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2. The Emergence of the Second Generation of Adult Comics in Its Political Context
- University Press of Mississippi
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39 CHAPTER TWO The Emergence of the Second Generation of Adult Comics in Its Political Context The radical rewriting of codes the new adult comics were to enact on their medium—the intense dialogue between the high and low end of the cultural spectrum, their tendency towards intertextuality as well as cultural horizontality—are all tightly linked to the climate of social and political unrest that characterized the second half of the ’70s in Italy. Born in the midst of the ’77 student protest movement, the second generation of adult comics was deeply influenced by, and, in turn, influenced the concomitant explosion of new counterculture media: the independent press, free radio, and alternative music. The exchange of ideas and languages between these areas was so close that any attempt to analyze the extent of the innovations brought forth by the adult comics without placing them in this wider context would be flawed. By the late ’70s, not only were the coordinates of both the antagonist culture and its official counterpart rapidly changing, but the disillusionment with the outcomes of ’68 and the development of new social and economic assets were giving shape to a different audience of adult comics and counterculture in general, a new entity the puzzled sociologists of the times called the new social subject. Since this emerging social stratum, along with the spontaneous political movement it generated, provided the audience and the breeding ground from which the authors of the new 40 THE SECOND GENERATION OF ADULT COMICS adult comics would spring, it is necessary to carefully scrutinize the factors that brought about its existence. In the summer of 1976, the counterculture magazine Re Nudo, in coordination with extra-parliamentary groups such as Lotta Continua, the first autonomous groups (most of which fell under the label “Autonomia”), and various anarchist collectives, organized its second summer festival at Parco Lambro, a park area on the outskirts of Milan. The patent failure of what was meant to be the most important gathering of the new proletarian youth was the first warning sign that things had drastically changed from the days of collective action of ’68. This is how comic artist Filippo Scòzzari, at the time in the ranks of Re Nudo and among the founders of the magazine Cannibale, remembers the Festival of Parco Lambro in his autobiography Prima pagare, poi ricordare: The willingness that the staff of Re Nudo had for publishing my artwork more or less echoed their ability for understanding reality, and unfortunately for them, reality slapped them in the face. June 26, 27, 28, 29. The attendance was way beyond their expectations (one hundred thousand people), but that was not their fault. Their fault was failing to realize that their young proletarians were bored, angry, frustrated, and poor and that locking all of them in the enclosed limits of the Lambro park was like pushing thirty lab rats in a shoe box, shaking it, and standing there to watch. Fights between groups, proletarian expropriations in nearby supermarkets. Police. Tear gas. Heroin. Thefts between comrades. (Scòzzari , Prima pagare, poi ricordare, 24) Another example of the way in which the events were reported by a 1976 article that appeared in the independent journal A/traverso: Some were raiding the stands of their own comrades, some destroyed the stand of the gay rights association Cony, some groups were molesting women shouting “men of Parco Lambro charge!” The violence of impotence came face to face with the impotence of violence and all the tensions were released in this ghetto where proletarian expropriation was substituted by its own spectacle. (A/traverso, July, 1976) The failure of the Parco Lambro festival attracted great attention from both the official press and the independent small-circulation publications of the movement. Of course, the right-wing press didn’t miss out either [54.84.65.73] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 11:02 GMT) THE SECOND GENERATION OF ADULT COMICS 41 and they capitalized on the events by demonizing the new left. But few caught the real meaning of the event: that the disastrous outcome of the festival was the symptom of a radical change in the composition of what was still referred to, somewhat anachronistically, as proletarian youth.1 At the heart of the matter was the failure of the extra-parliamentary groups and the collective action that characterized much of the protests of the ’68 movement, as well as the appearance of a new generation...