Circulating Populist Sentiments in 21st Century Film and TV Fiction in Italy

The aim of this project is to study the role played by fictional audiovisual media in cultures of populism, in 21st-century Italy. In past decades, liberal democracies have been threatened by the rise of populist movements, hegemonizing complex social and economic crises through a pattern of recurring, simplified narratives. Key features of this “populist imagination” are: the rhetorical construction and idealization of national “people”; its habitual relationship to a charismatic leader; a social binary between that “people” and a corrupt elite or external enemy; and contempt for traditional political processes. The role of the media in the affirmation of populism has been widely acknowledged: political narratives and audiovisual fiction spread through an interrupted flow in the mediascape. Though much research has been dedicated to the role of the information media, little work has illustrated the extent to which fictional narratives are a crucial actant in the populist mediascape.