Milan since the Miracle. City, Culture and Identity

Book: Milan since the Miracle. City, Culture and Identity
John Foot
Oxford, Berg, 2001, ISBN: 9781859735459, 240pp, Price: £45.00
Reviewer: Professor Anna Cento Bull
University of Bath
Citation: Professor Anna Cento Bull, review of Milan since the Miracle. City, Culture and Identity, (review no. 267)
https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/267-2/
Date accessed: 08 October 2024

Book:

Milan since the Miracle. City, Culture and Identity
John Foot
Oxford, Berg, 2001, ISBN: 9781859735459, 240pp, Price: £45.00

Reviewer:

Professor Anna Cento Bull
University of Bath

Citation:

Professor Anna Cento Bull, review of Milan since the Miracle. City, Culture and Identity, (review no. 267)
https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/267-2/
Date accessed: 08 October 2024

This book is a fascinating collection of chapters which partly analyse and partly evoke different periods, spaces and above all images of Milan since the 1950s. It does not fit into a neat academic category or discipline, beyond its being loosely a historical overview of the city. History, in this case, is neither social nor economic or political – nor is it a combinations of these. Rather, the primary focus is cultural, and the leit-motif throughout the book is the transformation of Milan from an industrial city divided primarily into a bourgeoisie occupying the historic centre and a working class, as well as marginalised strata, living in the peripheries, to a post-industrial metropolis dominated by and emblematic of mass consumerism, immaterial goods, and a composite, multi-ethnic population. In this ‘new’ city, the old fault line between centre and periphery has lost its meaning, to be increasingly replaced by a continuum of urban spaces and urbanised countryside, extending well beyond the city’s boundary. The shift is looked at primarily through an analysis of the different images of the city constructed by film-makers, television producers, photographers, designers and politicians. The underlying approach considers a city to be made up of a variety of spaces, interests, symbols, conflicts and lifestyles, where power is unevenly distributed and different social groups and actors produce images which are ‘mediated through language, mass media, memory, photographs, films and the environment’ (p. 159). As Foot clarifies, such images ‘are never fixed and are continually being reformed and deconstructed’; furthermore, they are the product of contested ‘ physical and moral constructions’ (p. 159).

What kind of images, then, does the book analyse and what is their conflictual nature? Most are negative images, as portrayed specifically in films: Milan as the impersonal and exploitative industrial city which depends on migrants for its wealth yet offers them only exclusion and segregation, or Milan as the capitalist city dominated by profit-making, cold human relations and, increasingly, by violence. The Milanese periphery was portrayed recurrently, the author reminds us, as the Bronx. This image of exploitation and violence, of inhumanity, was often contrasted with a mythical image of a pre-industrial, rural society for whose destruction cities like Milan were directly responsible. A more positive image was that constructed by the left parties, which presented the peripheries as places where a working-class collective and communitarian (sub)culture was able to counter the exploitative culture of ‘capitalist’ Milan. Both were myths, Foot warns us, even though at times the author appears to accept that such subcultures did exist, albeit only in some ‘old’ peripheries. They later disappeared under the onslaught of consumerism and individualism, symbolised by the decreasing importance of public, shared spaces and the increasing role played by private spaces, and in particular by the family living rooms where television occupied a place of honour. ‘Within the home, the salotto or soggiorno (living room) began to be seen as the television room, used solely or largely for the activity of television watching [.] Where there was no salotto in the home, the set was usually placed in the kitchen/dining room, where it inevitably began to dominate the semi-sacred meal times of the Italian family’ (p. 90).

Television, to which Foot reserves an entire chapter, brought mass culture to Italy (and Milan). Its effects were widely condemned for fostering cultural uniformity and standardisation, as well as for bringing down average levels of knowledge and culture. But Foot is extremely careful not to subscribe to a simplistic view of mass popular culture and consumerism as being inherently bad, in the same way as he rejects the automatic assumption that television inevitably shapes viewers’ outlooks and values in ways which are totally beyond their control. In addition, there was an early, ‘collective’ phase of television viewing, during which social, gender and generational barriers were at least temporarily broken down (pp. 86-90). This was followed by a retreat to private viewing and the re-erection of barriers, albeit of a different kind. In Milan, the peripheral estate of Comasina was one of the first to register a mass diffusion of television sets: ’90 per cent of families had bought a set (presumably on credit) by 1962′ (p. 89). As Foot remarks, ‘the very isolation of Comasina from the centre of Milan – with its glittering attractions, cinemas, dance halls and theatres – encouraged this process of television purchase and use’ (p. 89). This new phase marked but the beginning of a process which culminated in the 1980s with Berlusconi’s commercial television and the triumph of American-style glamour and lifestyles.

The spectacular rise of Berlusconi’s media empire and the success of his exclusively middle-class, purpose-built residential areas coincided with a new image of the city being promoted by designers and politicians alike, which best symbolised the transition to a post-industrial city: ‘Milano da bere’, or ‘city to be consumed’, was ‘an advertising slogan for an after-dinner drink which became the symbol (at first positive, later negative) of a whole epoch and political style’ (p. 165). Milan was transformed into and re-launched as a city of fashion, media, luxury goods, new entrepreneurs, extravagance and glamour. The new image coincided with the period in which a revamped Socialist Party, headed by Bettino Craxi, dominated local politics, and corrupt practices became an acceptable way of life – at least until the Tangentopoli scandal, during which the image of Milan became one of unscrupulous business people and politicians bent on promoting their own interests in defiance of the law and of any sense of public spiritedness. Tangentopoli Milan is reconstructed with great care, especially the link between the rise of new immaterial industries – typically fashion, which revolves around egotism, appearance, frivolity, and glamour – and the parallel emerging images of self-gratification, hedonism, conspicuous consumption. Foot does not hide his own distaste for the ‘Milano da bere’ image and even more for the social reality that underpinned that image and clearly sees the legacy of that period continuing to exercise profound effects upon the city. The conclusion to his book is pessimistic: ‘The rampant individualism of the modern metropolis has crushed any kind of collective civic culture able to organize society in a rational fashion [.] If Milan ever had a civic culture, it has one no longer’ ( pp. 182-3).

I have some sympathy with this conclusion, even though the picture it paints is perhaps too black. I also concur with much of the author’s reading and interpretation of a city in which I was born and lived between 1951 and 1959, and again between 1978 and 1985. It was easy for me to relate to the personal involvement of Foot into his subject-matter, which is referred to openly and with a hint of irony in the book: among the historical photographs of the city included in the volume, two show the author in the area where he lived. This same involvement may, however, have led Foot to focus on certain aspects only, and to neglect others. There are some significant omissions, as well as a disconcerting sense of a silent city with plenty of images but very few ‘voices’. The two aspects are connected, since the inclusion of certain cultural processes and events could have brought more voices into Milan. As it is, one gets the impression that the images that counted were increasingly constructed by people in power and/or with power and imposed upon the city with few or no pockets of resistance. The only exception appears to be that of the ‘classic’ working-class neighbourhoods during the economic miracle, which successfully constructed the myth of class solidarity and socialist/communist subcultures, and voted for the left parties at successive elections in the 1960s and ’70s. As Amalia Signorelli, following Bourdieu, pointed out in her book on urban anthropology, such neighbourhoods were able to accumulate ‘considerable symbolic capital, which could then be employed in the struggles for power which took place at the political level’ (Antropologia urbana. Introduzione alla ricerca in Italia, Milan, Edizioni Guerini, 1996, p. 132). The myth of working-class solidaristic culture was therefore a resource, it was a form of capital which, together with social capital, could be used to empower the socially weak and dispossessed. It created powerful counter-images and facilitated the socio-political integration of migrants. What happened when these forms of symbolic capital all but disappeared? Foot suggests that they were not replaced by any new forms so that the dominant images of recent decades coincided exclusively with the images produced by the dominant social groups. This may or may not have been the case, however. It could be simply an impression created by the omission of other, no less important aspects of city life and culture.

I would like to spend some time discussing some of these omissions. The first is that of local radio stations, particularly Radio Popolare, which gave the citizens a chance to express their opinions on the politics and culture of the city and became an important focus of opposition to Craxi’s Milan. When I lived in Milan in the 1980s, Radio Popolare had a large audience among the young (admittedly the young within the left), who constantly discussed among themselves and directly contributed to the diffusion of the issues it raised. The station started to operate in 1976; indeed it has just celebrated 25 years of uninterrupted broadcasting. It has been written that Radio Popolare was born with the precise intention of ‘giving voice, through the active participation of the public and cooperation with the different social realities, to the most marginal groups in official communication, such as students, ethnic minorities and immigrants, gay people, prisoners and pacifist movements’ (G. Cesareo and B. Scifo, ‘”Ecco Milano!.” Sviluppo e contraddizioni del sistema radiotelevisivo in Lombardia’, in D. Bigazzi and M. Meriggi, eds, Storia d’Italia. Le Regioni dall’Unità a oggi. La Lombardia, Turin, Einaudi, p. 1094). The authors appear convinced that the station has by and large fulfilled its original aim, succeeding both in establishing stable roots in the city and in playing a strongly critical and oppositional role. Another omission is that of popular music. Admittedly, Milan is not Naples, and music does not have such an encompassing influence upon the culture (and the image) of the city. Yet Milan has a strong musical tradition, quite apart from the one associated with Verdi and La Scala. In the old days of the economic miracle, ‘cantautori’ or writers/singers such as Gaber and Iannacci created powerful images of the city’s peripheries, and the balere were popular places in which music was produced and consumed. Some cantautori were also showmen and cabaret singers, such as Nanni Svampa. Their shows included songs but also sketches, sometimes involving the audience, often with political and satirical content. From the 1970s onward mass popular music occupied central stage and Milan became an important centre for pop music consumption and production, developing yet another ‘immaterial’ industry out of a pre-existing, but relatively modest, discographic sector. The exclusion from the book of radio, music and theatre (particularly Giorgio Strehler’s Piccolo Teatro, Dario Fo’s La Comune experiment, and all the other theatrical cooperatives set up in the 1970s) in favour of cinema and television leads to an inevitable overrepresentation of leisure and free time in terms of isolated, individual activities and a corresponding underrepresentation of what has been termed ‘conviviality’, that is, ‘the element of sociable pleasure in many kinds of purposeful activities and [.] the variety of ways in which people together make and remake the world. Conviviality in this broad sense is represented not only by cheerful activities like singing in pubs or street dancing at a block party, but also by the small-group rituals and social bonding in serious collective action [.]’ (L. Peattie, ‘Convivial Cities’, in J. Friedmann and M. Douglass, eds., Cities for Citizens. Planning and the Rise of Civil Society in a Global Age, Chichester, John Wiley and Sons, 1998, p. 247).

Perhaps the exclusion of theatre can be explained by the fact that it is an activity largely restricted to the city centre and to the middle classes, two other underrepresented protagonists of Milan before the 1980s. We are told by John Foot, for example, that the old bourgeoisie has largely disappeared, replaced by a new, yuppy-style, nouveau-riche, aggressive and extravagant middle class, but the process is not analysed in any depth nor does it produce ‘voices’, apart from those of Berlusconi and his acolytes. What happened to the old bourgeoisie? Did it sink without trace? Did it put up a fight, opposing images to images and symbols to symbols? Was it simply bought off? Did it retreat into splendid (but sterile) isolation? How much trading and negotiating went on behind closed doors in the most secluded ‘palazzi’? Milan, after all, was the city where Enrico Cuccia, Italy’s financial ‘éminence grise’ operated as the undiscussed boss of Mediobanca, the most powerful Italian merchant bank which acted as a powerhouse for the country’s major industrial groups. Milan is also the city where the Banco Ambrosiano operated for years before it collapsed in 1982 amid a gigantic scandal of political and economic corruption, long before Tangentopoli and even before the Socialist Party’s period of political dominance. Calvi, Sindona, Gelli, P2, the IOR, the Vatican and the Mafia were some of the protagonists of the scandal, and their enemies were the Bank of Italy, Cuccia himself, La Malfa and many honest and brave public servants and magistrates. Milan’s prestigious newspaper, Corriere della Sera, fell for a time under control of Calvi and P2.

There is no mention of the scandal or any of its protagonists in Foot’s book, yet their inclusion might arguably have had the effect of changing the author’s reading of the socio-economic transformation of the city. Clearly the rise of Craxi and Berlusconi was preceded by a widening web of shady financial dealings and underhand alliances with corrupt and/or criminal groups which shook at its foundations the old Milanese bourgeoisie. In this context, how useful is a periodisation which largely separates the 1960s and ’70s from the 1980s and ’90s, associating the latter period with widespread corruption and a ‘clientelist and nepotistic culture’ (p. 165)? The dark side of Italian capitalism became visible in the city well before the end of the industrial phase, even though the prevailing images were still those linked to ‘another’ Milan: a bleak, hard-working, conflict-ridden, highly politicised place, but also a place of economic legality. What I am trying to say is that the images of the city and its socio-economic transformation may not have proceeded necessarily in unison, as the book seems to suggest. While Tangentopoli and its images (at first positive, later negative) fit in well with the loss of traditional industry and an industrial proletariat and the triumph of ‘immaterial goods’, the Sindona-Calvi undertakings, the growth of Banco Ambrosiano, the illegal exports of capital which marked 1970s Milan had profound socio-economic effects upon the city but do not appear to have produced memorable or durable images. This raises the question whether they are not discussed precisely because they were not mediated by images. In other words, the ‘constructivist’ approach adopted by the author runs the risk of overlooking any social processes which are not reflected through the prism of cultural representations: what is not captured in images sinks into oblivion. This is why it would have been desirable, in my view, to reproduce voices alongside images.

It is possible, however, that the 1970s events referred to above were left out (together with mass political demonstrations and terrorism) because they would have detracted from the main purpose of the book, which is to compare and contrast the period of the economic miracle with the boom of the 1980s and its aftermath. In one telling sentence, Foot comments that, seen against the enthusiasm with which television was welcomed in Milan even in the early days, ‘1968 seems more of a blip than the proof of any real revolt against capitalist values’ (p. 107). As an extension of 1968, the 1970s may therefore have been relegated to the margins of the narrative. This certainly has the merit of allowing the author to focus on those aspects that really interest him and to make a strong case for tracing consumerism and individualism (mainly through his analysis of television) back to the period when collectivism and a mass proletariat appeared dominant. My reservation remains the one outlined above, that is, that the choice of certain types of media and leisure (television and cinema) at the expense of, say, music and theatre, may have influenced an interpretation that stretches individualist values back to the early 1960s, rather than extending collective behaviour – or at least ‘conviviality’ – well into the 1980s and beyond.

Lastly, the book contains some very interesting discussions of theoretical debates which were either influential in Italy in the past (such as the debate around consumerism and cultural assimilation), or inform studies of cities and urban spaces today. Foot approaches these theories in a refreshing manner. Rather than appearing in a separate section at the beginning of the volume, they are interspersed with the historical narrative, allowing for a seamless continuum of empirical observation, analysis of events and theoretical discussion. All in all, quite apart from any perceived omissions, this is a hugely enjoyable work, which brought back many memories of a city which seems to attract and repulse in equal measures. I left Milan in the middle of the ’80s vowing never to go back, yet I have since been drawn to it again and again for both work and pleasure. I have seen its transformation into a multi-ethnic city, described vividly in the book, together with the outward signs of multiculturalism, if not (yet) with real social integration. As well as making fascinating reading, the book stimulates new ideas and offers new incentives for research, and I do not think more could be asked of it.

April 2002

Author's response

John Foot
Posted: Tue, 17/11/2009 - 19:32

First of all I would like to thank Anna Bull for her detailed, wide-ranging and very useful review of my book, which also represents a stimulating call for deeper research on this complicated city. I was pleased with her interpretation of what I was trying to do with the volume, which corresponds largely with my real intentions, and with the ways in which she felt Milan was evoked by the book. I am also gratified that the multi-disciplinary nature of the book – crucial to any historical analysis of the city, in my opinion – does not appear to deflect from the main thrust of the volume. I will deal with Bull’s critical points about the book in the order in which they appear in the review:

1. Voices, Resistance and the analysis of Culture.

Here I broadly agree with Anna Bull’s points concerning the resistance to changes in cultural forms and images. However, I have two caveats to oppose to her points. Firstly, the book does contain aspects of resistance to change, such as with the accounts of the opposition to de-industrialisation, or with the description of the culture surrounding the tangentopoli scandals, or the possible role of counter-cultures linked to various phases of immigration. Secondly, I think one of the points of the book, and a key feature of Milan, is the way in which the city has always been able to embrace and promote social change, instead of remaining linked to outdated models of development. This capacity to adapt and re-invent itself, in Milan’s case through fashion and design linked to centuries of experience in textile and furniture manufacture, allowed the city to move fairly smoothly from an industrial to a ‘post-industrial’ economy. Thus, the very flexibility of Milan’s cultural norms were a key factor in this transition which did not happen in other Italian industrial cities to the same extent – in places such as Turin and Genoa. I hint at possible future resistance to images imposed from above in the chapter on immigration and in the last section of the book, but Bull is right to note my pessimism.

2. The omission of aspects of city life and culture

Here, again, I largely agree with Anna Bull’s comments. In fact, in the case of Radio Popolare, I am at something of a loss to explain the omission, which Bull is quite correct to highlight. I have listened to Radio Popolare on an almost daily basis for the last ten years and it was probably this very familiarity which led to the station’s absence from Milan since the Miracle. Bull’s points about the originality and force of this radio station, and the cultural networks it represents and links up, are absolutely right, although I would also argue that the Milan-based aspects of Radio Popolare have been weakened by its very success – its emergence at the centre of a national network of independent radio stations sharing programmes, news bulletins and reporters.

For music, Bull is again correct, although I do not think that popular music can be said to have played the same powerful role as cinema or television in the city’s development or within the context of cultural and social change and especially in terms of changes in images, so important to my book. Nonetheless, the artists she mentions are important figures in Milanese post-war history (Gaber and Jannacci) and, one might add, the emergence of Italy’s most famous and (still) popular rock and roll singer from the Milanese periphery in the 1950s – Adriano Celentano – who dedicated many of his songs to Milan, such as Il ragazzo di Via Gluck – was a significant cultural event for the post-war history of this city. Here, there is certainly space for further research and integration with the other cultural forms analysed in the book. It may also be that the flowering of comedy in contemporary Milan (through the Zelig club, Paolo Rossi and the Gialappa’s Band, amongst others) took up the tradition laid down by the cabaret/singers of the 1950s and 1960s.

Finally, for theatre, similar conclusions can be drawn. Theatre is not excluded altogether (Both Fo and the Piccolo Teatro are cited in the book) but it is certainly not analysed in detail. The explanation for this (and perhaps for music as well) lies in my attention to the history of daily, home-based and work-based life, and to images of the city. Both of these areas are more difficult to link to theatre and music than they are to cinema and television. My attention to debates over mass cultural change led, naturally, to a concentration on these classic mass cultural forms, at the expense of others. I was interested in the ways in which cultural forms interacted with social and cultural change, and, in particular urban change – particularly on Milan’s urban periphery.

3. 1968 as a ‘blip’

I still maintain that the individualism and familism of the 1980s and 1990s had deep roots in the time of the miracle, but this does not mean that the road between the 1950s and 1990s was a linear one, nor that everybody was a familist then, and everyone is a familist now. My point about 1968 possibly being something of a ‘blip’ in Milan’s history was as much an attempt to bring out these issues as to lay down a clear argument one way or another. For me, ‘Berlusconi’, ideologically, was born in the Milan of the 1950s – an important moment for Milan and for Italy as a whole. Perhaps, here, I am more Pasolinian than I would like to be given my critique of Pasolini’s analysis of society in chapter one of the book. I do have some sympathy with Pasolini’s depiction of 1968 not as a revolt against consumer society but as a mass attempt to conform to that society – to be admitted to its glittering prizes.

4. The Old Ruling Class

In response to Bull’s series of questions concerning this issue, most of the old, industrial, Milanese bourgeoisie has indeed disappeared, both economically and politically, While in the 1950s and 1960s, enlightened industrialists like Bassetti took a keen and active interest in the political management of the city, in the 1980s and 1990s these figures had withdrawn from public life and were busy dismantling their factories across Milan. Berlusconi in some ways represents a bridge between some sections of the old bourgeoisie (linked to construction) and the new ruling class dedicated to post-industrial activities. One exception to this is the Pirelli group, who have indeed closed most of their activities in the city but remain a key part of the power structure in the city. Another exception are the Moratti family, who have always had a strong cultural role in Milan, partly linked to the Inter football club. No new images were produced by the old bourgeoisie as it disappeared, marginalised by the rapid economic changes of the 1980s and 1990s and, to some extent, by the breakdown in political and clientelistic alliances brought about by the Tangentopoli scandals. Bull is correct to note my neglect of the banking system, although I think that the Banco Ambrosiana scandal had far more of an impact in Rome than in did in Milan. The Socialist Party, it should be remembered, was always important in post-war Milan, and the first post-war non-social democratic Mayor was only appointed in 1993. I agree about the long-term nature of political and financial corruption in the city, and some of these features are brought out in chapter 7. One of the main arguments of that chapter is the very dislocation between image and reality in Milan. Thus, Milan was Tangentopoli – a city built on systematic and scientific political and economic illegality and corruption – well before ‘Tangentopoli’ was discovered. Hence, I do not accept the criticism that the book claims that images of the city and its socio-economic transformation proceeded in unison. Milano da bere hid the dark, corrupt side of Milan, but also reflected deep trends in Milanese society. Images are of course extremely subjective and complicated and differ across time and space.