The Aesthetics of Mediocracy: Silvio Berlusconi on Screen between Political Image and Cultural Representation

Author

Novikova Liudmyla

a Ph.D. in Art Studies, a research fellow at the Screen, Stage Arts and Culturology Department of M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; a head of the Audiovisual Arts and Production Department of I. Karpenko-Karyi Kyiv National University of Theatre, Cinema and Television (Kyiv, Ukraine).

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6771-2908

The Aesthetics of Mediocracy: Silvio Berlusconi on Screen between Political Image and Cultural Representation

Abstract

The analysis of media representations of political power is considered as an important tool for comprehension of transformations in political communication and symbolic mechanisms of legitimation in contemporary film and cultural studies. The phenomenon of mediacracy is of a particular relevance in this context. The mass media function not merely as channels of representation but as active agents in the construction of political reality. Cinema, owing to its capacity for metaphorical generalization and critical reflection, captures these processes through visual strategies and narrative forms.

The article is aimed at analyzing the cinematic image of Silvio Berlusconi as an example of the interaction between political image-making and cultural representation in the conditions of mediacracy. The methodological framework of the study includes the theoretical concepts of Paul Virilio and Fredric Jameson, allowing the media image of the politician to be interpreted as a simulacrum oriented toward repetition, emotional impact, and symbolic circulation rather than embodied political presence.

The research material consists of films by Italian directors of the second half of the twentieth and the early twenty-first centuries, in particular works by Federico Fellini, Nanni Moretti, and Paolo Sorrentino, where Berlusconi’s screen image functions as a symptom of profound cultural and social shifts. The development of Berlusconi’s cinematic portrait from indirect allegorical representations to explicit satirical critique, reflecting the growing role of television and media narratives in Italian political life, is considered in the article.

It is concluded that cinematic representations of Berlusconism perform a diagnostic function, revealing the mechanisms of the fusion of political power and mass culture, as well as the consequences of the mediatization of politics for the cultural context of modern society. The analysis of Berlusconi’s cinematic portrait in a broader perspective makes it possible to consider mediacracy both as a political phenomenon and a symptom of deeper anthropological transformations associated with the dominance of visual communication over verbal discourse and the reduction of the public space of rational comprehension to the sphere of emotional recognizability.

Keywords

visual image, political image, cinema, television, Silvio Berlusconi, cultural representation, narratives, media and authorities.

References

1. DENYSKO, Petro. Insight. Visual and Multimodal Metaphors in Painting, Sculpture, Cinema and Other Visual Arts. Poltava: Sole trader Hovorov S. V., 2021, 248 pp. [in Ukrainian].
2. KULYK, Volodymyr. Discourse of Ukrainian Media: Identities, Ideology, Authorities Relations. Kyiv: Critics, 2010, 656 pp. [in Ukrainian].
3. BAUDRILLARD, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila Faria GLASER. University of Michigan Press, 1994, 164 pp. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9904 [in English].
4. BERLUSCONI, Luca e Paolo: “Una vera maschera italiana” [Berlusconi Luca and Paolo: “A true Italian mask”]. La 7 [The Seven] [online]. Available from: https://www.la7.it/dimartedi/video/berlusconi-luca-e-paolo-una-vera-maschera-italiana-13-06-2023-490158 [in Italian].
5. CALVINO, Italo. Lezioni americane. Sei proposte per il prossimo millennio [American Lessons: Six Proposals for the Next Millennium]. Milan: Garzanti, 1988, 110 p. [in Italian].
6. DIANI, Mario. “Media, Movements and Political Change.” In: Doug McADAM and William SCOTT, eds. Social Movements and Networks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 247–270 [in English].
7. ECO, Umberto. Travels in Hyperreality. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986, 298 pp. [in English].
8. JAMESON, Fredric. Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1990, 460 pp. [in English].
9. McLUHAN, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964, 359 pp. [in English].
10. ORTOLEVA, Peppino. Mediastoria. Il secolo dei media tra politica e società [Media History: The Century of Media, Politics, and Society]. Torino: Einaudi, 2011, 336 pp. [in Italian].
11. VIRILIO, Paul. The mediatic coup d’etat [The Media Takeover]. Traffic, 1994, no. 11, pp. 4 [in French].