RICERCA ITALIANA     

Research program

Media and Generations in Italian Society

University Co-ordinator

Università degli Studi di TRENTO - SCIENZE UMANE E SOCIALI - ()

Research Unit Leader

Luigi Del Grosso Destreri

Description

The intention is to examine popular narratives produced in the past decade. Socialization via the media is a process that persists throughout the lifetime and helps us understand our direct experiences meaningfully. Whilst the importance of television is indubitable and has been subject to numerous analysis, less taken for granted is recourse to popular fiction. This consists of novels, usually published in weekly instalments, which are never discussed in the literary columns of the newspapers but are read by an extremely large public – not necessarily female. The evergreen nature of this type of literature means that it is not a fashion but a medium-term cultural phenomenon. In blatant contrast with the modernity that seemingly pervades the media system, this literature reminds us not only of the ‘non-contemporaneousness’ discussed above but also of the possibility of cultural dissonances in media consumption perceived as such by scholars but not necessarily by users.
With these caveats, now described is the literary corpus that we intend to examine (see Roccella, 1998; Arslan and Pozzato, 1989). It has been claimed that romance literature “despite the major cultural changes of recent decades, has maintained the centrality in the female imagination that it acquired at the beginning of the century” (Miconi, 2001, p. 397) and “the female percentage is obviously dominant (94.8%), although the male readership is not insignificant … romantic literature is currently controlled by the Harlequin group … which also operates in Italy via an agreement with Mondadori on publication of the “Harmony” series. According to Miconi, “the romantic novel can currently count on more than 3,800,000 readers; … 41.6% possess lower-secondary school certificates, 25.4% elementary school certificates or no qualifications, 21.8% of consumers are upper-secondary school leavers and only 4.9% are graduates … put otherwise: three-quarters of readers (74.8%) have concluded compulsory schooling.” (ibid., pp. 398-9).
However, we believe that the ISTAT statistics do not permit the conclusion that only women consume romantic literature. Instead, it seems correct to attribute romantic fiction an image of ‘literature for women’, without this automatically signifying that women are its almost exclusive consumers. The case of Carolina Invernizio is instructive. Because the Sonzogno archive containing a huge number of readers’ letters to Invernizio was destroyed during World War II, we can only rely on indirect sources. It seems that fully 30% of the letters were from men, which confirms our hypothesis of a literary genre ‘officially’ for women but also consumed by a significant number of men. If we add that, as regards the ISTAT statistics, men are unlikely to admit during an interview that they read romantic fiction (because of its feminine image), we may suppose that there are numerous male readers.
This latter observation also applies to soap operas, which according to many scholars “reflect and are part of a female culture” (see e.g. Geraghty, 1991). That soap operas are a culture traditionally defined as female does not automatically signify that they are exclusively consumed by women. An interesting study on Un posto al sole reports that its audience is made up “mainly of women in the 45-to-64 age group”, but “it is also true that they are also watched by numerous men (Capecchi and Cardini, 1998, p. 260; see Capecchi, 2000).
The literature examined will therefore be that which for the purposes of the project defines itself and is perceived as a genre (although the problem of its actual use is still unresolved) After a survey of studies on consumption literature, selection will be made of narrative series whose essential features are: (a) medium and medium-to-low popularity; (b) their contemporary settings (therefore excluding historical fiction). The series considered will include two further groups: (a) those addressed to an explicitly adolescent audience; and (b) those addressed to an audience of generic age. Preliminary examination will be made of the generations present and the features attributed to them. Comparative analysis will concern not only the presence of the generations in the imaginary and real social structures (in order to evidence over- and under-representations) but also the emotional context.