The death (and re-birth) of the hero: charisma and manufactured charisma in modern Italy

Modern Italy ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 3 (02) ◽  
pp. 173-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Gundle
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mass Communications ◽  
Stage Management ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Profound Change ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
The People

Summary In the twentieth century Italy has witnessed an unusual variety of charismatic political figures. Given the tradition of the Risorgimento and in particular the influence of Garibaldi, several of these donned the mantle of heroism. However, in modern conditions this heroism was largely a matter of showmanship. With the rise of mass communications, political leaders were compelled to reinvent the nature and forms of their appeal to the people and also to engage with the languages of popular entertainment. It is argued that cinema heralded a profound change in the nature of charisma and that television subsequently undermined it by rendering political leaders familiar and reducing the distance necessary for stage management.

Espionage and Exile

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phyllis Lassner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Crises ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
John Le Carre ◽  
The Cold War

Espionage and Exile demonstrates that from the 1930s through the Cold War, British Writers Eric Ambler, Helen MacInnes, Ann Bridge, Pamela Frankau, John le Carré and filmmaker Leslie Howard combined propaganda and popular entertainment to call for resistance to political oppression. Instead of constituting context, the political engagement of these spy fictions bring the historical crises of Fascist and Communist domination to the forefront of twentieth century literary history. They deploy themes of deception and betrayal to warn audiences of the consequences of Nazi Germany's conquests and later, the fusion of Fascist and Communist oppression. Featuring protagonists who are stateless and threatened refugees, abandoned and betrayed secret agents, and politically engaged or entrapped amateurs, all in states of precarious exile, these fictions engage their historical subjects to complicate extant literary meanings of transnational, diaspora and performativity. Unsettling distinctions between villain and victim as well as exile and belonging dramatizes relationships between the ethics of espionage and responses to international crises. With politically charged suspense and narrative experiments, these writers also challenge distinctions between literary, middlebrow, and popular culture.

From fiction to reality: Presidential framing in the Ukrainian comedy Servant of the People

2021 ◽  
pp. 026732312110121
Author(s):  
Nataliya Roman ◽  
Berrin A Beasley ◽  
John H Parmelee
Keyword(s):  
Framing Theory ◽  
Character Traits ◽  
Political Satire ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
The People

This study examines presidential framing in the Ukrainian sitcom Servant of the People, which may have helped Ukrainian comedian and political novice Volodymyr Zelenskyy win the presidency in 2019. Building upon research into fictional framing and political satire verite, this study analyzes the roles and character traits of Vasiliy Goloborodko, a fictional Ukrainian president played by Zelenskyy. The findings expand framing theory to include fictional political leaders in sitcoms.

Institutionalization and Evangelization in the Argentine Church: Córdoba Under Zenón Bustos, 1905-1919

1989 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-381
Author(s):  
Arthur R. Liebscher
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Pastoral Care ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Central City ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
The People ◽  
National Leadership ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Church

To the dismay of today's social progressives, the Argentine Catholic church addresses the moral situation of its people but also shies away from specific political positions or other hint of secular involvement. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the church set out to secure its place in national leadership by strengthening religious institutions and withdrawing clergy from politics. The church struggled to overcome a heritage of organizational weakness in order to promote evangelization, that is, to extend its spiritual influence within Argentina. The bishop of the central city of Córdoba, Franciscan Friar Zenón Bustos y Ferreyra (1905-1925), reinforced pastoral care, catechesis, and education. After 1912, as politics became more heated, Bustos insisted that priests abstain from partisan activities and dedicate themselves to ministry. The church casts itself in the role of national guardian, not of the government, but of the faith and morals of the people.

scholarly journals Satire in Shrestha’s Ghintang Ghishi Twank

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-81
Author(s):  
Man Kumar Rai
Keyword(s):  
Positive Change ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Common People ◽  
The People ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Special Occasion ◽  
The Common

   The objective of this article is to analyze the use of satire in three poems, from Rupesh  Shrestha’s volume of poems Ghintang Ghishi Twank in order to examine use of the suffering of voiceless people. The poems depict absurdities of the society and hypocrisy of the leaders which are the causes of poor people‟s pains. This poems exhibit how follies, vices and absurdities are hurdle in transforming society into prosperous one. The poet has berated them with the aim of bringing positive change in the society and in the lives of the common people. The poet mocks at the political changes which have brought change only in the lives of political leaders, not in the lives of the people who have been ignored by the state for long. Despite many anxieties, they enjoy dancing and playing sticks in their hands on the special occasion of Gaijatra. The poems are collection of sharp words which are used to butt the corrupt politicians. For this, the elements of Juvenalian satire have been used as tools for analysis of the selected poems. This study highlights upon the anxieties of marginalized people; demonstrates the shameful act of politicians; and exposes the absurdities prevailed in the society. It indicates that the political and social absurdities are subject to be poked in order to reform a society.

Nation in Ephemeral Literature: Dynamics of Demonstrative Resistance and Swadeshi Nationhood (1905–11)

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-97
Author(s):  
Mimasha Pandit
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
The Public ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The People

A new image was engendered in twentieth-century Bengal. The image clarified the direction of public opinion, whether it sanctified the actions of the colonizers or that of the colonized. In the process, those who chose to side with the colonized developed a close bond with the others who became a part of the camaraderie. The resultant image, envisioned by the people, did not come to them naturally; it was produced in their mind. The word of the age, printed and performed, helped produce this vision using the context as an index of reference. Words were transmitted and circulated among large number of people, who came to know, discuss and debate it. Despite the strict vigilance of the Raj that censured objectionable words, it nevertheless reached the public. Words found expression in ephemeral media that made the words disseminated untraceable. One such medium was the placard. This article analyses the placards circulated and posted, during the early twentieth century, and delves deep into the process of demonstration and persuasion adopted by the placards to invoke an image of nation among the Bengalis.

Holiness and Judaism

2018 ◽  
pp. 23-88
Author(s):  
Alan L. Mittleman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Emile Durkheim ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
A Value ◽  
The People ◽  
Sacred And Profane ◽  
The World ◽  
Land Of Israel

This chapter reconstructs the meanings of holiness from representative texts of the Jewish tradition. The discussion is anchored on two claims. First, biblical thought does not divide the world into a neat dualism of sacred and profane. Second, the Bible and subsequent Judaism conceive of holiness in three different ways: holiness sometimes refers to a property, holiness indicates a status, and holiness is a value or project. These three characteristics of holiness are examined in detail using the Bible. The chapter is primarily concerned with the ideas of the holiness of the people of Israel and the holiness of the Land of Israel. It considers the sacred/profane dichotomy by focusing on the views of twentieth-century scholars such as Emile Durkheim, Rudolf Otto, and Mircea Eliade. It also explores holiness and purity as they relate to God before concluding with an analysis of holiness in ancient and medieval rabbinic Judaism.

Silicon San Francisco and the West Bay Wall

2018 ◽  
pp. 150-185
Author(s):  
Alex Schafran
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Silicon Valley ◽  
The West ◽  
The People ◽  
New Residents

Silicon Valley as we know it emerged in part from encounters between the technology of the valley and the Bohemian culture of San Francisco. This San Francisco–Silicon Valley nexus would produce one of the most dynamic economic growth stories any region has ever seen. Over the course of the latter part of the twentieth century, this encounter eventually turned both San Francisco and Silicon Valley into massive jobs engines. This chapter examines the spaces where this engine was most powerful, the places that drove the economic cart which attracted so many new residents and so much investment. These are also the places that largely did either very little or not enough to house the people who held these jobs. They did even less for those who had suffered under the segregated conditions of the earlier era.

Working Almost as Slaves?

2018 ◽  
pp. 74-94
Author(s):  
Oscar de la Torre
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Memory ◽  
Brazil Nut ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
The People ◽  
Loss Of Autonomy ◽  
Number Of Individuals

In the collective memories of the Lower Amazon maroons, the decades after emancipation are remembered as a period when “the people were oppressed” by Brazil nut merchants, who “enslaved” the blacks of the region. However, a number of individuals also relate memories of merchants who “helped the people,” who “gave goods for the saint patron’s parties,” and who acted, in the words of a Trombetas River maroon descendant, as “fathers of the people.” To reconcile these perspectives I argue in this chapter that these conflicting stories reflect two spheres in the relationships between black peasants and Brazil nut merchants. While the first one was characterized by domination, a few individuals successfully accommodated to, and even collaborated with, the newly arrived commercial houses. In both spheres, Afro-descendant forest specialists and explorers were fundamental to the merchants’ penetration into a world where the mocambeiros had hitherto ruled. In the end, the loss of autonomy and quality of life in the 1910s and 1920s shaped the maroon descendants’ social memory for the rest of the twentieth century, filling it with narratives of poverty, dispossession, and the speech figure of the “new slavery.”

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Ronny Regev
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Work Practices ◽  
The People ◽  
Film Content ◽  
Studio System ◽  
The 1950S

This chapter provides an overview of the main themes of the book. It explains Working in Hollywood’s main objective: to redraw the glamorous image of Hollywood and demonstrate that the film industry’s golden age (1920-1950) was not only defined by film content and celebrities but also by the people employed in the studio system, their work practices, and interactions on the job. It suggests there is much to learn by shifting our gaze from the pictures to the people who made them. In addition, the chapter offers a short timeline of the studio system, from the formation of Paramount, MGM, Twentieth Century-Fox, and RKO – the five vertically integrated major companies, in the 1920s, to the system’s disintegration in the 1950s.

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