Best Posters, 2017

I was encouraged to begin the 2017 version of "the year's best posters" by a remark made by Larry David, the creator of the popular television comedy series, "Curb Your Enthusiasm."  Asked about the show going into still another season--its 10th--David responded: "When one has the opportunity to annoy someone, one should do so."

So I'll get to it--annoying someone, that is.  Here's the first poster of this year's bunch.  It's included not for any aesthetic reason, but because it was the most widely disseminated poster of the year.  Ubiquitous and unavoidable.  Note the use of English. Intimissimi is one of the largest Italian lingerie chains.

I hope I haven't lost all my female audience, because the annoying part is pretty much over.  Actually, I'm a moderately sensitive guy on gender issues (yes, it was required).  To prove it, here's a poster from Ostiense (probably November 2016):

Call for meeting at Forte Prenestino, an avant-garde leftist space.  Solidarity.
The second line is famous:  "If I can't dance it's not my revolution."

The following poster, too, uses the words/slogan/manifesto "Non una di meno" (literally "not one less," though perhaps better translated "no one (female) left behind").  It calls for a struggle (lotto) and a global strike by women ("if our lives are not valued, we strike"). 

I also have a sense of humor. I found this one in the Re di Roma area, walking around while Dianne was getting her hair done.

The next one's a mystery.  Found in Trastevere, it seems to advertise an art fair--or more likely takes issue with the "art market."  It presents artists as mere money grubbers with silly ideas (the cover of the book seems to identify the work of street artists with sandwiches: "nuove figurini panini"). Wish I could blow it up just a bit more. 

In any given year, most of the posters are political, and 2017 was no exception.  I was intrigued by this poster, featuring Martin Luther King, Jr., on a corner in the ethnically mixed neighborhood of Torpignattara. 

The same community yielded the rather dramatic poster below.  It identifies a number of issues--unemployment, "cementification" (paving over paradise), and the distribution of wealth--that make the quartieri invivibili "unlivable."  The line in black reads:  "He who does not revolt remains a slave (male or female)."

Whether leftist or rightist or beyond politics, some made the list because they're colorful or pretty.
Of the three posters immediately below, the first two are products of the radical right.  The third advertises the annual flower festival in Genzano di Roma, in the Colli Albani (a wonderful event). For an explanation of the torch poster, we recommend Paul Baxa's history of Acca Laurenzia. 

Lovely

There's still some interest in Communism.  Don't miss the new biography of Lenin!  Not such a nice guy, we hear. 

"Power to those who work and those who are unemployed.  All power to the proletariat."

The next one's another mystery.  I looked up "Etere" on the internet but was unable to make much progress.  I originally translated it "to be or not to be," but it's not clear that Etere (one meaning is "ether") means "to be," even in Latin.  Help me out here.

At the intersection of Via Po and Viale Regina Margherita

Opposition to the European Union, here depicted as the chains of servitude, has been a  major poster theme for years. 

Bill
For some previous editions, see:
2016
2014
2013
2012
etc.

Rome's right-wing Graffiti: the 2014 Collection

We're not fans of people tagging and writing on Rome's buildings.  But not writing about it won't make it go away.  We doubt the graffiti writers are reading the RST blog and rejoicing in their having been discovered, or recognized.

Most of the casual graffiti writing--maybe 90%--is right-wing.  Disaffected youth expressing their ideas and concerns, such as they are.  Here's the rightist stuff we found on Rome's walls in 2014.

"Tutto il resto e' noia"/All the rest is boredom or, perhaps better, All that remains is boredom.
When we first saw this, the meaning seemed obvious.  The young rebels of the right--and the Sun Cross/LS (see below) signature suggests we are dealing with the radical right--are bored. It's not clear why they're bored.  It may be because they're not involved--unemployed, not in power, doing uninteresting, menial work.  And the "resto" implies some previous state, or other state, of non-boredom.  According to our Rome friend Massimo, the phrase expresses "a sort of existential ennui,...extended to cover a political stance: everything that is not (political action), everything that is not 'us' (that is, il resto, with their lazy and bourgeois life) is just plain boring." 


We agree.  But there's a complication, though one that doesn't change our sense of what the phrase means: "Tutto il resto e' noia" is also the title and chorus of beloved singer-songwriter Franco Califano's (1938-2013) most famous song.  Although written in 1976 during the anni di piombo, it seems to have no political valence.  It's just a love song.  Correspondent Massimo adds, however, that Califano the man and Califano the songwriter expressed something like a right-wing view of relationships between men and women.  So perhaps there is a link. 

"Vita, amore, guerra"/Life, Love, War.  Echoes here of the vitalism of Nietzsche, the Italian
Futurists, the cult of Mussolini and Fascism, even Hemingway.  You can add to the list.  If you're really bored, you can get some relief by going to war against the Austria/Hungarians.  Or driving an ambulance.








"Eredi di terza posizione"/Heirs of the Third Position.  The "Third Position" was a right-wing group founded in Rome in 1978, during the anni di piombo.  The "Third Position" reflected the group's goal of grounding a society in neither capitalism nor socialism--hence a "third" position--based on the ideas of Julius Evola.  The main ideas, which seem straight out of 1920s Fascism--are nationalism, tradition, militarism, and opposition to parliamentary government.  The Third Position now has a theme song, "Inno della terza posizione"/Hymn of the Third Position (2014), which you can listen to online--if you can stand it.  You can learn more about the "terza posizione" on Wikipedia, in English.

"Passi securi, passi pesanti e lenti"/Sure steps, heavy and slow.  This slogan suggests that the group will move in a gradual but determined way toward its goal.  We also have a signature: the LS - Lotta Studentesca (Student Struggle), a right-wing organization and one of the "Eredi di terza posizione" [see just above], this one focused on changes in the educational system. Appropriately, we found this grafitti on a school building. Perhaps this, too, is from a popular song. 

"Arma la tua anima"/Arm your Soul/Arm your Spirit.  We're not entirely sure what this means, though the schematic fasci at the right of the slogan mark it as right wing.  Also, it's likely from the right because that side seems particularly interesting in being armed.  We think it means "Toughen Up."  Note, too, that around the fasci are two letters--B and S--likely standing for Blocco

Studentesco (Student Bloc), a ring-wing organization similar to the Lotta Studentesca.  Those enamored with this organization can purchase a T-shirt bearing the words "Arma la tua anima," along with the words "absentia lunae."  This phrase is the name of an affiliated black metal band, whose website describes its "lyrical themes" as "negativity, emptiness, sadness"; its enemy as "modern scum"; and its goal as "resistance against the modern world."  Very earnest.   


"Valentino presente."  We haven't been able to pin down who Valentino is or was.  But from past experience we do know that the word "presente" (Present) means that Valentino is dead--likely some time ago, and likely as a consequence of his commitment to the values and goals of the right.  (We first saw the word "presente" used in this way on a poster in the Tuscolano zone, paying tribute to 3 young rightists killed there in 1978).  To say "Valentino presente" is to say that Valentino is alive in the hearts and minds of those committed to the cause.  The word was used by the Fascists in reference to Italian soldiers killed in the Great War. 

Bill

Rome's Best Posters, 2014

Compared to any place in the U.S., Rome is a poster city.  Some are legal, some are "abusivi"--illegal--and most of them are interesting in one way or another.  It wasn't a great vintage, but here are our 2014 favorites:

Bill

As in the U.S., the Italy's right wing--here, the Lotta Studentesca and Forza Nuova--have appropriated the family, as if the left didn't care about families, and as if the policies of the right didn't damage them.  The poster announces a "March for the Family" in Piazza Mazzini.  Bring your three kids and wear jeans.  And smile a lot; raising 3 kids is easy.  Are they all boys?

We first shot this one through a bus window, then returned to photograph it again.  It's Ronald, of course, and next to him the words "I'm destroying it," meaning the world (a take off on the company's ubiquitous slogan "I'm lovin' it," of course).  Across the golden arches it reads "McDeath."  This is a rare poster. 



Here are two of the most crowd-pleasing Popes (at least prior to Francis), Pope John Paul II (left) and John XXIII (right), freshly made new saints on April 27.  The political party, Azione Cattolica Italiana, is thanking us all--for just what we can't say.  Or is it thanking them?  Colorful, though, with slanted graphics.  These were everywhere.  

This is a right-wing effort.  The words below translate as "Honor to Fallen Comrades, Victims of Anti-Fascist Hatred."   The "7" refers to January 7, 1978, when a man on a motorcyle shot and killed 2 members of the neo-Fascist group, Fronte del Gioventu'.  The killing took place in the Tuscolano neighborhood on via Acca Laurenzia, where there is an informal memorial to the event.  Historian and guest blogger Paul Baxa wrote an insightful post on this event and its aftermath.  

Here, a larger poster for a TIM fiber network is partially covered by a poster announcing an event around the work of American poet and novelist Charles Bukowski--one of our favorite authors, despite his outrageous sexism.  The coloring and the pose are reminiscent of the 2008 "Hope" poster of Barack Obama, but the sponsor, CasaPound, is right-wing.  A CasaPound poster made it into our 2012 year-end poster reflections as well.

"Enough Immigration, Enough Banks, Enough of the Euro"/"We want a Europe of Homelands"
The right-wing message, clear enough, is distributed by the Fronte dei Popoli Europei--a group with which we're not familiar, and the Lega Nord [see the circle at bottom right], a once powerful northern Italian party that in the past advocated the secession of the north from the Italian nation.  Although the Lega Nord no longer has much power or influence, the anti-Europe, anti-immigration sentiments of this poster are common in Italy.  In the background, the arm wielding
the hammer suggests the appeal is to the working class. 

"All' Assalto" might be translated "On the Attack" or "To the Barricades."  The author is the Lotta Studentesca [LS, Student Struggle].  The best we could do with the words at the bottom is "Not in anger, not to destroy, but for the red dawn," whatever the "red dawn" is.  The LS is a right-wing organization committed to educational change.  The building is the famous "Square Coliseum," a Fascist-era structure in EUR with visual links to the Coliseum and, therefore, imperial Rome.  

We chose this one not because it's a great poster--the layout is standard for politics--but because the message is clear.  The group "Contropotere," its symbol a pair of pincers, wants to get rid of the new Rome mayor, Ignazio Marino ["Rome, throw out Marino"].  However, the words at the top--listing the homeless, the unemployed, workers without contracts, students, and others--suggest a left-wing orientation, and Marino is center-left.  Anarchists at work?

Lotta Studentesca, Blocco Studentesco: the young right wing tackles education

As you walk the streets of Rome--and if you "read" its walls--you'll find evidence of two similarly-sounding organizations: the Lotta Studentesca (literally Student Struggle) and Blocco Studentesco (Student Block).  Both are student organizations, and both are actively--perhaps sometimes too actively--involved in changing Italian schools, including secondary schools and universities. 

Posted outside a school on via Taranto

Although its name dates to the 1970s, the current Lotta Studentesca began as the youth arm of Forza Nuova, a militant, anti-immigrant, homophobic far-right political party founded in 1997.  The LS wants more investment in the public schools, opposes costly textbooks (costly, they say, because of corruption), is anti-drugs, and advocates more emphasis on school sports. 

Reprediamoci Tutto: We'll Take it all Back

The Blocco Studentesco emerged in 2006 from CasaPound, a neo-fascist organization named after the American poet Ezra Pound, who in the 1940s, while living in Italy, was an ardent supporter of the Mussolini regime.  It currently has affiliates in some 40 Italian cities, including Rome, Verona, Parma, and Palermo. 







The Rome affiliate has carried out occupations of several schools in Rome and, on October 29, 2008, occupied the tourist mecca Piazza Navona, where its supporters participated in a bloody clash with opponents on the left.  The clash was precipitated by the Gelmini Decree, named after Mariastella Gelmini, the

A Rome school occupied by Blocco Studentesco

Minister of Education, and passed by the Italian parliament.  The Gelmini Decree was composed of a series of proposed actions, most of which were opposed by the Blocco Studentesco.  The group was especially angry about cuts to the education budget (response: "we won't pay for your crisis") and a new course offering in "civic education" that was likely understood as an exercise in thought control. 

Despite the militant protests, the BS program seems less than revolutionary:  improved services, reduced bureaucracy, more student representation in decision-making, opposition to public money being spent on private schools.  A Roman friend offers a different perspective.  He describes both movements as "violent and dangerous," "anti-Semitic and homophobic."  "The difference [between them]," he adds, "is minimal and linked to personal opposition and dislike between their leaders." 

Bill

For more on "reading" Rome's walls, see our December 2011 post.

Opposition to government spending on private schools.