Question

What does Luigi Barzini mean by “the importance of spectacle” and what does he attribute it to?

Answer 1

Luigi Barzini Jr was a journalist, politician, and writer, in 1964 he wrote the book “the Italians” depicting the national character of Italy. The book deals with the issues of religion, family history, art, honor and many more issues that are fabrics of Italian people.

He had described in his book Italy being a very beautiful country with its sunny weather, music, art, love for Italian food, or get an education. The visitors also belong to a different category of life. Italy is mixed with illusion and reality, The Italian people represent the false picture of life by good gesture and language, they pretend to be having enough source of income and money, that is just to show the outside world, in reality, the life would be hard and tough, and they may not have wealth, but pretend to be having it.

They know the life is hard and full of difficulties as per Luigi Barzini the life of a normal Italian is based on illusion and spectacle.

Spectacle means the viewers who can see what is getting presented to them. This book was written when there was a vast difference between wealthy people and poor people, now Italy has the same GDP as the UK.

This book is talking about Italy when it was a poor country, and there was a wide range of difference in the wealth, between the wealthy north and the poor south.

As per  Luigi Barzini Jr, the Italian was presenting the pseudo picture of Italian life to the spectators who were visiting Italy, and this is the importance of spectacle that the poverty, unequal distribution of wealth were covered under good facial expressions, gesture, and language. People are seeing what was being presented to them.