Feminine Identity, Sexuality and Power in Italian Film and Media

Author: hejiawei

Three Case Studies about Public Shaming in Italian Cinema

Melody He

Three Case Studies about Public Shaming in Italian Cinema

Sexism and racism have existed in Italian society as serious problems for a long time. In order to call on people’s attention on these issues, some directors begin to utilize public shaming on women and black people, which could turn the films into more dramatic and powerful works. Public shaming is a way to punish, inform, and criticize those who deviate from certain expected standards (Petley, 2013). When people subjected to public shaming are women, sexuality becomes the focus of the actual acts of punishment and redemption. When the people subjected to public shaming are women of color, race, and gender are an explosive mix. This essay will show how the use of public shaming in Italian film initially aims to trigger discussions on sexism and racism, while, at the same time, reiterates the theme of sexism and racism in Italian society.I will talk about three films, Seduced and Abandoned, Malèna, and Black and White, in greater details.

Seduced and abandoned, a film made in the 1960s, is about public shaming operated by men and applied to women. At that time, because of the “honor code” in Italy, Agnese, the victim of rape, is forced to marry the rapist in order to keep two family’s honor. The scene which all the men in town chasing her and various people judging and criticizing her happens after she escapes from the court and rejects to marry the rapist. Those behaviors directly reveal the sexism in Italian society. Men treat Agnese as a dissipated woman because they believe that men own the right to rape or ask for sex, while good women need to reject such request.

Beyond the plot of Seduced and abandoned, the use of proxemics and close-up shots deepens the sexism hidden in public shaming. Proxemic behavior can be seen as a function of eight different dimensions: postural, sociofugal, kinesthetic factors, touch code, retinal combinations, thermal code, olfaction code, and voice loudness scale (Hall, 1963). We can analyze the kinesthetic factors in Agnese’s case. The kinesthetic factor is based on what people can do with their arms, legs, and bodies (Hall, 1963). After escaping from the court, she is surrounded by a crowd of men and can hardly step forward. In that scene, all the men cling to Agnese and bring physical pressure to her, which is parallel with the mental pressure they impose on her after she breaks the “good women” standard. When Agnese tries to run away from the crowd, men chase her and catch her violently. The attempt to control Agnese is a representation of how men dominate society, which utilizes violence to discipline women’s behavior.

Besides Agnese’s personal perspective, there is an “optical distance” for viewers on the basis of proxemics, referring to viewers’ perception of the physical distance that separates them from the event if they were actually present at the event (Ferguson& Ferguson, 1978). This optical distance is mostly conveyed through plenty of close-up shots of people’s faces when Agnese lies in bed. The whole frame is filled with one big face, which is quite powerful and stressful to watch. With the close-up shot of the head only, the frame corresponds to a physical intimate space arrangement that can bring discomfort to viewers. Because of the close optical distance, audiences, especially female audiences are able to highly resonate with Agnese, feel her pain and despair, and feel the stress created by a sexist society.

Seduced and abandoned successfully catches people’s attention and promotes the revision of “honor” legislation by dramatically depicts a story about the “honor code”. The director Germi aims to criticize the absurdity of the honor code and how it causes moral decay in society. By using public shaming, he reveals the sexism in Italian society and how “honor code” roots in sexism. However, this film is all about women being abused and victimization of women. The public shaming is sexist, which not only against the woman victim, but also upholds sexism. The close proxemics and optimal distance both lead to discomfort and self-depreciation among female viewers, which is a potential threat to women at that time.

Compared to Seduced and abandoned, the public shaming in Malèna is more violent and is mainly operate within the female community. Malèna is a beautiful woman. After everyone thinks that her husband died in the war, men begin to help her in exchange for sleeping with her. Due to her vulnerability, she sleeps with various men to survive, includes the Nazis. After Italy wins the war, women in town publicly beat her in excuse of her “collaboration” with Nazis. The real intention is that they are jealous of her beauty and envy her ability to attract men. Public shaming is upgraded in this film, in which women are the ones who act, while men are merely watching, which restores the order of patriarchy and sexism in Italian society.

Malèna also utilizes proxemics and plays with the concept of misogyny. In the public beating scene, proxemics is raised to a higher and more violent level. Women tear her clothes, beat her, kick her, cut her hair, and verbally insult her, which is related to kinesthetic factors and voice loudness scale according to Hall’s classification of proxemics. What matters the most is the use of proxemics dramatically demonizes women, which worsens the misogyny. Misogyny is the hatred of women. Despite its common appearance within men, misogyny also exists among women. It accompanies with patriarchal or male-dominated societies and continues to place women in a subordinate position (Flood, Gardiner, Pease, & Pringle, 2007). In Malèna, director Tornatore shows the practice of misogyny by presenting the violence within the female community, which is more shocking. Before and during the beating, women use vicious gender-based language, such as “whore”, to insult Malèna. In the beating scene, we can see the director divides the people into two parts: women who beat Malènaand men who stand by without doing nothing. There are two major implications generated from direct visual perception. The one who is experiencing public shaming is a woman. Those who act violently and brutally are also women. In any case, women are the ones needed to be blamed on, which actually worsens the sexism by increasing misogyny in Italian society.

Unlike Seduced and abandoned, Malèna fails to fight against sexism, which generates side effects in Italy. The plot itself, Malèna begins to sleep with men in order to make a living however gets beaten without help from men, indicates that women are useless without men. Besides, while the perpetrators and victim are both women, the misogyny in society deteriorates. As a result, this unusual and uncommon attack with strong intensity backfires, giving men more power to disparage women and making women less confident to speak out for women’s right.

Public shaming is not always that violent as it is shown in Seduced and abandoned and Malèna. When it comes to Black and White, we can find out that public shaming can be mild, unconscious, and is hidden everywhere in our daily lives. Besides sexism in Seduced and abandoned and MalènaBlack and White, the first mainstream Italian film to tackle interracial romance, raises the topic of racism in Italian society. Two scenes from Black and White will be analyzed: one is about racism, the other is about the mix of racism and sexism.

The first scene reveals the racism by visually segregating the people and through an explicit line said by a white kid. Both of them can be perceived as public shaming. In this scene, adults argue about the bride Barbie stolen by the black girl during the white gill’s birthday party. Every time the director Comencini gives shot to people, she shots the white family or the black family separately. This visual division implicitly demonstrates the racial segregation in Italian society. As Fred Kuwornu, the director of Blaxploitalian, says in the interview, eastern European and African women are treated differentlyin either film industry or Italian society. Moreover, when it comes to African women, they are seen as exotic in native Italian people’s perspectives. Thus, the segregation of black people is more severe than other ethnic groups. Besides, their argument ends up with a line said by the white girl: “you are doing this because she is black.”  It is a public shaming on both the black family and the white adults who give the black girl a privilege because of her race. The white girl directly uncovers the hypocritical mask on the racial segregation of black people. On one hand, she makes the black family feel marginalized due to their race. On the other hand, she ironically reveals her family’s inherent racist mind which is covered by their pretending kind behaviors.

The second scene shows how the racist and sexist attitudes, which most Italian people hold towards black women by implicitly stereotyping black women and sexualizing them, are turned into actions. When Nadine and Carlo check in the hotel, the receptionist assumes that it is a one-night stand and keeps staring at Nadine’s body. His behavior indicates the stereotype that people believe in towards black women: black women are wild and sexually available. In addition, his stare serves as a kind of public shaming since it tries to create a certain social hierarchy. Besides the racist thought, the sexualization is a form of evaluation of black women which puts the white men in the dominant position, supporting the sexism in Italian society as well. This scene supports the claim that when the victims of public shaming are women of color, race, and gender are an explosive mix.

Although public shaming in Black and Whiteis more implicit and less violent, it still does not have a positive effect on Italian society. The reason for failure is that it only points out the racism and sexism through public shaming and does not provide any useful or thought-provoking solutions. In other words, although it raises important social issues, it offers a very muted challenge to the dominant discourse on race and gender (O’Healy, 2009). After exposing viewers to public shaming, this film does not encourage audiences to think in a wider sense of the way in which societies privilege specific formations of gender and race at the expense of others (O’Healy, 2009).

Except Seduced and Abandonedsuccessfully makes some changes in society, Malèna and Black and White fail to influence Italian society in a positive way. Scheff(2018) speaks out her concern that when using public shaming to shift people’s beliefs rather than having constructive conversations about racism and sexism becomes the new norms and risk of blurring the lines between activism and humiliation. Although we know that these three directors have good intentions, we cannot predict how audiences would react towards the public shaming in films. Will they regard it as a motivation to fight against sexism and racism, or will they treat it as an excuse for their racist and sexist behaviors? Besides, Scheff (2018) also distinguishes public shaming in traditional media and digital media. In traditional media, the public shaming may be discussed in the local newspaper, becomes gossip for several days, and be forgotten by people. However, public shaming in digital media will last forever, because the Internet has eternal life and boundless reach. Therefore, the effect of public shaming in films is permanent. Even though the directors want to evoke people’s awareness towards the racism and sexism in Italian society, the side effect it brings to the public is irreversible. Thus, directors can make an evaluation to see if its benefit exceeds cost before making the decision of using public shaming in films.

In summary, although directors hold good purposes at the beginning, too much public shaming in films without offering proper solutions could become a potential threat and reinforce the sexism and racism in society. In these three films, women, especially women of color are the primary targets of public shaming. Did they do anything wrong? Do they need to feel ashamed? If not, why are we seeing them experiencing public shaming in those films? Who is the one truly deserves public shaming? What can we do? These questions have existed as unsolvable ones for decades. What we as viewers can do is to hold the right value towards all the elements in films. As for public shaming in either films or real lives, we should always remember that short-term vindication is rarely worth the long-term ramification.

 

 

References

Ferguson, S., & Ferguson, S. D. (1978). Proxemics and television: The politician’s dilemma. Canadian Journal of Communication, 4, 26-35.

Flood, M., Gardiner, J. K., Pease, B., & Pringle, K. (2007). International encyclopedia of men and masculinities. Routledge.

Hall, E. T. (1963). A system for the notation of proxemic behavior1. American anthropologist, 65, 1003-1026.

O’Healy, Á. (2009). ‘[Non] è una somala’: Deconstructing African femininity in Italian film. The Italianist, 29, 175-198.

Petley, J. (Ed.). (2013). Media and Public Shaming: drawing the boundaries of disclosure. IB Tauris.

Scheff, S. (2018). The Impact of Public Shaming in a Digital World. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/shame-nation/201807/the-impact-public-shaming-in-digital-world

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