Qrazy
05-08-2009, 09:59 PM
For anyone interested... Here's a paper I wrote for my Italian cinema class analyzing the family unit in relation to Amarcord (Fellini) and Rocco and His Brothers (Visconti).
The social institution of the family functions as one of the basic building blocks of Italian society. When family bonds are tight the family system provides support, protection and guidance for its members. When these bonds losen, the family flounders and disintegrates. The arrival of modernity and Fascism in the early to mid-twentieth century added many new stresses to family life which in turn destroyed many families. In Rocco and His Brothers and Amarcord, Luchino Visconti and Federico Fellini respectively, explore the effects that objectification, irresponsibility, and shifting social values, had on the family unit.
Modernity ushered in an age of greater freedom of choice and social mobility. Before the modern era the vast majority of people had fixed roles in society. For instance, if you were born on a farm you would remain there and become a farmer yourself. In Rocco and His Brothers Visconti focuses on The Parondis, a rural farming family who move from Lucania in Southern Italy to Milan in Northern Italy. The Parondi family members are the brothers Vincenzo, Ciro, Rocco, Luca, Simone and their mother Rosaria. In order to better understand the disintegration of the family unit in modern life, it is necessary to understand the roles played by the individual members of each family.
The family moves at the behest of its matriarch, Rosaria Parondi, who wishes to establish an economic and social future for herself and her sons. In her eyes urbanization represents an escape from poverty and obscurity. At one point she says to Ciro that for twenty-five years she had wanted to make the move. It was her husband who had stopped her. Now that her husband has recently passed on she can finally transition to the city. Unfortunately the shift from rural to urban life turns out to be a hard one and the growth pains of urbanization gradually begin to unravel Parondi family ties.
While Visconti focuses on the effect of urbanization on a rural family, Fellini's Amarcord focuses on the effects of Fascism on the inhabitants of a small city, a fictionalized version of Rimini in central Italy. Fellini focuses on one family in particular, the Biondis. The core of the Biondi family is comprised of the mother Miranda, her brother Lallo, the father Aurelio, sons Titta and Oliva, Uncle Teo and their grandfather. The Biondi's differ drastically from the Parondi's in that they do not suffer from the same economic hardships. Aurelio is a hardworking construction foreman. His family is well fed. They have a large house and a maid. However, like the Parondis, the Biondis are equally at the mercy of the tide of modernity and the pressures it exerts against the banks of their family.
The Biondi family's dysfunctionality is a product of its members inability to assume responsibility for themselves, their thoughts and behavior. This irresponsibility extends from the kids, to the parents and to the other townsfolk which in this tight knit community are in a sense the Biondis extended family. This far reaching irresponsibility can also be seen as an adolescent immaturity. It is this immaturity which allows Fascist ideology to proliferate and disseminate throughout all of the major social institutions in the town, including the institution of the family.
Although Rosaria Parondi is certainly not a fascist. She does seem to believe in the fascist credo that only the strong survive. It is Rosaria's desire for wealth and status which serves as the initial catalyst for the disintegration of her family. Visconti describes her as someone who treats her “children as objects, as forces to exploit.”1 She is not a bad woman nor a bad mother, but this self-interested outlook of hers damages her children.
This outlook can be witnessed in the anger she unleashes upon Vincenzo when he expresses his desire to be married so soon after his fathers death. She will not condone such a marriage before her and her sons are financially secure. Later in the film Rosaria jokingly warns her boys 'If you don't come back with money, you're no longer sons of Rosaria Parondi.' She presumably wishes to teach her sons the value of hard work but her approach is domineering and detrimental. She clearly loves her boys but she uses them as well.
On the other hand, Miranda, the mother of the Biondi's takes a very different approach to parenting but with an equally harmful outcome. She coddles both her sons Titta, Oliva and her brother Lallo as well. This keeps them all stuck in a state of perennial adolescence. As they are never taught how to take care of themselves, they never assume responsibility for their own lives. Lallo is referred to by a friend as almost sixty but his sister still thinks of him as 'just a kid'. And she treats him like a kid, doting on him and spoiling him at the dinner table.
Lallo, Titta and many of the other townsfolk are in possession of a “time-wasting freedom which permits... (them) to cultivate absurd dreams.”2 For example Titta and his friends engage in numerous sexual fantasies. Titta fantasizes about his math teacher, the busty tobaconnist, Volpina, large-bottomed peasant women on bicycles, and most of all Gradisca the object of his desires. All of these fantasies serve to keep Titta from engaging in the real world. His friends and he have no depth of thought or sense of moral responsibility. Titta and Lallo's idleness strain the family dynamic, but Titta's acts of juvenile delinquency push that dynamic nearly to the breaking point.
During one family dinner Aurelio discovers one of Titta's delinquent acts. While at the movies Titta and his friends urinated off of the theater balcony and onto a man's hat as a prank. Aurelio exclaims in frustration 'at his age I'd already been working for three years'! Titta's unfettered freedom and lack of responsibility provide him with the leeway to carry out these petty pranks. Despite his mischievious acts his mother defends him against his father which puts pressure upon their marital relationship. In exagerrated Felliniesque fashion by the end of the meal both parents are threatening to kill both themselves and the entire family. Titta may need to be punished for his actions but even more than punishment or boundaries, Titta needs united and autonomy supportive parents.
When Aurelio says to Miranda, 'you've brought them up wrong' he is in effect shirking his own parenting responsibilities. If the parents do not accept responsibility for their children, they can not expect their children to accept responsibility for themselves. Here the nuclear family serves as microcosm for the larger political spectrum of Italy. Fascism was supposed to impose structure and boundaries upon young Italians but it was a structure devoid of content. Fascist dictates are the political equivalent of the angry father shouting at his children in order to keep them in line. Both Aurelio's and the fascist approach are controlling and ineffective methods of socialization. Neither method fosters responsibility, only aquiescence. If Titta is to accept moral responsibility for his actions, he needs to be taught why what he did was wrong.
The psychologist Edward Deci has theorised that controlling methods of socialization lead to decreased self-worth, lower self-esteem and amotivation in the socialized individual. Similarly, when a parent's love is contingent upon monetary or other control related conditions the child experiences detrimental developmental effects.3 In Rocco and His Brothers Rosaria Parondi's materialistic concerns prime her son Simone's moral decline. Like Miranda's brother Lallo, Simone's penchant for laziness is apparent very early on in the film. Namely, Simone is the last of the brothers out of bed in the morning. Like Miranda, Rosaria also spoils Simone. Although she dislikes the idea, later in the film she lets him live with the prostitute Nadia in her house. This coddling of Simone's laziness coupled with the contingent affection of the women in his life send Simone down a self-destructive path.
Simone's self-destruction begins when at their mother's insistence both Simone and Rocco become boxers. They pursue this path in order to earn money for their mother and their family, but boxing is a dehumanizing career. The brothers must sell their bodies to be beaten upon for the entertainment of others. In order to win their matches, the boys must then objectify their opponents. This is because it is much easier to fight an object than a person. For instance, Rocco states after a win that he felt his fight was no different than shadowboxing. This detachment helps him to succeed in the ring.
Simone on the other hand loses his future as a boxer because he approached his career with a lack of discipline and seriousness. Despite giving up on boxing, the objectifying element of the sport takes a toll on Simone's psychology. Dehumanization is a prevalent symptom of modernity and it is not long for Simone before he begins to dehumanize others, including members of his own family, both in and out of the ring.
In Amarcord the individual laziness and irresponsibility which categorizes the Biondi family and the other townsfolk, facilitates the proliferation of fascist ideology. The Fascist framework orchestrates community rituals and spectacle driven events which bring the community together but in a primarily non-reflective manner. Fellini presents Fascism as a fundamentally hollow ideology, fueled by meaningless rhetoric. The two major Fascist events in the film are the arrival of a federale on the anniversary of the founding of Rome and the passing of the Fascist built cruise ship The Rex.
Both the arrival of the Fascist Federale and the passing of the Rex are characterized by an obfuscatory quality. For instance, the federale's arrival is obscured by smoke and the noise of the crowd while the passing of the Rex is hidden by fog. The smoke, fog and noise function as the sound and fury cloaking the essential emptiness of Fascism's base ideology.
Fascism is in a sense bringing the community and by extension the family together, but it does so in a problematic manner. The togetherness Fascism provides is a pseudo-unity. Characters engage in spectacle and shared experience but they are still wholly disconnected from one another. The fact that nearly everyone in the town wishes to attend these events only demonstrates that none of the townsfolk have the strength not to take part in the ritual.4 The petty pranks and stupidities perpetuated at these occurences further demonstrates the lack of individual responsibility of these characters. Fascism keeps characters selfish, irresponsible and disconnected from each other.
This disconnect is a far reaching symptom of modernity. The obfuscatory imagery which marked the arrival of the Federale and The Rex returns once more when a heavy fog enshrouds the town. Titta's grandfather wanders outside and can not even recognize his own house. By association he can not find his family. The fog here serves as metaphor for the isolation and alienation felt between Biondi family members and more generally between the citizens of the city. There is an interpersonal disconnect between characters but also an intrapersonal disconnect between any given character and themelves. Characters are emotionally disconnected. For instance, they fantasize primarily about physical sexuality rather than emotional fulfillment. Sex is thought of as an act of 'doing to' rather than 'being with' someone. Even the grandfather revels in discussions of his forefathers sexual potency. An old man, he is as irresponsible and immature as the Biondi children.
The Italian Fascist slogan reads 'Dio. Patria. Famiglia.' -- God. Country. Family. But Fascism does not genuinely represent these institutions. It represents and perpetuates only Fascism itself. At one point Lallo denounces his brother-in-law Aurelio to the fascists. Aurelio had played the Internationale, 'the anthem of subversives', on a gramophone during a fascist rally. This rouses the ire of the Fascist guard who punish Aurelio by forcing him to drink castor oil. Lallo's act of betrayal and Fascist ideology thus pushes the Biondi family further apart. Clearly Fascism places no importance upon the institution of family since it is destroying the family unit it professes to maintain. Family matters to the Fascist only in so far as it relates to and endorses Fascist ideology.
The social institution of the family functions as one of the basic building blocks of Italian society. When family bonds are tight the family system provides support, protection and guidance for its members. When these bonds losen, the family flounders and disintegrates. The arrival of modernity and Fascism in the early to mid-twentieth century added many new stresses to family life which in turn destroyed many families. In Rocco and His Brothers and Amarcord, Luchino Visconti and Federico Fellini respectively, explore the effects that objectification, irresponsibility, and shifting social values, had on the family unit.
Modernity ushered in an age of greater freedom of choice and social mobility. Before the modern era the vast majority of people had fixed roles in society. For instance, if you were born on a farm you would remain there and become a farmer yourself. In Rocco and His Brothers Visconti focuses on The Parondis, a rural farming family who move from Lucania in Southern Italy to Milan in Northern Italy. The Parondi family members are the brothers Vincenzo, Ciro, Rocco, Luca, Simone and their mother Rosaria. In order to better understand the disintegration of the family unit in modern life, it is necessary to understand the roles played by the individual members of each family.
The family moves at the behest of its matriarch, Rosaria Parondi, who wishes to establish an economic and social future for herself and her sons. In her eyes urbanization represents an escape from poverty and obscurity. At one point she says to Ciro that for twenty-five years she had wanted to make the move. It was her husband who had stopped her. Now that her husband has recently passed on she can finally transition to the city. Unfortunately the shift from rural to urban life turns out to be a hard one and the growth pains of urbanization gradually begin to unravel Parondi family ties.
While Visconti focuses on the effect of urbanization on a rural family, Fellini's Amarcord focuses on the effects of Fascism on the inhabitants of a small city, a fictionalized version of Rimini in central Italy. Fellini focuses on one family in particular, the Biondis. The core of the Biondi family is comprised of the mother Miranda, her brother Lallo, the father Aurelio, sons Titta and Oliva, Uncle Teo and their grandfather. The Biondi's differ drastically from the Parondi's in that they do not suffer from the same economic hardships. Aurelio is a hardworking construction foreman. His family is well fed. They have a large house and a maid. However, like the Parondis, the Biondis are equally at the mercy of the tide of modernity and the pressures it exerts against the banks of their family.
The Biondi family's dysfunctionality is a product of its members inability to assume responsibility for themselves, their thoughts and behavior. This irresponsibility extends from the kids, to the parents and to the other townsfolk which in this tight knit community are in a sense the Biondis extended family. This far reaching irresponsibility can also be seen as an adolescent immaturity. It is this immaturity which allows Fascist ideology to proliferate and disseminate throughout all of the major social institutions in the town, including the institution of the family.
Although Rosaria Parondi is certainly not a fascist. She does seem to believe in the fascist credo that only the strong survive. It is Rosaria's desire for wealth and status which serves as the initial catalyst for the disintegration of her family. Visconti describes her as someone who treats her “children as objects, as forces to exploit.”1 She is not a bad woman nor a bad mother, but this self-interested outlook of hers damages her children.
This outlook can be witnessed in the anger she unleashes upon Vincenzo when he expresses his desire to be married so soon after his fathers death. She will not condone such a marriage before her and her sons are financially secure. Later in the film Rosaria jokingly warns her boys 'If you don't come back with money, you're no longer sons of Rosaria Parondi.' She presumably wishes to teach her sons the value of hard work but her approach is domineering and detrimental. She clearly loves her boys but she uses them as well.
On the other hand, Miranda, the mother of the Biondi's takes a very different approach to parenting but with an equally harmful outcome. She coddles both her sons Titta, Oliva and her brother Lallo as well. This keeps them all stuck in a state of perennial adolescence. As they are never taught how to take care of themselves, they never assume responsibility for their own lives. Lallo is referred to by a friend as almost sixty but his sister still thinks of him as 'just a kid'. And she treats him like a kid, doting on him and spoiling him at the dinner table.
Lallo, Titta and many of the other townsfolk are in possession of a “time-wasting freedom which permits... (them) to cultivate absurd dreams.”2 For example Titta and his friends engage in numerous sexual fantasies. Titta fantasizes about his math teacher, the busty tobaconnist, Volpina, large-bottomed peasant women on bicycles, and most of all Gradisca the object of his desires. All of these fantasies serve to keep Titta from engaging in the real world. His friends and he have no depth of thought or sense of moral responsibility. Titta and Lallo's idleness strain the family dynamic, but Titta's acts of juvenile delinquency push that dynamic nearly to the breaking point.
During one family dinner Aurelio discovers one of Titta's delinquent acts. While at the movies Titta and his friends urinated off of the theater balcony and onto a man's hat as a prank. Aurelio exclaims in frustration 'at his age I'd already been working for three years'! Titta's unfettered freedom and lack of responsibility provide him with the leeway to carry out these petty pranks. Despite his mischievious acts his mother defends him against his father which puts pressure upon their marital relationship. In exagerrated Felliniesque fashion by the end of the meal both parents are threatening to kill both themselves and the entire family. Titta may need to be punished for his actions but even more than punishment or boundaries, Titta needs united and autonomy supportive parents.
When Aurelio says to Miranda, 'you've brought them up wrong' he is in effect shirking his own parenting responsibilities. If the parents do not accept responsibility for their children, they can not expect their children to accept responsibility for themselves. Here the nuclear family serves as microcosm for the larger political spectrum of Italy. Fascism was supposed to impose structure and boundaries upon young Italians but it was a structure devoid of content. Fascist dictates are the political equivalent of the angry father shouting at his children in order to keep them in line. Both Aurelio's and the fascist approach are controlling and ineffective methods of socialization. Neither method fosters responsibility, only aquiescence. If Titta is to accept moral responsibility for his actions, he needs to be taught why what he did was wrong.
The psychologist Edward Deci has theorised that controlling methods of socialization lead to decreased self-worth, lower self-esteem and amotivation in the socialized individual. Similarly, when a parent's love is contingent upon monetary or other control related conditions the child experiences detrimental developmental effects.3 In Rocco and His Brothers Rosaria Parondi's materialistic concerns prime her son Simone's moral decline. Like Miranda's brother Lallo, Simone's penchant for laziness is apparent very early on in the film. Namely, Simone is the last of the brothers out of bed in the morning. Like Miranda, Rosaria also spoils Simone. Although she dislikes the idea, later in the film she lets him live with the prostitute Nadia in her house. This coddling of Simone's laziness coupled with the contingent affection of the women in his life send Simone down a self-destructive path.
Simone's self-destruction begins when at their mother's insistence both Simone and Rocco become boxers. They pursue this path in order to earn money for their mother and their family, but boxing is a dehumanizing career. The brothers must sell their bodies to be beaten upon for the entertainment of others. In order to win their matches, the boys must then objectify their opponents. This is because it is much easier to fight an object than a person. For instance, Rocco states after a win that he felt his fight was no different than shadowboxing. This detachment helps him to succeed in the ring.
Simone on the other hand loses his future as a boxer because he approached his career with a lack of discipline and seriousness. Despite giving up on boxing, the objectifying element of the sport takes a toll on Simone's psychology. Dehumanization is a prevalent symptom of modernity and it is not long for Simone before he begins to dehumanize others, including members of his own family, both in and out of the ring.
In Amarcord the individual laziness and irresponsibility which categorizes the Biondi family and the other townsfolk, facilitates the proliferation of fascist ideology. The Fascist framework orchestrates community rituals and spectacle driven events which bring the community together but in a primarily non-reflective manner. Fellini presents Fascism as a fundamentally hollow ideology, fueled by meaningless rhetoric. The two major Fascist events in the film are the arrival of a federale on the anniversary of the founding of Rome and the passing of the Fascist built cruise ship The Rex.
Both the arrival of the Fascist Federale and the passing of the Rex are characterized by an obfuscatory quality. For instance, the federale's arrival is obscured by smoke and the noise of the crowd while the passing of the Rex is hidden by fog. The smoke, fog and noise function as the sound and fury cloaking the essential emptiness of Fascism's base ideology.
Fascism is in a sense bringing the community and by extension the family together, but it does so in a problematic manner. The togetherness Fascism provides is a pseudo-unity. Characters engage in spectacle and shared experience but they are still wholly disconnected from one another. The fact that nearly everyone in the town wishes to attend these events only demonstrates that none of the townsfolk have the strength not to take part in the ritual.4 The petty pranks and stupidities perpetuated at these occurences further demonstrates the lack of individual responsibility of these characters. Fascism keeps characters selfish, irresponsible and disconnected from each other.
This disconnect is a far reaching symptom of modernity. The obfuscatory imagery which marked the arrival of the Federale and The Rex returns once more when a heavy fog enshrouds the town. Titta's grandfather wanders outside and can not even recognize his own house. By association he can not find his family. The fog here serves as metaphor for the isolation and alienation felt between Biondi family members and more generally between the citizens of the city. There is an interpersonal disconnect between characters but also an intrapersonal disconnect between any given character and themelves. Characters are emotionally disconnected. For instance, they fantasize primarily about physical sexuality rather than emotional fulfillment. Sex is thought of as an act of 'doing to' rather than 'being with' someone. Even the grandfather revels in discussions of his forefathers sexual potency. An old man, he is as irresponsible and immature as the Biondi children.
The Italian Fascist slogan reads 'Dio. Patria. Famiglia.' -- God. Country. Family. But Fascism does not genuinely represent these institutions. It represents and perpetuates only Fascism itself. At one point Lallo denounces his brother-in-law Aurelio to the fascists. Aurelio had played the Internationale, 'the anthem of subversives', on a gramophone during a fascist rally. This rouses the ire of the Fascist guard who punish Aurelio by forcing him to drink castor oil. Lallo's act of betrayal and Fascist ideology thus pushes the Biondi family further apart. Clearly Fascism places no importance upon the institution of family since it is destroying the family unit it professes to maintain. Family matters to the Fascist only in so far as it relates to and endorses Fascist ideology.