Of Carlo Freccero

Source: Formiche.net

“Series are a form of geopolitics, they manage to make the real understood more than the real” and if to say it and Carlo Freccero you can't help but believe him. Television writer, writer, mass media expert and political communication expert, in a conversation with Formiche.net explores a topic dear to him, lo storytelling politico, starting from American fiction, capable, explains Freccero, to be ahead of the curve more than any other form of communication, also the election of Donald Trump to the White House. While in Italy…
He said fiction is truer than truth, what does it mean?
It's very simple, fiction must be understood as critical storytelling of reality. Because of this, in some way it is capable of anticipating this reality, because he knows how to grasp the spirit of the time. If I think and read Hause of Cards, which was the perfect portrait of Clintonism in its declinations, it was inevitable that Trump would then arrive. And not only that. Another sensational example of how the series have rewritten power is 24, which had already anticipated September 11th, what is called the state of exception, and I could continue. But there is a very important fact, that is, US politics can be understood through the critical vision of American seriality, what an eye opener, it does a ferocious debunking of reality that mainstream newspapers are not capable of doing.
This is a new form of storytelling?
The thesis that I develop in the preface of the book “Telerivoluzione” by Alan Sepinwall is precisely this. The application of the Propp scheme to American politics, which explains how storytelling is constructed. That is, there is a balance and then its breakdown. If I think about American history, to the history of the American empire after 2001, there are two very important facts, of which the first is precisely September 11th. At this, adds the economic crisis of 2008. The American dream, with this crisis, causes a disruption of the equilibrium e, as Propp explains, with the crisis of this balance the American dream turns into a nightmare. From here the negative hero is born.
And how fiction reflects all this?
I have always maintained that in America critical thinking is expressed not through theoretical and philosophical tests, come in Europa, but through narration. The American narrative, written or filmed, he has always had two ways of describing reality: the naive and enthusiastic one of mass products and the critical and sometimes desperate one of committed cinema, even Hollywood, today almost extinct. Critical storytelling is the matrix of new auteur TV shows, caustic and much harsher towards society, than information can be. Censorship of "political correctness" exacerbates the orthodoxy and banality of political commentary.
A critique of society through fiction, Therefore.
The typical model of critical storytelling is dystopia, which represents the most usual scenario of contemporary science fiction stories. Dystopia is an example of a narrative scene constructed not to amuse or entertain, but to make us feel uncomfortable and reflect on our own lives. Positivistic optimism in progress abandoned, science fiction is a critical narrative of the near future, when not already of the present.
Obama's presidency can also be read according to this scheme?
Obama is already described well in the series 24, in which there is the black president. Clearly what is very interesting in the series, especially on HBO - the network closest to us Europeans - is that it works on power, unlike Netflix which works on teenagers and Amazon which works on gender. It is clear that Obama was already profiled, but the problem is that the Democratic Party – which is the party of power, of the strong powers – was totally contaminated and then created Trump's populist response, negativity, facing the holders of globalization, of finances. It was inevitable that there would be this rupture.
And in Italy? What role does fiction have??
Unfortunately it is impossible for fiction to read reality before it happens even in Italy, because most are produced by Rai1 and Canale 5. The American golden age was born at the end of the 1980s with the multiplication of channels, prima Fox, then all the cable channels. The multiplication of networks makes it possible to develop work for niche audiences, to which the network transmitting them can then be identified. When television begins to develop as a network and also work for minority audiences who have different cultural skills, wealth is born.
Fiction as a high cultural product, At that time?
I even maintain that fiction has replaced art films with a very important difference: that the arthouse film is based on the director's vision, therefore in some way it is a narcissistic vision linked to an individuality. The showrunner, on the other hand, is based on a category that is the spirit of the time and thanks to this he can read the reality in progress.