Hajek, A. (2014) Coming to terms with terrorism: Sergio Corbucci's Donne armate and the trauma of the anni di piombo. Italianist, 34(2), pp. 219-234. (doi: 10.1179/0261434014Z.00000000074)
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Abstract
Since Italy’s transition to the Second Republic in the early 1990s, a period marked by attempts to come to terms with the traumatic experience of the violent 1970s, cinema and television have increasingly been (ab)used for the rewriting of national history, often within a revisionist framework, and for the promotion of new discourses of reconciliation. The miniseries Donne armate (Sergio Corbucci, 1991) is one such attempt to work through the trauma of political violence by rehumanizing — in the words of Giancarlo Lombardi (2009) — the demonized figure of the terrorist. Produced in the same period as Sergio Zavoli’s television documentary La notte della repubblica, where former terrorists from both sides of the ideological spectrum are offered the chance to publicly express their personal reflections and regrets, Donne armate also promotes a discourse of reconciliation by bringing together two women belonging to different sides of the law: a terrorist and a policewoman. This reconciliation with Italy’s violent past is reinforced by the casting of Lina Sastri in the role of the terrorist, calling back memories of Giuseppe Bertolucci’s Segreti segreti (1984), where Sastri interpreted a ruthless terrorist killer who is eventually defeated by the law. Drawing, among other things, on theories of cultural memory and trauma, this article discusses — through an analysis of both Donne armate and a number of television programmes on terrorism broadcast in the early 1990s — the political potentialities and limits of television in processes of healing and national reconciliation.
| Item Type: | Articles (Other) |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | Annual Film Issue |
| Keywords: | terrorism, cultural trauma, pluri-mediality, premediation, reconciliation, Italy, television, Donne armate |
| Status: | Published |
| Refereed: | Yes |
| Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: | Hajek, Dr Andrea |
| Authors: | Hajek, A. |
| Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DG Italy |
| College/School: | College of Arts & Humanities > School of Modern Languages and Cultures > Italian |
| Journal Name: | Italianist |
| Publisher: | Maney Publishing |
| ISSN: | 0261-4340 |
| ISSN (Online): | 1748-619X |
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