Tag Archive: Lorella Zanardo


ITALY IN A COMA – IT’S SERIOUS

Filed under: Books, Gender, Good causes, Italy, Politics — Leave a comment
July 4, 2013

GIRLFRIEND IN A COMA  directed by Annalisa Piras (UK / Italy, 2012)

This documentary film ,co-written and narrated by ex-editor of The Economist, Bill Emmott, looks at Italy as an open wound in the heart of Europe.

As with Emmott’s book (Good Italy, Bad Italy) it examines the nation’s virtues and vices, borrowing the image of the country as a metaphorical girlfriend from the song by The Smiths and quoting liberally from Dante’s Divine Comedy.

In my view, it spends too long looking at the background to the crisis and too little on proposing a way out of the mess. The strongest messages rightly assert that ,if change is going to come, it is going to be the result of the more active role of women and a more enlightened attitude from the new generation.

Lorella Zanardo, who made the film Il Corpo Delle Donne, is therefore right to target her message at schools since the older generation already seem like a lost cause. This is also why it is less important to hear what Umberto Eco and Nanni Moretti think and more crucial to find out what the younger generation have to say. Continue reading →

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WOMEN’S BODIES

Filed under: Gender, Italy, Television — Leave a comment
September 20, 2009
Lorella Zanardo

Lorella Zanardo

Having lived in Italy for the past 13 years, it is something of a relief to see a growing protest against the way women are portrayed on the national TV. This is powerfully articulated in the excellent short documentary by Lorella Zanardo called Il Corpo Delle Donne. An English version of this film (Women’s Bodies) can be seen on the related blog and an article about this has appeared in todays’s Guardian.

Zanardo admits that prior to making this film she didn’t watch much television.  A friend challenged her feminist credentials by saying that she could know nothing about women unless she watched more. She recorded around 400 hours and reduced this to around 25 minutes which show clearly how young women (there are very few over the age of 40) are used as adornments. This is something she expected to see;.what she didn’t expect, and what the film shows, is how they are routinely humiliated in the name of entertainment.

Her motive for making the film was to open a debate and in this respect she has already succeeded. The timing couldn’t be more perfect given the recent controversy over Berlusconi’s ‘escorts’.

I’m sure there are many who will argue that these women choose to appear in this way and that they are willing accomplices. In part, this is true but TV is such a powerful medium that it does not simply reflect trends but actually creates them. In other words, TV establishes the role models and one of the key issues is that smart women who don’t fit the super-babe image aren’t given any significant airtime.

Reconstructed red blooded men need to enter this debate too. Taunts like “Whassa matter donta you lika the sexy woman?” need to countered  – and while we’re about it, a few more intelligent men on the box wouldn’t go amiss!

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