By Ricardo A. Belisario, Columbia University
December 22, 2024
I signed up for a course on the Italian chivalric epic and folk performance traditions not knowing what to expect. I had never read Boiardo, Ariosto, Tasso, or anything close to the Song of Roland. Admittedly, I came into the classroom with a seemingly empty contextual canvas. Yet, as I think Socrates would agree, ignorance is not the absence of curiosity, it is not hardened sand in the desert; rather, it is the fecund soil on which any fruitful harvest must begin. A blank canvas is the potential disclosure of a new world. That course disclosed a new world to me.
Our first assignment was to watch two documentaries, one on the maggio tradition of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, and a second on Antonio Pasqualino, a scholar and supporting pillar of Sicilian puppet theatre. I soon remembered that I had been introduced to this latter art form before: in a translation course I took years prior, we were tasked with translating and programming subtitles for a newsreel on Giacomo Sferlazzo’s puppet theatre in Lampedusa. Now we began a new journey into this world. I watched the two documentaries and – to borrow from Sferlazzo’s language – sono rimasto folgorato. I was thunderstruck. There was an ensorcelling element to the footage of the performances, the interviews with the artists, and their deeply personal investment in the craft. I could not place my finger on the origin of this magic, but I could sense that my computer screen, for all its great functions and wonders, was concealing the spell’s trail. I felt profound tenderness. Why? The reason eluded me. I felt it beckoning me from across the conglomeration of pixels, but I could not seize it.
The following reflections attempt to find the trailhead to this question. As all wanderers know, to arrive somewhere we must choose a path and not others; we cannot simultaneously trek eastwards and westwards. At some point, from planning or intuition, we must choose a trail to follow. I intuited a starting point, I saw a few signs on the road, and probably took many wrong turns. But if you hike this trail with me, together we may stumble upon something memorable along the way.
***
In the documentary L’infanzia di Orlandino, Antonio Pasqualino testifies how puppet theater was all but destroyed within two years of the arrival of television. Later, the painter and stage designer Pina Patti Cuticchio expresses the event in a single poetic utterance, “Purtroppo tutto finisce al mondo, la gioia di vivere e di soffrire” (“Unfortunately, everything in the world ends, the joy of living and of suffering” [42:00]). Specularly, in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, maggio families must proactively engage with young members, the state, and schools to counteract reduced engagement by younger generations.
To my chagrin, my own childhood was extensively mediated by television; and nowadays, smartphones condition much of our experience of reality. Generally, our modes of entertainment and social interactions have shifted from the public sphere to the private screen. What are the cultural transformations involved in this shift? How does this radical change in the medium condition our experience of different art forms? And what can Italian folk performance traditions reveal about our own cultural situation in the US? After all, I am virtually ‘attending’ these performances from New York.
In the following paragraphs, I will explore these questions through Walter Benjamin’s “Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit,” or, in English translation, “The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproducibility” (second version, 1936). I chose this theoretical essay as an access point for several reasons. Firstly, Benjamin’s approach is to investigate “the manner in which individual works, genres, media, or technological apparatuses mediate the complex processes by which we perceive, act upon, and function within [the] world” (Jennings et al 3). In other words, Benjamin’s framework examines the relationships between technology, media, and human perception – a set of elements that undergird the query above. By unconcealing the relationships between these elements, we may begin to understand broader cultural phenomena from the study of Italian folk performance traditions. Secondly, Benjamin’s essay is based on his observations of a technological process that is essentially comparable to the process witnessed by Antonio Pasqualino: the shift from live theatre to film is an earlier manifestation of the same process that begets the shift from puppet plays to television sets. Thirdly, Benjamin’s examination of this process is particularly instructive as it reveals broader cultural aspects of a historical period. The philosopher questions “the capacity of the artwork to encode information about its historical period (and, in so doing, potentially to reveal to readers and viewers otherwise inapprehensible aspects of the nature of their own era),” and also “the way in which modern media – as genres and as individual works – affect the changing human sensory apparatus” (9). Works of art, and more specifically details within the works of art, “encode not just the character of the artistic production of the age, but the character of parallel features of the society: its religion, philosophy, ethical structure, and institutions” (10). As such, my analysis of folk performance traditions through the lens of “The Work of Art” hopes to reveal larger structural, philosophical, and social issues.
***
Walter Benjamin intentionally wrote his essay to fight back against fascism. The piece ends with the famous call-to-arms, “Such is the aestheticizing of politics, as practiced by fascism. Communism replies by politicizing art” (“Work of Art” 42; emphasis in original). Using art as a political tool for the masses was the author’s response to what he rightfully perceived as the mythologizing discourse of fascism. To that end, the philosopher took a position against authority, uniqueness, historical tradition, cult, and ritual. Further, he identifies live theatre as the embodiment of these elements, and the development of photography and film as their subversion. The reproducibility of photography and film, where the meaning of an ‘original’ is fractured, breaks the uniqueness inherent in live performances. Benjamin suggests that even in “the most perfect reproduction, one thing is lacking: the here and now of the work of art – its unique existence in a particular place. It is this unique existence – and nothing else – that bears the mark of the history to which the work has been subject” (21).
Both maggio and puppet theater performances are characterized by the here and now. Like any form of live theater, each performance is unique and irreproducible. One could attend a performance of L’arrivo di Angelica by the Cuticchio company two consecutive evenings in the same theatre and still the spectacles would not be identical. They are performed in live time: the voices, the music, and even improvised lines of script. Yet it is not only the basic irreproducibility of live performances that plays a role here; each performance by traditional puppeteers is authentic (in the Heideggerian sense) because the artists react in real time to the responses of the audience. Expert pupari understand how different audiences react differently to different parts of the plot and actions on the stage, and they can adjust their performances accordingly. When the audience is comprised of children, some performances include live interactions where the puparo asks the children questions and stresses comical gestures or vocal elements. Similarly, the audiences of maggio performances give the actors live feedback with their applause and exclamations. Hence, it should not surprise us that Benjamin considers the stage play the paradigmatic example of an irreproducible work of art. “Indeed, nothing contrasts more starkly with a work of art completely subject to (or, like film, founded in) technological reproduction than a stage play” (32).
What sets the maggio and the puppet theatre apart from film and television is the aura of the former. Benjamin defines aura as a “strange tissue of space and time: the unique apparition of a distance, however near it may be” (23). The aura of a work of art is its uniqueness, its embeddedness in a historical context of tradition. The maggio and puppet theatre are incontrovertible celebrations of tradition. Both base their content on Italian epics like Boiardo’s Orlando innamorato, Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, Pulci’s Morgante, or even Virgil’s Aeneid and Homer’s Iliad. The epic tradition goes back to the inception of the Western literary canon. Moreover, maggio performances began as a communal celebration of the end of winter and the arrival of la bella stagione. The preservation of these traditions is the preservation of local cultural practices, a literary history, and even languages. The Cuticchio family presents puppet performances for school children in Sicilian in order to preserve the language. Furthermore, Benjamin claims that “the unique value of the ‘authentic’ work of art always has its basis in ritual” (24; emphasis in original). Indeed, ritual abounds in traditional folk theatre. In the maggio tradition, the community gathers after the performance to dine together and sing the most famous ottave. In the puppet theater tradition, when the cycle finally reached the point where Gano is defeated, puppets of Gano would be cathartically burnt to expiate evil from the community. In short, with their uniqueness, their positioning in a tradition, and their ritualistic practices, traditional Italian folk theatres are quintessential auratic works of art.
Again, Benjamin associated the aura of the work of art with the fascist aestheticization of politics and thus sought the aura’s erosion. The reproducibility of photography and film marked a turning point in our experience of art. “For the first time in world history, technological reproducibility emancipates the work of art from its parasitic subservience to ritual,” writes Benjamin, “But as soon as the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applied to artistic production, the whole social function of art is revolutionized. Instead of being founded on ritual, it is based on a different practice: politics” (24-5). As aforementioned, Benjamin’s goal was the politicization of art and hence his desired erosion of the aura was a political statement. Benjamin admirably applied his intellectual prowess to resist fascism. But I question, what happens when we destroy the aura? What occurred when television replaced traditional live performances?
The technological reproducibility of artworks changes the experience of the audiences and the community. Benjamin testifies how the masses experienced cinema during his time:
Interest in this performance is widespread. For the majority of city dwellers, throughout the workday in offices and factories, have to relinquish their humanity in the face of an apparatus. In the evening these same masses fill the cinemas, to witness the film actor taking revenge on their behalf not only by asserting his humanity (or what appears to them as such) against the apparatus, but by placing that apparatus in the service of his triumph. (31)
Similar phenomena still occur today, when audiences fill the cinema for an awaited film; or decades prior, audiences in Italy would gather around a radio to listen to Alberto Savinio’s version of Pulci’s Morgante, as Luca Zipoli’s research shows us.
Notwithstanding, my own observation is that currently the main (not only!) medium through which we consume art is the private screen. Unlike in Benjamin’s time, the screen of the cinema is by no means the only screen we have available – on the contrary, it is the screen existentially further from us. In nearly every home in the US and Italy stands a TV; but more ubiquitous still are the phone screens through which we can read books, search for pictures of any famous art piece, watch movies and TV, listen to music, and even watch recordings of staged theatre. These technological advancements are nothing short of incredible. I beg my reader not to misinterpret my claim: the easy availability of these artworks is a blessing. The first point I want to press is that in our everyday lives, the experience of art is mostly mediated by the private screen and not experienced in the (non-virtual) public sphere. This point is structural and non-evaluative. Now, I ask: What are the broader cultural and social consequences of the shift in the media of art, as exemplified in the shift from traditional folk theatre to television? My contention is that at least one consequence of this shift is the partial loss of the piazza as a site of social connection. To understand what I mean, let us explore our situation in the United States today.
I see public art forms as sites of community engagement; and in turn, I see community as an essential human need. At the same time, the US is currently undergoing a process of social dis-cohesion quite unlike anything in our recent history. In 2023, the US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy declared an epidemic of loneliness and isolation. According to the report of the US Department of Health and Human Services, one in two US Americans report experiencing loneliness (HHS 4). Loneliness, absence of community, and lack of felt belonging have pernicious effects on our health and general well-being. Studies show that lack of social connection “can increase the risk for premature death as much as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day” (8). On the other hand, “higher levels of social connectedness suggest better community outcomes, ranging from population health to community safety, resilience, prosperity, and representative government” (36). Yet, in a 2018 study, only 16% of US Americans reported feeling ‘very attached’ to their local communities (16). Not surprisingly, technology plays a major role in the loneliness epidemic. The report claims that “Despite current advancements that now allow us to live without engaging with others (e.g., food delivery, automation, remote entertainment), our biological need to connect remains” (9; my emphasis). Remote entertainment, the phenomenon I described above as the shift from the public sphere to the private screen, directly contributes to the epidemic of loneliness. “A variety of technologies have quickly and dramatically changed how we live, work, communicate, and socialize. These technologies include social media, smartphones, virtual reality, remote work, artificial intelligence, and assistive technologies, to name just a few” (19). Was something lost with the rise of technological reproducibility that supplanted the auratic work of art?
The maggio and puppet theater are both (1) a site [Schauplatz] of community engagement and belonging and (2) a playroom [Spielraum] of social connection that bridges social capital (generational, economic, ethnic, etc.). By staging live theatre in a communally shared space, traditional folk theaters offer a time and place where the community can gather to experience art together. We note how in the maggio tradition, plays are performed outside in the opening of a clearing. The stage is the local ground itself. Furthermore, folk theatre allows virtually any community member to participate in the spectacle; anyone from children to adults, independent of class or education level, can enjoy the play. And in the case of the maggio, members also participate as actors, musicians, writers, or capomaggi. In Sicily, before the arrival of television, men would gather in the piazza every evening after work to watch an episode of I paladini di Francia – very much like the factory workers of Benjamin’s cinema. The shift in the medium of art, from the puppet stage in the piazza or the maggio stage in the clearing to the private screen has resulted in the loss of repeated opportunities for social bonding.
It is important to note some less attractive facts: in the past, women were excluded from enjoying these traditions the same way as men. In puppet theater, women generally did not attend the evening performances – it was a male-exclusive space. In the maggio tradition, we have evidence that suggests women’s stage roles were limited and men dominated the stage. Fortunately, these practices have changed. In addition, it is key to credit Benjamin that building community through tradition can be instrumentalized as a means of exclusion (as in fascism or even nation-building in general). He was not wrong to make these associations. Notwithstanding, traditional folk theaters are not dominated by political discourse. Moreover, today the pernicious consequences of loneliness and the dismantling of social bonds are contributing to the weakening of democratic governance (see HHS 36).
To combat the loneliness epidemic, the US Surgeon General recommended advancing social connection by strengthening social infrastructure in local communities, where “social infrastructure refers to the programs (such as volunteer organizations, sports groups, religious groups, and member associations), policies (like public transportation, housing, and education), and physical elements of a community (such as libraries, parks, green spaces, and playgrounds) that support the development of social connection” (48). To this list, we can easily include preserving, supporting, and expanding forms of live theatre. And in Italy, traditional maggio and puppet theatres.
***
I now understand, at least partially, why I felt such tenderness when I first learned about Sicilian puppet theater and the maggio traditions – through the computer screen, they offered me a vision of something I felt lacking in my youth: a sense of community, belonging, and social bonding. Perhaps part of the spellbinding beauty of these performances is the shared laughter, joy, and sorrow; the recognition of being part of a community and literary history that is older than ourselves; the realization that, even after the show ends, we still have each other to feast and sing together, just one more ottava.
WORKS CITED
Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media. Edited by Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008.
Cavallo, Jo Ann. Il Maggio Emiliano: ricordi, riflessioni, brani. Documentary. 2003. https://edblogs.columbia.edu/eboiardo/epic-maggio/il-maggio-emiliano/
Gagliardo, Matilde, and Francesco Milo. L’infanzia di Orlandino – Antonio Pasqualino and the Sicilian Puppet Theatre. Documentary. 2007. https://www.cultureunplugged.com/documentary/watch-online/play/50893/
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2023. https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf
Zipoli, Luca. “Modernist Storytellers. The Legacy of Luigi Pulci’s Morgante in Modern Italy.” Lecture, Columbia University Department of Italian. December 4, 2024.