What does the expression pop culture mean today? And how does it contribute to understanding a Country and a cultural group? This collection of essays, diverse in content, approach and perspective, tries to answer these questions. It aims at describing and figuring out the texture of Italian pop culture – as a meaningful juxtaposition between high and low, mass and elite, artistic and consumerist – in relation to the Italian mediascape and cultural context.
Through the mosaic of narratives produced by television, music, comics and novels, to name a few, and the mixture of genres and types of cultural products analyzed in every essay, the reader is allowed to further the knowledge of Italian pop culture and to get a glimpse of Italians and ‘Italian-ness’.
- Fabio Corsini, Introduction: Working Out the Puzzle of Italian Popular Culture
- Paolo Biondi, Understanding Italian Comics Culture: Hugo Pratt, the 9th Art and Politics
- Marco Bracci And Edoardo Tabasso, Stil Novo. The Legendarily Adventurous Route of Italian Music in Search of Pop Maturity
- Milly Buonanno, Fallen Heroes and Anti-Heroines: The Mafia Story in Italian TV Drama
- Fabio Corsini, Italian Webseries: The New (yet Old) Way of Storytelling
- Flavia Monceri, Porn as a Cultural Product
- Anna Lucia Natale, In the Beginning There Was the Radio… Contexts and Genres of Radio Entertainment
- Nicoletta Peluffo, The Adventures of Pinocchio: An Outcome of Popular Culture
- Kristin Stasiowski, A Divine Comedy for All Time: Dante’s Enduring Relevance for the Contemporary Reader
- Bernardo Valli, Italy and the Search for Modernity: At the Origins of Made in Italy
- Contributors