The popular culture that unites the country

In his studies he has delved into the impact of technologies on society, focusing in recent times on the processes of digitization of media and political communication. At the beginning of his research activity, he examined popular culture in Italy and its transformation into mass culture under the impetus of industrialization. This very topic, the focus of an upcoming book written with Lorenzo Luporini, he wanted to return to Wednesday before a packed lecture hall.

“I think there is also a political reason for talking about popular culture. There is a lot of discussion today about the identity of our country as a nation, but our country has grown as a patchwork of identities and continues to be so. Looking at popular culture, you can see very well what the forge of national identity is, which today sees the contribution not only of the North and the South, but also of new generations of migrants,” Colombo said.

The discussion began with an account of the story of Pellegrino Artusi, defined for the occasion as the inventor of Italian cuisine. The Artusi family was originally from Forlimpopoli, Romagna, a region then belonging to the Papal States and haunted by the raids of the brigand known as the Passator Cortese. Later, the family moved to Florence, where they had a fairly good fortune. Uninterested in business, however, Pellegrino sold the company and devoted himself to his passions: travel and good living.

“As he traveled around the country and, more importantly, tasted,” Colombo stressed, “Artusi realized that Italy did not exist: the Sicilians did not know risotto, the Milanese did not know what spaghetti was. Beets were used only by Jewish communities.” Thus was born the idea of “making Italians” starting with cooking. It was ultimately about making known to some what they did not know about others, using Italian as a common language.

The cookbook, “Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well”, had a troubled publishing history, but today it is simply “the Artusi”, a reference point for gastronomy and, according to Colombo, “a metaphor for the forge of our national identity”, which has always been composite and multifaceted.

Another important juncture, highlighted in a discourse also rich in anecdotes and background on 150 years of the culture and entertainment industry, concerns “L’Inferno di Topolino”, a comic strip story published by Arnoldo Mondadori beginning in 1949. Written by Guido Martina and drawn by Angelo Bioletto, this work,” the professor pointed out, “is very different from those produced by Disney in America, because it recovers graphic elements peculiar to our national tradition to educate by entertaining through parodying a learned text. But most importantly, in those vignettes perfect blend of the entire Disney imagery, the two authors’ love and admiration for America emerges. This sentiment, which is the hallmark of Degasperian Italy, is like a mirror in which is reflected the image of a country that looked overseas for a model of recovery from the war.

Recipes, comic strips, the songs of Gaber and “I Gufi” [tr. The Owls], radio broadcasts in Fascist Italy such as “I Quattro Moschettieri” [tr. The Four Musketeers], the excesses of a TV show such as Renzo Arbore’s “Indietro tutta!”, the films of Sergio Leone and the Gialli Mondadori, the eternal nostalgia for the 1960s of the film “Sapore di mare” [Taste of the Sea] released in the early 1980s, the endless television series of the platforms: what do all these products of yesterday and today tell about our country?     

Popular culture and the culture of elites, high and low, are in reality the currents of one great stream in which we are all immersed. Inside this river, over the years, Fausto Colombo has taught how to swim to discover who we really are.