Laughter Under Fascism: Humour and Ridicule in Italy, 1922–43

Fig. 1.

Ettore Petrolini, here in the guise of his character Gastone, was a variety entertainer who teased the Fascists while also supporting them.

The aim of this article is to show how humour formed part of Fascist culture and how it was regarded officially. My concern is with permitted humour, or humour which in one way or another sustained or coexisted with Fascist rule in Italy. Inevitably, the discussion must begin with Mussolini. The ‘Duce’ was the centre of a formidable personality cult which resonated throughout the peninsula and turned him not only into a focal point of conversation but also into a figment of imagination and dreams.¹ In the interwar years, the nation was, to some degree, modelled on him, and his tastes and manner of being, including his attitude towards humour, counted for much. However, Fascism was not entirely bound up with Mussolini. The Fascists themselves, from their earliest manifestations as violent ‘action squads’ committed to the physical punishment of opponents, thrived on the sense of male solidarity and aggressive patriotism that had been formed in the trenches.² They were loud, raucous and thuggish and they prided themselves on their coarse, swaggering manner. Their laughter reflected this boisterous milieu. It was cruel, crude and mocking. Beating up a socialist or trade unionist, cutting off a beard (or half a beard), forcing a man to imbibe castor oil, or reducing a dissenter to pathetic compliance were what most amused them. This type of bullying bravado was not peculiar to Fascism but in the Italian context it came to be identified as a Fascist trait. For this reason, there are collections of anti-fascist cartoons and a few academic or semi-academic studies of anti-fascist humour,³ since these have been taken to be expressions of resistance, but there is virtually no discussion of Fascist humour. Fascist humour has been seen as being of little merit and practically indistinguishable from the general demeanour of the movement.

This article will not entirely overturn that view. However, it will show that four strands of humour can be said to have co-existed under the regime and all of them need to be taken into account if Fascist humour is to be identified and understood. Humour has a bearing on several large issues, including how repressive the regime was and how it policed the Italians; it illustrates the tensions between Fascism’s revolutionary impulses and its commitment to the preservation of bourgeois order, which to some extent reflect Renzo De Felice’s distinction between Fascism as movement and as regime.⁴ In addition, it also shows how the more creative fringes of the movement were not discarded as the regime took shape. Finally, humour shows how the regime evolved and how innocuous distraction was increasingly flanked by polemic and insult as the pattern of consent which was so extensive in the early to mid 1930s faded away.

The four strands are as follows. First, Mussolini’s own rather odd sense of humour, which requires comment because of the extent of his personal influence. From this it is possible to grasp something of why Fascism was so severe with oppositional humour. Second, ironical humour in theatre and journalism, which I discuss in relation mainly to the variety performer Ettore Petrolini. Third, a current of bourgeois humour present in various popular media which was not specifically Fascist, but which suggests how distraction functioned under a regime which absorbed, or permitted the persistence of, pre-existing forms of humour in the public realm and the mass media: a practice which aligned it with prevailing order and established tastes. Finally, satire and lampoon, under Fascism initially deployed against the powerful, but later using ridicule, sarcasm and denigration to attack individual opponents and whole undesirable categories. In the final phase, the crude derision that characterized specifically Fascist culture informed certain cultural battles and propaganda campaigns.

MUSSOLINI AND HUMOUR

Although he has recently been labelled a weak dictator,⁵ Mussolini interfered in virtually every sphere of public and private activity. Even trivial...