Serena Dandini (photo by Gianmarco Chieregato).
TOI have practiced the ancient profession of satirist for many years, I can assure you that I do not envy the young people who now try their hand at this activity.
It is increasingly difficult to make people laugh with the new figures available in the current theater of Italian politics and entrepreneurship.
There are those who regret the old freaks of the parliament of the past and the long-time captains of industry, figures with a certain level of curriculum and an authority that lent itself to being torn apart by irreverence and irony.
Now there is very little to disassemble and the characters to deal with are so insignificant that even the desire to make fun of them passes away.
It is the same reason why it is difficult to recreate the great season of Italian comedy today at the cinema, to achieve that miraculous sour-sweet balance that made you laugh and, at the same time, denounced the misdeeds of power: it would take characters to punish that do not exist more.
Far be it from me to feel nostalgic, but just look at one of the many talk shows to understand that nowadays giants like Gassman, Sordi and company would have very little material to inspire them.
“Il divatore” by Elena Stancanelli (The ship of Theseus).
It is in this sense that The diver – the beautiful book by Elena Stancanelli on the life of Raul Gardini (The Ship of Theseus) – is enlightening. The writer gives us an essay that is also a novelnot only of the life of a single entrepreneur, but of an entire generation of extinct men of power.
There are no judgments, no matter whether their extinction is a bad thing or a good, the vision that, thanks to a very accurate documentation and a compelling writing, Stancanelli offers us is that of a vanished world, made up of men that we consider today unpresentable but who are in effect our fathers.
“I have seen those males, I have watched them move with the ease that comes from living in a world that you have shaped in your image and likeness. Now those males are considered enemies. Just like plastic or meat ».
They are the ones we grew up with, who built the foundations of our country, they are our roots. To realize the new worlds we dream of, we cannot erase our past.
If we do not fully understand what we are made of, we will never be able to open new chapters in our history. A sincere thanks to Stancanelli’s work for this great opportunity for collective memory.
All the articles by Serena Dandini.
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