A Landslide in Ischia
Plus, the problem with ‘ex-pats’ and del Toro’s Pinocchio
Last Saturday, at around 5 am CET, following a night of heavy storms in which 126 millimeters of rain fell in six hours, a landmass on Ischia’s central Monte Epomeo, went crashing down into the village of Casamicciola Terme. The result was grimly reminiscent of the disaster that took place in Marche earlier this autumn. People awoke, stunned, to find their homes crushed, or flooded with mud and silt. The death toll as things stand is 8 and 230 have also been left homeless. This is a tragedy in its own right, of course, but it also raises other huge questions. Not least, who is responsible? Many are pointing to the short-lived Five Star-Lega coalition which in 2018 gave an amnesty to all those involved in illegal construction of 28,000 homes which damaged soil integrity in an area at risk of landslides. Others put it down to decades of mismanagement at regional level. Wherever the buck ultimately stops, this event is embarrassing both for Giuseppe Conte, who has been positioning himself as the morally credible opposition, and for Matteo Salvini, the current Minister of Infrastructure. The implications, in immediate terms, are about more than pointing fingers though. Scientists are warning that if something is not done to address soil erosion, and an evacuation plan worked out, this disaster is guaranteed to repeat itself. Fabrizio Curcio, head of the Civil Protection Unit, has gone even further, suggesting that 94% of Italian municipalities are at risk of flooding, landslides or coastal erosion. For policy-makers this should be a wake-up call. For citizens it is the latest confirmation of a grotesque reality: that the state, those in power, are currently unable to protect the public from avoidable catastrophe.
Andrea Pisauro, co-founder of the Europe for Scotland campaign, published a long piece for Red Pepper magazine this week that I’d encourage all readers here to take a look at. In his essay, Pisauro offers a summary of the electoral mess that led to Meloni’s victory, reinforcing points that many have made about fragmentation on the left as well as the continuity of the Berlusconi years. He also looks at deeper prospects for the government: There is good stuff on the culture wars, the attack on civil liberties and efforts to re-write history, and he pulls few punches in defining Meloni’s sovereignist agenda as “indifference to potential conflicts of interests” and “unscrupulously on the side of national capital.” Eagle eyed readers might even notice a link to this newsletter – if I may be so immodest as to point that out (!). It’s his conclusion, though, that weighs most heavily here. While he dodges the question of how long the current coalition might actually last, he is surely correct in his assertion that: “a civic, cultural and social backslash to Meloni’s reactionary agenda is bound to develop across Italian squares. Italian progressives must seize that moment to transform a necessary resistance into an overdue resurgence.” It’s a sober piece, alarming without succumbing to pessimism. Check it out - in full - here.
VICE Italy published a piece the other day which has been doing the rounds on social media. On the surface, this is an interview with the Austrian photographer Kurt Bauer about his work and about what it’s like, as a foreigner, to shoot pictures in Italy. The real subject, however, as the title makes clear is rather more loaded: “Perché così tanti fotografi stranieri hanno la fissa per la 'dolce vita italiana'? [Why are so many foreign photographers obsessed with the Italian ‘dolce vita’?]. During the exchange, Gilda Bruno, a quite spiky interviewer, challenges Bauer about some of the larger issues that surround his, and other peoples’ work, exploring themes like superficiality, fantasy, overtourism, naivety and the ethics of ‘othering’. Bruno’s core suggestion, it seems, is that too many photographers are taking pictures of an idealised romantic Italy (its old people, kids playing football against churches, the long lazy summers etc) while turning a blind eye to the harsher realities of life here: poverty, corruption, environmental degradation and so on. Personally, I think this is a half-truth. Yes, many (but not all) influencers and travel bloggers are guilty of this; but there are also many, Bauer included, who manage to see and valorise aspects of life here that Italians themselves often miss. Anyway, this a hot potato so I’ll stop here for now. If you read Italian you should check out the piece and make up your own mind. Otherwise, Bauer’s latest series, Love Letters from Sicily, is available here, and you can follow him on Instagram below.
Arts and culture: out of place
Sticking with this topic of ‘foreigners in Italy’ for a moment, Cullen Murphy, editor at large for The Atlantic, has just released an edited collection of essays, diary entries and photographs by and about the art critic Milton Gendel. Just Passing Through—A Seven-Decade Roman Holiday tells the story of Gendel’s 20th Century international jet-set circle which included “artists, writers, and actors; journalists and industrialists; glittering denizens of high society; and a multicultural assortment of aristocrats and royalty.” Think the real-life Fellini dolce-vita and you’ll have something close to the idea. On the surface, this might seem a bit banal, fanciful, even simply vulgar. Read in a certain light, with a certain critical detachment, these fragments tell stories about a whole range of issues, not just Negroni-fuelled soirees but cliques, cults and rivalries, the mania of postwar consumerism, the sheer weirdness of celebrity culture. It’s a strange story of exoticism and alienation, liberty and loneliness that still shines light on the life experience of privileged migrants from Britain-America to this day. Gendal’s diaries are fleeting, distracted, tipsy-seeming and filled with insatiable, rather deranged seeming, erotic appetite. Despite that, or because of it, they make for an interesting read. Check out some extracts over at LitHub.
Of the many nomenclatures we might ascribe to the last few months of 2022 one of the most applicable might well be ‘the autumn of Pinocchio.’ Over the past few weeks we’ve seen the release of not one, but two, remakes of the beloved children’s book-then-film. First there was the Disney live action version, by Robert Zemeckis, which was slammed by critics. So forget about that one. This week, however, Guillermo del Toro’s adaption hits silver screens across much of the world, and it’s already getting rave reviews. This animated version, starring Gregory Mann and Finn Wolfhardt with a supporting cast including Tilda Swinton, Cate Blanchett and Ewan McGregor (as Jiminy Cricket) is set in a period adjacent to the Italian Ventennio; i.e the time of Mussolini’s regime. It is, in the words of the director, an ‘anti-fascist fairytale’ that uses the frame of the bildungsroman par excellence to offer a critique of the social conservative forces that trap invidividuals in ideology. It all sounds brilliant to me. Check it out in a cinema near you. Otherwise you’ll find it streaming on Netflix from 9 December.
Recipe of the week: Panettone (with Yuzu)
OK, so this week’s recipe is not actually a recipe per se as much a buying tip for your Winter Shopping. Last weekend, during a visit to Milan, I took the time to pass by Re Panettone, the annual baking competition which was taking place in the Palazzo del Ghiaccio just by my hotel. First, if you ever get the chance, you should absolutely go. This is a (free) ticketed event which allows you to sample bites from some of the country’s best pastry chefs. At the end, the public vote, together with the judges, and winners are crowned. This year, after eating many many morsels of the buttery snack my absolutely favourite was Pasticceria Elite’s Panettone with Yuzu, created by chef Pietro Cartabia in Vimercate (Monza and Brianza), which came second overall. Texture wise the dough is buttery but light, with sizeable airholes and a melt-in mouth feel. Flavour-wise, the usual sweetness of panettone is balanced out by the lime-like citrus hit of the Yuzu. This is an artisan product, not for mass distribution. But if you’re interested you can order one for pick-up in-store, or home delivery, by contacting them via the website. Otherwise, if that’s too much of a faff, check out the list of other producers (clicking on ‘elenco espositori’) who, without exception, were offering wonderful products to put all those pre-packaged, chemical-laden supermarket panettones to shame.
About Me
My name is Jamie Mackay (@JacMackay) and I’m an author, editor and translator based in Florence. I’ve been writing about Italy for a decade for international media including The Guardian, The Economist, Frieze, and Art Review. I launched ‘The Week in Italy’ to share a more direct and regular overview of the debates and dilemmas, innovations and crises that sometimes pass under the radar of our overcrowded news feeds.
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