Of Alessio Mannino
Calling the pro-child advert of the baby products company "fascist" shows that the sense of limits has been lost. And about being parents
Proof of how much advertising is the true Collective Intellectual of the consumer society, lo Chicco television commercial which invites us to do so by taking advantage of the absence of the Azzurri at the World Cup, returning to give birth with gusto in an Italy that procreates little, has sparked outrage on the perpetually menstruating web, as if it were an institutional message promoted by the new populist and sovereignist government. "Alarms, they are fascists": even the copywriters of the pram and baby articles company? Yes, according to those who spilled the beans on social networks, which then are i beam-all-seeing, those who he sees people bandage everywhere – next time, what do we know, it could happen to Nutella (too dark, almost black), or to agricultural trade associations that invite you to buy Italian (autarky, autarky!) or to anyone who should ever recall in non-defamatory terms works such as the reclamation of the Agro Pontino (oh no, Antonio Pennacchi has already done it, hard and pure communist, with its – beautiful – “Mussolini Canal”).
Let's follow the logic (so to speak). An advertisement that, with evident irony and a very clear commercial purpose, it mimics the declamatory tone of propaganda a bit, relaunching the biblical watchword "grow and multiply" with scenes of passionate effusions, it would be an updated re-edition of the Regime's campaign to give children to the Homeland, al Mussolini's motto "number is power". So who answers the call, perhaps with enthusiasm rather than rejecting it in disdain, at this point he would be a fascist too. Who instead is disgusted, offended by the blatant regurgitation of rhetoric from Ventennio, he certainly won't be willing to have sex in order to give birth to children. Other than Chicco: your Durex will be kept dear and ready for use on the bedside table, and died there. So, the thoroughbred anti-fascist, consistent until the last condom, fuck just for pleasure. Also because, sensitive to the ecological footprint that one more human being causes on a planet already overburdened with the human species, and in solidarity with the gay cause (unable to do so), becoming a father or mother would become, as well as a false duty, also a disservice to humanity.
Let's provoke, it's clear. But not much. Taken for granted (hopefully) that the intent of a company that sells products for young children is to increase its customers, the fact that the birth rate is a problem, bad, and not a good thing, it should be a common belief. We dare say, if the Gestapo were not lurking modernly correct, what thinking it should be natural. But no. Having a child is blasphemy, because there are no economic and material means for a life project like a family: so they say. And they are not there because the supreme good is painfully scarce: a stable job, that gives parents the necessary security to maintain their parents' standard of living, that is, one's own, what they themselves have enjoyed so far and are desperately trying to replicate. E’ fear of downgrading, fueled by the typical frustration of the precarious and dissatisfied "underprivileged class" of the current thirty-forty year olds.
But I say, for all the gods, when has starting a family ever been a project? Things, you must first do the cost-benefit analysis, the master plan and forecast of revenues and profits? Why you decide to give birth to a new life: for calculation, out of duty, out of habit, and not perhaps for the dark, mysterious but very natural impulse to reproduce Life, obeying paternal and maternal instinct, following hope, innate and profound, to leave something of oneself afterwards – e against – one's physical death? Nothing to do: all this is not only outdated (thanks to science and its armed wing, the technique, you can have children even without sexual union), not only is it even considered very natural anymore (motherhood and fatherhood? purely cultural constructions, easily circumvented, half illusory and practically false), but above all, Obviously, It's fascist stuff, fundamentalist Catholics, nostalgic traditionalists and other ugly people who don't understand that the family's rejection is due to the sole fact that permanent contracts are lacking.
I migrants who are trying to settle in the West, a contract, in many cases, they've never even seen it, yet they arrive with numerous offspring. They are poor, but confident in the future. This is what we are missing: trust. Instead, resentment abounds, rancor, intolerance, dissatisfaction. A point of connection between the economic discontented and the defenders of the family, actually, there is: both know that to form one you needexistential stability, that is, the certainty of an income. Both are enemies, perhaps unaware, of this economic model based instead on precarious income - underlined: income, I don't work: known for right-wing slavers and left-wing ultra-laborists. What divides them is the vision of their son: it is a selfish act to do so, or not doing it? It should reveal itself, simply, the decision anymore very much of the world. How to have sex (which between consenting people is never unnatural: engraved for homophobes), despite sex being practiced less and less in a hyper-sexualized reality that extinguishes desire, and via Instagram and Facebook, it kills secrecy and intimacy. How to live with dignity, without the anxiety of not having enough to pay the bill at the end of the month. How to be vital. And how – listen, listen – to love.