Friday, September 10, 2010

Ripasso III: gli italiani e la loro cultura

I'm still here.

I've been neglecting this poor blog long enough.  Most of you probably thought I was done, but no, we still haven't reviewed the very core of my whole experience: the Italian people and their culture.  I've put this off long enough to the point of irrelevance, but I want this all written down for posterity.  Let's travel back in time three months (!) and talk about the society I was in.

First of all, a disclaimer: When I make an observation about the Italian culture writ large, remember that I observed Bologna, a northern student-filled middle-sized city.  Italy is a diverse place, so no promises that what I say is true up and down the boot.  Also, I'm coming from the suburban northeast, so some of my later comparisons to cultural values may be unique to that area.  Anyway...

The Italian culture is social and public.  I don't just mean gesticulating relatives shouting around the Sunday dinner table, though that's a part of it.  The core of the Italian community is outside, in the streets and piazzas, not in the home.  Pedestrians crawl about everywhere, many not to get from Point A to Point B but simply to sit at Point C.  American downtime is spent in the home, and that's the meeting place before an excursion.  Italian downtime is outside, in your city, sitting outside to eat or just sitting outside.  You don't stop by to pick up your morning coffee on the way to a destination, you stop by to drink your morning coffee in the bar.  I think there's a reason the second question asked in an Italian introduction is "Di dove sei?"  Contrary to what Italian 101 teaches you, that doesn't precisely mean "Where are you from?"  Di and from are not perfect translations of each other.  Da is more accurately "from," in terms of place.  Di is really more of an of: "Of where are you?"  See the difference?  "Marc from New Jersey" is a geographic description.  "Marc of New Jersey?" Suddenly I'm intimately involved with the state, like it's a part of my identity.  Origin towns of individuals and families is important in Italy, thanks to the city-state history and the dialect identities, and I think it has to do with the social nature.  People are at home in their town, not just in their house.  And why shouldn't they be?  Everything is so walkable, and there are so many piazze and other public spaces to be in.  Bologna, while a university city, was not an American-style campus by any means, and yet somehow the whole city could feel like one sometimes.  I don't think I felt remotely alone at any time for five straight months; that has its pluses and minuses.  I recall lying in the hostel bed, in the pitch-black, completely silent room on the BCSP Tuscany trip, and realizing that I hadn't been in that setting in an extremely long time 

Perhaps from this sociability comes the notorious Italian laxness.  Professors show up to class 15 minutes late, cashiers will knock a few cents off the price of something if it'll round to a Euro, the immigration officer you're dealing with will go out to get coffee and come back half an hour later.  Have patience: the trade-off to this sometimes irritating custom is that you can act this relaxed as well.  If you're on a strict schedule, you're in the minority.  Before I left, my dad recommended that I get the batteries in my watch change, but I didn't.  My watch died within the first few weeks, of course.  I later realized that this was symbolic.

Italian pop culture is American-imported and influenced.  Most of the music I heard was American, and that which was Italian sounded like cheesy late-90s pop ballads.  I have a problem now that whenever I hear Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" I get really nostalgic; I'd never ever listen to her kind of music but it was the hit of the season in Bologna.  TV is largely American as well: my roommates would watch The Simpsons, Family Guy, and American Dad everyday (how much of that last one were they understanding?).  The Italian gameshows were hyper-cheesy, and clearly designed to award as little money as possible (Round 1: Answer really hard questions.  Round 2: Answer even harder questions that can potentially decrease your winnings.  Round 3: Impossible all or nothing!)  I'm not sure I saw any original Italian fiction on TV.  See this diagram that my friend Catherine made:

Calcio.  I'd nearly forgot about that.  They love their soccer.  As my friend Brandon once said, as we stood in a packed pub to watch a game: "Watching Italians watch soccer should be a show on ESPN."  One of my roommates was a sports nut, who had money on most games, so I got to witness some glorious fanhood, especially come World Cup time.  I could write a whole 'nother blog, perhaps an academic dissertation, about that roommate, but I'll leave him be; I don't need to write it down for posterity because I will never, ever forget Alberto, his habits, and his tumultuous long-distance relationship with his girlfriend.  That is all.

It's not all sunshine and fioriI'm going to write now about the problems ailing Italian society, if only so I can get it over with before ending on the highest of high notes.  You know how I feel about the education system and its teachers, but the students have problems too.  We discussed in my culture class there that many young people, particularly the boys, don't move out of their parents' homes until very late, and many don't work.  There was definitely a lack of motivation with my roommates- they spent way too much time in front of the television, and led very, very repetitive routines.  They are not lazy, they did any task they had to do pleasantly and well, and as I'll discuss were extremely, extremely helpful and friendly  They just clearly weren't concerned much for their futures, not interested in all in their approaching adult lives, or even livening up what's left of their youths.  I had a discussion with my grandfather about the American and Italian education systems: he said that ours is less like the real world because we live on campuses with an imposed structure, but I disagree: the Italian students may be living with everyone else in a city and society, but they've got no thoughts toward the next era of their lives, whereas much of the American college experience is career preparation and planning, albeit from a separate location and culture.

Everyone smokes.  My other roommate did in the kitchen next to my room, and some nights it was terrible for me.

I felt that the society was very racially segregated.  All of the African men I saw were street vendors, all of the little grocery stops were run by Pakistanis.  When I say "all" in each example, my generalization is very, very near to being literally true.  There were some minorities in the student body, but other than that each non-European race seemed to have there niche in the society and no mobility out of it.  I didn't see any of it, but some of my friends reported that their roommates made some offhand remarks about blacks.  I remember noticing several interracial couples and minorities in business suits in London, and realizing I hadn't seen many of either in Italy.  Only Italians staffed the main businesses.  Middle-aged adults filled the jobs we'd typically see teenagers and immigrants doing here (cashiers, for example), and perhaps that contributes to the youth stagnancy I mentioned above.

Sexism is also a bigger problem there than in America.  A huge number of ads were just women standing next to products, and every game show host seemed to have a harem.  I realize that this is true here, to an extent, but our relevant examples are much, much more reserved.  Vanna White never wore a thong and stopped the show to dance for Pat Sajak.  I don't know how that translates to the workplace, because it seemed to me that there were just as many women as men staffing the businesses and in my classes.  I've already told you that girls were sometimes graded based on their appearance by professors.

Those are the issues I observed, but of course there are others that are more national in scope: northern regionalism, southern poverty, the Mafia, Berlusconi, etc.  But don't let that bring you down.  Never, ever forget that...

Italian people are the nicest people in the worldI have never, ever, ever encountered the sort of gentility that I did on a few of my adventures in Italy.

When I first met my grandfather's friend Sciortino, he gave me a tour of the city, introduced me to his daughter, gave me the phone numbers of his friend and his mother, and later met me for a lunch on him, with drinks on the house from his friend the restaurant owner.  I had never met this man before in my life.

Over Easter in Milan, I was treated to three days of meals and tours in Genoa, Milan, and on the coast, and was finally allowed to pay for something on the last day because Ettore ran out of cash.  I'd met him once before, very briefly in Brooklyn.

The day I met Antonio, he gave me (and a friend) a tour of Naples, a fantastic dinner, took me to the small nothing town of Camposano just because I wanted to see the sign, drove me up Vesuvius and back to my hostel, all because I called up one day and claimed to be a relative.  I didn't know he existed before I arrived.

When my friends and I visited Vignola, we asked for directions from two people standing around.  They pointed us in the proper direction, and fifteen minutes later, as we walked, pulled up beside us to give us a map.

When program director Ricci had us all over to his house for pizza on a whim, his wife (American, but she counts!) apologized that they weren't prepared to feed twenty-five students at half-hour's notice.

I don't know how to respond to all this, how to analyze it, or what I could possibly do to pay this kindness forward.    I'm essentially speechless about this topic, three months after my return.  I'll just let those stories speak for themselves.  Grazie a tutti.

One more post before we retire this blog.  It'll be an easy one.