{"id":77486,"date":"2019-01-16T14:45:20","date_gmt":"2019-01-16T13:45:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fondazionepirelli.org\/?p=77486"},"modified":"2020-05-07T13:25:14","modified_gmt":"2020-05-07T12:25:14","slug":"umberto-eco-and-pirelli-mass-culture-and-corporate-culture-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fondazionepirelli.org\/en\/activities\/stories-from-world-of-pirelli\/umberto-eco-and-pirelli-mass-culture-and-corporate-culture-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Umberto Eco and Pirelli: mass culture and corporate culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps not everyone knows that Umberto<\/span>\u00a0Eco<\/span>\u2019s famous\u00a0Phenomenology of Mike Bongiorno<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 which in 1963 became part of the\u00a0Misreadings<\/strong>\u00a0collection<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 first appeared in\u00a01961<\/strong>\u00a0in\u00a0Pirelli. Rivista d\u2019informazione e di tecnica\u00a0in an article entitled \u201cTowards a Culture of Vision?<\/a><\/strong>\u201d. It was part of a wider analysis of\u00a0television and culture<\/strong>, one of the many cultural and social themes that were examined in the Pirelli magazine. It painted a portrait of the television presenter\u00a0Mike Bongiorno<\/strong>, published at the peak of his popularity, at a time when viewers crowded into caf\u00e9s to watch \u201cLascia o raddoppia\u201d, the first major cult show on Italian television. Referring to Bongiorno,\u00a0Eco<\/span>wrote: \u201cHe does not provoke inferiority complexes, despite presenting himself as an idol, and the public acknowledge him, by being grateful to him and loving him. He represents an ideal that nobody need strive to reach because everyone is already at his level.\u201d As an absolute icon of Italy\u2019s\u00a0eco<\/span>nomic boom, the Italian-American compere was \u201cthe most striking illustration of superman\u2019s being reduced to everyman\u201d capable of arousing empathy as the bearer of \u201can immediate and spontaneous allure that can be explained by the fact that he betrays no sign of theatrical artifice or pretence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much has also been said of\u00a0Eco<\/span>\u2019s role in the debate on the cultural evolution of comics in Italy. His reflections in an essay originally entitled \u201cApocalyptic and Integrated<\/strong>\u201d of 1964 were taken up and examined by\u00a0Eco<\/span>\u00a0himself three years later in the Pirelli magazine in \u201cMeditations on a Balloon<\/a><\/strong>\u201d: \u201cWhen I published the semantic studies on the comic Apocalyptic and Integrated, the most supercilious critics asserted that one should not examine such frivolous subjects with the tools normally applicable to Kant.\u201d On the massification of comics, he wrote: \u201cThe first scholars of this phenomenon used to gather almost in secret. [\u2026] Now, as is only right, theses on comic books appear in various university institutes, conferences are called and communications discussed\u2026\u201d He quotes the Corriere dei Piccoli and Topolino, by way of Cocco Bill, Diabolik, Crepax and Walt Disney. The texts are accompanied by wonderful\u00a0Roy Lichtenstein lithographs<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were the comic-book enthusiasts. We worked mainly from memory. Few of us had collections at home. And those who did would not show them to the others. Or they didn\u2019t know they had them. They only found them later, up in the attic. [\u2026] Now Linus has broken down the barrier. Comics are on the national stage now.\u201d It is no coincidence that, after a brief editorial, the first issue of Linus in April 1965 opened with an interview with\u00a0Elio Vittorini<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Oreste Del Buono<\/strong>\u00a0by\u00a0Eco<\/span>. One need only read the first question that\u00a0Eco<\/span>asks Vittorini: \u201cToday we\u2019re discussing something we believe to be very important and serious, even though it may appear frivolous: Charlie Brown comic strips. Vittorini, how did you first come across Charlie Brown?\u201d and one can see how this interview \u2013 together with the Meditations and the essay on the \u201cApocalyptic and integrated\u201d \u2013 is actually a manifesto that elevates the comic strip to an acknowledged artistic and literary form.<\/p>\n

Not just television and comic strips.\u00a0Eco<\/span>\u2019s contribution to the debate on society and mass culture also included pungent reflections on established holidays, as in\u00a0Protocol 00\/03 Lighting Dossier<\/a><\/strong>, again in the Pirelli magazine, in 1962. The article reco<\/span>nstructs an ironic correspondence between the devils of Malebolge, who have been instructed to boycott Christmas: \u201c\u2026 with that atmosphere of festivity and general benevolence that comes about at that time of year, Christmas celebrations promote cordial relations, for a few days putting international conflicts to one side, and leading people to perform absurd good-neighbourly actions such as giving gifts, doubling employees\u2019 wages, and entering into civil conversations. Precisely in order to avoid these dangers, I asked your predecessor and I ask you now to prepare a master plan for the area of Milan, which we have chosen as a sample.\u201d<\/p>\n

And again on the subject of Christmas, in 1963, in\u00a0a letter to his son<\/a>: \u201cAnd I will teach you how to play very complex wars, in which the truth is never on one side alone\u2026\u201d \u201cBut if by chance, when you grow up, the monstrous figures of your childhood dreams, with witches, kobolds, armies, bombs and mandatory military service still exist, who knows if you will not have acquired a critical consciousness with regard to fairy tales and if you will have learnt to act critically in the real world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Umberto<\/span>\u00a0Eco<\/span>\u2019s relationship with Pirelli went beyond the years when the magazine was published. For example, when interviewed in 2011 about the exhibition entitled\u00a0Rubber Soul: Aesthetics and Technique in Step with Fashion<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0curated by the Pirelli Foundation at La Triennale di Milano (21 June-24 July 2011), he said: \u201cIn this wholly intangible exhibition, one made of images, history and interpretation, we see not the portrait of fashion, but a portrait of the image of fashion. And it is precisely this that makes its representation so relevant today.\u201d \u201c\u2026As we have already said, there are no objects, just representations, so as to shift our focus from the tangible aspect of fashion to the level of dreams. Indeed, fashion evokes and produces dreams, especially now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Perhaps not everyone knows that Umberto\u00a0Eco\u2019s famous\u00a0Phenomenology of Mike Bongiorno\u00a0\u2013 which in 1963 became part of the\u00a0Misreadings\u00a0collection\u00a0\u2013 first appeared in\u00a01961\u00a0in\u00a0Pirelli. Rivista d\u2019informazione e di tecnica\u00a0in an article entitled \u201cTowards a Culture of Vision?\u201d. It was part of a wider analysis of\u00a0television and culture, one of the many cultural and social themes that were examined in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":53025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,68],"tags":[243],"class_list":["post-77486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activities","category-stories-from-world-of-pirelli","tag-company-history"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nUmberto Eco and Pirelli: mass culture and corporate culture - Fondazione Pirelli<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fondazionepirelli.org\/en\/activities\/stories-from-world-of-pirelli\/umberto-eco-and-pirelli-mass-culture-and-corporate-culture-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Umberto Eco and Pirelli: mass culture and corporate culture - Fondazione Pirelli\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Perhaps not everyone knows that Umberto\u00a0Eco\u2019s famous\u00a0Phenomenology of Mike Bongiorno\u00a0\u2013 which in 1963 became part of the\u00a0Misreadings\u00a0collection\u00a0\u2013 first appeared in\u00a01961\u00a0in\u00a0Pirelli. 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