Imagine if Rupert Murdoch could not only run for president of the United States, and not only win, but also govern his lowbrow media fiefdoms via an army of stooge-proxies while occupying the Oval Office. Transplant that cultural drama to Italy, and you've got the staggering Videocracy, director Erik Gandini's documentary about Silvio Berlusconi's three-decade climb from ribald quiz-show producer to Italian Prime Minister. Videocracy doesn't address that history so much as it maps Berlusconi's TV empire, a wasteland teeming with half-naked showgirls, would-be reality stars, and supported by a population in which the image is more than just king -- it is God.
"No one tells about Italian television in a better way than Italian television itself," Gandini told his audience this week at TIFF, where Videocracy amused, baffled and thoroughly baffled moviegoers during its North American premiere. "My idea was basically to enter inside this. It's a balanced view of what's happening in the country and what's happening there. It's much more a portrayal of a world that has been portraying itself too much. I wanted to take the liberty of portraying it my own way. It's something I hope other people will do, too.
"I don't like to be a passive observer, which is what everyone's supposed to be in Italy," Gandini continued. "You have to be happy, have fun -- 'fun' is like a mantra in Italy. And I wanted to show the back side of that with my images."
Mission accomplished. Gandini opens with an introduction to Ricky, a young factory worker convinced that his blend of pop vocals and kung-fu are the key to his reality-TV breakthrough. ("Ricky Martin doesn't do martial arts, and Van Damme doesn't sing," he says, citing his chief influences.) Meanwhile he waits his turn in studio audiences and gripes about women's easier access to stardom. The TV showgirls (known as velines) are a cult of their own, comprising anonymous young starlets on whose flesh Berlusconi's media vision is largely built.
Gandini trips around from there, narrating in the deliberate style of Werner Herzog while blending that filmmaker's knack for character with Errol Morris's more formalist nonfiction touch. In lieu of talking heads, we get a vast white bedroom where candid superagent Lele Mora lurks in repose, or we tag along as scandal-hunting paparazzi-turned-TV star Fabrizio Corona hilariously deconstructs his role in Italy's fame hierarchy. He calls himself a revisionist Robin Hood ("I take from the rich guy, but I don't give to the people, I give to me"), when he really does little more than blackmail his subjects with photos they don't want released. In one case, Berlusconi buys back an "unflattering" picture of his daughter just so can run it in his own magazines.
That cynicism meshes flawlessly with Videocracy's humor. Maybe that's because it is the humor, from the fascist hymn that Mora gleefully sets (and shares) as his mobile ringtone to Berlusconi's campaign-karaoke commercial, simulcast nationwide with sing-along lyrics like "Thank God Silvio exists!" And don't count on changing the channel, either; Berlusconi owns and/or controls virtually all of them.
Mora and Corona in particular underscore that new, Berlusconi-era Italian shamelessness. "I really liked the fact that the more space I gave them, the more they sort of destroyed themselves -- it's like they're suicidal," said Gandini, whose rigorous visual style bespeaks both his time with and access to the subjects. He singled out Corona as "the quintessence" of Berlusconi's 30-year-old media monolith. "All these characters are just products of a system above them, which is bigger than them. I don't even think they're aware of this system. To me it made sense; they're like pawns in a bigger machinery that I wanted to understand."
Gandini did such a good job of understanding, in fact, that Berlusconi's networks have banned Videocracy's trailer and commercials on the air. (The film is currently in release in Italy; the trailer below is NSFW) The administration had already taken to suing domestic and foreign newspapers alike for their inquiries into Berlusconi's scandal-plagued reign. Gandini, an Italian native who lives in Sweden, said he received his own threatening government letter ("in a kind of Orwell text") about the ban earlier this year.
Naturally, the ban didn't quite dampen Videocracy's notoriety. "The day after, there was an explosion on the Internet," Gandini said. "People were spreading this on Facebook, on YouTube. It was uncontrollable. It became the most widely spread piece of information in Italy. Everybody was talking about this. For me, it's a good example of how out of [touch] this idea of controlling TV though censorship is. It's not going to work. It's outdated. The fact that people use other forms of communication is really significant. [...] Newspapers are the ones who always criticize Berlusconi, and they always lose because they use logic, rhetoric and words. He uses emotions. He's a TV guy! He reaches the heart."
In the end, the film's bottom line comes from a Big Brother director who suggests all of Italian TV -- and thus, all it influences by extension both inside and outside Italy -- reflects the flow of Berlusconi's own personality and obsessions. "It's like a science fiction idea," Gandini said. "That one person for 30 years can just project his taste -- in young women, especially -- [means] there's been no discussion about this. It's starting now, basically. If I was a woman in Italy, I'd grab a gun or something. It's unbelievable."