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Sanremo, my love

The strange mirror of Italy yesterday and today

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The national-popular event par excellence is a perfect representation of our country and its contradictions, between memes and relics of the past.

 
 
 
 
 
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Un post condiviso da Mahmood (@mahmood)

There is a week in Italy that is different from all the others. A week where apparently the whole country stops and the attention is focused on a single topic: Sanremo. No one can escape, the Festival is a catalyst that captures the attentions of the Belpaese and everything that is not 'sanremese' passes into the background.

Citing the famous poem by Catullus we could say that the feelings of Italians towards the singing event oscillate between two poles of love and hate, often without nuances in between because, as we will see, the very nature of Sanremo is extremely complicated and contradictory. And this is due to its history.

Sanremo: the bel canto and the Tik Tok generation

For those who don't know it, the singing event was born in 1951, in a world completely different from the one we know: the post-war Italy, with one foot in the past and one in the future, ideals still tied to puritan morals, a TV that played the unusual role of "teacher" to Italians who could barely read and write. In this context, an event like Sanremo, an expression of a classic variety show that was also a bit stiff, a window to 'musica leggera'  that was absolutely in tune with the times, was in no way out of place, on the contrary.

Times have obviously changed, the years have passed, yet Sanremo has remained. And in recent years there has been a decidedly interesting phenomenon. Some time ago Sanremo was considered an event anchored in the past, with the various choirs that every year decreed its death, recently it is living a sort of renaissance. This is thanks to a more varied musical selection, which also takes into account the tastes of the younger audience, who is looking for music on the magical world of internet

 
 
 
 
 
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Un post condiviso da Elisa (@elisatoffoli)

The selection of Sanremo singers has thus become a strange hybrid and we can see this clearly by analyzing this year's contestants: the inevitable old glories like Gianni Morandi (surprisingly third, but who wouldn't want his energy? Not even after 12 coffees), Iva Zanicchi and Massimo Ranieri, a figure like Elisa, modern but at the same time rich of a decidedly iconic career, the new committed singer-songwriters like Fabrizio Moro and Giovanni Truppi, the alumni of talent shows, from Mahmood to Emma to Aka 7even, passing through Michele Bravi and Noemi, indie phenomena that have come to the surface of the mainstream, such as La Rappresentante di Lista, Ditonellapiaga, Highsnob and Hu and Rkomi, the sons of SoundCloud and Tik Tok such as Blanco and Matteo Romano.

A mixture of different generations, different starting media, in which the new generation of Mahmood and Blanco triumphed. On the other hand, last year Maneskin triumphed: unbelievable but true, Sanremo is increasingly young.

The audience of the first evening was made up of 71% young people, a figure that definitely gives us pause for thought. But it is always Sanremo that brings young people to the world of Sanremo, not only music. Also in this case the magical world of the internet came to the rescue.

 
 
 
 
 
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Un post condiviso da Sapore di male (@sapore.di.male)

Sanremo is not only a television phenomenon, it is a social phenomenon: if you opened Twitter during the evenings of the Festival, you will have been invaded by brilliant memes, from Giusy Ferreri's megaphone, to the contrast between Mahmood's calm attitude and Blanco's trolling ways, to the mythological appearances of Beppe Vessicchio, greeted as a divinity.

The Festival with its nosense moments and its bizarreities is a forge for serial meme makers. Once again, the magic of the internet. And how could we not mention the Fantasanremo game, the app that allows you to create "teams" of singers, who acquired points based on a series of phrases/actions that the contestants in their lineup had to pronounce/do.

And so we saw the singers, not just the young generation, shouting 'papalina' and 'ciao Mara' to make the players earn points, transforming the vision of the Festival into something essentially interactive.

A hodgepodge of old and new values

It's not Sanremo if there are no controversies: every year we expect them and it would be really strange if there weren't.

Controversy about cachets, singers, hosts. This year the controversy about the hosts has been particularly "sparkling" and has highlighted one of the founding characteristics of Sanremo, which exists between lights and shadows.

 
 
 
 
 
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Un post condiviso da Sanremo Rai (@sanremorai)

At the helm of the conduction once again Amadeus, accompanied by a group of co-hostesses: Ornella Muti, Sabrina Ferilli, Maria Chiara Giannetta, Lorena Cesarini and Drusilla Foer. And here the situation becomes quite tangled. On the one hand we have Amadeus, who prefers to use the term 'co-hostesses' because valets is derogatory, but at the same time defines as 'ladies who cheer the stage'.

And one wonders if in 2022 it is possible to make controversy about the presence of women, who are still considered a separate macro-category, who must be included regardless, precisely because they are 'women' first and foremost. And it's extremely unnerving. Because you lose the individuality, the experience, the uniqueness.

Women are led to become the voice of battles, of testimonies, which are often forged in suffering, such as Lorena Cesarini's experience with racism or, in a different form, the testimony of Maria Chiara Giannetta, who brought to the stage the blind women and men who supported her in playing the blind detective in the fiction Blanca.

Experiences are valid, sufferings cannot be denied, on the contrary, they should always be highlighted, but there is always the feeling that Sanremo wants to convey an idea of integration and progress, but does so with dated, rhetorical stylistic elements and with narratives that are in a certain sense 'negative'.

There is this tendency, in the language of the Festival, but in general in the Italian media, to construct narratives about the 'different' precisely by emphasizing its 'diversity', believing in this way to generate progress, but in this way a distance is created between us and others, who should always be pitied.

The powerful sounding board of Sanremo, which in this respect is a perfect mirror of our country, a contradictory jumble of past, present and a future that it often clumsily faces, should not broadcast a rhetoric of ideals but simply beautiful stories, stories that exist. This is how we face  that new generation, which despite everything, trash, gaffes and accidents, watches Sanremo and will continue to watch it.

We close with two quotations that in the midst of a thousand controversies are only to be taken as an example, respectively by Drusilla Foer and Sabrina Ferilli:

"I don't like the word diversity, it has in it something comparative and a distance that doesn't convince me. I looked for a term to replace it and I found uniqueness, I like it, everyone likes it, because we are all capable of noticing the uniqueness of the other and we all think we are unique. But to understand and accept one's uniqueness it is necessary to understand what it is made of, what we are made of, certainly beautiful things, ambitions, values, beliefs, talents."

"Then I thought of more important issues, feminism, body positivity, inclusion, but I think that to talk about these topics we need to ask those people who get their hands dirty, study and come from less glittering stages than this. I'm very respectful of other people's expertise. And instead on social media there is not a person who does not make a comment on anything. There are also issues like: global warming, overpopulation, wage inequality... but why does my presence have to be tied to a big, cosmic issue? I'm here because of my work, my choices, the best thing that could accompany me on this stage is my story, I think it's the most beautiful thing that can accompany women everywhere. It's not that I don't know how many things there are to change, to fix, but I stay in my line, I chose the path of lightness. In such heavy times you have to glide through things with a heart without boulders, lightness is not superficiality."