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Opening at the IFC Center in New York on February 12th, Erik
Gandini’s documentary “Videocracy” examines how Silvio
Berlusconi’s control of Italian television facilitates control
over a population that appears even more addicted to junk TV than
the U.S.’s One might even wonder if Gandini chose the title
“Videocracy” in honor of a similar but fictional film titled
“Idiocracy” directed by Mike Judge of “Beavis and Butt-head” fame.
This is from my November 2007 review:
Mike Judge’s world of 2506 is a lot like today’s world, except
even worse. Fed by a diet of stupid television shows and movies
like “Knocked Up,” they have forgotten how to read a book and can
barely speak. Their language is a mixture of grunts, slacker style
“ya knows” and locker room profanity–both from men and women.
Anybody who is the least bit articulate, including [hero] Joe
Bauers, is seen as a “faggot”.
Watching “Videocracy”, you get the impression that the whole of
Italy has been sent to Mike Judge’s future world. We meet a 26
year old machinist named Rick Cantelli who is practicing karate
moves on the front lawn of the house he shares with his mother.
After he is finished his work out, he tells us that unless you
appear on television in Italy, you are nothing. Or more exactly,
you are condemned to do work as a machinist or whatever capitalist
society has assigned you to do as a function of class origins and
education. Cantelli dreams of being a contestant on what appears
to be the Italian version of American Idol, on one of the three
private stations owned by Berlusconi. (He also controls the public
stations by virtue of being prime minister. All in all, he has 90
percent of the airwaves tied up.)
read full review:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/videocracy/
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