon] (Aldani 1962: 2), therefore stressing its cultural rather than exclusively artistic influence in Italy. He later maintains that sf is a

rappresentazione fantastica dell’universo, nello spazio e nel tempo, operata secondo una consequenzialità di tipo logico-s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Explorations and the Creation of a National Identity
• 3. Futurism and Science Fiction
• 4. After the Apocalypse: Repression and Resistance
• 5. The Internal Other: Representing Roma
• 6. Aliens in a Country of Immigration: Intersectional Perspectives
• 7. Dystopic Worlds and the Fear of Multiculturalism
• 8. The Questione Settentrionale: Reconfiguring Separatism
• 9. Future Pasts: Revisiting the Colonial Legacy in Alternate History Novels
• 10. Afterword: A Genre Across Cultures
• Back Matter