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Conclusions
- University Press of Mississippi
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- Additional Information
133 Conclusions As the ’80s drew to a close, so did the Italian adult comics movement. This change was paralleled throughout the industry, particularly in France, but to a lesser degree in the American market. In addition to the premature departure of two of its leading figures, Tamburini and Pazienza, one contributing factor to the Italian adult comics’ decline was the dramatic increase in the cost of printing paper—which forced many publications out of the market.1 But on a deeper level, behind the crisis of the adult comics were the profound changes the generation of ’77, representing the readership of publications such as Cannibale, Il Male, and Frigidaire, experienced throughout the ’80s. The illusion of a second economic boom during the socialist government of Prime Minister Bettino Craxi and the harsh police repression—beginning after the assassination of Aldo Moro and continuing after the bombing of the Bologna train station—effectively destroyed what little remained of the Movement. This then dissolved the elusive new social subject that, for almost a decade, constituted a novel urban hybrid between proletariat and middle class and thus served as the ideal audience for the adult comics. A uniform urban middle class composed mostly of shopkeepers and independent entrepreneurs quick to seek the advantages of what was thought to be a new economic miracle took its place.2 It should be noted that the Movement was primarily composed of students and that by the ’80s most of them had slipped back into the ranks of society in an awkward , but inevitable, repetition of the post-’68 situation. At the same time, the generation that should have provided a fresh audience for the adult comics’ readership instead regarded this medium as an anachronism, having been reared on much “faster” media, television in particular. Further, the ’80s was also the decade in which future Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s financial empire came to the forefront in the media arena, thanks in part to his friendships in the ranks of the Socialist Party. The explosion of small, privately owned radio and TV stations that emerged in the mid-’70s lasted only a short time. In 1978 there were more 134 CONCLUSIONS than 500 private TV stations in Italy—a stunning per capita if compared with the 900 stations operating at the same time in the United States.3 But by the early ’80s, only a handful of local TV stations remained, the majority having been bought out or forced out of business by Berlusconi’s Fininvest monopoly which, along with his three national channels (Italia 1, Rete 4 and Canale 5) would from that point forward represent the only competitor to RAI, the state-owned national TV channels. Berlusconi’s channels successfully imposed a general trivialization of taste on the Italian audiences through the persistent broadcasting of Reagan-era Hollywood movies, American TV series, and soaps, and the non-stop flow of commercials emphasizing images of available luxury—a far cry from the rhetoric of “moderate wealth for everyone” sponsored by the Christian Democrats since the ’50s. For better or worse, this mediadriven rhetoric shaped the collective imagination of a generation. The impact of this TV-dominated decade is still felt in Italy today where politicalcampaignsarefoughtnotonlybybroadcastdebatesandspeeches, but in a much subtler way—by programming that superimposes the fictional world of TV series, talk shows, and game shows over the political programs and electoral promises of the candidates. And so it was in, and because of, this climate of oppressive mass-media domination that comics literacy (one has to know how to read comics in order to understand and decipher their structures and codes, just as one learns how to read poetry or fiction) dramatically decreased into a resulting crisis—not only with adult comics, but with those aimed at younger readers as well. By the end of the ’80s, the three most important adult comic magazines in France (Metal Hurlant, Fluide Glacial, and A suivre) folded in rapid succession. Similarly, in Italy venerable comics magazines such as Alter, Il Mago, and Eureka also closed their doors within the decade, and the last of the adult comic pillars, Linus, was reduced to a monthly collection of syndicated American comic strips. Magazines of great quality, such as La Dolce Vita, lasted only a few issues as did a handful of doomed attempts to rehash the old adventure stories of the auteur comics with magazines such as Orient Express (whose greatest merit was that of introducing the works...