the interview
noon, December 17, 2021 – 08:14
The playwright and De Luca’s arrows against “imbecile” intellectuals: we need a councilor like Nicolini
from Natasha Festa
Always on The culture of insult. The topic raised by the director Enzo d’Errico in the editorial two days ago was commented yesterday, for his part, by Biagio de Giovanni. And in summary it is this: the governor Vincenzo De Luca this time has targeted the Neapolitan intellectuals “a series of idiots who dirty the pages of local newspapers with unbearable examples of provincialism, municipalism, vulgarity and stupidity”. Of the insult in its imaginative form Mimmo Borrelli – considered the greatest Italian playwright as well as being ‘O Maestrale in Gomorra. The series – is an absolute authority. He mixed them with Phlegraean tuff dust and Torregaveta wind of such baroque style as to lead the viewer into a sort of linguistic-phonetic stupor.
What do Borrelli think of this linguistic drift on the part of an institutional summit?
“I started thinking about the insult many years ago. I had intercepted the onset of this phenomenon and I assumed it in my texts by verticalizing it. I explain: to make people understand the extent of violence that is in the insult, I translate it into its most excessive and icastic form. And I was right. Here we are many years later talking about the culture of insult used by representatives of the institutions. What my shows, however, is the cry of the poor against the power of the few. The disadvantaged are entitled to it, not those who are inside the monopoly. The privileged, on the other hand, have made that verbal violence their own and use it at will. I am a little surprised that De Luca has yielded to this need ».
In what sense?
“In his own way, the governor is a very capable speaker – as an actor I notice it right away – and I don’t understand why he has decided to lower his language in this way. Or rather, I understand it: like many others, also due to the press, it needs to “cause a sensation” and to receive immediate consent ».
The one of the likes?
“Exactly. I mention the names of politicians I hated: Andreotti, Craxi, De Mita and even De Michelis. If we reread their speeches we find a very high quality. Perhaps even De Luca could be capable of it but he has departed from his qualities because he was successful precisely by degrading his language and creating the culture of the gag ».
Why the arrows against the intellectuals?
«The intellectuals – and the Pasolini alas are no more – are seen as outsiders to be caged. Others, to be honest, make a living room among themselves. Once politics turned to the wise to understand how the world could change. We, on the other hand, I put it myself, are a series of subjects at the mercy of public funds destined for political structures which then distribute them. In the past, however, the funds were destined to subjects who had expressed a value, to artists. In the 1980s, Roberto De Simone’s company received 800 million, perhaps too much for some, certainly not for me. Today, however, the money goes to institutions, to public theaters and a dynamic of dependence is created. Culture thus becomes a showcase, a commercial ».
Politics does not do patronage but seeks consensus.
«The administrators pass, however, and the poets remain. The truth is that the so-called intellectuals are seen as monkeys in a cage ».
And the bottoms are the peanuts.
«It is as if they said: your show is beautiful but we make you do it. Then there is the self-appointed intelligentsia, the one that judges and says: this yes, this other no. Result: people no longer go to the theater. No wonder: why should they spend 30 euros to see the painful reinterpretation of a classic by dude or dude. No space is given to artists who tell the present. Today culture is entourage, if you are inside it you work, if you are outside you are perceived as a risk ».
In addition to the regional councilor that he immediately advocated to himself, De Luca said “is the city councilor for Culture missing? And who cares, I’ll do it. ”
«I’ll answer with an example. Bassolino as councilor called Renato Nicolini the man who had understood that the theater could not finish in May and invented the Roman summer. The administrators must administer for everything else it is necessary to rely on those who know how to do things “.
December 17, 2021 | 08:14
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