The Organization of Political Ideology: Culture, State, and Theater in Fascist Italy

Abstract

The Italian fascist regime claimed that the theater was an ideal cultural vehicle for diffusing fascist ideology. Yet, the regime did not radically alter the content offascist theater. Standard accounts of the relationship between culture and the state that privilege the cultural product suggest that the Italian case was anomalous. Using archival materials, I lay out a conceptualframeworkfor discussing the interaction between states and cultural institutions and apply it to Italianfascist theatrical policyfrom 1922 to 1940. Thefascist regime pursued a policy of state paternalism towards the theater. The regime regulated producers of culture rather than cultural products and used organizational structures to legitimate a split between doing theater and writing theater -performance and text. The Italian case suggests that even a regime that claims to be totalitarian cannot create a national aesthetic. it also forces a re-examination of prior studies of states and cultural institutions. M odern states frequently mobilize social and cultural institutions to disseminate ideological beliefs and to shape the public identities of their citizens. While expenditures for cultural institutions may be a small part of state budgets, cultural products diffuse more widely than benefits that accrue to individuals. They provide the state with a symbolic infrastructure. Early in the twentieth century, regimes as diverse as Stalinist Russia, New Deal America and fascist Italy enlisted national cultural institutions in the service of ideology. Despite recent exceptions (Goldfarb 1989; Haraszti 1987; Hunt 1984; Mally 1990), the social science and historical literature lacks accounts of the process through which regimes use cultural institutions to diffuse political ideology.I Studies of Nazi art (Lane [1968] 1985), fascist cinema (Hay 1987), and totalitarian culture (Golomstock 1990), no matter how rich in descriptive value, belie the complexity of the interaction between politics and ideology and suggest that regimes can mold cultural products in their ideological images. Theater in fascist Italy is a useful venue for exploring the interaction between states and cultural institutions. When Benito Mussolini came to power in 1922, cinema was in its infancy and theater was the principal mass entertainment medium. Theorists and activists of varying political persuasions viewed the theater as an effective political tool (e.g., Goldman [1914] 1987; Rol