Silvio Berlusconi--Italian media tycoon, politician, billionaire; prime minister of Italy (1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011)--is dead. People will remember Silvio Berlusconi in many ways--friend to Vladimir Putin and Moammar Gadhafi; at the center of bunga bunga; media tycoon with an uncanny ability to stir popular passion (and its opposite); owner of a well known football team; .leader of the Forza Italia party. One gets the picture--and it is one that English language media reports relish (see, e.g. here, here, and here).
The national newspaper La Repubblica, wrote: “It is now difficult to imagine an Italy without Berlusconi. In the last 50 years, there hasn’t been a day in which his name hasn’t been mentioned, on TV, in the newspapers, in parliament, in bars and at the stadium.’’ “Everything about him was excessive,” added the paper in its editorial. “At one point, his popularity was such as to be identified as a symbol of the Italian, around the world.” But if the rightwing newspapers have praised Berlusconi, calling him a “visionary” and even a “builder of modern Italy”, other newspapers have underlined the other side of the coin: the judicial inquiries, shadows on his political career and questionable business dealings. (‘Everything about him was excessive’: Italy says farewell to Silvio Berlusconi)
This is all very nice. It is the nenia--the carmen funebre (dirge), usually performed by women, in Roman funerary practices among the nobility)--to a life excessively lived. The invocation of Nenia Dea is appropriate, as protection by its singers against the lingering effects of a powerful spirit.
Dies irae, dies illa; Solvet saeclum in
favilla, Teste David cum
Sibylla. Quantus tremor est futurus, Quando judex est venturus, Cuncta
stricte discussurus! Tuba mirum spargens sonum; Per sepulcra regionum,
Coget omnes ante thronum. Mors stupebit et natura, Cum resurget
creatura, Judicanti responsura. Liber scriptus proferetur, In quo totum
continetur, Unde mundus judicetur. Judex ergo cum sedebit, Quidquid
latet apparebit. Nil inultum remanebit. [This day, this day of wrath
shall consume the world in ashes, as foretold by David and the Sibyl.
What trembling there will be When the judge shall come to weigh
everything strictly!
The trumpet, scattering its awful sound Across
the graves of all lands Summons all before the throne. Death and
nature shall be stunned When mankind arises To render account before the
judge. The written book shall be brought In which all is contained
Whereby the world shall be judged] (Latin Text Roman Catholic Requiem Mass (Sequentia: Dies Irae))
I prefer to remember him at the start of his life's adventures--as a performer on cruise ships; singer, bass player, songster. . . . actor. Seductive, compelling, quite conscious of the heat of his personality, and of his ability to weave desire into something more. . . .useful. And thus my brief laudatio funebris (funeral oration) in its more antique style. And so my oratio pro rostris (public oration) as praise and dirge for him and (as is intended by the act of speaking) for us.
Absolve, Domine, animas omnium fidelium defunctorum ab omni vinculo
delictorum et gratia tua illis succurente mereantur evadere iudicium
ultionis, et lucis aeternae beatitudine perfrui. [Forgive, O Lord,
the souls of all the faithful departed from all the chains of their sins
and by the aid to them of your grace may they deserve to avoid the
judgment of revenge, and enjoy the blessedness of everlasting light.] (Latin Text Roman Catholic Requiem Mass (Tractus: Absolve, Domine)
Mr. Berlusconi spent a lifetime crooning for an audience on the good Ship Italy, as it docked periodically in various ports of call. He sang Italy (and the rest of the world) a love song--of youth, growth, vigor. . . . passion. But it was a dirge as well--for the old people to whom he sang this; the elites and their captive populations now firmly institutionalized in their care facilities could only grasp this as a re-envisioning of what was now attainable only as fantasy; a sort of
yiking the past. He and his gang of shipmates--never known for their piety, ethics, morality, or scrupulous attention to the performative expectations of the European social order--provided a moment of clarity in which that distance between desire and the possible could be bridged, if only for the duration of the performance. But it could never last. And no one expected it would. But the evocation is brought was powerful--and an antidote to the mandatory banalities of the increasingly performative freedoms on offer by societies with an overwhelming desire to manage. . . everything; for a population that at times sought such management as a matter of learned compulsion. At the end of the day, the selling of fantasy is a powerful discursive narcotic--one that is likely the most popular on offer today to the masses in the liberal democratic world. And others.
Is it possible that under conditions of (post) modernity the social collective desires to be made love to? Or lectured? Or both? Is there power in the release of control to (collective) others for the
release of freedom, stability, prosperity, self-actualization (within
appropriate confines) or the like? Performances like Mr. Berlusconi's can suggest that possibility. There is another. One can move from the cruise ship crooner to the highly symbolic brothel (semiotic marketplace) of Jean Genet's 1957 play,
The Balcony. In place of the crooner, a cast of for-pay players amenable to satisfying whatever desire one has the means to purchase in the "house of illusions." In this case, the illusion is one of vigor, of the active principle, of growth, strength, purpose--something that was once reflected in and no longer captured by a society that in its own head has lost all of this--except as fantasy. What appears dark is actually a relief from the necessary realities of social life as it moves inevitably toward points of inflection.
Either way, it is the staging of fantasy, as well as its tropes, that produce the magic that is political (and social) theater. It is a fantasy that is made more powerful when it can be realized vicariously. And that is the world Mr. Berlusconi helped gift to all of us. This is the world of the radio talk show host, of media influencers, of the Met Gala, of commercials for everything from athletic equipment to the cornucopia of pharmaceuticals that promise the impossible. It is the world of what is impossible but might be; it is hope of a very special and powerful kind. This is the kind of seductive power that is normally harnessed to the chariots of the nobility--whether an ancient nobility or what passes for those who can judge their inferiors as despicable or useful. But Mr. Berlusconi would not be harnessed (though he did a bit of harnessing himself). And that was unforgivable. Mr. Berlusconi was left to play the role of Elizabeth Taylor to the traditional elite's Kim Novak in the 1980 movie--The Mirror Crack'd (and what better discursive tool than cinema against which to understand the performance of the leading the stars of the political theater of the late 20th and early 21st Century). Indeed, there may be no better summary of the relations between them than those now precious interchanges between Elizabeth Taylor and Kim Novak:
- (Kim Novak) "You seem lovely, as always. Of course, there
are fewer lights on than usual. In fact, any fewer, and I'd need a
seeing-eye dog."
- (Elizabeth Taylor) "Oh, I shouldn't bother to buy one, dear. In that wig, you could play Lassie."
- (Kim Novak) "Same adorable sense of humor. And I'm so glad
to see that you've not only kept your GORGEOUS figure, but you've added
SO MUCH to it."
- (Elizabeth Taylor) "What are you doing here so early, dear? I thought the plastic surgery seminar was in Switzerland."
- (Kim Novak) "Actually, darling, I couldn't wait to begin our little movie. You know the saying: once an actress, always an actress."
- (Elizabeth Taylor) "Oh, I do know the saying. But what does it have to do with you?"(The Mirror Crack'd Quotes).
But that seductive power could be paralyzing as well. And in a closed community of like minded empowered people, it could be quite dangerous for the structures of social relations and for those whose lives were meant to be fueled by but not centered in the fantasy of the crooners. We are all, as it were, the cleaning staff who get a chance to peek in, but whose role is to get the room ready for the performance and then to clean it up. That magic comes in those seconds when we can imagine ourselves as crooner or crooned. None of this really touches so much on the failure of humility, or the consequences of hubris--but rather the pathology of Narcissus (an obsessive self-referencing). This was the poisoned gift of the gods to the eternal cruise ship crooner: in inability to tear his gaze away from himself, especially in the presence of others.
And yet, that was a gift that was meant for us as well--his audience; his admirers; his enemies; and those who in their status conscious arrogance continued to dismiss him even as they were swept out to sea. What Mr. Berlusconi saw in himself was a reflection of us--our lusts, our hopes, our needs, our fantasizes. That eternal desire of our collective social relations that has more to do with what the late Mae
West once described as the ultimate condition of choice--"
When I'm caught between two evils, I take the one I've never tried." And that is what we do. Choose, grasp, fantasize, and fear the consequences against we retreat into a world in which we reserve a small space to those assigned the role of performing what cannot be undertaken by the mass of social relations. Society needs its crooners; political society more so. Croon on. In political life it may be that what counts is not the certainty of constrained stability under conditions of hierarchy and exploitation, but the seduction to an incandescent and fleeting fantasy that produces the sort of spark that moves social relations from one eventually unsatisfactory equilibrium position to another. And in between one indulges in the fantasies of the bureaucrat, the master, the collective, the voices in one's head, or what one experiences, however one embeds that into one's desires. It is in this sort of world that we will always pay for the chance to hear Mr. Berlusconi croon.
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