Deborah Toschi

RIASSUNTO La ricerca si propone come riflessione sulla possibilità dell’autoritratto collettivo, le sue problematiche metodologiche e i percorsi di analisi che mettono a tema il concetto di appartenenza e la costruzione visuale di una comunità. Utili strumenti metodologici si sono rivelati i paradigmi dei web e internet studies e dell’etnografia virtuale. La ricerca è stata articolata a partire da due casi di studio: il primo riguarda la rappresentazione e il racconto di sé messo in atto attraverso social network e blog della comunità locale di Bonefro che ha subito nel tempo importanti fenomeni diasporici. Il secondo caso verte invece sull’autorappresentazione della comunità cittadina di Reggio Emilia attraverso un progetto artistico fotografico: Self-Community di Cecilia Pratizzoli. SUMMARY This research aims at a reflection on the possibility of collective self-portrait, its methodological problems and paths of analysis that theme the concept of belonging and the visual construction of a community. Useful methodological tools have proven to be the paradigms of web and internet studies and virtual ethnography. The research was organized from two case studies: the first concerns the self representation and narration implemented through the social networks and blogs of Bonefro, a local community which has undergone important phenomena of diaspora. The second case concerns instead the self-representation of the town community of Reggio Emilia through a photographic art project: Self-Community by Cecilia Pratizzoli.

Il saggio analizza la figura della cantante Rita Pavone, colta come esempio di uno dei corpi ‘mutanti’ della nuova generazione che si afferma nel panorama musicale italiano a partire dagli anni Sessanta. Sarà presa in considerazione in primo luogo la strategia crossmediale di costruzione del personaggio attraverso programmi televisivi, film, performance canore e il circuito di discorsi sociali promosso dalle riviste. In secondo luogo ci soffermeremo sull’ampia polisemia che veicola questo specifico caso, in particolare in riferimento alle dicotomie giovinezza/maturità, italianità/americanità e femminilità/mascolinità, per mettere in relazione i temi del sonoro alla nuova figura dell’adolescente, alle specificità culturali veicolate da canzoni e ritmi musicali e infine al gender. The paper analyzes the figure of the singer Rita Pavone, taken as an example of one of the ‘mutant’ bodies of the new generation that established themselves on the Italian music scene since the sixties. In the first instance, we will consider the cross-media strategy of building the character through television programs, films, singing performances and the social circuit promoted by the magazines. Secondly, we will focus on the large polysemy that carries this specific case, particularly in reference to the dichotomies youth/maturity, Italian/American and femininity/masculinity, in order to relate the themes of sound to the new figure of the adolescent, the cultural specificities conveyed by the songs, the musical rhythms, and finally to gender.

Some products included in the offer of digital terrestrial television represent a specimen of the ‘adaptation’ of analogical broadcasting to the new digital environment. They are such format as the reality shows, which seem to fit well into the testing of new forms of communication and interactivity and refer to a target of young people, having the necessary skills to access Dtt services. The analysis described in the essay has been carried out on four reality shows which have characterized the television season in 2006: Amici di Maria De Filippi, Music Farm, La Fattoria and il Grande Fratello. They are consolidated formats, coming from general television and which were not created ad hoc for the digital platform. The four program restyling gone through before the passage to Dtt offered an interesting observation point to forecast the scenario of television communication following the switch off. The essay underlines how the switch to digital television has enhanced some typical components of the reality shows: first of all the active participation of the viewers with their vote, and then the full accessibility to the competitors’ private dimension thanks to interactive interfaces joined by sections dedicated to votes and updates. It has also been underlined the presence of formats (La Fattoria and Music Farm) representing a radical change in which the digitalization of the products is bound to a substantial continuity with the analogical proposal. Other programs (Amici di Maria De Filippi and Il Grande Fratello) are more suitable for the digital transition and mark a difference, even though in a different way, if compared with their previous editions. In the end it is underlined how the scenario is characterized by incomplete forms of adaptation and by the lack of products conceived ad hoc for the new platforms.

The analysis of the fantastic and horror production of the 1960s offers a surprising evidence: taking the distances from the standards of gender, the autochthonous production differs from other for the presence of female protagonists, together active and seductive. Not only victims, nor masculinized heroines, but women acting as deus ex machina, without renouncing to their typically feminine features. The female characters show however an ambivalence: they are heroines, but also monsters. They leave open questions on the role of genre in the emancipation process of women.