Erik Gandini
Videocracy

It has been defined as a horror ante litteram and also an essential film, the kind to be shown in schools.

The docu-horror "Videocracy" aims to show how the lobotomization caused by butts, breasts, reality show stars, showgirls, and every other devilry of the so-called commercial TV over thirty years, has created a monster, and this monster would be the Italian people. A people that blindly trusts six news channels that say the same thing, whose greatest ambition is to appear on TV believing this gives them immortality (and here's where you chuckle), success and admiration, who think studying is superfluous. The ethics of entertainment first of all.

To narrate this Italy, Erik Gandini, an Italian who has been residing in Sweden for years, uses interviews with some key figures, who, perhaps thinking they are speaking to a foreigner, open up almost as if they were talking to a priest. There's a young man from Brescia who dreams of going on TV as an emulation of Ricky Martin and Van Damme, delightful in his naivety, shocking when he admits that yes, in the end, if someone offered him a movie, he'd even bend over, but clearly not for a minor role (like saying, I would never rob a bank for 1000 euros, but for 10000...), there's the photographer of Costa Smeralda who lives below you-know-who, there's the stressed director of Canale5, there's the thousand girls dreaming of becoming showgirls "because in life it's important to have a job you love and marry a soccer player".

Lele Mora stands out, an absolutely luciferian being, dressed in white, surrounded by unknown muscular reality stars (the director also explains what a reality star is, abroad they might think it's a throne manufacturer...in the end, in Sweden, they have a monarchy!) chilling the scene in which he proudly shows the ringtone of "faccetta nera" with many joyful swastikas dancing on the mobile phone. Finally, there was bound to be Fabrizio Corona, a delirium of egomania and endless greed, who describes himself as a modern Robin Hood, who steals from the rich to give to himself, who goes as far as secretly filming his own divorce in court to sell it to the news at a high price. Nothing of this, however, is as frightening as the plastic faces of people singing "meno male che Silvio c’è", you hope it's a mass game from North Korea, but instead, it's your Country.

In all this, one wonders, was it necessary? Was it necessary to shame, to expose in this way the weaknesses and smallness of a nation? And if it was, will this serve any purpose, will it open someone's eyes, or will the audience presumably be only those who already know these things, who are already nauseated, who do not recognize themselves in the TV models?

At the same time, an interesting film, in some ways shocking, but surely less necessary than a "Gomorra", and anyway, nothing takes away from my mind the idea that this horrible TV of dwarfs and illiterate dancers is just the tip of the iceberg of a more hidden evil, an evil that no one speaks of.