Description
Istituto Luce's documentaries and newsreels played a pivotal role in the colonial propaganda of Fascist Italy during the 1930s. The films of the Luce's Photographic Department for East Africa, which was established in Asmara at the onset of the Ethiopian War, exemplify colonialist tendencies that would subsequently become the stylistic hallmark of Italian cinematic productions for decades. The footage, captured by notable photographers such as Mario Craveri, Corrado D'Errico, and Giorgio Ferroni, is distinguished by a voyeuristic narrative that aligns with the prevailing European perception of African inhabitants since the late 19th century: a depiction of the colonized populations as subhuman beings, situated at the intersection of bestiality and eroticism.
This representation is accompanied by a series of stereotypical auditory elements that are typically associated with the African setting. Indeed, depictions of the populations of the Horn of Africa, including the African military corps under Italian command, invariably feature ambient music that uses well-known exotic clichés, such as high-pitched woodwinds, folkloric percussion, and the "Phrygian" scale. The origins of these auditory elements, in the context of Italian settings, can be traced back to a select number of pieces from photoplay music collections of the "silent" era, such as Carisiana (Carisch), Biblioteca Cinema (Ricordi), Commento Films (Florentia), and others.
For the purposes of this paper, I will argue that the Luce documentaries and newsreels, with their repertoire of auditory topoi associated with the African scenario and disseminated in a variety of receptive contexts, had a decisive impact on the way Italian society of the time perceived and represented African populations. Luce's films functioned as a "fabric of commonplaces," understood in the sociological sense of taken-for-granted collective knowledge, of untheorized assumptions that do not fall within the direct sphere of the subject's experience but with which he or she comes into contact through the media.
| IMPORTANT | YES, I confirm I have read it. |
|---|
