Serie A: Made in where?
Plus Adriatic crabs and Harry Potter meets The Godfather
Georgia Meloni’s administration has already established quite the reputation for itself as a purveyor of some truly bizarre PR messages. This week that tendency was on display yet again when the government revealed it has signed-off on a 10 million euro deal to rebrand the nation’s top football league as ‘serie A: made in Italy’ when advertised abroad. What to say? The sum, EUR 10 million, is paltry in government spending terms. It’s a ‘good deal’, in a sense. But what’s the point? I think it’s already pretty clear that the serie A is made in Italy. It takes place here after all. Yet, in other respects, this is a misnomer. Many of the players - obviously - hail from outside the country. There are athletes from all over the world on the pitch, and the management, investors and sponsors are global too. Yes, Italian football has a distinctive flavour; but this is largely tied to the national team (“the azzuri”) and an already-existing nostalgia industry around Italia ’90. This club football equivalent – pulled out of thin air, in a top-down manner – has no clear rationale. The Italia ’90 buzz worked because it was tied to romance, to memories of a great World Cup, to hearts and minds. It grew out of the emotional swell of the crowds. This current rebranding, by contrast, has no such purchase in the (global) public imagination. It is a name that has no organic basis, no popular resonance, and which seems – quite transparently – to serve the interests of capital and little else. Slogans work when they are embedded in popular culture. And while the intention here is, clearly, to graft football onto other ‘made in Italy’ export success stories (food, fashion, art, cars etc), the logic here is too cold, too calculating, to really resonate. Like so many of this government’s actions, this is superficial sovereignist posturing which is unlikely to bring any renewed interest to the Italian game. Un peccato.
The Mediterranean is warming up, and fast – 20% faster than the global average, to be precise [see this report]. One of the implications - alongside an increased risk of hurricanes and “tropical” storms - is a change in marine biodiversity. Over the past decades more than 1000 exotic “alien” species have been migrating and thriving on the Italian coast; threatening the delicate eco-systemic balance. By far the most significant “invader” is the Portunus segnis, the swimming blue crab. Generally clustered around the coasts of Kerala, the crab migrated across to Italy in the mid 20th century, virtually unnoticed. Now it is taking over the Adriatic coastline, in Veneto and Puglia in particular. This is a serious problem. These these are big, monster crabs. They have a carapace of up to 20 centimetres and can grow to a weight of 1kg. The critters have few natural predators and they have a tendency to devour the wildlife around them (prawns, clams, mussels and squid in particular). Luckily, for we humans, they also happen to be delicious. Now, faced with a possible crisis, the fishing industry in Italy is redoubling its efforts to catch and sell these animals, both for culinary reasons and to help the ecosystem. Gourmet restaurants and local supermarkets are, as a result, all of a sudden, on the frontline of an important battle to keep fish and crustacean populations in balance. To find out more check out this long read in Internazionale [ITA only]. And if you see blue crab on your menu this summer, make sure to order it!
Arts and culture: the infinite artichoke
James Butler, one of the UK’s most virtuosic writer-editors, has got a new essay out in the London Review of Books about Italo Calvino’s life, work and politics -- and it’s a wonderful as you might expect. Ostensibly, Butler’s task here is to review a new collection of the author’s criticism: The Written World and the Unwritten World which is now out in a new Penguin edition, translated by Ann Goldstein. Yet this is no simple review. Instead, Butler uses the opportunity to cast a wide-ranging inquiry about Calvino’s “difficult” legacy; the challenge of categorizing his work, the problem of his reputation. For Butler, Calvino is significant precisely because of his awkward struggle to balance theory and art production, philosophy and literature. This is a writer whose “tastes are classical, more premodern than post” who “prefers periods when the generic borders of fiction have been fuzzy.” To cite the leading metaphor, Calvino’s works are akin to an artichoke with many layers. An “infinite artichoke” to be precise. Read the full essay here to find out exactly what that enigmatic metaphor really entails. The answer may surprise you…
Last month a new museum opened in Naples dedicated to showcasing the work of that city’s single most influential contemporary artist: the sculptor known as Jago. Nicknamed by the media “the new Michelangelo” (sigh) Jago burst onto the scene in the mid 2010s when he began producing and exhibiting a whole array of classical-inspired, renaissance-like sculptures; yet modernized, depicting contemporary themes. Jago is an extraordinary artist. His statues are harmonious and graceful; the details, the draperies, the sinews, are exquisite. Yet there are nods to the postmodern here too — the humour of a figure like Jeff Koons, for example, is immediately recognizable. This might sound like an impossible fusion of elements, but Jago somehow makes it work - and it’s great to see more people taking notice. The Guardian, for one, has just published a short interview-profile with the artist himself which is well worth your time. If you’re planning a trip to Naples anytime soon make sure to add this museum to your itinerary.
AI experiments are all the rage right now. Since Chat GPT and DALL-E came into general use last year, more and more people - broader and broader publics - are using these technologies to probe the limits of how deep learning algorithms can respond to and mimic our human notions of reason, emotion and artistic creation. This week, the AI film generator D-ID, produced what is, to my mind, the most mind-boggling work so far. “Harry Potter but in Italy” features a computer-generated cast of characters who re-enact a nightmarish, magic-infused version of the Godfather. It’s a bizarre, destabilising world. Harry himself is reinvented as a kind of Michael Corleone figure; Voldemort is a mafia boss (obviously), while Dumbledore seems to be some kind of aristocratic tramp-like figure. The backdrops are an odd blend of Sicilian, Roman and Florentine scenes, but jumbled-up kaleidoscopically. The music is a strange, eerie re-rendering of something that sounds like the Nuovo Cinema Paradiso theme, but just a little bit “off”. It’s a heady combination and it doesn’t really work at all; but you’ve got to admire D-ID for its commitment to the brief and admirable sense of humour. “Avada vendetta” indeed! Check out the full video below.
Recipe of the week: Mozzarella in carozza
Looking for a snack to flesh out your summer aperitivo? I got you covered. Mozzarella in carrozza is, basically, a deep-fried cheese sandwich. Two slices of stale sandwich bread, dipped in flour and egg, and filled with the eponymous mozzarella. Nothing more, nothing less. There are few tricks I’ve learnt over time by trial and error. First, the cheese should be as dry as possible. You don’t want a Mozarella di buffala or a burrata or anything like that here. The best option, in fact, is one of those rectangular long blocks of cheese you sometimes see in the supermarket (but which - unless you own a sandwich shop - you probably don’t buy). Then the bread. No ciabatta or pane toscano here please. All you need is good, old-fashioned crustless industrial sandwich bread. The kind the Venetians use for tramezzini, which have a slight processed sweet flavour. I know, this all sounds a bit… trashy? But trust me, follow this advice, and Emiko Davies’s foolproof recipe, and you’ve got yourself a new number one spritz nibble.
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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