Abstract
The Holocaust features prominently in a number of recent Italian television productions, many of which have focused on
members of the Catholic clergy and on secular but pious historical figures. This article argues that such cultural products partake
of a broader process of constructing a normative, ‘consensual’, and inherently conservative notion of Italian national identity for
the twenty-first century. The chapter will combine two lines of enquiry. Firstly, it will situate these television products in the longterm
history of conflicting and often mutually exclusive memory cultures in Italy, each vying for recognition in the public arena
throughout the twentieth century. These fractured memory cultures find a common ground in the oft-mentioned myth of the ‘good
Italian’. In the context of this long history, the article will then explore the challenge to fixed notions of Italian identity represented
by the recent wave of immigration to the country, and television’s insufficient engagement with these developments. In exploring
the place of Holocaust narratives in contemporary Italian television, this article examines the medium’s role as public historian and
purveyor of far-from-neutral cultural values in a specific moment of the country’s history.
Original language | Italian |
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Title of host publication | Televisionismo: Narrazioni televisive della storia italiana negli anni della seconda Repubblica |
Editors | Monica Jansen, Maria Bonaria Urban |
Pages | 49-60 |
Number of pages | 176 |
Publication status | Published - 2015 |
Keywords
- Holocaust Memory
- television
- Italy