The orange man and Jessica Rabbit

Published: July 30, 2009 at 11:06am
This picture from The Telegraph shows Berlusconi's make-up coming off as he mops his brow.

This picture from The Telegraph shows Berlusconi's make-up coming off as he mops his brow.

I suppose Silvio Berlusconi thinks that he is doing his best for Italy’s image on the world stage.

The trouble is that the rest of the civilised world has moved on from the days when men were expected to be patronising prats while women twirled in minimal clothing for their delectation.

Now that sort of thing is a minority perversion and Western Europe looks on in amazement as Italy persists in error.

Perhaps it was to be expected of a tycoon who built his empire on the back of a bunch of desperate ‘vallette’ keen on hitting the big-time by parading in small outfits on Italy’s private television networks, but finishing all washed up at 35 and working in an escort agency.

If you can make it in New York you’ll make it anywhere, as Frank Sinatra sang, but if you make it in Rome, that’s where you’ll stay, moving from screen to dustbin for aged Barbies.

The portrayal of women on Italian television is a source of endless fascination to those of us who are not Italian. Advertisements depict ‘clever’ women smartly performing household chores while admiring men look on and wise grannies dispense advice.

Occasionally, a particularly dirty-looking husband – in the literal sense of the word – is thrown into a handily located washing-machine for a thorough cleaning, wearing an ‘I’m such a naughty boy’ expression while his wife, in full make-up, high heels and a completo by Armani, plays the role of Mamma to her cheeky pseudo-son.

Meanwhile, back in the Italian advertisement kitchens, where there are no dustbins and no washing-up piled high in the sink, the sole role of men is to sneak tastes of food – cheekily, it goes without saying – which women are cooking.

Those women have hair which falls in graceful waves to their shoulders, and though there is not a plastic clip in sight, not one strand winds up in the insalata.

The man hangs around behaving like a toddler while the woman smiles nicely and doesn’t tell him to get the f**k out of the kitchen if he can’t make himself useful. Instead, she uses a bottle of olio extra vergine as a flirtation device.

In this scenario, our 21st-century Italian casalinga has ditched the outfit she put on for the trip to the land of sapone di Marsiglia and is now wearing an abito casual composed of a pristine, starched white shirt encasing her to the wrist (while she whips up some salsa di pomodoro for her marito) and the sort of skirt that Marilyn Monroe might have worn for a bit of breathy writhing on camera.

The difference, of course, is that these are not Marilyn’s famous hips we are talking about, but something that has been reduced by cooking-while-only-pretending-to-eat to the proportions of a 12-year-old boy.

And that just leaves me wondering why the women wearing hardly any clothes on Italian television-shows are shaped like Jessica Rabbit, while the women doing the washing and cooking in Italian advertisements are shaped like teenage boys.

Ah, I get it.

It’s because some women are there for sex and some women are there for housework, and in the minds of Berlusconi Man they’re in different compartments.

The ones who do sex don’t do housework, and the ones who do housework don’t do sex.

The portrayal of women on Italian television is even odder when you consider it in the context of real life outside television in Italy. Italian women put other European women to shame – not because of the way they dress or the way they look, which is really quite ordinary and often even shabby – but because of the way they work.

You would be hard put to find an Italian woman under 55 who doesn’t work, and many of those over 55 will have worked for years but are now retired.

Italian women of child-bearing age can’t rely on Nonna to look after the bambino because Nonna is working even longer hours than Mamma.

In Italy, work for women is not only about money and the household income. It’s about dignity and self-respect and holding your own.

Real Italian women are smart, tough cookies with jobs and careers, but Italian television women are just a Berlusconi fantasy so far removed from life that they might as well be wearing pink gossamer wings and waving magic wands to grant wishes involving food and sex, the first dispensed by pubescent boys in wigs and make-up and the second by Jessica Rabbit.

As for Silvio Berlusconi, even his billions and the fact that he is prime minister are now no longer enough to exert an aphrodisiacal pull on women.

Once a man becomes a joke, the only women who will sleep with him are those he pays to do so, and sometimes not even then.

Listen to ‘Sandra’, a nightclub dancer paid €1,000 to go to Berlusconi’s New Year’s Eve party in Sardinia, quoted in the new book ‘Papi: A Political Scandal’.

She was lying on a guestroom bed when Berlusconi walked in. “His face was coloured with something that looked like self-tanning lotion and it stained his hands too, making them seem greasy. His heels were high….He held a bag full of jewels.”

An orange Father Christmas in high heels? Send out a search-party for Johnny Depp.

Another woman who spoke to the press said: “I’ve worked in the theatre and I know about make-up. He had a lot on. It made him look orange and when he laughed you could see the wrinkles.”

Sandra was just one of several escort-girls who were paid to attend the house-party.

In a bizarre mating ritual or courtship display, the equivalent of a baboon displaying his scarlet bottom, Berlusconi lectured them on politics, showed them films of his meetings with Important People in International Politics, sang songs (he used to be a crooner on a cruise-liner) and fiddled about with an obscene pencil sharpener, a small rubber figure of a man with his trousers down which moaned when he turned the pencil.

Sandra said this made Berlusconi “laugh like crazy.”

Somehow, I just can’t picture the legendary Steve McQueen doing that. Or Barack Obama.

This article is published in The Malta Independent today.




26 Comments Comment

  1. Twanny says:

    And yet he remains popular in Italy. Which goes to show that if you control the media (or enough of it) you can get away with anything.

  2. Nick says:

    Say what you like about Berlusconi, but he is the man who finally united the centre right in Italy, making them an unstoppable electoral force and giving Italy a stable government for the first time since the end of the war. On a personal level I would much rather spend a night out with Berlusconi than Prodi or God forbid Boring Brown.

    • Matthew CG says:

      It’s interesting that you say that, because the outcome of an election very often hinges on whom half the population would rather have a drink with.

      Each man likes to think that he is different to the next, more refined, more discriminating, whatever. But we’re really quite simple, predictable creatures, and campaign teams know and exploit this. They would look at what you’ve just written and say ‘mission accomplished’, because they know that you, like a whole lot of Italian men, would love to sit down with Berlusconi and exchange stories about sexual conquests.

    • Andrea says:

      You sound like those fossil Germans who claim that, at least, Hitler built the autobahn.

      [Daphne – Or one of those Maltese who champion Mintoff because he ‘introduced social services.’ Try telling them that Hitler could have built the autobahn without killing millions of people, or that Mintoff could have introduced social services without turning Malta into the semblance of something behind the Iron Curtain.]

  3. Steve says:

    I don’t particularly like Berlusconi, but don’t most politicians get made up before appearing on TV nowadays?

  4. Leonard says:

    Berlusconi does have some admirable qualities. But he also brings to mind those Italian movies starring Gloria Guida, il-fenek t’Edwige and a bunch of dreadful-looking, lecherous Italian men … Berlusconi would have had no problems walking into any one of those movies.

  5. eros says:

    Never mind his laudable political achievements at home – he was the right man at the right time, taking advantage of the crumbling communists and socialists and of the corrupt and confused Demo-Cristiani. His public image, however, is that of a clown, more so outside Italy, as seen in his pathetic antics during the photo-shoot with Queen Elizabeth.

    He is a disgrace to his country. As to his television stations, it has always been clear that his live shows have to be full of big-bosomed girls – never mind talent – who are meant to distract the audience from the shallowness of the programme. Even a discussion programme on football or F1 has to include scantily clad ‘vallette’. Somebody close to him should give him some serious advice.

    • H.P. Baxxter says:

      To you, he is a disgrace, but to the average Italian, his hamallu exuberance and back-slapping antics are completely normal. Which is why all this fawning stuff about the Italians being the paragon of elegance is complete bollocks. Give me a Romanian* any time, Gypsies included (at least they keep their distance).

      *By way of example, being absolutely despised by the Italians.

  6. P Shaw says:

    The British media are obsessed with Berlusconi and they can’t understand why is he so popular in Italy, even though his popularity is dwindling because of the current scandals.

    There is no love lost between Berlusconi and that other media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, and this might have something to do with it. Ironically Murdoch has become the hero of the left and the communists in Italy.

  7. Joe S says:

    Greetings from Marbella on the Costa del Sol, Daphne. You should have put Berlusconi’s picture in the previous story. Is this how the Italian men make themselves up to look better than us Maltese men?

  8. Loredana Gatt says:

    ….. well, this is the first time in many years that Italy has a stable government that’s doing something to fix the many problems that besiege this otherwise incredible country. I fully agree with you that it’s a big shame that the ambition of most girls in their teens is to get on TV, be seen at Billionaire in Sardegna or marry a footballer (so glad I have a son not a daughter).

    But one can hardly blame Berlusconi for that. The guy saw an opportunity for trash commercial television and took it many years ago when television was a state monopoly. In spite of all his antics and his public “brutte figure” I can assure you that most of the members of his cabinet are doing a great job.

    Little do any of us care what he does in his spare time as long as he and his team get the job done. We had Prodi for four years who, apart from being unbearably bland as a person, did absolutely nothing except try to keep his party together…..while in the meantime the whole country went to the dogs.

    Re Italian women, you’re right. This is quite a matriarchal society. In fact, most women efficiently run and manage not only their Mulino Bianco homes but also their husband’s and father’s businesses. I work in an international law firm where women are not only slowly outnumbering men, but in my opinion are also objectively more “in gamba”. This is a highly paradoxical country ….. while on the one hand we have ‘veline’ and Barilla ladies on TV, women here work hard at home and beyond. There isn’t one Italian family-run enterprise (including Barilla, which owns also Mulino Bianco), hospital, school, government agency, that I have come across in eight years of living and working here that didn’t have a woman somewhere at its helm.

    • Mario De Bono says:

      Are you the Loredana Gatt I used to work with in 1986 in the far north of Malta? San Gwann, lawyer, missing in action ………?

      • Loredana Gatt says:

        Yes, I’m from San Gwann… don’t know what you mean by missing in action….? Or for that matter who you are? 1986 in the far north of Malta? I was at university in 1986.

    • Mario De Bono says:

      You were also at the Ramla Bay Hotel. Missing in action = MIA.

      [Daphne – How convoluted, Mario.]

  9. Anthony Farrugia says:

    As they say in the Bel Paese: L’Italia e’ letteralmente andata a puttane”.

  10. Mario De Bono says:

    I just love Gerald Scarfe, Meerkat, you made my day.

    Oh Berlusconi ……why do so many people vote for him? He is a self-made man: from crooner to one of the richest men in the world.

    You know, I think dear Silvio is playing the fool and hiding a keen intellect behind that facade. He does nothing without a purpose, and the Italians love him for it.

    He peddles sexy girls, and dreams, and whatever makes people comfortable with watching his TV. Although we may disapprove, yet I suspect we secretly admire some of his antics.

    He is also the much lesser of the two evils. I mean, the Italian left made a huge mess of things…..they even took Arnold into their fold, for crying out loud.

    At least this man does not believe that capitalism should die to be replaced by some kind of austere Neo-Marxist-Leninist policy masquerading as social democracy.

    So Silvio, wear all the makeup you like and continue entertaining us ……….I am an unashamed admirer although you are a clown sometimes, and a cynical one at that. Maybe the Italians can drag themselves out of their crisis with you at the helm…….if the botox doesn’t kill you first.

  11. Anthony Farrugia says:

    Well the guy is greaseball and King of Sleaze.

  12. david s says:

    I laugh when I read all this Berlusconi bashing. Berlusconi is a successful person. He started off his media empire with one great idea. It was illegal to have a national TV network in Italy so he bought/franchised numerous local stations to broadcast Canale 5 simultaneously, and thereby acquiring national coverage, and hence national advertising.

    His decision to enter the political fray was when the DC imploded under corruption allegations, which left a vacuum in the centre-right. Within months of his setting up Forza Italia, it became the largest political force in Italy. Probably nowhere in the world has a new political party been created and achieved such instant success.

    And of course you have the envious types like Mani Pulite magistrate Antonio di Pietro, Italy’s equivalent of Saviour Balzan, but 10 times worse, constantly pursuing Berlusconi with one aim in life – to satisfy his envy by seeing him behind bars.

    Berlusconi has achieved the record of serving a full five-year term in government for the first time in post-war Italy, and will soon achieve a new record as the longest serving Italian prime minister.

    Berlusconi is pushing hard for new infrastructure projects, including restarting nuclear power generation which was scrapped by Prodi who had backed a referendum. Yes, leaving such decisions to The People can produce brilliant results.

    So Berlusconi the self-made multi-billionaire, prime minister of Italy, of course wields much power. But did he do so by throwing people into jail, or gagging his opposition ?

    It’s also a fact that power can cause people to start behaving somewhat irrationally. Bill Clinton and his escapades; Thatcher, who became so intolerant, decided not to return to the UK on the night she had a leadership challenge. And Berlusconi after his landslide election victory last year must also be feeling invincible.

    So it is indeed a shame that his great achievements are being tarnished by his unorthodox behaviour which is certainly unbecoming of a prime minister. But let’s not belittle the man as some clown governing a banana republic.

    Even David Cameron, who is still leader of the opposition but feeling increasingly closer to becoming prime minister, only yesterday decided to play cool and swear twice during a radio interview.

    • MS says:

      David, don’t be naive! Of course Berlusconi is gagging the opposition and has been doing so gradually over the years! He might not be doing so brutally in the same manner as Ahmedinejad is trying to oppress his dissidents in Iran. However, by controlling 90% of the Italian media, he directly or indirectly manipulates whatever is broadcast on TV and published in newspapers. Make no mistake, he is not very partial to criticism.

      There is absolutely no comparison between Cameron’s use of ‘t**t’, which is not even considered a swear word by some and Berlusconi’s increasingly outrageous sexual escapades.

  13. Antoine Vella says:

    I used to admire Berlusconi and still think he’s an intelligent and efficient administrator but the fact that he’s unwilling to grow old gracefully is starting to put me off. It’s not just the hair dye and make-up: a man in his seventies shouldn’t be running after girls 45 years his junior – it’s more than undignified, it’s humiliating. He should realise that he’s not a private person and his behaviour reflects on his government and Italy.

    On the other hand, if I were Italian, I would resent foreign media systematically ridiculing my PM. I don’t know how the Telegraph would take it if Berlusconi’s television stations ran daily stories highlighting the gaffes of the Royal Family members.

  14. Karl Flores says:

    I don’t care if it’s Berlusconi’s fault or not. What I care about, although I live on this blessed rock, is that news from AFP says that more than a million Italian families languish in ”absolute poverty” unable to attain minimum standards deemed essential for modern life, the national statistical institute ISTAT said. Nearly five per cent of Italy’s population – almost three million people, often in larger families of three or more children and many in the country’s south – are trapped at a level of economic misery considered degrading. etc, etc.

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