Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary Italian Teen Film
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Redefining a Gendered Genre: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary Italian Teen Film Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Daniel Evan Paul, M.A. Graduate Program in Italian The Ohio State University 2019 Dissertation Committee Dana Renga, Advisor Jonathan Combs-Schilling Linda Mizejewski Catherine O’Rawe 1 Copyright by Daniel Evan Paul 2019 2 Abstract “Redefining a Gendered Genre: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary Italian Teen Film”, pushes against the generally accepted classification of teen film—with its romantic narratives and its classification as popular culture—as a feminine/feminized genre. I argue instead that such films privilege male protagonists and their coming-of-age experience and thus make central the masculine struggle of growing into adult- and manhood. Through close analysis of ten filmic texts, I demonstrate how Italian teen film proposes innovative forms of masculinity through its male protagonists, ones which often appropriate aspects of femininity such as caretaking and emotional availability. These forms of masculinity at once code the young men as inherently damaged, yet also allow the genre’s stereotypically female audiences to mourn the wounded men so that they can subsequently be recuperated into normative society. In that the films I discuss often centralize teenage romance, they are quite easily labeled as melodramas, or even romantic comedies. A common, though not constant, trope of the melodramatic mode is its tendency to depart from a space of innocence which is often characterized by hearth and home. For a melodrama to end happily, it typically does so by centralizing the heterosexual couple or the heteronormative family consisting of husband, wife, and child(ren) in an apparent return to the space of innocence from which it departed. In the dissertation, I contend that Italian teen film subverts the traditional heterocentric happy ending of melodrama by privileging male-male bonding, the surrogate father, and queer desire. By so ii doing, the male protagonists find new avenues for happiness and fulfillment, ones outside the heteronormative model. I thus argue that, despite its popular address, its consideration as a feminized genre, and its reliance on sentimentality, Italian teen film merits increased attention as a site of negotiation for contemporary notions of masculinity. iii Dedication To my wife, Lisa iv Acknowledgments First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor, Dana Renga, for her support during my time at Ohio State University. I am extremely grateful for her confidence in my project, her keen intellect, her patience and guidance, and her thoughtful criticism. It hasn’t always been easy to write about Italian teen film, but her unwavering approval has continually spurred me on. I am likewise indebted to Catherine O’Rawe for her insight and feedback on all things Italian teen film. Her support in the arduous process of publication has been immeasurable and I am grateful to be her colleague, which is what she made me feel like even as a graduate student. I am equally grateful for Jonathan Combs-Schilling and Linda Mizejewski, the other members of my committee. It has been a pleasure and honor to work with you both. Thank you for letting me bounce ideas off you and work through some of the issues at play in my corpus. My gratitude goes out to all of the wonderful professors, staff, colleagues, and friends from the Department of French and Italian at Ohio State. I will miss being among such lively, warm-hearted, and supportive people. Finally, my sincere appreciation goes to my wife, Lisa, for her unrelenting support and steadfast belief in me, even when I doubted myself. I honestly could not have done this without her. She has kept me sane and motivated during the hardest of times. Despite the difficulty of this undertaking, I knew I was never alone. Thank you for taking this journey with me. v Vita June 2003 ................................................................ Pitman High School 2012 ........................................................................ B.A. Linguistics and Italian, Brigham Young University 2014 ........................................................................ M.A. Italian Studies, Ohio State University 2014 to present ........................................................ Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of French and Italian, Ohio State Univeristy Publications “Marking Their Territory: Male Adolescence Abroad in Recent Italian Teen Film”, California Italian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 1-18 (Online, cloudfront.escholarship.org/dist/prd/content/qt6w37g1w9/qt6w37g1w9.pdf?t=p4pwzg). “Conference Report: ‘Italian Screen Studies: Methods and Priorities’, Joint conference of AAIS and CSIS, The Ohio State University, 20-22 April 2017”, Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2. pp. 235-240. Fields of Study Major Field: Italian Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization: Film vi Table of Contents Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... ii Dedication ................................................................................................................................. iv Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................................... v Vita ........................................................................................................................................... vi List of Tables ........................................................................................................................... viii List of Figures ........................................................................................................................... ix Introduction: Coming-of-Age in Contemporary Italian Teen Film ............................................... 1 Chapter 1. Federico Moccia, Teen Film, and Contemporary Masculinities ................................ 29 Chapter 2. Marking Their Territory: Male Adolescence Abroad ................................................ 58 Chapter 3. Lost Fathers Found: Masculinity, Surrogate Fatherhood and the New Italian Family 87 Chapter 4. Call Me by Your Name, Chrononormativity, and the (Queer?) Future of Italian Teen Film ........................................................................................................................................ 137 Epilogue: Transnational Adolescence and the Female Future of Italian Teen Media................ 167 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................... 179 Appendix A. Italian Teen Films, 2003-2013 ........................................................................... 205 vii List of Tables Table 1. The success of teen film in Italy, by Gross Domestic Earnings .................................. 206 viii List of Figures Figure 1. The erasure of female adolescence in Niente può fermarci ......................................... 12 Figure 2. Rain as Step’s tears in Tre metri sopra il cielo ........................................................... 47 Figure 3. Teen film: A genre gendered feminine ....................................................................... 59 Figure 4. The homoerotic threat in Lezioni di volo .................................................................... 77 Figure 5. Marco in his natural element in 10 regole per fare innamorare ................................ 114 Figure 6. Carlo’s view of his surrogate family in Universitari - Molto più che amici ............... 132 Figure 7. Elio’s productive mourning in Call Me by Your Name ............................................. 161 ix Introduction: Coming-of-Age in Contemporary Italian Teen Film Introduction: Teen Film in Italy Today Since 2000, the teen and coming-of-age film genres in Italy have flourished: films such as Notte prima degli esami [Night Before the Exams] (Fausto Brizzi, 2006) and Scusa ma ti chiamo amore [Sorry, If I Love You] (Federico Moccia, 2008) have placed on the list of the top ten highest grossing films in Italy for their respective years—coming in at number eight and six, respectively—beating out the domestic releases of Hollywood blockbusters like The Departed (Martin Scorsese, 2006), Twilight (Catherine Hardwicke, 2008), and The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008). In 2007, the films Ho voglia di te [I Desire You] (Luis Prieto), Notte prima degli esami - Oggi [Night Before the Exams - Today] (Brizzi), and Come tu mi vuoi [As You Desire Me] (Volfango De Biasi) each placed in the top twenty list and together accounted for ticket sales of nearly €45,000,000. Hence, as is clear in Table 1 in Appendix A, teen film represents a stable, reliable, and lucrative genre in Italian cinema. With statistics like these, it is no wonder that Danielle Hipkins asserts that the “boom of the [Italian] teen movie was launched in 2004” with director Luca Lucini’s adaptation of Federico Moccia’s novel Tre metri sopra il cielo [Three Steps Over Heaven] (173). The story behind how the novel eventually came to be a film borders on the mythic and provides useful insight into the rather brief, yet extremely profitable, period of what we might label the “teen film craze” in Italy: initially published at Moccia’s own expense