2. The Evolution of Illustrated Magazines: Western Europe and the United States
[I]n Italia […] il giornalismo, più che professione o mestiere, diventa missione di una importanza grande e delicata, poiché nell’età contemporanea, […] è il giornalismo che circola tra le masse e vi svolge la sua opera di informazione e di formazione.1
[[I]n Italy […] journalism, more than a profession or trade, has become a mission of great and delicate importance, since in the contemporary age, […] it is journalism that circulates among the masses and carries out its work of information and education.]
The Evolution of the Popular Press in Europe
In order to understand the importance of the innovation introduced by the rotocalchi and its impact on the Italian magazine sector and its readership, it is necessary to take a step back and briefly outline the main stages in the history of illustrated periodicals in Italy. This by no means exhaustive introduction to the field is also useful in understanding the changes in the publishing sector that made companies such as Nerbini, Mondadori and Rizzoli key players in the modernisation of Italian popular magazines in the 1930s. At the end of the nineteenth century significant technological advances in the press industry marked the beginning of a process of modernisation of the publishing sector that particularly affected periodicals. In January 1847 the first illustrated magazine appeared in Italy: Il Mondo illustrato (Turin: Pomba, 1847–48). The publisher’s aim was to create a national illustrated periodical capable of competing with European illustrated journals:
Per una singolare fatalità il paese che fu la culla delle belle arti, […] si è lasciata precedere nei giornali illustrati dall’Inghilterra, dalla Francia e dalla Germania. […] [I]l Mondo illustrato […] è opera civile, italiana e artistica nel tempo stesso […]. È un pensiero patrio, […] e saremo lietissimi di mostrare al resto d’Europa, che l’Italia è capace di fare un giornale illustrato.2
[By a peculiar fate, the country that was the cradle of the Fine Arts, […] has allowed itself to be preceded in illustrated journals by England, France, and Germany. […] Mondo illustrato is a civil, Italian and artistic work at the same time […]. It is a patriotic thought […] and we shall be delighted to show the rest of Europe that Italy is capable of creating an illustrated journal.]
Whereas elsewhere in Europe illustrated periodicals were already in circulation from the first half of the 1840s,3 in Italy this was still an unexplored field soon to be modernised by publishing companies such as Treves (Milan) and Sonzogno (Milan). With the launch of L’Illustratione italiana (Milan: Treves, 1875–1962) in 1875, illustrated periodicals began to be popular throughout Italy.4 After Treves’s successful attempt, other publishers launched their own illustrated journals, such as Il Secolo illustrato (Milan: Sonzogno, 1889–1927), La Tribuna illustrata (Rome: Bontempelli, 1890–1969) and La Domenica del Corriere (Milan: Corriere della Sera, 1899–1989). These periodicals had many features in common: they covered various topics, from sport and fashion to literature, the Arts and science, with a particular focus on current events, from both Italy and the rest of the world. They offered not only news but, more importantly, entertainment. The illustrations, which were the main feature and novelty in these journals, were rich artworks or reproductions of paintings and photographs and were printed mainly in black and white, with colour used only on the front-page, as the following example shows (Fig. 1):
Treves and Sonzogno, both based in Milan, dominated the Italian publishing scene at the end of the nineteenth century. The first focused on high culture and targeted an educated bourgeois readership; the second aimed to attract the petite bourgeoisie and the emerging urban working class with publications specifically aimed at them, such as illustrated journals, women’s periodicals and popular romance. Despite this distinction, Treves and Sonzogno competed with each other in the periodical sector, which mainly targeted a broad readership and strove for widespread distribution at different levels of society.5 The new technologies for the reproduction of images were crucial: images were a powerful means quickly and directly to deliver and support the news, contributing to the expansion of the readership and the beginning of the transformation of the press into a mass product. The process of technological innovation in image-printing began in the 1850s, when photogravure was introduced and progressively replaced lithography, a printing method used since the end of the eighteenth century. In the 1890s technological advances brought the development of an improved printing machine: rotogravure. Thanks to its mechanical innovations, rotogravure allowed the high-volume printing of standardised products, making it a cost-effective technique for printing mass-circulation magazines.6 The importance of this new technology lay not only in its speed of printing, but also in its high-quality reproduction of images that attracted readers and, consequently, advertisers, thereby turning periodicals into commercial products. The new technique, combined with readers’ new expectations and habits, allowed the development, in the interwar years, of modern mass magazines in the United States and across Europe.
In the preface to the first issue of Il Mondo illustrato (2 January 1847) the editors highlight the fact that Italy’s illustrated press was one step behind other European countries where illustrated periodicals had begun to flourish a few years before.7 The Illustrated London News, for example, was launched in 1842, while the German Illustrierte Zeitung and the French L’Illustration were published in 1843 and 1844 respectively, anticipating Il Mondo illustrato. At the beginning of the twentieth century these countries were still ahead of Italy in terms of magazine production and set examples that conditioned the shaping of modern Italian illustrated periodicals. In particular, magazines which developed in Germany and France in the 1920s had a great influence on the layout and editorial formulas of Italian rotocalchi in the 1930s. Following the example set by nineteenth-century illustrated periodicals, modern magazines were characterised by an extensive use of pictures. In the 1920s, playing a role similar to that of illustrations at the end of the previous century, photographs became a privileged means of information and storytelling accessible to the emerging mass readership. Moreover, as already mentioned, in the 1920s readers had become used to visual images thanks to the popularity of films, which turned readers into spectators and, subsequently, magazines into visual products.8 In that decade the increasing use of photography led to the development of a new form of journalism: photojournalism.9
Photojournalism as a means to deliver the news in magazines developed in Germany, where illustrated magazines such as the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung (Berlin: Ullstein, 1892–1945), Uhu (Berlin: Ullstein, 1924–34) and Das Magazin (Leipzig: Giesecke & Devrient; then Berlin: Eysler, 1924–41) gained great popularity. As Kurt Korff, picture editor of the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung – a pioneering picture magazine – put it:
Life has become more hectic and the individual has become less prepared to peruse a newspaper in leisurely reflection. Accordingly, it has become necessary to find a keener and more succinct form of pictorial representation that has an effect on readers even if they just skim through the pages. The public has become more and more used to taking in world events through pictures rather than words.10
Photojournalism emerged as a consequence of modern life and technological innovations, such as the introduction of the portable Leica camera in 1925 that allowed photographers to take photos of subjects in motion. The introduction of rotary presses, the superseding of halftone printing and the establishment of the rotogravure printing technique advanced technological innovation and the process of expansion of the readership that had begun in the nineteenth century.
In the 1920s magazines in Weimar Germany were among the first to introduce the use of images as a visual representation of events, either as single images or in photo series. In those years new uses for photos as a means of communication also emerged, such as photo-essays and photomontages, used to express the contradictions and social crises of modern life. Not only did these magazines focus on images, but they were also put together to recall the dynamism of films, highlighting the connection to this medium and creating a distinctive feature of illustrated magazines worldwide. The Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung in particular was the first to rely entirely on photographs, a feature that turned it into a national success with a circulation record of two million copies in 1931, making it ‘the largest mass circulation magazine’ in Germany.11 It covered a large variety of topics, mainly sports, the Arts and technology; and although use of the text was limited to its being a support to images, the magazine also included serialised novels. This successful formula was later emulated by other European magazines, such as the French L’Illustration, Vu (Paris: [n. pub.], 1928–40) and Marianne (Paris: [n. pub.], 1932–40). Although L’Illustration was historically the first successful illustrated French magazine, it was the modern-looking Vu that revolutionised French picture magazines. Created using the model set by the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, Vu aimed to cover a wide range of topics to keep up with ‘the fast rhythm of modern life’ like a film, as stated in the launch issue.12 Like its German equivalent, Vu used photos to inform and illustrate the news, making images its key feature and, thanks to rotogravure, distanced itself from L’Illustration, which was still printed using halftones. With a modern layout, extensive use of pictures and a wide range of topics covered, from fashion to politics, Vu targeted a broad range of readers and became the most successful mass-circulation French magazine of the time. It is worth highlighting that Vu combined serious political analyses with lighter topics – like popular fashion and beauty tips – and published photos by the most famous photographers of the time, such as the Hungarian-American Robert Capa (1913–1954), whose famous shot of a falling soldier during the Spanish Civil War was published for the first time in Vu.13
Like the German and the French illustrated magazines, the British Weekly Illustrated (London: Oldhams, 1934–39) and Picture Post (London: Hulton Press, 1938–56) focused entirely on photographs and copied the formula of the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung. In both cases, Stefan Lorant, who had been the chief editor of another pioneering German illustrated magazine, the Münchner Illustrierte Presse (Munich: Knorr & Hirth, 1924–44), the main competitor to the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, edited the weekly, bringing into the British periodical press the features of German illustrated magazines. Lorant also had a role in the creation of Life: he had met Henry Luce in 1934 when Luce was planning the publication of an American illustrated magazine on the model set by the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung and Weekly Illustrated.14 When the first issue of Life (Chicago: Time, 1936–72) was launched in November 1936 its layout resembled that of Weekly Illustrated. At the same time, when Picture Post was first published in 1938 it had many similarities with Life, demonstrating how in the 1930s European and American illustrated magazines influenced one another, creating similar layouts and formulas which can be found in various magazines, including Italian rotocalchi.15 Moreover, these magazines often had in common the crucial role played by their lead editors: Kurt Korff (Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung), Lucien Vogel (Vu), Stefan Lorant (Picture Post), Henry Luce (Life) and, in the case of Italy, Leo Longanesi (Omnibus). Each was the mind behind the magazine, shaping it and giving it its distinctive features.
Fascist Italy and the Perception of ‘America’ as a Myth, a Model and a Threat
Another country that influenced the development of the Italian popular press, particularly the use of illustrations and the structuring of magazines as visual products, were the United States, a country with which Fascist Italy had a contradictory and often conflicting relationship. Whereas politics was not the focus of popular magazines, the dynamics between Italy and the United States conditioned the content of the Italian popular press, making their relationship one of the factors to be taken into account in the analysis of Italian rotocalchi.
Starting from the end of the nineteenth century, American society, economy and politics underwent a transformation which made the United States one of the most powerful countries in the world. In the interwar years the importance of this new role on the international scene was accompanied by the spreading of the American way of life through American culture and products, which in those years began to invade the European market. The Fascist regime, which in the second half of the 1930s launched a plan for economic and cultural autarchy, viewed the United States both as a model and, particularly from 1936 onwards, a threat to the Italian spirit. In spite of Fascist efforts to create a purely Italian culture and Fascist opposition to the spread of American products and ways of life in Italy – as demonstrated by the regulation of the film industry and censorship of translations and publication in general – the Italian perception of America was more ambivalent than it may seem. As Jane Dunnett argues in her study on the Italian literary scene, in the Ventennio Italian culture was in dialogue with that of America, reflecting the complexity and ambiguities of the regime and overcoming the idea of its monolithic opposition to America.16 That same dialogue can be found in Italian popular magazines, whose cultural content was deeply influenced by and steeped in American culture. This reflected and contributed to the dissemination of American values and aspirations across Italian society. Despite the Fascist system of control of the press and its ever stricter directives against the publishing of foreign materials, the widespread presence of American influence in Italian illustrated weeklies can be seen as evidence that the process of the Americanisation of Italian culture and society started well before the end of the Second World War. Italian rotocalchi thus serve as a litmus test for analysing both the effectiveness of Fascist censorship and the depth of the fascination with America felt by Italians during (and despite) the years of Mussolini’s rule. A brief analysis of the origins of this attraction to anything American and the reaction of the regime to it helps us better to understand the roots of this process of Americanisation and of how Italy received and reinterpreted models and values by Italianising American products.
An Ambivalent Image of the United States: The View from Fascist Italy
After the Great War Europe experienced a phase of uncertainty and instability that many viewed as a sign of the decline of European civilisation. The decadence of European culture, the perceived decline of its political and intellectual dominance and the rise of mass society – characterised by the increased participation of the lower classes in culture and politics – were seen as the end of the European Order, as predicted by Oswald Spengler’s two-volume Der Untergang des Abendlandes [The Decline of the West] (1918 and 1922) and as described by Paul Valéry’s The Crisis of the Mind (1919) and José Ortega y Gasset’s La rebelión de las masas [The Revolt of the Masses] (1930). While Europe was struggling to deal with modernisation and the participation of the masses in public life, American economic and political power was rising and its society and culture became the symbol of modernity, perceived as both a threat and a model. ‘America’ became synonymous with ‘modernity’ and was identified with mass production, mass culture and consumption, an idea disseminated in Europe by American products.
The Fascist regime, which saw ‘Americanism as the main mythical metaphors of modernity’,17 responded to the challenge in a unique way, presenting itself as able to combine modernity and spirituality, creating a modern mass society without losing national traditions and identity. Mussolini’s rule offered an alternative model that could revitalise Italy and set an example for the rest of the world. Throughout the Ventennio we can see ambivalent feelings towards American culture which determined a conflicting attitude towards the United States. Two main phases can be identified: a first phase from 1922 to 1937, during which the United States were admired, although this period was also characterised by the rise in negative critiques of American society after the economic crisis in 1929; and a second phase, from late 1937 to the collapse of the Fascist system of power, when anti-American propaganda increased and finally reached its peak during the war.18
The relationship of Fascist Italy with the United States and their modern culture and society offers a compelling case for the study of the modernisation – through the process of Americanisation – of Italian society in the interwar years. Italian magazines were a product which reflected both the American commercial invasion of Europe – with films, make-up, fashion, interior design and habits of entertainment influencing and attracting Italian consumers – and the Fascist government’s position towards the United States, revealing the contradictions and discrepancy between Italian society and Fascism, and within Fascist culture itself. The ambivalent relationship the regime had with America has been widely studied.19 It is not possible here to analyse all the elements which characterised the complex, even contradictory way the Fascist system looked at the United States; however, to understand the significance of the presence of American culture in popular Italian magazines it is important to outline how the United States were depicted and perceived by Mussolini’s regime, particularly as concerns politics, economics and society; modernity; and women. All these three aspects of the perception of America by the Fascist State were reflected in Italian popular magazines.20
Politics, Economics and Society
When Mussolini formed his government in 1922 the relationship between Italy and the United States revolved around war debts and migration flow, with an increasing number of Italians settling in North America. On 16 November 1922, in one of his first addresses to the Italian parliament, Mussolini declared: ‘I nostri rapporti con gli Stati Uniti sono ottimi e sarà mia cura di perfezionarli, soprattutto nel campo di una desiderabile intima collaborazione d’ordine economico’ [Our relations with the United States are excellent and it will be my concern to perfect them, especially in the field of a desirable, close economic co-operation].21 Not only was a good relationship with the United States desirable, it was essential in order to attract American investors, settle the quota for Italian migration on more favourable terms, disseminate an image of Italy as a strong protagonist in the international arena and, more importantly, to consolidate the regime.
The appointment of Dino Grandi as Foreign Minister on 12 September 1929 contributed to the consolidation of a friendly relationship between the two countries. In spite of the aggressive colonial ideology and policies of the Fascist state, Grandi supported international disarmament, which would have aligned Italy with the American position. In this first phase in its attitude towards America, one characterised by the attempt to build a strong alliance with the United States, the Fascist regime highlighted the features the two nations had in common, such as the youthfulness of their people and spirit, as opposed to the obsolete, old, European liberal governments.
Whereas Italy was an underdeveloped country left weakened by the Great War, the United States were a modern nation with a powerful, growing economy that was gaining increasing importance in Europe. In the eyes of Italian Fascism, the United States represented a model of power and a way to elevate Italy’s reputation. However, after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 harsh critiques against American society emerged. This shift in the perception of the USA is represented by two books from the time: Margherita Sarfatti’s L’America, ricerca della felicità [America, Search for Happiness] published in 1937; and Emilio Cecchi’s America amara [Bitter America], the collection of a series of articles published in the Corriere della Sera between 1938 and 1939 reporting on Cecchi’s impressions during his journey across the United States.22 Corriere della Sera had become, in the 1920s, the most-sold newspaper across the Peninsula, with daily sales of 800,000 copies, reaching up to a million on Sundays and thus giving Cecchi’s reportage wide visibility.23 While Sarfatti echoed Mussolini’s early statements on Roosevelt’s government and the American character, Cecchi focused on the violent and intellectually poor aspects of American society. Depicted as a dangerous degeneracy, a result of modern habits, reckless consumerism and capitalism, the decay of America was revealed by the Wall Street Crash. This idea was echoed by Cecchi’s reports, which highlighted the depth of the capitalist imperative that led American society constantly to seek profit to the detriment of morality and ethics.24
From that moment onwards the Fascist regime emphasised its own uniqueness as a third way, one that represented the answer to the failure of capitalist society and the only alternative to Socialism: as a new ideology, Fascism was the answer to the uncertainty of the times. As Ben-Ghiat observes, Mussolini presented ‘his “third way” as an antidote to political and spiritual decline in Europe’, an idea which found space in the anti-American propaganda following the economic crisis of 1929.25 However, the election as President of the United States of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932 changed, once more, the way the Fascist leaders perceived the United States, strengthening the alleged analogies between the two countries. Italy looked to President Roosevelt with a certain admiration, particularly after the first New Deal (1933), many aspects of which recalled Italian corporatism.26 The affinities between Fascism and the New Deal were stressed by Mussolini himself: ‘[L’]appello ai giovani, questo affrontare la battaglia con decisione e pessimismo virile, appartiene a quello stile, a quel “modo di vita” cui il fascismo ha educato e intende sempre più educare il popolo italiano’ [[The] appeal to the young, this facing of the battle with decisiveness and virile pessimism, belongs to that style, that ‘way of life’ to which Fascism has educated and intends increasingly to educate the Italian people].27 In particular, the National Recovery Administration Agency (1933) revealed, according to Mussolini, the same Fascist idea that saw the State oversee the economy. In 1935 Roosevelt’s economic policies were seen as an expression of Italian corporatism, ‘un corporativismo senza corporazioni’ [a corporatism without corporations], as defined by Gerarchia.28 However, the aggressive Italian policies in Africa and Mussolini’s declaration of the Italian Empire on 9 May 1936 changed the relationship between Fascist Italy and the United States, marking the beginning of a second phase, one characterised by the increasing anti-American propaganda carried out by Mussolini’s government. After Roosevelt’s ‘Quarantine Speech’ on 5 October 1937 the regime took an anti-American position,29 which became open opposition from 1938 onwards and reached its peak during the war; its effects are clearly reflected in the censorship of American cultural products.
In the ambiguities and contradictions that characterised Italy’s anti-Americanism during the Ventennio, recurrent themes can be identified. The first, strictly connected to the Fascist approach to modernisation, depicted and condemned American society as a ‘mechanical civilisation’ in which machines were increasingly present in everyday life – a frantic life constantly focused on efficiency. In its reliance on machines rather than on the human spirit, American society was seen as decadent and mechanical. The second recurrent theme were the negative aspects of the youthfulness of America and its obsolescence. As a relatively new, independent nation, the United States did not have the deep historical roots or long-standing traditions of European countries, which in Fascist propaganda translated into a lack of past and hence history; however, at the same time it was an old society because of its European origins: ‘vecchia perché in realtà era una prosecuzione dell’Europa, ma anche perché quando pure avesse trionfato, la sua barbarie avrebbe comportato automaticamente la fine di ogni civiltà’ [old because it was actually a continuation of Europe, but also because if it had triumphed, its barbarism would automatically have meant the end of all civilization].30 Connected to these two main themes were also two popular stereotypes that defined American civilisation as materialistic (made up of people focused only on ‘lavorare, consumare e chiedere “quanto costa?”’ [work, consumption and asking, ‘How much is it?’]) and barbarian (‘la mancanza di storia della breve vita dell’America si traduceva automaticamente in mancanza di cultura, cattivo gusto, assenza di tradizioni’ [the lack of history of America’s short life automatically translated into lack of culture, bad taste, absence of traditions]).31 All these themes were strictly connected to modernity, a crucial and recurrent topic in the contradictory, ambivalent relationship of the Fascist regime to American culture.
Modernity
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s Fascist Italy had to face the increasing social and material expectations of the Italian people. However, the problems posed by the demographic and economic crises the country was facing made it difficult for the regime to satisfy the desires of Italians. These new consumer expectations were fostered by American products: through films and advertisements the American way of life was exported to Italy, causing negative reactions among the Fascist rulers. While Italian people preferred American products over Italian or other European brands, the Fascist ideologues accused American culture of corrupting the Italian spirit. Their main worry was the spreading of an American snobbery that was contaminating Italy’s morals, challenging one of the most prominent features of the Fascist ‘new man’: tradition. In the Fascist view, American products were disseminating a new model of living that was conditioning and changing the habits and tastes of Italian society, endangering the national traditions. The Fascist moralists:
condemned American society as a modern Sodom where sexual freedom, the disintegration of the family, the practice of contraception, the search for material well-being, the cult of wealth, ruthless capitalism, dehumanising technology, urban neurosis, corrupt politics, racial discrimination, and organised crime were rampant.32
In spite of this negative perception, on 14 December 1926, in his first speech to the American people, Mussolini claimed he felt ‘la più cordiale amicizia per gli Stati Uniti’ [the most pleasant friendship with the United States], declared Italy a modern nation and expressed his confidence that the two countries had common values: ‘L’Italia d’oggi, come l’America, è sana, semplice e piena di fiducia in se [sic] stessa’. [Today’s Italy, like America, is healthy, simple and full of self-confidence].33 In opposition to the most common anti-American stereotype, which defined American civilisation as led by machines, Mussolini affirmed that:
la civiltà americana è stata accusata di essere dominata esclusivamente da fattori meccanici e materiali e di trovare i propri impulsi solo nel desiderio del guadagno. Nulla potrebbe essere più falso. La civiltà nord-americana ha dato un notevole contributo all’attività spirituale del mondo. Essa produrrà ancora più in avvenire.34
[American civilisation has been accused of being dominated solely by mechanical and material factors and of finding its motivations only in the desire for profit. Nothing could be more false. North American civilisation has made a considerable contribution to the spiritual activity of the world. It will produce even more in the future.]
This view contrasted with the Fascist ideology that sought to fight the dehumanising effects of technology and:
ristabili[re] nel mondo contemporaneo gli equilibri necessari, ivi compreso quello fra uomo e macchina: questa può soggiogare l’individuo, ma sarà piegata dallo Stato, il quale la ricondurrà al servizio dell’uomo e della collettività come strumento di liberazione, non come accumulatrice di miserie.35
[re-establish in the contemporary world the necessary balances, including that between man and machine: the latter may subjugate the individual, but it will be bent by the State, which will restore it to the service of man and the community as an instrument of liberation, not as an accumulator of misery.]
This contradiction is not only a clear example of ambivalence in the image of the United States in Italy during the Fascist era, but also of the regime’s relationship with progress. Mussolini presented Fascism as a political expression of modernity that sought to renovate Italy and its society without changing social structures, a process which resulted in a contradictory innovation anchored to traditional values. As Ben-Ghiat puts it, Mussolini aimed for ‘the creation of a “national” version of modernity that would permit the retention of spirituality and specificity’.36 Spirituality was indeed the key word of Fascist modernity: against the annihilation of the individual carried out by Socialism and the degeneration and standardisation of man embodied by the United States, Mussolini’s modern Italy represented an alternative that combined modernity and spirituality. To support this view of Fascism as a third way, the regime disseminated negative images of the United States – the modern nation par excellence – and their heavy industrialisation and mass production. At the other end of the spectrum, Mussolini’s system of power defended Italians from standardisation and spiritual impoverishment by affirming strong moral values.
After the crisis in 1929 the Fascist government placed more emphasis on the idea of Italian modernity as an autonomous model. In particular, it was a reaction to the American way of life, which Fascist ideologues viewed as a threat to the Italian lifestyle and, more importantly, to its spirit. Because Italian consumers identified American products with elegance and freedom, the Fascist regime sought to propagate anti-American messages to counterbalance American cultural invasion:
Non c’è bisogno d’essere in trincea e di averlo davanti armato per accorgersi che c’è un nemico. Oggi il nemico vero è disarmato, […] entra in casa nostra coi giornali, colle fotografie, coi libri che ne diffondono la mentalità. Guardati intorno, italiano: scorgerai l’americanismo davanti, a destra, a sinistra, dietro di te: lo scoprirai nella fanciulla mascolinizzata, nell’abito del giovane elegante, nella facciata di una costruzione, nella pagina di una rivista. […] Altro che emigrare in America! È l’America che emigra in Italia! […] [S]orridiamo con compiacenza, talvolta esaltandoli e coprendoli d’onori, a coloro che si sforzano di introdurre fra noi i principi dissolvitori della nostra salute spirituale.37
[There is no need to be in the trenches and have him armed in front of you to realise that there is an enemy. Today the real enemy is unarmed, […] he enters our house with newspapers, with photographs, with books that spread their mentality. Look around you, Italian: you will spot Americanism in front of you, to the right, to the left, behind you: you will discover it in the masculinised young woman, in the attire of the elegant young man, in the façade of a building, in the pages of a magazine. […] Rather than emigrating to America, it is America that is emigrating to Italy! […] [W]e smile complacently, sometimes exalting them and covering them with honours, at those who strive to introduce among us the dissolving principles of our spiritual health.]
Harsh critiques also came from intellectuals and non-Fascist militants such as Mario Soldati, whose book America primo amore (1935) portrays a barbarian, insensitive and violent civilisation. In modern American society individuals put themselves at the centre, pursuing their own interests above anything else because of America’s uncontrolled capitalism. According to Mario Soldati, only the ‘new American race’ could bear the levelling of its neurotic society, whose happiness was frustrated and soul drained by countless comforts.38 Similarly, Alberto Moravia describes the United States in his correspondence with Giuseppe Prezzolini as a place where:
la mentalità è rimasta schiavistica e sfruttatrice: di qui la inumanità razionalizzata e il nessun amore […] per tutti i valori che non possano essere tradotti in moneta. […] [S]i è continuamente tentati; violentati dalle cose da mangiare da comprare da godere e tutte queste cose si possono ottenere senza sforzo personale, […] soltanto che si abbia denaro – è un po’ la tentazione del bazar e […] del bordello.39
[the mentality has remained one of slavery and exploitation: hence the rationalized inhumanity and the total lack of love […] for all values that cannot be translated into money. […] [O]ne is constantly tempted; assaulted by the things to eat to buy to enjoy and all these things can be obtained without personal effort […] as long as one has money – it is somewhat the temptation of the bazaar and […] of the brothel.]
Consumerism, a modern trait derived from capitalism, was levelling American society and depriving American people of their own identity:
La mentalità ‘standard’ è come un’enorme piovra che stende i suoi tentacoli su tutta la vita esteriore, imprigiona l’anima e la mente, e costringe le idee e gli atteggiamenti a uniformarsi a un tipo unico, allo stesso modo con cui i grandi stabilimenti meccanici producono i diversi pezzi di un’automobile secondo una sagoma unitaria.40
[The ‘standard’ mentality is like a huge octopus that spreads its tentacles over all outer life, that imprisons the soul and the mind and forces ideas and attitudes to conform to a single type, in the same way that large mechanical factories produce the different parts of an automobile according to a unified outline.]
In a process started in the 1920s, the urbanisation, mass production, constant economic growth and subsequently increased spending power of Americans turned American citizens into consumers. This evolution particularly affected the role of women within the family, whose active role in the workforce increased, as well as their participation in the new mass consumer culture. The Fascist regime saw this emancipation as further evidence of the degeneration of modern American society and used it in its anti-American propaganda as a model of all the negative consequences of modernisation.
Women
In the 1920s and 1930s there were mainly three factors that defined modern American women, or their image, at least: their presence in the workforce, not only as secretaries but also in skilled jobs; their sexual emancipation, influenced by growing public discourse on female desire, the birth control movement and changing views on marriage;41 and their participation in mass production, mainly as the object of advertising campaigns. Whereas Mussolini’s project aimed to bring women back into the home as mothers and wives, in the United States they were emancipated, modern consumers, identifiable with the ‘flapper’, a fashionable, independent new woman, and with the modern housewife.
Thanks to electric domestic appliances, ready-to-eat meals and innovative methods for the education of children, like John Dewey’s progressive education and the Montessori method, American housewives had free time to pursue activities outside the house. They performed a traditional role with modern means and became the main target of advertising campaigns and mail-order shopping. Modern housewives were thus both the subject and the object of modern marketing strategies, representing the consumer par excellence, because the majority of the shopping was done by women and modern methods of education and management of the house were performed through consumption. American housewives, freed from domestic chores by their appliances, soon became one of the main symbols of the American way of life, a model exported abroad as representative of a new consumerism that was becoming an original American social model.
An iconic symbol of modern America, the flapper represented financial independence and sexual freedom. Aesthetically, the flapper was identified by a tomboyish appearance, short hair, a trim body and clothes that would hide her figure but expose the legs. This model of a woman overturned the model of femininity that had dominated the nineteenth century (embodied by the ‘Gibson girl’) and represented the sexual, political and financial emancipation of women in the 1920s.42 The flapper personified the liberation of women from the household, a working woman who knew how to enjoy her free time; she was a product of the wealth of the Roaring Twenties. In the 1930s, however, in the United States the flapper was perceived as a superficial woman more interested in fashion and sexuality than in politics, thereby advancing the idea that women had rejected political emancipation for sexual freedom.43 The flapper was also identified with premarital sex, birth control, masculine behaviour such as smoking and drinking in public and a general disdain for traditional values and morals. As a result, in the United States the emancipation of women began to be associated with moral decay and family decline. In Europe, the echoes of American women’s emancipation created the stereotype of the ‘modern woman’, harshly criticised by the Fascist regime. According to Italian reporters of the time, such as Arnaldo Cipolla, sexual freedom in the United States was one of the main consequences of women’s emancipation, which was a product of the materialistic, mechanical American civilisation. At the end of the 1930s this negative view became part of a more generalised critique of the American way of life, which was seen as the decadence of its youth and the demonstration of the failure of American society.44
The Fascist State sought to oppose emancipation by suggesting a traditional model of femininity that both took advantage of and prevented modernisation. Fascist organisations for young women insisted on the virtues of domestic life, but at the same time involved their members in activities outside the home, undermining the authority of their parents and indirectly emancipating them. Against the model of the liberated American woman, Mussolini’s regime created the model of the donna-crisi [crisis-woman], identifiable with the flapper and contrasted to an opposite model of femininity: a curvaceous woman focused on her family and the education of her children.45 This contrast is exemplified by Mino Maccari in a comic vignette published in Il Selvaggio, in which he portrays a skinny woman drinking alone in a bar, representing the decadence of modernity.46
The ambivalent attitude of the regime to American culture and modernity is also evident in its rejection of the American model of beauty. Up until the establishment of the dictatorship (marked by Mussolini’s speech after the murdering of Socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti on 3 January 1925), American standards of beauty were not only tolerated but even accepted. The very first uniform of the Giovani italiane (the Fascist organisation for adolescent girls), for example, was initially modelled to imitate the American tomboy style, following the American fashion models who were dominating Europe, the blouse shaped to minimise the young women’s figure. With the beginning of the Fascistisation of society, new models of beauty were imposed which opposed the American flapper: a generous female figure was praised and curves glorified as a sign of fertility and hence of womanhood.
Whereas Mussolini’s regime began to propagate its own standards of beauty through various media, illustrated magazines included, the fascination exerted over Italian women by the American model, mainly disseminated by films and adverts, challenged the Fascist ideal of curvaceous femininity. Despite the deterioration in the relationship between the two countries during the Second World War and despite Fascist censorship forbidding any foreign, and particularly American, influence, Italian women continued to follow the American model of beauty, keeping their weight in check and in some instances bleaching their dark hair to imitate the predominantly blonde Hollywood stars.47 These ambivalent attitudes towards America were clearly and repeatedly mirrored and shaped by the Italian magazines of the time.48 Not only did they reflect models coming from America, but rotocalchi were also influenced by American culture in their layout, content and structure, challenging the regime’s aim of creating an autarchic culture.
The Illustrated Popular Press: A Model from America?
Between 1890 and 1905 American magazines tripled their circulation and became the first national mass medium, informing, entertaining and shaping American public opinion. Thanks to the lower cost of paper, increased advertising and the introduction of the innovative printing technique of the halftone, publishers were able to produce magazines inexpensively and sell them for as little as ten cents a copy. Similar to the Sunday supplements put out by newspapers, these magazines were characterised by extensive use of illustrations, addressed contemporary issues and informed readers on new technological advancements and, in general, on world events. As William Archer describes them, ‘there [was] nothing quite like [the American cheap magazines] in the literature of the world – no periodicals which combine[d] such width of popular appeal with such seriousness of aim and thoroughness of workmanship’.49
As far as the expansion of the readership was concerned, the American revolution of inexpensive magazines in the 1890s can be compared to the Italian rotocalchi innovation of the 1930s. In Italy, the rotogravure technique revolutionised the periodical-publication sector as much as the halftone had done in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. The presence of well-printed illustrations, advertisements, literature, comments on current events and lighter topics such as the cinema and other forms of arts and entertainment make these revolutionary publications comparable. As had been the case at the beginning of the century, the Italian rotocalchi revolution followed the development of photojournalism in Europe, where countries such as France and Germany, also influenced by the American model, were already ahead of Italy as far as popular illustrated magazines and the expansion of their readership were concerned.50
Although the Italian and American paths to modern magazines can be compared, the two publishing systems were far from similar. On the one hand, there was the American mass production model, with circulation numbers that easily reached hundreds of thousands of copies per month: a popular magazine such as the Ladies’ Home Journal (New York: Meredith, 1883–2016), for example, reached one million copies in 1900. By the beginning of the twentieth century, in the United States magazines were a mass product, both in their production methods and their readership. They were based on advertising and conceived of readers as consumers. Consistent with the transformations in American society at the turn of the century, magazines were standardised and a mass production process was used to reach as many readers as possible, mainly by offering the same format that had attracted them in the first place.
On the other hand, as already discussed, in Italy the development of a modern template for the creation of popular illustrated magazines started only in the second half of the 1920s, fully realising its potential in the 1930s. In the interwar years the Italian publishing sector was far from the system of mass production and distribution already in place in the United States. In Italy, the low literacy rate limited the demand for the products of publishing and left Italy behind the United States and other European countries such as France, which at the beginning of the twentieth century had already reached high levels of literacy – and consequently higher numbers of customers and greater distribution of printed publications. This difference not only affected distribution numbers in Italy but also the organisation of publishing companies.51
Due to the inaccessibility of first-hand documentation, particularly as far as the Nerbini publishing company is concerned, it is hard to retrace practical aspects of the production of magazines in Italy in the 1930s. An examination of the publications themselves, editors’ biographies and other secondary sources have made it possible to outline the organisation of magazine production by Mondadori, Rizzoli and Nerbini. These publishers relied on a small group of people who worked in various roles – as editors, columnists, authors, translators and even layout artists – in different magazines, creating a network of people whose names recur in many major publications. This represents a distinctive feature of Italian production, particularly compared to the United States: whereas in Italy a small group of people produced the magazine, in the United States every title had a well-organised editorial staff, often divided into sections focusing on one specific aspect of production – advertising, research, etc. – and dominated by the figure of the editor, who supervised the work. Once a magazine had gained the distinctive, unique features that made it recognisable, the figure of the editor lost relevance and the publication would remain consistent in spite of a change in its staff, highlighting the standardisation of the creation and production of American magazines. More importantly, publishers adopted a marketing strategy and developed a formula to target a specific sector of consumers with their magazines.
In Italy, production appears less standardised and organised until the rotocalchi revolution. The editorial staffs at Nerbini, Rizzoli and Mondadori were dominated by the figure of the owner of the company and/or a few collaborators, as is the case with Leo Longanesi, who edited and took final decisions on every aspect of Omnibus before printing any issue, or the abovementioned Mario Nerbini. In the 1930s these companies employed journalists, writers and intellectuals who marked the history of Italy’s post-Second World War press, such as Arrigo Benedetti, Mario Pannunzio, Mario Soldati, Indro Montanelli, Giuseppe Prezzolini, Dino Buzzati, Giorgio Scerbanenco, Irene Brin, Corrado Alvaro, Cesare Zavattini, Wanda Bontà, Elio Vittorini and Paolo Lorenzini, to mention only a few.
Finally, another characteristic that distinguished rotocalchi from other periodicals was advertising, which became particularly relevant in publications targeting a specific readership, such as women’s titles. The development of a modern methodology of advertising based on Taylorism and the American example made advertisements part of the features of a magazine and consumption part of its message.52 This sector represents another example of how the American model influenced Italy’s modernisation of the popular press, which in the 1930s reproduced and reinterpreted American features to produce mass-circulation magazines that left a long-lasting mark.
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What makes Italian popular illustrated magazines a particularly compelling source for the study of the development of modern Italian culture and society is that they were shaped by other models coming from Western Europe and the United States. Within this complex cultural dialogue, which involved different countries, the fascination with American culture was deeper than any other in the Ventennio, cutting across different sectors of society. Some intellectuals perceived ‘America’ as a myth and contributed to the creation and dissemination of the American myth; women followed Hollywood standards of beauty and were inspired by the look of the famous film stars they could admire in magazines; and Italian children grew up reading American comics while being educated by the Fascist system. American magazines had a greater influence on Italian rotocalchi than did French and German models, something which can be linked in part to the delay in the modernisation of the Italian publishing sector and in part to the increasing popularity of American culture disseminated through other popular media.
The ambivalent attitude of Fascism to modernity complicated the relationship with American culture, often seen as an example of the negative effects of modernisation and identified with standardisation and mass consumption. The regime presented itself as a different model, one which would create an Italian way of mass consumption that would have preserved national traditions and identity. After 1935, and particularly after 1937, the campaign for autarchy complicated the relationship of the Fascist State to American culture still further, a change that was reflected in and partly shaped by magazines, which for their part confirmed the presence of both the American model and the dialogue with American culture. For this reason, rotocalchi represent a privileged source for the examination of the modernisation of Italian society and mass press, its distinctive features and its relationship with the United States and other countries. What is more, each publishing field reflected and re-elaborated in its own distinctive way this complex cultural dialogue, which saw in the censorship of foreign words and products the apotheosis of the control the regime wanted to exercise over the masses – all visible in the rotocalchi published by Nerbini, Mondadori and Rizzoli.
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