L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, JULY 13, 2017 www.italoamericano.org L'Italo-Americano 26 H ave you ever seen at the beach a hermit crab changing its "home"? It is a very rare spectacle in its wild state, partly because it is mostly a nocturnal animal. At any rate, you might have seen that phe- nomenal crustacean in an aquari- um, as it passes from one seashell to the next, because it has grown off size and needs to carry a bigger home on its shoul- ders. Similarly, Marga Cottino- Jones, Professor Emeritus at the Department of Italian at UCLA, has repeatedly changed her spe- cializations over her academic career, passing from English Literature, through American Classics, and, yet again, to Italian Medieval and Renaissance culture, in which field she became one of the lead- ing Boccaccio's experts in the U.S., co-heading the American Boccaccio Association in the mid-70s. Finally, she helped reshaping the film studies courses, within the Department of Italian at UCLA, and penned a book, Women, Desire, and Power in Italian Cinema, that has careful- ly assessed women's situation in Italy's cinema and society throughout the twentieth century, thus revamping such a fascinat- ing chapter of our history and setting the bar really high for whoever is going to treat the sub- ject in the future. What is your cultural back- ground in terms of studies and what drew you to Italian cul- ture, especially literature and cinema, in the first place? After getting a doctorate in Lettere Moderne from the University of Torino, my home- town, with a specialization in English Literature, I followed my mentor's advice, and came to the U.S. in the late 50s, to study American Literature with Professor M. R. Davis, a special- ist in the American Classics, from the University of Washington in Seattle. He showed interest in my cur- riculum and the Department of English admitted me to their graduate program, offering me a Teaching Assistantship to teach French and Italian in their neigh- boring Department of Romance Languages. At that point, I applied also for other fellowships that the Department suggested for me, and I was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship and an American Business and Professional Women grant that ensured me a good financial assistance while working for my PhD, at the University of Washington. In a few quarters, I fulfilled the course requirements for an M.A. in American Literature, and after completing the exams, I started writing my M.A. thesis on Hawthorne's The Marble Fawn. How did you end up teach- ing at the Department of Italian at UCLA? Through my teaching in the Romance Languages Department, I had become aware of how little my American stu- dents knew of the great humanis- tic heritage that Italian Medieval and Renaissance culture had pro- vided to the development of Western Civilization and that had been such an important part of my education. So, I was faced by a real dilemma: should I continue my studies in the English Department and go back to Italy with a PhD in American Literature so as to be ready to apply for one of the new chairs in that field, as I had planned before, or should I stay in the US and teach Italian medieval and Renaissance culture to the American college students who truly needed such a learning experience to improve their life and their understanding of the world around them? By that time, I had met a young American fellow student whose knowledge of Italian cul- ture was just as poor as my stu- dents', but who had been in Italy during his military service in the Navy and had been fascinated by the depth and richness of Italian culture and historical past. He consequently was encouraging me to stay in the US, marry him, and teach here. He was very per- suading! So I switched Departments and earned a PhD in Romance Languages specializing in Medieval and Renaissance Italian Studies with a dissertation on Boccaccio's Decameron, and moved to California with my husband and one-year-old daughter. You were among the first three vice-presidents of the American Boccaccio Association, in the mid-1970s. What was that chapter of your life like? Boccaccio became thus the topic of a couple of other books of mine, as I was being consid- ered for an Associate Professorship and the chairman- ship of the Department of Italian at UCLA, where I later organized the International Symposium to celebrate Boccaccio's birth cen- tenary, an event that attracted attention all over the Medieval Scholarly world. As a consequence I was asked to become involved with the American Boccaccio Association, that later passed to VALERIO VIALE How Marga Cottino-Jones strove for Italian cultural excellence's recognition LOS ANGELES ITALIAN COMMUNITY the enlightened guidance of for- mer UCLA's students of mine, such as Elissa Weaver and Pier Massimo Forni. At that time, besides chairing my Department I was also involved with other campus pro- grams, such as the Women Studies Program, the Comparative Studies and Folklore Programs, and it was difficult for me to find time for other activities outside of cam- pus. You start your book, Women, Desire, and Power in Italian Cinema (2010), with a quote from Italian diva Monica Vitti, with her consid- erations on the passive role played by women in Italian cinema. Could you elaborate on the influence, exerted by "divismo," in building the image of women solely as beau- tiful objects to look at? In the mid-70s, I had also started getting involved with the restructuring and modernization of our Undergraduate cinema course, as well as with the orga- nization of a new graduate film studies' class, that later on helped me to conceptualize my recent book, Women, Desire and Power in Italian Cinema. I became interested in film studies, because of what I thought was my mission in life, that is, my belief that my teach- ing of Italian culture and of its valuable concepts and artifacts, would benefit and enlighten my students' life and sharpen their understanding of the complexity of life and of human relation- ships. I have always tried to find available efficient tools to raise my students' interest in learning. The visual effects that cinema provides are very useful in all types of learning situations. For what concerns the book under consideration, from the research on women in Italian society and cinema that I have accumulated through the years, I can say that there has been a slow but constant acquisition of awareness of the unfairness of their condition both in Italian society and in Italian cinema, starting with the Neorealism movement of the late 40s and 50s, especially in the films by Rossellini and Pietrangeli. Fascist cinema had powerful- ly delivered the typical Fascist message of the importance of male virility/authority and female sexual submission, or mere motherly function. Nothing could be more evident for an understanding of "divismo" and the social role of women exclu- sively as beautiful objects of desire, than the way the camera obsessively focuses on the beau- tiful body of Clara Calamai in Fascist films. Delving more deeply into your book, you title your first chapter "Cabiria." In what way is this Italian epic silent film so relevant to take up the full chapter? As for my choice to dedicate the first chapter of my book to Cabiria, the silent film is a mas- terpiece of all times. I still stand by it! The eponymous child Cabiria shows how women have been viewed in Italian society for centuries. She is actually the activating force of the whole film, as every family woman is normally the activating force of her own family. And yet, once the action has started, Cabiria is left alone on the floor as an inanimate object, in the corner of the room, tucked away for good, not to be seen or heard until the male heroes come back and start a new action involving her and another protec- tor to take care of her. Then, as soon as she grows up, she becomes an object of desire, licit as well as illicit desire, and again she just keeps her passive role, as "other" (male and female) characters act for her and take care of her, as every young girl in a patriarchal soci- ety expects to be taken care of. So Cabiria well represents the condition of women in Italian society, a woman whose voice is never heard (not even in subti- tles!!!) and who can only be looked at if a male gaze is watching her. Could you sum up, in a paragraph or so, the evolution of women throughout Italian cinema, from the 1950s through the 60s, 70s, 80s, up to the 90s? This condition was often highlighted in the '50s by Comedy Italian Style films that chose to use ridicule to represent male hypocritical behavior and megalomania. This lesson was repeated in more dramatic form in some films of the great mas- ters of Italian Cinema, such as Antonioni, Fellini and Visconti and in the later films of comic filmmakers, such as Benigni and Troisi. Michelangelo Antonioni, especially, has been very impor- tant in studying male-female relationships and highlighting male weaknesses and pointing directly at them as the cause of their female partners' neurosis and alienation. Marga Cottino-Jones, Professor Emeritus at the Department of Italian at UCLA

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