Mussolini Marvel hero
Benito Mussolini from the TV series “M. the son of the century”, taken from the successful historical novels by Antonio Scurati, is a Marvel hero, with a splash of Francis “Frank” J. Underwood from the American version of the serial “House of cards”. Not dissimilar, to tell the truth, from his contemporary political followers, from Donald Trump to Giorgia Meloni, passing through Elon Musk. These, like Luca Marinelli’s hyperbolic Mussolini, are characters who devour their own person.
A figure disconnected from reality
Sky Atlantic’s Mussolini, with his mostly grotesque and physically hypertrophic narration – as well as being a hymn to the sound and visual effects of Futurism (other than the exhibition at Gnam in Rome) – is a figurine totally detached from historical reality and little truth about the profound nature of fascism. It was not a single man – the Duce – however exaggeratedly carnal, magnetic and stubborn who personified fascism, but it was an entire country that gave strength and substance to the Mussolini dictatorship. The Mussolini of pay TV, like Marvel’s Deadpool, speaks to us in the room, breaking the fourth wall, because he is a contemporary proto-populist, he is a pimp and seeks the most intimate consent of the viewer. He is – like the most successful politicians of today – a follower of his followers, satisfying every most hidden need or revenge. Seek and obtain empathy. Not from the mass, but from the individual.
The grimaces
Contemporary TV serial narration – storytelling, said in the manner of the nefarious Holden School – in an absolutely narcissistic society, tends to have the compliance of the individual, while leveraging the conformism commonly accepted and professed by the masses. A wonderful oxymoron, where everyone’s approval is sought, playing on the tics of the multitude. Marinelli’s Mussolini speaks to each of us, making faces in favor of the camera, like Giorgia Meloni who, from the proscenium of the Montecitorio bench, makes faces to accompany the speeches of her political opponents, up to the cabaret scene of hiding his head in his Armani jacket, pulling the collar up over his head. Or, scream at the top of her lungs that she is a “mother, Italian and Christian”, complete with a viral jingle. The character in fact, who eats the person. And even Donald Trump who, like a crazed and hallucinated Loki, from his residence in Mar-a-Lago, predicts the invasion of Greenland, the Strait of Panama and Canada. While, Elon Musk – like a ketamine-addicted Anthony Edward “Tony” Stark – declares his support for the German neo-Nazi party via “X” and bombards British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the media with a certain frequency, going so far as to finance “Reform UK” by Nigel Farage.
How will it end?
They are all epigones of the heroes – it would be better to say “anti-heroes” – of Marvel, like the grotesque and screaming character of Mussolini of Sky. Each with its own media superpower, eager to find acceptance among a wide audience, while getting under the skin of each individual. Where the mass merges with the individual dimension of each one, capturing fears and transforming them into overwhelming consensus. With the portentous addition of social networks, now a place of perdition for elderly boomers, dissolute young people, wild marketing, seamless repetition of memes and news broadcast in continuous rotation, which do not amplify the message, but repeat it endlessly. And looking at Mussolini on television, it seems strange that he, between a sneer at Gabriele D’Annunzio and a palatinate at Margherita Sarfatti (this figure is indeed interesting for making a film or a TV series out of, like Galeazzo Ciano), did not include hands with a smartphone, intent on issuing a declaration of war on Emmanuel Macron’s France via “X”. In a sort of space-time leap that brings back that Mussolini, so historically vandalized first by Scurati and then by Joe Wright, among us, like any leader struggling with his media and virtual ego, intent on spreading viral contents devised by his personal social media manager.
And therefore, this serialized Mussolini, so similar to our super heroes of a phantasmagoric Marvel-style political party, appears so close and present to us, alive and embodied in a handful of faces and screams, disorganized phrases and ferocious threats, that he could be brought back to life by this handful of leaders of this new international reactionary and anarchic right. A historical fake, Sky’s Mussolini, but also very similar to the present day. So much so that it seems more real and authentic than the original and makes viewers ask themselves, between one episode and another, “Who knows how it will end?”.