Thursday, January 15, 2009

A documentary about Mussolini


Photo: Claudio Fuentes Madan

Last Saturday at 10 in the morning they showed a documentary about Mussolini. They didn’t put the credits at the end and I missed the beginning, so I can’t tell you what it was called or who directed it. I started to watch it in the middle and as it went on I decided to take some notes to share here. It’s not that I am already seeing ghosts where there aren’t any, but tell me if all this isn’t too much of a coincidence…

Mussolini:

- He always wanted to win over his audience even if this meant contradicting himself over and over in the media.
- Under his government you could only belong to one party.
- The media only talked about the prosperity of the country.
- He had initiated censorship at the beginning, which ended up becoming the status quo of his regime.
- He promised progress and development.
- He made himself Commander in Chief of Italy.
- He fought wars against the will of his people, in which thousands of soldiers died.
- His wife was barely seen in public.
- His family held positions in the government.
- He introduced compulsory military service.
- He was very paranoid and toward the end of his life his mental state was terrible.
- All the bad he did outweighs the good he’d been able to do.

Note: I have no picture of Mussolini, so I decided on this one by pure "coincidence".

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

oh yeah claudia you forgot some points: he was a fascist! class difference in Italy was huge. Women had close to no rights. If you were poor with no education, no healthcare, no food..nobody cared.
It is easy to look upon the history with shallow eyes, and I know it takes time to read. But the only analyze worth reading or listening to is the one based on at least somer sort of historical knowledge. what is this a provocative joke? fascism is not a joke and you petty the murderous fascist dictatorship with this text. The ideology of Fidel is the opposit of that of Mussolinis. you would know if you read.

Anonymous said...

Hah! That killed me! You're so right Claudia, regardless of what kind of government it is, communist, fascist, whatever. If he fits the description you make above IT'S TOTALITARIAN and it's GOTTA GO. Who cares about analyzing it to that extent. We care about how it affects people and their quality of life, which in Cuba right now sucks for the 21st Century.