From normalising populist rhetoric to objectifying women on TV, Euronews Culture takes a look at how the ‘Cavaliere’ transformed Italy’s cultural and social landscape.
By Andrea Carlo for Euronews – The curtain has closed on the life of Silvio Berlusconi, the three-time Italian prime minister and media titan whose time on earth felt more like the plot of a Verdi opera – or even one of his TV channels’ soap operas – than anything approximating that of any other politician.
Much has been made of il Cavaliere (“The Knight”, as he was nicknamed) and the sleuth of scandals, intrigues, and legal vicissitudes he has left behind. But it was Berlusconi’s transformative impact on Italian society and culture that has been arguably the most noteworthy — and controversial — part of his legacy.
Berlusconismo: ‘Cancer’ or ‘revolution’?
Berlusconi’s arrival into Italian politics came in the midst of years of turmoil which had ransacked the country’s party system, and left the political landscape with a void – one he was swiftly able to fill.
Most commentaries on Berlusconi have consequently tended to look at his impact after his so-called discesa in campo (“descent into the field”, borrowing from football jargon) in 1994, and how he led four right-wing governments which brought together both neo-fascist forces (to which current PM Giorgia Meloni belongs) and the regionalist Northern League.
But as the owner of a business empire which had three top private TV channels, a newspaper, publishing house, theatre and the world-renowned A.C. Milan football club, Berlusconi had Italy under his chokehold since the 1980s, well before his political career could spread its wings.
The mogul’s Mediaset channels, which offered an alternative to the country’s state-owned RAI network, flooded the Italian media landscape with a very new brand of television.
Glossy, gaudy, and gossipy, they exposed the Italian public to American soaps — Dynasty being the most prominent among them — and were dominated by lowbrow talk and variety shows, namely Striscia la notizia, presented by scantily-clad showgirls (known as veline). Clothes were looser, the language cruder, and such an erosion of certain public mores left a profound mark on the nation’s image, changing the format of national TV networks and the public’s everyday vernacular and aspirations.
Indeed, such a new cultural climate ended fuelling the aspirations of countless Italians, who dreamed of a lucrative TV career within one of his networks.
“Without TV, you couldn’t do anything,” said Lele Mora, one of Italy’s best known talent agents, a Berlusconi aide, and convicted pimp. “It’s a magic box… People see you from home, and you become popular.”
Berlusconi would eventually wed his media visions to his political ambitions, pioneering what came to be described as ilBerlusconismo, or “Berlusconism”.
Blurring the line between politics and entertainment, and treating his voters as consumers, this signalled the start of a new, kitschy – campy, even – approach to politics which had hitherto been alien to Italy’s rather stuffy political establishment. Even the name of his first party – Forza Italia, loosely translated as “Onwards, Italy” or “Go Italy!” – directly borrowed from the language of football stadium chants.
The epitome of Berlusconi’s “pop political” style came in 2008, when he released an electoral TV campaign titled “Thank Goodness for Silvio!” (Menomale che Silvio c’è), showing a crowd of singing, devoted followers which make even Kim Jon-Un blush.
“There is no doubt in my mind that [Berlusconi’s] most profound impact was on Italy’s national popular culture,” noted Italian journalist and documentary-maker Annalisa Piras while speaking to Euronews Culture. “Today, a quick zapping through Italian TV news is clear evidence of the Berlusconi effect”.
Such an impact is still felt in the present-day, which to Piras is confirmed by the “football chanting, the hagiography and the simultaneous broadcast on 20 TV channels”, of the ex-PM’s state funeral, held in Milan last Wednesday.
