by Umberto Eco

ABSTRACT: Pannella has changed the manner of conceiving mass medias, maintains Umberto Eco, because he has always upset people's expectations and because he never says what people expect a politician to say.

(CORRIERE DELLA SERA, May 5, 1976)

As I am writing this article, Pannella has won - even if not entirely - his battle to appear on TV screens.

At this point however, we could seriously ponder, with a clearer mind, the question raised by Parise on this same paper, that is, if access to TV was worth risking one's life, if it was necessary to pay such a heavy price to obtain something which the others have had for twenty years, without paying a cent (and even making a profit!), and which is ultimately worth very little.

If we approach the problem from the point of view of sociology of communications, barely ten years ago it was a commonly held opinion that TV was a powerful means of persuasion, which it was indispensable to have at all costs. The Frankfurt school had taught us that mass media were the real means to exert Power. But the actual experiences of the last decade have significantly confused the issue. The Christian Democrat Party has exerted a monopoly on TV for two decades; according to the apocalyptic prophets of the mass-medias, twenty years of television should have produced a generation of sheepish people: short hair, quiet life-style, family, law and order. And instead, Bernabei and Pippo Baudo (1), Willy De Luca and Mike Bongiorno (2), Andreotti (3) unveiling a monument and Abby Lane unveiling her legs, Mariano Rumor (4) and Father Mariano, Fanfani (5) and Corrado (6) both engaged in propagandizing their bullfight, have produced the young generation of '68, the abortionist feminists of the seventies, the 13

May of 1964 and the 15 June of 1975. With the result that Henry Kissinger doesn't know who to blame.

Why did all this happen? Possibly because Bernabei and Bongiorno don't know their job? I exclude it, especially as far as the latter is concerned. The fact is that a mass medium does not divulge messages out of the blue, it divulges them amid a quantity of other messages, and they penetrate directly in the core of concrete situations. This is why to shout "allegria!", like Bongiorno does, to an unemployed person can engender odd and dialectic effects. To be more precise, the messages of the mass media interact with the social circumstances, and are interpreted in the light of many alternative messages. A relevant element, for example, is that nothing is more corrosive than political propaganda on TV, at least the way it is done on "Tribuna politica". A semiological survey conducted a few years ago by Paolo Fabbri revealed that any politician (of any party), when facing the the screen, that is, removed from the tangible and visible audience (as in rallies), leveled out the peaks of his speech. If the politici

an belonged to the Right, he would tend more to the Left, if he belonged to the Left, he would tend to the Right, and the final result was that all speeches converged to the centre. Cases of personalities who compensate for this fatal equalization of subjects with a "piercing" presence on screen are rare: as far as I remember, I would mention the case of Pajetta (7). Maybe Almirante (8) too, who shifted himself to such a degree and with such promptness from the image people expected of him, that he actually produced some effects. If these are the facts, if TV is not that "powerful" means which we all thought it to be, if it is an obsolete principle of mass media studies that messages always level themselves out on an average level, then why fight to be on TV? All these questions are valid if we tackle the problem from the point of view of communication, in its former conception. But the Pannella case forces us to shift the core of the problem, because "Pannella is above all a person, in Italy, who has change

d the manner of conceiving the mass media". If we look back at the different incidents of Pannella's public life (who is thus taken as the symbol of the Radical party), we must acknowledge that, regardless of any evaluation on his ideological positions, Pannella has above all triggered a revolution of our country's mass media. Each one of Pannella's initiatives always consists of an operation conducted in a limited context, but carried out in such a way as to upset all our expectations, such as to force the mass media to talk about them. The Radicals complain that their initiatives are the object of a boycott on the part of the information means, and they are probably right, considering the quantities of energies they spend; but the fact is that the part of their initiatives which has managed to pierce the barrier of silence has revolutionized our opinion on a variety of problems. To occupy the Monument to the Homeland by laying wreaths for the dead soldiers seen not as heroes but as victims, to organize dem

onstrations on the sidewalks and not in the middle of the streets in order not to disturb the traffic, to smoke hashish after having informed the police (insisting on being arrested), to fast to urge the acknowledgment of the Constitutional right to express one's opinion, all these and other actions are characterized by two things. The first is that are conducted from "within" the institutions, and claim respect for the institutions, and at the same time they question the institutions, in that it becomes clear that the full respect of the institutions engenders unsustainable situations. And this is a point on which Pannella has always been extremely explicit, paradoxically enhancing his observance of the law. The second fact is that they force the press and the public opinion to realize that the institutions are deficient, and that arrogance and violence, complicity and silence prevail on the respect and the order we thought there were. Lastly, the communication carried out by Pannella's actions always conc

ern concrete situations, but is realized not "talking" about circumstances, but "creating" circumstances which other people will be forced to talk about. Clearly, messages of this kind are alternative messages from the very beginning; they impose a mistrustful interpretation of official messages. The important thing is nonetheless that Pannella's messages are never an object, but a "process".

In this specific case, Pannella will not win, because he will appear on TV. He has already won once he has proved, risking his own life, "that" one has the right to appear on TV, "how" to struggle to obtain this right (proving, on the basis of non-violent principles, that it is possible to win without hurting other people, that is, without hurting innocent people), and explaining the "reason" for each action, step by step. The fact that Pannella now has six hours of television or none is irrelevant (not for him but in theory): because Pannella has already told the Italian public opinion, in the stages of the process to gain access to TV, more than what he will ever say on screen. In fact, the more the authorities delayed his access to the TV screen, the more Pannella was speaking to "everyone", with irreversible effects. It was enough for us to watch Pannella at the TG2 last week to understand that he "pierces" the screen, precisely because he does not say the things people expect a politician to say. Leadin

g us us to think that a different use of the TV screen is possible, and so is a new use of other information means. But this, I insist, is not the most important thing. In this month, Pannella has taught many Italians not how to correctly use the means which freedom allows us to use, but how to become free, and above all, how to deserve it.

Translator's notes

(1) Pippo Baudo: Italian compere.

(2) Mike Bongiorno: Italian compere.

(3) Giulio Andreotti (1919): Italian politician. Christian Democrat. Minister of Interior (1954), Finance (1955-58), Treasury (1958-59), Defence (1959-66 and 1974), Industry (1966-68), Balance (1974-76). Currently Head of Government.

(4) Mariano Rumor (1915): Italian Christian Democrat politician. Secretary of the DC (1964-69), Prime Minister ('68-69; '69-70; '70; '73-74; '74).

(5) Amintore Fanfani (1908): Italian Christian Democrat politician. Secretary of the DC (1954-59; '73-75), Premier ('58-59; '60-62; '62-63; '82-83), Minister of Foreign Affairs ('64-65; '65-68), President of the Senate ('68-73 and '76-82).

(6) Corrado: Italian compere.

(7) Giancarlo Pajetta (1911-1990): Italian Communist politician. One of the main leaders of the Resistance.

(8) Giorgio Almirante (1914-1988): Secretary of the MSI from 1969 to 1987.