Abstract
This article analyses how Italian young people were represented in the Saturday night television programme Studio Uno (1961–1966). It defines i giovani as a performative identity: i giovani are not described as a specific age group, but rather as a normative identity constructed in popular media through the reiteration of bodily practices defined in opposition to ‘adult’ practices. Firstly, the article connects the emergence of discourses around i giovani with the educative function of RAI. Secondly, it outlines to what extent 1965 can be considered a turning point for representations of i giovani in Italian media. Thirdly, it compares the two young Studio Uno 1966 co-hosts Mina and Rita Pavone, to highlight the practices through which the latter was constructed as giovane. Lastly, the article suggests how the giovane identity was presented to an audience of adults and youths respectively through a different spatialisation of giovani performers on the show.
Highlights
This article analyses how Italian young people were represented in the Saturday night television programme Studio Uno (1961-1966)
It defines i giovani as a performative identity: i giovani are not described as a specific age group, but rather as a normative identity constructed in popular media through the reiteration of bodily practices defined in opposition to ‘adult’ practices
While the few analyses of media representations of young people during the 1960s in Italy have focused on the influence of cultural products such as popular songs and teen magazines,[2] television has only marginally been taken into consideration, as at the time this medium was mainly intended for an audience of adults and families.[3]
Summary
This article analyses how Italian young people were represented in the Saturday night television programme Studio Uno (1961-1966) It defines i giovani as a performative identity: i giovani are not described as a specific age group, but rather as a normative identity constructed in popular media through the reiteration of bodily practices defined in opposition to ‘adult’ practices. According to Hebdige, youth tends to be represented by the media either as ‘youth-as-trouble’ – criminal, delinquent youth – or as ‘youth-as-fun’ – commercial, consuming youth.[20] In the Italian media, the ‘giovane-as-fun’ image involved a negotiation of meanings: it incorporated the social and political struggle between generations by redirecting it to other fields, in particular those freetime activities that characterised young people’s consumption, especially from 1965 onwards These activities included the making, singing of, and dancing to giovane music as well as bodily expressions like style and fashion.
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