Intellectual Property Law

Videocracy

By Susan Crawford

I spent part of today watching Videocracy.  It’s a nightmarish film about the culture surrounding Silvio Berlusconi.  Control over 90% of the medium - television - on which 80% of Italians rely for information adds up to significant cultural saturation.

Berlusconi himself, with his easy smile and his fascination with spectacle, isn’t the focus.  Instead, the dead-voiced narrator describes the lives of others who are caught up in Berlusconi’s picture of the world:  a mechanic desperate for televised fame, a pudgy TV producer in an endless celebrity-rich party, an extortionist trying to stay at the center of the story.  There’s a sleek smugness in the one who has made it to the top - the producer - and a crazed absence in the other two.  Thousands of young women crowd around the camera, longing to be showgirls.  Women sing “Thank God Silvio exists!” in a campaign commercial.

It’s a deliberate, dreamlike, appalling film.  You really ought to see it.

Full post as published by Susan Crawford Blog on February 22, 2010 (boomark / email).