by Umberto Eco
Make Your Own Movie Sets fire to photo of himself as a baby, with savage laughter. Sings "Mira Norma." Chinese checkers. Toy soldiers. Hide-and-seek. Tag. Gin rummy. Slap jack. Racing demons. Fan- tan. Snap. Spin the bottle. His aunt. Grandmother. Innocent little sister. Himself in the mirror. Dead mother (dream sequence). The postman on his rounds. The old housekeeper. Carmen Moravia. A Bellocchio brother (according to preference). Luchino Visconti Scenario The Baroness, a a Hanseatic b lesbian, betrays her male lover, c a worker at Fiat, d reporting him e to the police. f He diesg and she repents b and gives a big party, i orgiastic, in the cellars of La Scala m with transvestites, n and there poisons herself. � Variants Key b Duchess. Daughter of the Pharaoh. Marquise. Dupont stockholder. Middle European (male) composer. From Munich. Sicilian. Papal aristocracy. From Pittsburgh. Her female lover Husband. Son with whom she has an incestuous relationship. Sister with whom she has an incestuous relationship. Lover of her daughter with whom she has an incestuous re- lationship, though she beerays her daughter with her daughter's male lover. The Oberkomman- 153
MISREADINGS d g danturweltanschaunggotterdammerungfiihrer of the SA of Upper Silesia. The catamite of her impotent and racist husband. A fisherman from the Tremiti Islands. Steel- worker. Riverboat gambler. Mad doctor in a Nazi concentration camp. Commander of the Pharaoh's light cavalry. Aide-de-camp of Mar- shal Radetzsky. Garibaldi's lieutenant. Gondo- lier. Giving him wrong directions about the route. Entrusting to him a bogus secret message. Sum- moning him to a cemetery on the night of Good Friday. Disguising him as Rigoletto's daughter and putting him in a sack. Opening a trapdoor in the great hall of the ancestral castle while he is singing Manon dressed up as Marlene Die- trich. To Marshal Radetzsky. To the Pharaoh. To Tigellinus. To the Duke of Parma. To the Prince of $alina. To the Oberdeutscheskriminalinter- polphallusfiihrer of the $S of Pomerania. Sings an aria from Aida. Sets off in a fishing smack to reach Malta and is never heard from again. Is beaten with iron bars during a wildcat strike. Is sodomized by a squadron of uhlans under the command of the Prince of Homburg. Becomes infected during sexual contact. with Vanina Vanini. Is sold as a slave to the Sultan and found again by the Borgia at the flea market of Portobello Road. Is used as a throw rug by the Pharaoh's' daughter. 154
Make Your Own Movie h m rl o Is not the least repentant. Is wild with joy. Gone mad. Bathing at the Lido to the sound of balalaikas. A big funeral. A satanic rite. ATe Deum of thanksgiving. Mystical. Dramatic. Baroque. Algolagnical. Scatological. Sadomasochistic. Pre-Lachaise. Hitler's Bunker. In a castle in the Black Forest. In section 215 of the Fiat Mirafiori factory. At the H6tel des Bains on the Lido at Venice. With corrupt little boys. With German homo- sexuals. With the Trovatore chorus. With lesbi- ans dressed as Napoleonic soldiers. With Cardinal Tisserant and Garibaldi. With Claudio Abbado. With Gustav Mahler. Attends the entire Ring cycle. Plays ancient songs of Burgundy on a Jew's harp. Undresses at the climax of the party, revealing that she is really a man, then castrates herself. Dies of consump- tion, wrapped in Gobelin tapestries. Swallows liquid wax and is buried in the Muse Grvin. Has her throat cut by a lathe operator as she utters obscure prophecies. Waits for the acqua alta in St. Mark's square and drowns herself. 1972 155
The Phenomenology of Mike Bongiorno Translator's note: Mike Bongiorno, since the dawn of Italian television, has been a star, mainly as the quizmaster of programs based on--indeed, copied from--such Amer- ican shows as "The $64,000 Question" and "Wheel of Fortune." But to call him a star gives an inadequate idea. Imagine someone with the popularity (but without the vitality) of Johnny Carson and the anonymity of Ed Sul- livan, with a touch of Sesame Street's Mr. Smiley. Even English-speaking readers who have never seen Italian TV will understand the type from Eco's analysis. The man seduced by the mass media becomes, of his peers, the most respected. He is never asked to be anything beyond what he already is. He is never encouraged to desire anything that does not ,conform to his own tastes. Still, among the narcotic rewards granted him is escape into daydreams, so he is often confronted by goals which could create tension be- tween them and him. He is, however, absolved of every responsibility, because these goals are deliber- 156
The Phenomenology of Mike Bongiorno ately placed outside his reach. The tension is resolved in identification and not in actual transformations aimed at altering the status quo. In short, he is asked to be a man with a refrigerator and a twenty-one- inch TV set: he is asked to remain as he is, in other words, merely adding, to the objects that he pos- sesses, a refrigerator and a TV. In return he is offered role models like Kirk Douglas or Superman. The model of the mass-media consumer, on the other hand, is a superman that the consumer will never aspire to, though he enjoys identifying with that ideal in his imagination, as a person might put on someone else's clothes for a moment before a mirror, without the slightest notion of ever owning those clothes. But television puts the consumer in a new posi- tion. Television does not propose superman as an ideal with which to identify: it proposes everyman. Television's ideal is the absolutely average person. In the theater Juliette Greco appears on the stage and immediately creates a myth and founds a cult; Jose- phine Baker prompts idolatrous rituals and gives her name to an era. In TV the magic face of Juliette Greco appears on various occasions, but the myth is never born; she is not the idol. The idol is the woman who announces her, and among women announcers the most beloved an-d famous will be the one who best embodies average characteristics: decent good looks, limited sex appeal, so-so taste, a certain house- wifely inexpressiveness. Now, in the realm of quantitative phenomena, the average represents in fact a median, and for those who have not achieved it, it also represents a goal. 157
MISREADINGS According to the famous mot, statistics is the science according to which if one man eats two chickens daily and another man eats none, then each has eaten one chicken. In reality, for the man who hasn't eaten the goal of one chicken a day, it is something to which he can aspire. But in the realm of qualitative phenomena, reducing to the median means reducing to zero. A man who possesses all the moral and intellectual virtues to an average degree immediately finds himself at a minimal level of development. The Aristotelian "mean" signifies equilibrium in the ex- ercise of one's own passions, the passions balanced by the discriminating virtue of prudence. But one who harbors passions to an average degree and pos- sesses an average prudence is a poor sample of hu- manity. The most striking illustration of superman's being reduced to everyman is, in Italy, the figure of Mike Bongiorno and the history of his fame. Idolized by millions of people, this man owes his success to the fact that from every act, from every word of the persona that he presents to the tetecameras there emanates an absolute mediocrity along with (the only virtue he possesses to a high degree) an immediate and spontaneous allure, which is explicable by the fact that he betrays no sign of theatrical artifice or pretense. He seems to be selling himself as precisely what he is, and what he is cannot create in a spectator, even the most ignorant, any sense of inferiority. Indeed, the spectator sees his own limitations glori- fied and supported by national authority. 158
The Phenomenology of Mike Bongiorno To understand the extraordinary power of Mike Bongiorno it is necessary to conduct an analysis of his behavior, an authentic "Phenomenology of Mike Bongiorno," in which, of course, his name stands not for the real man but for the public figure. Mike Bongiorno is not particularly good-looking, not athletic, courageous, or intelligent. Biologically speaking, he represents a modest level of adaptation to the environment. The hysterical love he arouses in teenage girls must be attributed partly to the maternal feelings he arouses in a female adolescent, and partly to the glimpse he allows her of an ideal lover, meek and vulnerable, gentle and considerate. Mike Bongiorno is not ashamed of being ignorant and feels no need to educate himself. He comes into contact with the most dazzling areas of knowledge and remains virgin, intact, a consolation to others in their natural tendencies to apathy and mental sloth. He takes great care not to awe the spectator, dem- onstrating
not only his lack of knowledge but also his firm determination to learn nothing. On the other hand, Mike Bongiorno displays a sincere and primitive admiration for those who do know things. He emphasizes, however, their physical qualities, their dogged application, their power of memory, their obvious, elementary methodology. A man becomes cultivated by reading many books and retaining what they say. Mike Bongiorno hasn't the slightest inkling that culture has a critical and creative function. For him, its only criterion is quantitative. In {his sense (having to read many books in order to 159
MISREADINGS be cultured), the man with no natural gifts in that direction simply renounces the attempt. Mike Bongiorno professes a boundless faith in the expert. A professor is a man of learning, a represen- tative of official culture; he is the technician in the field. The question goes to him, to his authority. But true admiration of culture is found only when, through culture, money is earned. Then culture proves to be of some use. The mediocre man refuses to learn, but he decides to make his son study. Mike Bongiorno's notion of money and its value is petit bourgeois: "You've now won a hundred thousand lire! A tidy sum, eh?" Mike Bongiorno thus expresses to the contestant the merciless reflections that the viewers will be mak- ing at home: "You must be very happy with all this money, considering the monthly salary you earn. Have you ever put your hands on so much money before?" Like children, Mike Bongiorno thinks of people in categories and addresses them with comic de- ference (the child says, "Excuse me, Mr. Police- man. .), always using, however, the most common and vulgar category: "Mr. Garbage Collector," "Mr. Sharecropper." Mike Bongiorno accepts all the myths of the so- ciety in which he lives. When Signora Balbiano d'Aramengo appears as a contestant, he kisses her hand, saying that he is doing this because she is a countess (sic). With society's myths he accepts also society's con- 160
The Phenornenology of Mike Bongiorno ventions. He is paternal and condescending with the humble, deferential with the socially distinguished. Handing out money, he instinctively thinks, with- out explicitly saying so, more in terms of alms than of deserved rewards. He indicates his belief that in the dialectic of the classes the one route of upward mobility is represented by Providence (which, on occasion, can assume the guise of Television). Mike Bongiorno speaks a basic Italian. His speech achieves the maximum of simplicity. He abolishes the subjunctive, and subordinate clauses; he manages to make syntax almost invisible. He shuns pronouns, repeating always the whole subject. He employs an unusually large number of full stops. He never ven- tures into parentheses, does not use elliptical expres- sions or allusions. His only metaphors are those that now belong to the commonplace lexicon. His lan- guage is strictly referential and would delight a neo- positivist. No effort is required in order to understand him. Any viewer senses that he himself, if called upon, could be more talkative than Mike Bongiorno. Mike Bongiorno rejects the idea that a question can have more than one answer. He regards all var- iants with suspicion. Nabucco and Nabuccodonosor are not the same thing. Confronted by data, he reacts like a computer, firmly convinced that A equals A and tertium non datur. An inadvertent Aristotelian, he is consequently a conservative pedagogue, pater- nalistic, reactionary. Mike Bongiorno has no sense of humor. He laughs because he is happy with reality, not because he is 161
MISREADINGS capable of distorting reality. The nature of paradox- eludes him; if someone uses a paradox in speaking to him, he repeats it with an amused look and shakes his head, implying that his interlocutor is pleasantly eccentric. He refuses to suspect that behind the par- adox a truth is concealed, and in any case he does not consider paradox an authorized vehicle of expres- sion. He avoids polemics, even in admissible fields. He does not lack for information on the oddities of the knowable (a new school of painting, an abstruse discipline "Tell me now, I hear all this talk about Cubism. Just what is Cubism exactly?"). Hav- ing received the explanation, he does not try to delve any deeper, but indicates, on the contrary, his polite dissent, as a sensible, right-thinking citizen. Still, he respects the opinion of others, not for any ideological reason but out of lack of interest. From all the possible questions on a subject, he chooses the one that would first come to anybody's mind and that half the viewers would immediately reject as too banal: "What is this picture about?" "What made you pick a hobby so different from your regular job?" "What got you interested in phi- losophy?" He drives clichs to their extreme. A girl educated by nuns is virtuous; a girl with brightly colored stockings and a ponytail is a "hippy." He asks the former if she, a nice girl, would like to look like the latter; when he is told that the question is insulting, he consoles the second girl, praising her physical superiority and humiliating the convent-school prod- 162
The Phenomenology of Mike Bongiorno uct. In this dizzying whirl of faux pas he doesn't even try to paraphrase, for paraphrase is already a form of wit, and wit belongs to a Vico cycle alien to Bongiorno. For him, everything has one name and only one; any rhetorical figure is a fraud. In the final analysis, a faux pas stems always from an act of unintentional sincerity; when the sincerity is delib- erate, what results is not a faux pas but a challenge, a provocation. The faux pas (of which Bongiorno is a past master, according to critics and audience) arises precisely when the speaker is sincere by mistake, out of thoughtlessness. The more mediocre a man is, the clumsier he is. Mike Bongiorno is a consolation to the mediocre, for he exalts the faux pas, raising it to the dignity of rhetoric, of an etiquette established by the TV company and by the viewing nation. Mike Bongiorno sincerely rejoices with the victor, because he honors success. Politely uninterested in the loser, he is moved if the latter is in desperate straits, and he may promote some beneficent action, at the conclusion of which he expresses his satisfac- tion and convinces the audience of his pleasure; then he moves on to other concerns, content with the fact that this is the best of all possible worlds. He is unaware of the tragic dimension of life. Mike Bongiorno therefore convinces the public, by his living and triumphant example, of the value of mediocrity. He provokes no inferiority complexes, though he presents himself as an idol; and the public repays him, gratefully, with its love. He is an ideal that nobody has to strive for, because everyone is already at its level. No religion has ever been so 163
MISREADINGS indulgent to its faithful. In him the tension between what is and what should be is annulled. He says to his worshipers, "You are God, stay exactly as you are. I961 164
My Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination to Reduplication with Ridecolation of a Portrait of the Artist as Alessandro Manzoni The reviewer cannot conceal his satisfaction in speak- ing about this little volume from the pen of Mr. James Joyce, now printed for the first time by Shake- speare & Co., revived by Miss Beach solely to permit this literary event, which I suspect will be hailed as by far the most important of the year. While we must be grateful to Miss Beach for giving us back, not without sacrifice on her part, her estimable pub- lishing house of the twenties, we owe an even deeper gratitude to Richard Ellmann and his collaborators, who after years of unceasing study of manuscripts preserved at the University of Buffalo have succeeded in collating this work (which Mr. Joyce wrote during the period in which he taught Triestine dialect at the Berlitz School in Como), though the author himself never chose to establish a definitive redaction. It is easy to understand how this situation led scholars to make the deplorable error of considering the manu- script lost or, as i suspect was the case with many, 165
MISREADINGS that its existence was questionable, a thing beyond verification. As I hold this work in my hands today, I cannot help but doubt the rationality of such suspicions (though the scholars' philological caution is certainly praiseworthy). At the same time I hope to be allowed to venture a critical approach to this work, which follows Finnegans Wake--and follows it not only in the chronological sense. The sensible reader may realize, in studying this volume, that it represents a rather advanced point in Joycean development: only after having attempted the colossal experiment with language in his preceding work could
Mr. Joyce succeed, once he had "rinsed his garments in the waters of the Liffey," in writing this book, Ipromessi sposi (The Betrothed). The title of this work is eloquent, and the reviewer needs add little comment to it, as it is rich in pro- foundly revelatory allusions. If Finnegans Wake was the "work in progress" of which all Joyceans were given news in the course of its evolution, I promessi sposi is the "promised work," like the Promised Land desired by the Jewish people (the people of Leopold Bloom, we must remember). But this promise is fulfilled, inasmuch as a marriage takes place, the union of the youthful aspirations of Stephen Dedalus and the radiance and the scholastic proportio. the union of the dazzling linguistic gifts of the vicocyclometer of maturity and lyric style and drama and epic, of the language of tradition and the languages of the future, as linguistic experimentation 166
My Exagmination is wedded to the narrative construction of the works of youth. Thus we feel that in the light of this final work the nature and function of its predecessor are clari- fied, and the Wake, the mourning vigil of Tim Fin- negan, is seen for what it really is: the nuptial vigil of Renzo and Lucia. I promessi sposi begins where Finnegan ends, and it begins by picking up the theme of the liquid element on which Finnegan concludes: Riverrun. The novel begins with the description of a body of water and with a parodistic subtlety of which only an Irishman could be capable; it begins by exactly imi- tating the earlier work. How, in fact, does I promessi sposi begin? Allow me to quote: "That branch of the lake of Como, which extends southwards, between two uninterrupted chains of mountains, and is all inlets and bays, as those same mountains project or recede, suddenly narrows, assuming the flow and form of a river, between a promontory on one side and a broad shore opposite . " The opening of Finnegan was similar. Its first sentence, if we eliminate all the linguistic ambiguities that encumber it, goes like this: "That course of the river that, having passed the church of Adam and Eve, from the turn of the beach to the curve of the bay, leads us along a more comfortable route of return again to Howth Castle and environs . " But in I promessi sposi the language has been further refined; the allusions are more subtle, less visible, the symbolism more powerful and pure. 167
