Conclusion

By the time the Fascist Gran Consiglio voted out of power its own leader, Mussolini, in July 1943, L’Avventuroso, Omnibus and Grazia had all ceased publication. Grazia, like many other women’s magazines, including Rizzoli’s Annabella, Rusconi’s Gioia and Vitaliano’s Eva, was relaunched after the war and its successful format was confirmed by its international success down to the present day, making it one of the longest-running magazines in the history of the Italian popular press. The rotocalco formula created by Omnibus was reproduced in L’Espresso, launched in 1955, which became one of the most prominent Italian news weeklies and it is still published today. For its part, L’Avventuroso, although it did not survive into the post-war era, imported into Italy an American model which left a visible mark on Italian comics and wider culture, creating an imaginary that conditioned young Italian readers decades after its last issue was printed.

The three case studies present different aspects of the popular press in Italy at a very particular moment in Italian history, one characterised by the creation of a capillary system of control that moulded mindsets, cultural production (and consumption) and societal structure. Together, the magazines analysed here demonstrate a shared model of popular print-media production in Italy, showing strong evidence of the presence of multicultural dialogue and processes of Italianisation of foreign models. They also illustrate the evolution of Italian practices of publication and production, initially centred on individuals (and small groups of editors) who created media enterprises which now control the majority of the Italian print-media industry, like the Mondadori group and the RCS [Rizzoli-Corriere della Sera] Media Group. The pattern established by the rotocalchi in the 1930s remained a staple of the illustrated press in the decades that followed. This model, especially visible in Omnibus and Grazia, used particular techniques to attract and create a loyal readership, such as actively engaging the readers with competitions and columns. Advice columns became the distinctive feature of women’s rotocalchi, while letters to the editor established a form of discussion between readers and editorial staff in cultural and political magazines. This form of engagement with the readership moved on to become a feature also in the comic press. Topolino, relaunched in 1945 in a new comic book format (called formato libretto), included competitions and columns dedicated to correspondence with its young readers. The comic periodical Linus, which imported comic strips such as Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz and Andy Capp by Reg Smythe,¹ was launched in 1964 and gave space to readers’ letters that fostered a socio-political debate around comics, establishing itself as a point of reference for discussions on comics to this day. More generally, comics are a dynamic, influential part of modern Italian culture. They have evolved far beyond their origins as simple entertainment or an educational tool for children to address complex social, political and personal themes. Contemporary authors like Michele Rech (known as Zerocalcare), Josephine Yole Signorelli (known as Fumettibrutti), Takoua Ben Mohamed and Giulia Spagnuolo (known as ZUZU) have crafted powerful storytelling comics which engage readers with visual narratives that are accessible yet profound, blending art and literature in a way that appeals to a variety of readerships. These comics address issues such as identity, trauma, history and social justice, making them essential tools for reflecting and challenging societal norms. In our contemporary world comics are not just entertainment – they are a medium for dialogue and cultural exchange. Italy’s early exposure to American comics in the 1930s showed this potential, as comics introduced Italian youth to American values and ideals which contrasted with Fascist narratives. Despite efforts to suppress these influences, the appeal of American heroes persisted, illustrating the fact that comics have long acted as a bridge across borders and ideologies. This legacy continues today, with comics serving as a global platform for exploring shared and diverse human experience. Looking back at rotocalchi from the 1930s, the survival of their unique structure in contemporary magazines – alternating entertainment with serious commentary and engaging directly with readers – demonstrates the popularity of illustrated magazines born from a complex, multicultural exchange between Italy and other Western countries.

Another distinctive feature of rotocalchi that continued in post-war Italy is the use of photographs to catch readers’ attention, contribute to delivering messages and give immediacy to illustrated periodicals. If anything, images acquired an even more relevant role in the post-war popular press, a trend that is still visible today in image-based social media. In the case of Italy, it was in the 1930s that the use of images revolutionised the popular press, as shown by the case studies presented here. The key role of photographs in rotocalchi is tangible proof of the cultural dialogue taking place throughout Western Europe and the United States, demonstrated by the similarity in the use of images as well as by the increasing number and significance of international photo agencies. Such cultural exchange is visible in the features and layout which the rotocalchi examined here share with other weeklies such as Marie-Claire, Vu, Marianne, Uhu, Life and The New Yorker. Inevitably, the mixed product and format that resulted from this cultural dialogue reflected in intricate ways the general modernisation of Italian culture and society, themselves conditioned as they were by both the Fascist system of power and international models.

The complex co-existence of a multicultural dialogue and Fascist ideology is particularly evident in the case of Omnibus. Its history reveals both the dialogue between the popular press and Mussolini’s establishment and the direct intervention of censorship in the rotocalco sector when the latter was not aligned with the evolving cultural directives of the regime. The case of L’Avventuroso demonstrates the striking impact of American comics on Italian print culture, popularising comics as a pure form of entertainment. At the same time, it illustrates how Fascist cultural campaigns and censorship targeting American products could lead indirectly to the closure of a magazine, even without an explicit ban or formal intervention by the regime. Finally, Grazia, which echoed Fascist rhetoric more directly and enthusiastically than either Omnibus or L’Avventuroso, is the only one of the three magazines which did not cease publication because of Fascist cultural policy or intervention: Grazia was suspended only because of the impact of the war. However, even in this case the presence of foreign models and of a modernising, complex attitude to everyday life is visible. Taken together, the three case studies illustrate the uneasy co-existence of traditional and Fascist models with modern aspirations and desires, often imported from foreign countries through popular media.

The analysis of early rotocalchi production has shown that the organisation of the publishing companies in the Italian sector was based mainly on a small group of intellectuals, writers or artists who contributed to different magazines and worked for different publishers, often in intersecting networks, something which points to the distinctiveness of the Italian publishing industry in the interwar years when compared to its American and European counterparts, especially in France, Germany and the United Kingdom. Italian magazine production was more localised and less professionalised; the figures of the publisher and of the strong individual editor were typically at the centre of creative as well as commercial processes; and each magazine had its own specificities that contributed to the creation of a varied market. This had consequences also for the readership, the characteristics of which can be deduced from the content and writing style of the magazine. Leaving aside L’Avventuroso, it is possible simply by looking at regular columns to assume that the readership of Omnibus was on average older than that of Grazia and, judging by the different competitions regularly promoted, was also more educated. Many assumptions could be drawn from this observation, especially given that Grazia was specifically aimed at women – hence a potentially less educated, less politically and culturally involved readership that that of Omnibus – proving once more that the study of rotocalchi can provide insights into many aspects of Italian society: from the impact of Fascist ideology and the attraction of foreign models to the interests of literate Italians and their level of education based on their correspondence with the magazines. One could object, saying that the readers’ letters, unless otherwise proved, could be fictitious; however, while this is a valid hypothesis, the letters still provide information on what interested readers because these columns needed to address widespread topics and concerns to keep their readership engaged. Whether real or fictional, readers’ letters and advice columns point to the predominant desires, expectations and concerns of the readership of the time.

The analysis presented in this volume offers clear indicators of the intersection between transnational spheres in the production (and development) of the modern popular press and shows the hidden dynamics of cultural production under a nationalist, controlling system of power. The production of rotocalchi in Fascist Italy mirrored and contributed to the shift towards mass consumer culture that boomed after the war. This change was fuelled by many factors, including the foreign influences whose impact we have seen in our three case studies. Among the other forces that influenced the emergence of a mass consumer culture and the modernisation of Italian society, one must not forget the massification of Italian society promoted by Mussolini’s rule, as well as the idea of a national consumer who promoted private Italian enterprises. Mondadori, Rizzoli and Nerbini made business choices which ultimately prevailed over political allegiance, accounting for another factor in the failure by the Fascist regime’s system of control to turn rotocalchi into a means of propaganda in support of the creation of the new Italian.

L’Avventuroso, Omnibus and Grazia are revealing examples of how new forms of attention to new sectors of readership became central to the Italian publishers, who in turn developed commercial strategies to expand their readership and transform it into active consumers, resulting in the multilayered product that is the rotocalco. The three magazines were each created with a broad readership in mind, one drawn from different classes or different sectors, such as women or young people, expanding the readership of the popular press and marking a new stage in the history of modern mass-print media in Italy. Because of the control exerted by Fascist power over cultural production and the press, publishers also had to take into account these restrictive policies in order to avoid losing their business to censorship. It is because of the co-existence and equal significance of these two factors – the expansion and modernisation of the readership; and the control exercised by the regime – that by examining the popular press as a mixed, new, national and transnational product we can better understand the practical consequences of the Fascist apparatus and its totalitarian ideology for cultural production. The development of rotocalchi demonstrates the uneven process of the nationalisation (and Fascistisation) of the masses, revealing the clear flaws, limits and ambiguous negotiations behind Fascist control over cultural production.

Among the factors that limited the control of the Fascist regime over Italians’ consciences, a key role was played by American culture and its myth, more so in readers’ imagination than in the practical production of illustrated magazines. The constant presence of American-style articles, references to Hollywood and its stars, American literature and curious facts, not to mention the myth of the frontier and American comics, proves the fascination with the United States among the readership of different types of rotocalchi. Given the widespread attention paid to anything American, regardless of the main readership targeted, one can conclude that the interest in American culture and way of life was shared across Italian society. The ambiguity with which the United States was often presented in rotocalchi offered publishers a shield against censorship by suggesting an anti-American sentiment. At the same time, popular magazines mirrored the broad criticism of American society and culture disseminated by Italian writers and intellectuals across different media. Among them, Emilio Cecchi and his America amara offer a key example of the echoes in Italy of the extremes of materialism, a theme that pervaded anti-American rhetoric, especially after the Wall Street Crash (1929).

Publishers and editors took inspiration from other countries, too. The similarities between Marianne and Omnibus and Marie-Claire and Grazia respectively clearly show that French magazines were a point of reference for the modernisation of the Italian illustrated press. Italian publishers had traditionally looked to other Western European countries, as documented by Pomba’s declaration in 1847 of his aim to create an illustrated periodical capable of competing with European publications, and did so again in the 1930s when creating the new rotocalco, with American magazines becoming part of the multicultural dialogue. The case studies presented in this book confirm that the development of the popular press was shaped by two main factors: the readers’ taste and political strategies – both influenced by Fascist ideology and propaganda as well as by business needs. Publishers sought to shape their magazines according to the desires and expectations of their readership, who were in turn influenced by exposure to foreign cultures through cultural consumption. At the same time, in order to survive Mussolini’s system of control and censorship Fascist ideals and policies had to be accommodated, too. Oftentimes these two needs clashed, causing publishers to alter the contents of their magazines even if it meant going against their business strategy (and success). This process affected not only the periodical press, but was, in fact, an ambivalent attitude common to all sectors of cultural production.² In this context the rotocalco emerges as a modern product whose exposure to foreign models and, more generally, to a multicultural dialogue is the result of what Gramsci identifies as a lack in Italy of a national-popular culture.³ By offering a product steeped in foreign cultures, adapted to readership tastes, mediated by Fascist ideology and/or limited by an authoritarian system of control, rotocalchi are an expression of the modernisation of Italian culture as well as a modernising force. The co-existence of different cultural products within the same rotocalco – such as wordy traditional comics and American adventure comics in L’Avventuroso; high literature with gossip columns as in Omnibus; or the portrayal of perfect housewives next to a guide on how to behave in the workplace displayed in Grazia – mirrors the ambivalence of Fascism not just towards modern culture but towards modernity in general. If the contradictory relationship between (Fascist) Italy and the United States offers a representative example of the regime’s conflictive perception of modernity, rotocalchi reveal that same attitude in cultural production. This ambivalence was a direct result of Fascist fluid ideology, based on action and a versatile rhetoric that helped Mussolini’s system of power to shape itself according to the needs of its totalitarian project. It is not surprising, then, to find contradictory and sometimes antithetical content in rotocalchi. In this analysis of Italian popular magazines one can observe how the regime’s hyper-nationalist ideology pushed towards a cultural expansion which made Italian (and Fascist) culture transnational despite itself. The success of foreign literature offers an example of the multicultural exchange that marked the modernisation of Italy; its presence across popular magazines proves the limits of the Fascist totalitarian project, which sought to use the press to mould and integrate the masses into the new State. The cultural content of rotocalchi confirms the trend established during the liberal period of a predominant consumption of foreign culture over national productions. This tendency persisted throughout the Ventennio, despite Mussolini’s initiatives for nationalising Italy (and its citizens) encompassed by cultural production and aimed at creating a national popular culture.

Further research in the field is required to highlight the mechanisms of multicultural dialogue between Western Europe and the United States in the 1930s. In spite of the radically different political systems in countries in the interwar years, modern Europe was shaped by transnational influences, particularly visible in the Italian case of rotocalchi production. Understanding the multicultural and transnational forces that contributed to creating modern popular culture can help us to frame and better to understand the current socio-political and cultural public discourse in both Europe and the United States. Today, the terms ‘Fascism’ and ‘Fascist’ have become part of the public political debate and are used wildly to comment on current socio-politically destabilising events. The discussion surrounding the international presence and influence of Fascism also involves the academic community, with recent analyses tracing its presence in the United States and addressing its ideological impact and significance today.⁴ Such renewed interest in defining Fascism and its ideology not only poses new challenges in terms of methodological approaches to the study of the historical events that shaped Europe in the interwar years – and specifically Italian Fascism – but also makes the understanding of the past all the more relevant to a balanced evaluation of the present.