On the Complexity of the Cinepanettone*

Alan O’Leary, University of Leeds

The cinepanettoni are a series of farcical comedies, one or two of which are

released annually in Italy for the Christmas period, and attendance at which

has come to be an integral part of the festive celebrations for many Italians

so that the films are often among the most successful of the year. Though

the cinepanettoni date back to 1983, the term itself seems to have been

coined in the early 2000s and was certainly intended pejoratively, meant to

suggest that these films are a matter of mere consumption (the preferred

industry term is ‘film di Natale’ (Christmas film)). In this chapter, I

introduce the history and variety of the cinepanettoni, and provide a sample

of the criticism or parody of the films in scholarship and in popular culture. I

then move on to analyse aspects of two films. Firstly, I discuss history in

S.P.Q.R. 2000 e ½ anni fa (1994), a satire of contemporary Italian politics

and justice set in the classical Roman period. I argue that the film’s satire is

directed as much at the pomposity of historical discourse as it is at its

explicit targets of political corruption and judicial incompetence. Secondly,

I discuss a literal version of ‘toilet humour’ in Natale sul Nilo (2002),

directed by Neri Parenti. Parenti’s cinepanettoni from the new century have

been the subject of particular derision, and I deliberately focus in on what

is seen as the irredeemable vulgarity of the Parenti films, in an attempt to

better understand their humour of the lower body. My modest aim in this

chapter is to argue the complexity and interest of the cinepanettone against

its discursive construction in scholarship, criticism and in the wider Italian

culture as crude, simplistic and beneath consideration. To that end I deploy

the Bakhtinian concept of the carnivalesque, and I close the chapter with a

short discussion of the ideological and identity politics of the cinepanettone

in the terms provided by Bakhtin and his commentators.

The cinepanettone

The cinepanettone is a complex form which has evolved over three

decades.1 Strictly speaking the term itself refers to films made since 2000

directed by Neri Parenti, most of which are generational comedies

concerned to a greater or lesser degree with the Christmas holidays. The

films are set in foreign (for Italians) locations, and most have titles with the

form Natale+preposition+location, even if the ‘Natale’ aspect has often

been assumed rather than developed, and most of the films frankly reveal

that they were shot in late summer and early autumn.2

However, the category cinepanettone has come to include several more

films released for or before Christmas. It is applied retrospectively to films

dating back to Vacanze di Natale of 1983, an ensemble piece set in the

winter resort Cortina d’Ampezzo, which itself generated several sequels

(‘variations’ is probably a better label) in Vacanze di Natale ’90 (1990),

Vacanze di Natale ’91 (1991), Vacanze di Natale ’95 (1995), and Vacanze di

Natale 2000 (1999). Another pair within the series accentuates the satire of

male homosociality and mores: Paparazzi (1998) and Bodyguards - Guardie

del corpo (2000) are episodic films which focus on ‘topical’ professions as a

means to allow a group of male protagonists to interact with each other

while allowing the display celebrity female bodies. The episodic

construction of these two films also relates Paparazzi and Bodyguards to the

portmanteau cinepanettoni Anni 90 (1992) and Anni 90 - Parte II (1993).

A further set of films is comprised of the meta-cinematic exercises

undertaken by the fraternal partnership of Carlo and Enrico Vanzina in A

spasso nel tempo (1996) and A spasso nel tempo l’avventura continua

(1997), farcical elaborations of the Back to the Future films (1985, 1989,

1990) which riff on schoolbook history and on film and television culture.

The Vanzinas’ S.P.Q.R. 2000 e ½ anni fa (1994), as mentioned above a satire

of tangentopoli (bribe city), the corrupt system of kickbacks in Italian

politics, and the ‘Mani pulite’ (clean hands) judicial investigations that

challenged the system, relocated to the classical Roman period, is also a

meta-cinematic exercise replete with allusions to films like Spartacus (1960)

and the various Ben Hurs. The self-reflexive ending to S.P.Q.R., discussed

below, anticipates the playful, Brechtian codas to several of the Neri

Parenti films of the 2000s co-scripted by the director with Fausto Brizzi with

Marco Martani, which tend to parody and to make explicit the comic

mechanism that has driven the film.3

What links these sets of films, and what makes them cinepanettoni, are

primarily the release date (they are marketed as “il vostro film di Natale”

or similar) and the register of farcical comedy. Most of the titles have been

produced by Aurelio and Luigi De Laurentiis’ company Filmauro, though not

Vacanze in America (1984), which was a Cecchi Gori film, and not the

recent November/December releases with comic actor Massimo Boldi (Olè,

2006; Matrimonio alle Bahamas, 2007; La fidanzata di papa, 2008; A Natale

mi sposo, 2010), co-produced, with the exception of Olè, by Medusa and

Boldi’s own Mari Film.4 As the mention of Boldi suggests, the films are also

linked by the presence of performers who appear in several (for example,

Ezio Greggio), most (Massimo Boldi) or all (Christian De Sica), and the

prominence of a given star or stars in a given film or episode may tend to

dictate the character of that particular film or episode.

The cinepanettone in criticism and parody

The cinepanettone is widely seen as a base and crude product, and has

become a byword for low quality as well as a metonym for the degraded

tastes of the Italian public. Giorgio Simoncelli (2008: 185), for example,

writes of the cinepanettone as “an embarrassing Italian phenomenon that

[…] causes a large part of society to feel indignant at its every appearance,

and which has become the ne plus ultra of superficiality, of banality, of

vulgarity, of the Italian cinema’s lack of ideas”.5 “They are unredeemable

films”, writes Roy Menarini (2010: 80), who regrets the fact that a stratum

of the Italian public places such value on seeing them year after year: “We

seem to be dealing with a social appointment, with ritual behaviour” (p.

80).6 For Menarini, attendance at the cinepanettone is a “Pavlovian reflex”

(p. 81).7

Given the uncertain status of the popular in paternalistic Italian criticism it

may not be surprising to find these kinds of statements so confidently

uttered (O’Rawe, 2010). But the negative characterization of the

cinepanettone is not restricted to criticism; it is also proverbial in the wider

culture, and even employed as a metaphor in political discourse.8 Forums

like YouTube feature amateur filmmakers or budding critics distinguishing

themselves from the common horde by declaring their disdain for the series

of films,9 and one episode of the satirical TV show Mai dire Martedì

(broadcast on Italia1 in 2007-8) featured a spoof trailer for a film entitled

‘Natale al cesso’ (Christmas in the toilet) with the ironic tag line “the genre

of film envied by the world”.10 What is striking about this spoof version of

the cinepanettone is its concentration on the ‘vulgar’ aspects of the series:

dialectal obscenity, fart jokes, slapstick and grotesque sexual situations.

Such a narrow focus is retained in Boris: il film (2011), the feature offshoot

of the cult satirical television series of the same name (2007-10). The plot

of Boris concerns a maladroit television director who hopes to adapt La

casta, the (real) 2007 book by Gian Antonio Stella e Sergio Rizzo which

denounces the corruption and arrogance of the Italian political class, only to

end up begging for production money by promising to make a

cinepanettone. The word is introduced and pronounced very deliberately,

almost like the breaking of a taboo, and his film is ultimately entitled

‘Natale con la casta’. The satire of the cinepanettone in Mai dire Martedí

and Boris: il film risks toothlessness because it distils the films to a

‘vulgarity’ that is but one of their features, a vulgarity that is also regularly,

even ritualistically, deplored in scholarship and criticism, and which is

discussed (and defended) below.

The burlesque of history

Before dealing with the cinepanettone at its crudest, I want to discuss its

travesty of historical discourse in S.P.Q.R. 2000 e ½ anni fa. The film is a

costume comedy that transplants to Ancient Rome the mores and speech of

contemporary Italy, and dresses (and cross-dresses) them in the togas and

sandals of the period. Christian De Sica stars as a corrupt member of the

ancient Roman senate who finds himself under investigation by an honest

but incompetent judge from Mediolanum (Milan), played by Massimo Boldi.

The two become allies against the leader of De Sica’s political party, a

character who combines the cynicism of Bettino Craxi with the rhetoric of

Umberto Bossi, played by Canadian Leslie Nielsen .

It might be straightforward to treat S.P.Q.R. as a source for understanding

contemporary attitudes to the political scandals of the early nineties, or to

see it as a comic elaboration of the anxiety caused by the unmooring of the

political and economic system. Less straightforward perhaps to argue the

film’s insight into the classical Roman period, but in this section I am less

interested in what S.P.Q.R. says about Italian politics at the end of the First

Republic then in its representation of ancient Rome, and its engagement in

ironic terms with what has been called the “larger discourse of history”.

S.P.Q.R. takes the contemporary corruptions, nepotisms and exploitative

priviledges of Italian politics and relocates them, in all their exuberant

anachronism, to Ancient Rome. As such, it might be excluded from the

recuperation of historical film carried out by historians like Robert

Rosenstone, who might dismiss it as a “costume comedy”.11 Rosenstone

(2006: 12) has drawn a distinction between serious historical film and what

he calls costume dramas, films “which [use] (and [misuse]) the past as a

mere setting for tales of adventure and love”. Likewise, Robert Burgoyne

(2007: 4) what distinguishes properly historical films is one “common core

feature”:

they are centred on documentable historical events, directly

referring to historical occurrences through their main plotlines.

Unlike the costume drama or the romance set in the past, history

provides the referential content of the historical film. The events of

the past constitute the mainspring of the historical film, rather than

the past simply serving as a scenic backdrop or a nostalgic setting. (p.

4)

Arguably, Rosenstone and Burgoyne’s distinction between costume

drama/romance and properly historical film translates the traditional

suspicion of the historical film (as factually inaccurate, trivializing and so

on) by applying it to another form.12 It leaves intact a certain preferred

structure of engagement with the past and fails to consider the variety of

what people actually do when they engage with the past. One of the things

they do, of course, is to laugh at it. In other words, one can speak not only

seriously but comically, even farcically, about the past, and one can do so

on behalf on audience resisting the coercive claims of history.

Gleeful anachronism in S.P.Q.R.: Massimo Boldi in Milanese colours on the terraces of the Coliseum, and a fashion show by ‘Versacivs’

Classical Rome is a constant presence in Italy. It was invoked in the fascist

period as the model for expansionist ambition and the bellicose state, and

the weight of archaeology (if not history per se) can be oppressive in the

Italian capital and elsewhere. This presence generated one of Italy’s earliest

and most longstanding genres, the epic of ancient Rome, which has served

as, among other things, a means of asserting aggressive forms of Italian

national identity and expansionist claims on other territories.13 Christopher

Wagstaff (1996: 223) writes:

Italy never abandoned this genre of film, which adopted a pose of

cultural dignity, and which had the virtues of being spectacular, of

reinforcing nationalist notions of Italy’s great past, of inviting

comparisons between the politically righteous and the dissolutely

opportunist, and which often combined all these assets with the

emotional pull of melodrama.

S.P.Q.R. is the ancient Roman anti-epic: it is no melodrama; its comparison

between the politically righteous and the dissolutely opportunist is resolved

in fatalistic fashion; it presents Italian nationalism as jingoism; it undercuts

any pose of cultural dignity. To make light of the Roman past so regularly

proffered as admirable or even ideal is to protest against the overbearing

nature of paternalistic or prescriptive historical models.

In order to illustrate these points, I want to describe a rhyming pair of

sequences from S.P.Q.R., one from towards the start of the film and one

from the very end. The initial segment imagines the heavy Roman traffic on

the Appian Way in classical times, jammed with horses, caravans and traps.

The scene continues the De Sica character’s introduction to the film, and

contains the Boldi character’s first appearance, as the Roman senator and

his mistress in a light pony and trap plough into the judge’s family caravan

en route from Mediolanum. The two protagonists clash and exchange

regional slanders but later become allies, and both are eventually involved

in a slave revolt that results in their punishment by crucifixion along the

same Via Appia that was the site of their original meeting. Left to die, they

discuss their fate: the senator bemoans the ill-advised righteousness that

has led them to their deaths, while the judge makes an admirable but

sententious speech about Italian brotherhood and justice in the ‘future’,

which he imagines will have been enabled by the example of their sacrifice.

As he pontificates, a panoramic camera movement travels without an edit

from the cross where he hangs to look along the centre of the Via Appia,

revealed now to contain a 1990s version of the gridlock that caused their

first meeting. The mock-serious orchestral music that has accompanied the

judge’s valedictory is displaced by a contemporary summer pop song and

the road is jammed with unmoving cars and their frustrated passengers

grumbling beside them. This time in a sports car the same colour as his

mistress’ bright red tube dress, De Sica speeds illegally along the verge of

the traffic jam and repeats dialogue from the early scene only to again

plough into Boldi’s vehicle – now a saloon car of sober design. The film ends

as the camera retreats in crane shot above the scene of the two men

trading insults and punches, offering ironic commentary on the content of

Boldi’s speech of justice and brotherhood and on the continuities of social

and political culture on the peninsula.

Senator (Christian De Sica) and mistress (Gabriella Labate) on the Via Appia, ancient and modern Rome.

The character of the film’s ending might be enough to damn S.P.Q.R. for its

pessimistic conservatism. Nothing will change, it says; the Italians are ever

thus: corrupt, belligerent, lacking any civic sense. But this is hardly the

whole story. To relocate the bad – and the banal because contemporary –

behaviour of the present to the mythologized past is to challenge the same

mythology. S.P.Q.R. is an uproarious protest against the paternalistic values

of one’s own schooling, against the overbearing use of the past as model,

against the domineering myth of the nation. It may not be a serious

historical assertion, but it is a profoundly comic one: not only is the present

like the past in certain respects, the past itself suffered all the ignorance

and grotesquery of the present. The absence of seriousness in S.P.Q.R. is

the medium and register of this assertion.

The carnival body and Culture

Comedy is deeply rooted in its linguistic and cultural circumstances, and it

is often said that ‘national’ comedies in local languages are unexportable.

But comedy also deals with something we all share: the body in society. We

are, all of us, obliged to regulate the functions, needs and desires of our

bodies according to the different and particular conventions and strictures

of a given society, but the fact of the regulation is universal, and it is a

perpetual concern of comedy to portray the non-conformity of the body to

that regulation.

In Natale sul Nilo, Massimo Boldi plays a Carabiniere general on a holiday

trip to Egypt.14 Boldi’s physical appearance gainsays the dignity of his rank

even as he embodies the proverbial absurdity of the Carabinieri in Italian

popular discourse. But indignity is further added to absurdity when he drinks

some of the local water and suffers diarrhoea during a tour of the Great

Pyramid. Following an urgent conversation rich with profanity, his

exaggeratedly Neapolitan adjutant is dispatched to find a toilet. None is to

be found but the general is led to a nearby alcove where he is able to

relieve himself in the nick of time, accompanied by forthright sound effects

suggesting falling faecal matter. The general notices that his adjutant has

(as he thinks) even provided toilet paper, and he unrolls an ample supply in

case of further need. A wide shot tracking from right to left past a dividing

wall reveals the toilet paper to be instead the swaddling bandages from the

last intact mummy in the pyramid, which the general proceeds to

unwittingly reduce to dust (a digitally generated special effect) before the

gaze of a tour group and its shocked guide.

Boldi’s performance of the leaking body in Natale sul Nilo, and the camera’s revealing of the real nature of his carta igenica. “Dieci piramidi di morbidezza” (“ten pyramids of softness”), says the general, alluding to an advert of the time.

Boldi’s destruction of the archaeological treasure pitches the demands of

the material against the claims of the Cultural (with an upper case ‘C’). This

is so not only in terms of the destruction of the heritage artefact for the

basest of needs, but also inasmuch as Boldi’s materiality precipitates the

final death of what was once itself a breathing, eating, defecating body,

and which has had its materiality disavowed (it must not be touched) in the

transition to museum exhibit. The register of the comedy here could be

described as ‘grotesque realism’. I borrow this term from Mikhail Bakhtin

(1968) who sees it as one form of the carnivalesque, that is, in Dentith’s

useful summary, “an aesthetic which celebrates the anarchic, body-based

and grotesque elements of popular culture, and seeks to mobilize them

against the humourless seriousness of official culture” (Dentith 1995: 66).

For Bakhtin, the carnival body is grotesque, and opposed to the “achieved

and completed thing – rounded and finished” (Dentith 1995: 67) that is the

‘classical’ body:). In Bakhtin’s own words:

The grotesque body is not separated from the rest of the world. It is

not a closed, completed unit; it is unfinished, outgrows itself,

transgresses its own limits. The stress is laid on those parts of the

body that are open to the outside world, that is, the parts through

which the world enters the body or emerges from it, or through which

the body itself goes out to meet the world. This means that the

emphasis is on the apertures or the convexities, or on various

ramifications and offshoots: the open mouth, the genital organs, the

breasts, the phallus, the potbelly, the nose. (Bakhtin 1984: 26)

Boldi in Natale sul Nilo typifies this carnival body and, as the jester crowned

king or Carabiniere, he typifies too the inversion of hierarchies

characteristic of carnival.

Carnival and critique

The cinepanettone evidently lends itself to analysis in carnivalesque terms.

Apart from the satire or inversion of the concerns and shibboleths of

‘official culture’, found for example in the rejection of high-minded

mythologizing of the classical Roman period in S.P.Q.R., the form itself is

associated with a holiday period of suspension of quotidian norms and

priorities. The intuition of the anonymous critic who coined the term

‘cinepanettone’ to indicate that the films are part of the excess and

overindulgence of the Christmas period was, therefore, fundamentally

sound, even if the implied disapproval marks the critic out as an avatar of

the ‘official culture’ being burlesqued in the films.

On the other hand, ‘official culture’, in the sense of reactionary social

organization or even politics, has been associated with both the

cinepanettone and with carnival itself. Umberto Eco (1984: 6), however, has

suggested that carnival is mere “authorized transgression”, and asserted its

essential conservatism in that it reinforces the status quo, and regulation

per se, by functioning as a filter of subversive impulses. Indeed, Eco points

out that carnival has been used as a means to stifle popular revolt, and he

asserts that it continues to be so used, inasmuch as the mass media, which

he sees as instruments of social control, operate a “continuous

carnivalization of life” that substitutes pleasure for politics (p. 3).

Something akin to Eco’s critique of carnival is found in those accounts of the

cinepanettone that argue that, far from providing a transgressive escape

from the norms and regulation of contemporary Italian society, it is a

celebration of the worst excesses of Italian political and mediatic culture,

as exemplified in the carnival antics of the paradigmatic jester king, Silvio

Berlusconi. On this reading, the cinepanettone is simply the unguarded

version of the demagogy and ideology of a grotesque ruling class, a

transgression only of politeness and a validation of prejudice and oppression

rather than their inversion.

A sophisticated version of this ideological argument is found in Christian

Uva’s short piece on Neri Parenti’s cinepanettoni of the new century (Uva,

2006). Uva bases his argument on the carnivalesque energy of Christian De

Sica’s vigorous performances which “celebrate the absolute victory of the

‘politically incorrect’, and of all that is instinct, force and vigour against

that which is sentiment, reason and fragility” (166-7).15 For Uva, the films’

ostensible celebration of the grotesque De Sica persona marks the Parenti

cinepanettone as unequivocally ‘right-wing’. He describes the De Sica

persona’s verbal and physical violence towards other characters in the

films:

[T]he ideological aspect makes itself felt when you realise that [De

Sica’s] mischief is not directed at a comprehensive range of targets,

but is all too regularly and deliberately focussed on a precise set of

victims who, as we have seen, are always the same. These are the so-

called weak categories: women, the aged, homosexuals or, at

another level, culture as such, seen to be only ‘dust in the eyes’, to

be just the dull birthright of ‘losers’ excluded from the great orgy of

life. (169-70)16

Space does not allow an exhaustive response to Uva’s astute but

tendentious analysis. Still, I should certainly gesture towards an issue raised

above, that of the paternalistic left’s ongoing distrust of the popular,17 even

as I reject the crude (if heuristically effective) tool of labelling cultural

forms as ‘destra’ or ‘sinistra’ (‘right’ or ‘left’), as in the study from which

Uva’s essay is derived. One might also mention the quality of the De Sica

physicality: a camp on the cusp of gay stereotype that unveils as disavowal

the character’s reflex homophobia. To recognize this disavowal is to

acknowledge as partial any dismissal of the cinepanettone because it retains

the privilege of breaking social norms for “white straight normative men”.18

I do not, however, wish to fall into the mode of “sentimental populism”

identified in the celebration of the carnivalesque by Terry Eagleton (see

Medhurst, 2007: 69-70). There is certainly a danger, in a discussion like

mine, of substituting for the ritualistic dismissal of the cinepanettone a

celebration that is equally jejune, and the proper use of the idea of carnival

in this context is therefore strategic.19 It can be used to account for some of

the appeal of the cinepanettone, and to demonstrate its intrinsic interest

and complexity, even and especially when it is at its most vulgar. This has

been my goal in this chapter.

Bibliography

Bakhtin, M. (1984) Rabelais and His World (Bloomington: Indiana University

Press).

Burgoyne, R. (2007) The Hollywood History Film (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007).

Dentith, S. (1995) Bakhtinian Thought: An Introductory Reader (London:

Routledge).

Eco, U. (1984) ‘Frames of Comic Freedom’, in Carnival!, ed. by Thomas A.

Sebeok (New York: Mouton), pp. 1-9.

Hughes-Warrington, M. (2007) History Goes to the Movies: Studying History

on Film (London: Routledge).

Medhurst, A. (2007) A National Joke: Popular Comedy and English Cultural

Identities (London: Routledge).

Menarini, R. (2010) Il cinema dopo il cinema: dieci idée sul cinema italiano

2000-2010 (Genoa: Le Mani).

O’Brien, D. (2011) Introduction to the ‘peplum’, in Directory of World

Cinema: Italy, ed. by Louis Bayman (Bristol: Intellect), pp. 176-8.

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Studies, 66: 3, 431-43.

________ (forthcoming) Fenomenologia del cinepanettone (Soveria Manelli:

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2, 282-6.

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                                                                                                               * My thanks to Catherine O’Rawe for her advice on a draft of this essay. 1 Here is a complete list to date, with year, director and production company. See O’Leary 2011 for an explanation of how I arrived at this list, which would not be accepted by everyone. 1983 Vacanze di Natale. Carlo Vanzina. Filmauro. 1984 Vacanze in America. Carlo Vanzina. C. G. [Cecchi Gori] Silver Film. 1990 Vacanze di Natale ’90. Enrico Oldoini. Filmauro. 1991 Vacanze di Natale ’91. Enrico Oldoini. Filmauro. 1992 Anni 90. Enrico Oldoini. Filmauro. 1993 Anni 90 - Parte II. Enrico Oldoini. Filmauro. 1994 S.P.Q.R. 2000 e ½ anni fa. Carlo Vanzina. Filmauro. 1995 Vacanze di Natale ’95. Neri Parenti. Filmauro. 1996 A spasso nel tempo. Carlo Vanzina. Filmauro. 1997 A spasso nel tempo l’avventura continua. Carlo Vanzina. Filmauro. 1998 Paparazzi. Neri Parenti. Filmauro. 1999 Vacanze di Natale 2000. Carlo Vanzina. Filmauro. 2000 Bodyguards – Guardie del corpo. Neri Parenti. Filmauro. 2001 Merry Christmas. Neri Parenti. Filmauro. 2002 Natale sul Nilo. Neri Parenti. Filmauro. 2003 Natale in India. Neri Parenti. Filmauro. 2004 Christmas in love. Neri Parenti. Filmauro. 2005 Natale a Miami. Neri Parenti. Filmauro. 2006 Natale a New York. Neri Parenti. Filmauro. 2006 Olè. Carlo Vanzina. Medusa. 2007 Natale in crociera. Neri Parenti. Filmauro. 2007 Matrimonio alle Bahamas. Claudio Risi. Mari Film/Medusa. 2008 Natale a Rio. Neri Parenti. Filmauro. 2008 La fidanzata di papà. Enrico Oldoini. Mari Film/Medusa. 2009 Natale a Beverly Hills. Neri Parenti. Filmauro. 2010 Natale in Sud Africa. Neri Parenti. Filmauro. 2010 A Natale mi sposo. Paolo Costella. Mari Film/Medusa.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Forthcoming 2011 Vacanze di Natale - Cortina. Neri Parenti. Filmauro. 2 The exception in terms of title, location and structure is Christmas in Love (2004) set in snowy Gstaad, which has three distinct episodes intercut with each other rather than the usual two intersecting plot lines. 3 I am employing the term Brechtian loosely but deliberately in order to assert that playful intelligence is not restricted to explicitly political or auteurist films. 4 Following the limited success of Olè against the Filmauro competition, Mari Film and Medusa brought forward to late November the release date of Boldi’s ‘Christmas’ films. His 2011 entry (Matrimonio a Parigi) has had an October release date, and so cannot be dubbed a cinepanettone. The Filmauro cinepanettoni are released in mid December. 5 ‘[Q]uello che è ormai un imbarazzante fenomeno italiano, che […] indigna ogni volta al suo apparire buona parte della società, che è diventato antonomasia della superficialità, della banalità, della volgarità, della mancanza di progetti del nostro cinema […]’. 6 ‘Sono film non redimibili’ […]‘Si tratta, con tutta evidenza, di un appuntamento sociale, di un comportamento rituale’. 7 Menarini has, very graciously, responded to my critical invocation of his work in a comment to my research blog available at <http://holidaypictures.tumblr.com/post/1506283938/the-cinepanettone-is-a-badthing-2> [accessed 22 June 2011]. 8 The industrialist Luca Cordero di Montezemolo used it in 2010 to refer to the Berlusconi government. See <http://qn.quotidiano.net/politica/2010/11/21/417929-governo_cinepanettone.shtml> [accessed 15 August 2011]. 9 See for example <http://youtu.be/Bd1SQKal0xQ>, and <http://youtu.be/z14iS5bT6cE> [both accessed 15 August 2011]. 10 ‘Il genere di film che il mondo ci invidia’. The spoof trailer is available at various web addresses including <http://youtu.be/glDlBbACGbw> [accessed 15 August 2011]. 11 The term is mine, coined by analogy with Rosenstone’s ‘costume drama’. 12 My argument here is informed by Hughes-Warrington 2007. 13 See my introduction to Cabiria (1914), available at <http://italiancinema-mumbai.tumblr.com/post/8007246474/cabiria>, and Daniel O’Brien’s succinct introduction to the ‘peplum’ films of the 1950s and ’60s (O’Brien 2011). The epic of Ancient Rome has also been the object of parody before S.P.Q.R. of course, not least in the ‘peplum’ itself, and in films like Totò contro Maciste (1964) and Satiricosissimo (1970). 14 The Carabinieri are a branch of the Italian army that performs civil police duties. They are a typical subject for jokes. 15 ‘[S]i celebra la vittoria assoluta del “politicamente scorretto” e di tutto quanto è istinto, forza, vigore contro ciò che è sentimento, ragione, fragilità’. 16 ‘[I]l fattore ideologico interviene quando ci si accorge che tale cattiveria non contempla un raggio d’azioni a 360 gradi, ma risulta fin troppo serialmente e programmaticamente indirizzata verso precisi obiettivi che, come visto, sono sempre gli stessi, e cioè le cosiddette categorie deboli, quali le donne, gli anziani, gli omosessuali oppure, su un piano diverso, la Cultura tout court, vista essenzialmente come ‘fumo negli occhi’, come noioso patrimonio di ‘sfigati’ esclusi dalla grande orgia della vita. 17 Naturally, I am not suggesting that a disdain for popular culture, or for the cinepanettone itself, is unique to the left – in Italy or anywhere else – but I am recalling the mainstream Italian left’s history of suspicion of ‘mass’ culture, finding it not properly ‘popular’ in the sense of ‘of the people’. That this suspicion remains is indicated by some of the responses to an online questionnaire designed to elicit attitudes to the cinepanettone. Respondents were asked if they believed there was a typical spectator for the cinepanettone and, if so, to provide a description of that person. The descriptions include the following: “Tipico berlusconiano”; “I truzzi, gli arricchiti e i berlusconiani”; “L’italiano ignorante, l’italiano stupido e l’italiano di destra (più del 50%)”; “Una persona senza cultura, che non legge e non si informa, non va al cinema abitualmente e non conosce la storia del cinema, probabilmente di centro-destra, con pregiudizi e priva di gusto e con la soglia dell’attenzione e la capacità di concentrazione bassissime” [Typical Berlusconi type; The boors, the nouveaux riches and the Berlusconi types; The ignorant Italian, the stupid Italian and the right-wing Italian (more than 50%); A person without culture, who doesn’t read and doesn’t keep himself informed, doesn’t go to the cinema regularly and doesn’t know the history of cinema, probably a supporter of the centre right, bigoted and tasteless and with an extremely short attention span and low capacity for concentration]. The questionnaire is available at

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             <https://www.survey.leeds.ac.uk/cinepanettone/>. A full analysis of the responses will be published in O’Leary (forthcoming). 18 This is the phrase used in the notes to a draft of this chapter by the editors of the present volume. In any case, such a privilege has been allocated to others down through the years, including the conspicuously non-male Sabrina Ferilli and Anna Maria Barbera. For more on this theme see Rigoletto 2010. 19 Andy Medhurst (2007: 69-70) argues for the strategic use of the carnivalesque in relation to ambivalent comedy. He quotes Mikita Hoy: ‘Bakhtin tends to idealize popular culture in order to rescue it from the patrician pessimists’ (p. 70). The phrase ‘patrician pessimism’ well describes the tone of the criticism of the cinepanettone in writers like Simoncelli and Menarini discussed above.