Introduction 1 Sounding Fascism in Cinema

Notes Introduction 1. For an extensive analysis on the subject, the article “Music as Torture / Music as Weapon” in the Transcultural Music Review by Cusick traces the history of the research, and the use of sound (musical and non), for war; an extensive quote from her work demonstrates power’s appropriation of the sheer power of sound: “Acoustic weapons” have been in development by Department of Defense contractors since at least the 1997 creation of the Joint Non- Lethal Weapons Task Force, accounting for 1/3 of the Task Force’s budget in 1998–99. The earliest contract I know to have been let for such a weapon was on November 18, 1998, authorizing now- defunct Synetics Corporation to produce a tightly focused beam of infrasound—that is, vibration waves slower than 100 vps [vibrations per second]—meant to produce effects that range from “disabling or lethal.” In 1999, Maxwell Technologies patented a Hyper-Sonic Sound System, another “highly directional device . designed to control hostile crowds or disable hostage takers.” The same year Primex Physics International patented both the “Acoustic Blaster,” which produced “repetitive impulse waveforms” of 165dB, direct- able at a distance of 50 feet, for “antipersonnel applications,” and the Sequential Arc Discharge Acoustic Generator, which produces “high intensity impulsive sound waves by purely electrical means.” 1 Sounding Fascism in Cinema 1. All translations from Italian texts used in the work are mine. 2. Gentile’s “Fundamental Ideas,” second part of the “Doctrine of Fascism,” which appeared in the Enciclopedia Italiana in 1932, under the title Fascism, see web entry http://www.treccani.it/biblioteca/biblioteca_fonti. htm. 3. Two films with different intents at different moments in history recount the “nation” in its multiplicity of languages and heterogeneous realities and map it from the south to the north: Blasetti’s 1860 (1933) shot during 188 l Notes Fascism for fascist edification and enticement, and Rossellini’s Paisà (1946) that illustrates the status of the nation at the moment of the post- war Liberation. Taken together, they offer an idea of how the linguistic and national unity prospected by the fascist Regime was not accomplished at all. The two films also expose a paradigmatic use of the technology of sound recording and production to which I will return to in chapter 4. 4. In the article by Virginia Pulcini, “Attitudes toward the Spread of English in Italy,” which specifically addresses the evolution of and the relation between the Italian and English languages, and the spread of the latter in Italy since the advent of Fascism to the post–World War Two period, dubbing is an invisible naturalized force, the author mentions it en passant, as an adjective for films and television series that in Italy are, as a matter of fact “dubbed.” Cleansed of its reasons for being, like impeding the spread of foreign languages, and English, in this analysis dubbing simply produces “faulty shifts of meanings” of English words because of “hasty translations” (81). In Pulcini’s inquiry into the motivations for the poor status of second-language acquisition and proficiency, dubbing does not figure at all as one of the indirect repressive agents. Mostly to blame is bad teaching, not the fact of having absolutely no linguistic exposure to other languages if not through tourists visiting, travel, or personal interests, and curiosity. She concludes the article affirming, in contrast to nations like France, the open Italian attitude toward English that the lack of restrictive linguistic policies guarantees. In Pulcini’s vision, after the linguistic xeno- phobia of the fascist Regime, Italians have developed a very democratic attitude toward cultural matters, so dubbing loses its repressive history, and is simply stratified in the monocultural and monolingual scape that the Fascist Regime successfully implemented. 2 Dubbing in Deed, and Listening to Dubbing 1. The technical definition of the term and process is generally given without names of famous inventors and specific dates, as in Mary Ann Doane’s essay on sound editing and mixing where she provides a clear and detailed explanation of this post-production process that avoids breaks and inter- ruptions of the audiovisual flow following the Hollywood values of conti- nuity, or continuous narration (in Film Sound 57). 2. It is not difficult to make the connection with the way Blackface min- strelsy represented black characters as mis-speakers for laughs, and how this was carried into a common idea that many people had/have of how blacks speak. 3. It is useful to remember also how the names of internationally popular musicians, famously Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman, had to be Italianized, literally translated, for the Italian public into Luigi Braccioforte and Beniamino Buonomo. Jazz music as “negro music,” was unwelcome. Notes l 189 In the article “Fascismo e Tradizione” from the fascist magazine Il Popolo d’Italia penned by Carlo Ravasio, (March 30, 1928), the journalist, future undersecretary of the PNF, asks why should the Italian people put their violins and mandolins in the attic and exchange them for saxophones that can only play barbaric melodies, or Americanate [things American] of every sort. 1928 signaled the beginning of the fascist attack on jazz and the ensuing politics of the national radio (EIAR, Ente Italiano Audizioni Radiofoniche) of dramatically reducing the broadcasting of foreign music in favor of national music. See Mazzoletti, A. Il jazz in Italia. 3 Cinema Talk: Between “Make Believe” and Schizophonia 1. Pirandello’s complaints, which here center on the as yet imperfect technology, also recall how audiences, often used to live musical performance during a film, also had to learn to listen to the screen, to suspend aspects of disbelief. The whole question of dubbing is also a question about what has been suspended, and what this might mean culturally. 2. Even in Italian, the substantive acusticita` from the adjective acustico (acoustic) seems personally coined by the author, or it is an archaic form currently not notated in various dictionaries; thus I offer the same old/ neologism in English. 3. In Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts, Douglas Kahn vari- ously and extensively discusses his work, with and without the futurists, in the elaboration of and for the soundtrack of modernity. 4. The study on dubbing by Fodor, which is the only monograph and sys- tematic investigation on the subject, explores the dynamics of the process from a technical linguistic, phonetic point of view, with much attention to the problem of “phonetic synchrony,” as defined above, and of “character synchrony” as the creation of harmony between the sounds of the dubber, his/her vocal performance, and the film actors’ physical presence, temperament, bodily gestures, and facial expressions. The detailed analysis is grounded in a linguistic frame, but Fodor goes on to underline the conceptual impossibility of dubbing, as it stages on film the essential dis- crepancy of foreign words on foreign gestures and technically undermines the profound connection and inseparability of a body that speaks its own spoken words. He also explores the cultural impossibility of dubbing to render and maintain whole the connotative elements of film, as the new (target) language should adapt, and naturally fails to adapt, to the specific sociocultural visual representation on the screen. According to Fodor, only the denotative elements of film can be carried by dubbing, that is, the ver- bal information of the film although dichotomized from the specifically paralinguistic and aesthetic information. Also, as plot and dialogue translation “content synchrony” is somehow problematic not simply because it suffers from the modifications necessary to synchronize the dialogues, but 190 l Notes because cultural and political factors do intervene and can influence the translation of the original text. Moreover, Fodor emphasizes how often the requirements of phonetic synchrony are antagonistic to those of character and content synchrony. It becomes a matter of choice what type of synchrony is preferred; thus an impeccable dubbing is inconceivable. 5. The Italian word doppiata, that is “dubbed,” is contained in the word rad- doppiata “re/doubled,” the pun is thus with the word “doubled” “raddop- piata” containing in itself the word dubbed, “doppiata,” as if in English the word for re/doubled was “redubbed.” 6. In Italian the word for silent cinema is cinema muto, “mute cinema,” it emphasizes the absolute impossibility of speech, the impossibility of a cinema that can talk. The English “silent” seems to be a more evocative word that defines an atmosphere, silence being the lack of sound but not its impossibility. 4 The Soundtrack after Fascism: The Neorealist Play without Sound 1. For the sake of terminological clarity, I differentiate between the word and notion of dubbing and post-synchronization. I use dubbing to indicate the imposed mode of audio translation of foreign films, while I will refer to post-synchronization to signify the post-production of the soundtrack of national films which are not in need of translation. To maintain the distinction is somewhat complicated since both involve post-synchronization, and in many authors’ and directors’ references the word “dubbing” tends to be used to indicate both practices. The distinction is not about the technology and techniques, it is formal, concerning the objectives, both aesthetic and ideological, of the two practices as they converge and diverge, as will become fully clear in the discussion of the films of Antonioni and Pasolini. Thus, keeping in mind the distinction between dubbing as translation, and post-synchronization as soundtrack post-production technique is relevant for my argument. 2. Italy remains a dubbing country; despite the considerable change in the possibility of audiovisual exposure to films in original language offered by cable TV and digital reproduction, distribution market and spectator habit favor the traditional modality of dubbing as opposed to subtitling.

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