In the early 20th century, many people considered film to be the best way to quickly transmit information and ideas to large audiences. This particular quality of film—its wide-reach and broad appeal—made it the ideal tool for propagandists and artists alike. But, as the century progressed, a new medium came to overtake film as the ultimate communicator: television. It can communicate roughly the same amount of audio-visual content through image and sound, but rather than requiring people to buy a ticket and go to the theater, stations could broadcast the content directly into people’s homes. The convenience and allure of television sets obviously made them extremely popular. So, when commercial television broadcasting was just hitting its stride in the 1980s, the content commanded an enormous audience. What does television show? Essentially, there are two types of television programs: those for news and those for leisure or entertainment. While there are crossovers (like John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, which combines journalism with comedy), most programs can be placed into one category or the other.
Are you seeking a music composer for an original film or media project? Tom Gurin is an innovative composer for short films working on multimedia projects around the world. Send him a message online or at thomas.gurin@aya.yale.edu for information on his current availability, ongoing projects, and rates.
Television in Postmodernist Film
What does television do to people? Three postmodernist films made since the rise of commercial television seek to answer that question. Firstly, The Icicle Thief (1989) by Maurizio Nichetti contends that although television reaches a wide audience, the content is rarely absorbed in full thanks to commercials and to the semi-conscious way in which many people tend to consume TV. TV, according to Nichetti, does not truly affect people. Secondly, La Mafia Uccide Solo d’Estate (2013) by Pierfrancesco Diliberto (Pif) counters that view, showing how entertainment television can transfix Arturo and even shape his childhood. Pif also uses historical telegiornale footage to lend a sense of authenticity to the story, as well as to trigger memories in his audience. Finally, the ubiquitousness of television humanizes Giulio Andreotti in Il Divo (2008) by Paolo Sorrentino. The very fact that he watches television makes it easier for the audience to believe he is normal. Each of these films 1) engages with television in a different way and 2) proposes different effects that television can have on people, including characters and audiences alike.
Icicle Thief by Maurizio Nichetti
In The Icicle Thief, Nichetti draws attention to a puzzling truth about commercial television: although the medium of TV has the potential to reach a very wide audience, many viewers consume the images and music uncritically, without truly engaging with it. For them, a TV set has the same effect as a fireplace; often on in the background for hours at a time, its glow and hum conduct leisure and relaxation. There are several planes of experience at play in The Icicle Thief, and in one of them we see a family using their television in exactly this “fireplace” role. For example, the young son is most concerned with his Lego set; the TV simply provides background noise. At one point, the boy looks up at the screen, slowly munching on a “Big Big” bar, and encounters a hungry Bruno “breaking the fourth wall.” He seems to be gazing intensely at the tasty snack in the boy’s hand. When Bruno asks his parents for a “Big Big” bar of his own, we are suddenly aware that he isn’t just “breaking the fourth wall.” In fact, Bruno can see through the TV screen into the living room.
The irony, then, is that the characters onscreen react more strongly to the audience than the audience does to them. Punctuating this point, the end of the film shows Nichetti yelling from inside the TV set. Desperate for a reaction from the family, he shouts, “Don’t leave me locked up in here! I want to get out!” Unaware that Nichetti is talking to her, the mother calmly walks over to the TV and switches it off before going to bed. He is unable to incite any type of response in her.
We often think of television screens as two-way mirrors: we, as the viewers, can look through the glass into another world, while those on the other side of the screen cannot see us. By reversing the direction of this two-way mirror, Nichetti is contrasting the semi-conscious experience of watching commercial television with the “hyperconciousness” of postmodernism, the emergence of which coincided with the rise in popularity of commercial television in the early 1980s. In his essay “Television and Postmodernism,” Jim Collins defines hyperconsciousness as “a hyperawareness on the part of the text itself of its cultural status, function, and history, as well as of the conditions of its circulation and reception.” Here, a distinction must be made between Nichetti the director and Nichetti the character. Although The Icicle Thief was not made for TV, the director incorporates a plane of experience that comments on its eventual circulation via commercial television. When Nichetti the character is shouting to get the attention of the family at the end of the film, his awareness and plea for attention is a synecdoche for the film’s hyperconsciousness of, and similar plea for attention from, TV audiences at large.
La Mafia Uccide Solo d’Estate by Pierfrancesco Diliberto
In The Icicle Thief, we saw characters on a TV screen struggling in vain to get the attention of a family watching in their living room. In La Mafia Uccide Solo d’Estate, Pif engages with the TV medium in a very different way from Nichetti. Whereas Nichetti criticized television and television audiences as being disconnected, Pif depicts TV as very powerful, even including a scene paralleling The Icicle Thief in which he re-flips the two-way mirror. At the beginning of the film, Arturo sees Giulio Andreotti on a television talk show. The politician, usually quite reserved, offers a rare bit of personal information by explaining how he proposed to his wife. Unlike the young boy and the mother in The Icicle Thief, who are hopelessly blind to the characters’ attempts to engage with them, Arturo cannot help but believe that Andreotti is addressing him directly. This scene pushes back against Nichetti’s critique that TV audiences do not fully engage with the content onscreen and argues instead that TV has the power to transfix people.
But Pif doesn’t just depict TV as a powerful force; he also uses TV footage to great effect, proving his own point. In The Icicle Thief, the film’s contact with commercials hinders the plot’s advancement and tarnishes the film’s purity in the eyes of Nichetti. This is not the case for La Mafia Uccide Solo d’Estate, whose composite images of new film and real, archived “telegiornale” footage of Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa’s funeral enhance the historical authenticity of the film. This footage actually aired on television, and its use in La Mafia Uccide Solo d’Estate makes the film even more relatable for Italians who would have seen the footage live on air in 1982. Because Arturo became obsessed with Giulio Andreotti by way of an appearance on television, Andreotti’s absence from this later scene is made more poignant for the audience thanks to the real televised footage. Pif doesn’t just depict television as powerful; he uses it powerfully.
Il Divo by Paulo Sorrentino
In Il Divo, Sorrentino uses television’s effect on Giulio Andreotti and his wife to alter the audience’s perception of Giulio. More specifically, the fact that Giulio is able to relax while watching TV helps his audience relate to him, much like the young Arturo relates to him in La Mafia Uccide Solo d’Estate. In Il Divo, there is only one scene in which television plays a central role. It comes immediately after Andreotti informs his wife that he is under investigation for mafia connections. Livia responds, “I know who you are. You can’t spend your life with a man and not know who he is. I know who you are and we’ll defend ourselves.” This line makes it clear that Livia loves Giulio, softening our stern perception of the man and preparing us for the following scene. Sorrentino cuts to an angle from which we see Giulio and Livia sitting in arm chairs, facing us head on. When Livia points the remote control at the camera, we understand that we are looking outward from the television’s perspective. This places us in Andreotti’s shoes, as the objects of observation. During his lifetime, Andreotti frequently appeared on television programs such as the one that sparked Arturo’s interest in him (although he was rarely as personable as he was in that interview). Furthermore, we are freshly aware that he is being investigated for criminal charges at this point in the film. All of this is in the context of Il Divo, a film about Giulio Andreotti. In short, Andreotti was a watched man, and Sorrentino’s choice to place the camera directly in front of the television challenges us to feel for him.
Beyond helping us understand his point of view, this scene humanizes Andreotti by depicting him enjoying a television program, and by allowing us to look through the eyes of his wife. The very fact that he watches television at all makes him more relatable to many audience members, who are used to seeing him on the screen. Furthermore, he half-smiles at a joke made at his expense! This is the only moment out of the entire film when he expresses any amount of amusement. Livia immediately changes the channel. This time, she stops on a live recording of a popular music concert. The soloist is singing a love song and when he reaches the word “sposa,” Livia reaches out and touches Giulio’s hand. Sorrentino cuts so that we see Giulio from Livia’s perspective: wrinkled, tired, and full of love and gratitude for her. This scene shows Andreotti engaging in the near-universally relatable act of watching television, which leads to a moment of softness between him and his wife. The combined result is that he appears a bit more human to us than before.
Conclusion
These three films—The Icicle Thief, La Mafia Uccide Solo d’Estate, and Il Divo—engage with television in very different ways. The Icicle Thief depicts television as inert, incapable of eliciting a true response from its audience. La Mafia Uccide Solo d’Estate doesn’t just depict television as powerful, it also uses television footage to create a real effect in the audience, proving its own point. Finally, Il Divo deliberately shows the effect that television has on Andreotti, and uses that effect as a humanizing agent to help the audience relate to him. All of these films recognize that the experience of television was nearly ubiquitous across all classes of society for many years. But, the age of commercialized entertainment television may be coming to a close, as commercial-free internet-based services such as Netflix are on the rise. To quote Jimmy Gibler in the postmodernist Netflix original series Fuller House, “Netflix! Those guys are running the world. In a good way.”
Hire a Film Composer
Tom Gurin is an innovative short film composer who works in close collaboration with directors to build musical scores and soundtracks for their independent projects. He studied music at Yale University and in Paris. Click here to contact a composer for films and shorts right now!