#mezzogiorno

[gregor-samsung]

“ Disteso sul pagliericcio del carcere, mi sentivo a casa mia, dissi a Chiellino, nel sogno ora stavo bene, ma lui mi svegliò veramente dal bel torpore dell’ultimo sonno con le parole “La campagna si fa lunga”. Il carcere era per lui, come quella della Libia e del fronte italiano, un’altra campagna. Caddi dalla branda. Volli prendere lo straccio, non so se mi spettava, e se pure mi spettava, Chiellino in mia vece era già accoccolato e così, piegato sulle ginocchia, indietreggiava man mano che con lo straccio puliva il pavimento e la striscia bagnata arrivava ai suoi piedi. «No, no, deve venire uno specchio, tu lo lisci, devi calcare; calca forte» mi diceva Chiellino. Calcavo forte e nello sventagliare lo straccio due opposti pensieri, a destra e a sinistra, mi salivano in capo: perché dobbiamo pulirci noi il pavimento? Ecco l’origine della schiavitù. Giappone, perciò, non si abbassa mai, è lì che fischietta e sorveglia, da padrone: lui, ed anch’io, faremmo crescere la polvere dei mesi e degli anni, lui per protestare e chiedere il colloquio e dire al procuratore di provvedere con uno spazzino o con una guardia, io per richiudermi nello sdegno e nell’isolamento, per non darla vinta ai boia, ai comandanti, ai giudici: essi non ci hanno soltanto messi in galera per scacciarci dalle strade, ma così ottengono che ci avvezziamo all’umile ordine interno e che ricreiamo tra noi la gerarchia dei servizi, la necessità di una legge. Loro ci volano sopra, sorridenti e beati come il generale passa a cavallo a dire col mento, col mento suo e con quello del cavallo: “Bravi, voi siete il mio ordine e la mia volontà, il mio regolamento. Fra poco morirete da cani in battaglia; anche questo è previsto”. Noi siamo le pecore e i buoi dei macellai e dei proprietari di bestiame. Così essi mantengono la loro ragione sugli operai, sui contadini, sui pezzenti e il sempre nuovo annuncio del vangelo, ogni giorno e ogni domenica, ripete la legge degli uomini e ognuno dice a se stesso: “Io sono la via, la verità, la vita” e subito corre a comandare alla moglie, ai figli, al fratello più piccolo, al più debole di sé. Il pavimento si bagnava, potevo vedermi la faccia dentro e mi arrestai nel vederla. “

Rocco Scotellaro, L' uva puttanella-Contadini del Sud, Laterza (collana Universale, n° 4; prefazione di Carlo Levi), 1977⁴, pp. 79-80.

[Prime Edizioni originali, postume: Laterza (collana Libri del tempo), 1956-1954]

[monstrousgourmandizingcats]

Insane passage from Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi.

[isabelladifronzo]

L'attrice Giovanna Mezzogiorno e le crudeltà sul set per il suo corpo sovrappeso: «In tanti hanno chiuso i rapporti, c'era chi diceva che ero malata» - Open

[thegretchenimages]

Stare a casa è bello e frustrante allo stesso tempo ma quando dalla cucina si alza l'odore del piatto tipico di tutta la tua infanzia è strepitoso.

[primepaginequotidiani]

PRIMA PAGINA Il Quotidiano Del Sud di Oggi mercoledì, 18 settembre 2024

[womenforwomenitaly]

Quali rischi per le donne sulle riforme del premierato e autonomia differenziata. Il pensiero femminista è cruciale per contrastare queste riforme che potrebbero aumentare le disuguaglianze e limitare la libertà di scelta delle donne.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"There can be no systematic intellectual progress in the study of organized crime assuming contentious governing structures beforehand.

Feuds and vendettas are endemic within underworld societies though one cannot assume there are never any effective restraints. It makes perfectly good sense for mobsters of any ethnic or racial background in any era to realize that killing other mobsters is dangerous and for them to seek allies or determine the range of opponents when contemplating such action. Sometimes those they wish to kill are frightening enough to restrain violence; sometimes not. Reasonable fear aside, there are other factors which either impede or stimulate organized crime's internal violence. Among the most important is whether or not there is a serious law enforcement investigation focusing on particular syndicates. For when organized criminals face potentially decisive prosecutions, they turn to killing one another with abandon knowing that their closest allies pose an unacceptable risk.

Informing is often good for business particularly when it eliminates competition in various illicit activities. Giving up other criminals thus helps to keep the police away from one's own door. Informing is also demanded by law enforcement for its own organizational needs, both for continuing general intelligence and to maintain a record of arrests and prosecutions. All this without mentioning corruption in the classic sense, where police figures are more deeply embedded members of criminal syndicates, or those variants where police units are in effect criminal syndicates. In these variations, intelligence-gathering through a flow of coerced underworld informants is constant. In the complex web of relations between organized crime and law enforcement, informing on others is a crucially important activity. That organized criminals "grass" to police is more the rule than is the romantic notion of "omerta." This naturally sets off a murderous Cycle - those with critical information know they may well be killed by their closest confederates so they in turn either kill them, flee, turn to law enforcement as informants. It is always a very precarious business, with treachery at every step.

Patron-client networks which can be thought of as complex grids of constantly changing social power holding precariously together professional criminals, their clients and victims, criminal lawyers, police and politicians, are the predominant form of association characteristic of underworlds. Obviously crime bosses and others in these networks seek to achieve a situation in which they will be protected-bosses from ambitious underlings and rival bosses, underlings and associates from bosses either somewhat psychopathic or under pressure from law enforcement. But there are no methods for controlling violence once these networks begin to change as they invariably do, except the traditional one of murdering actual and more importantly potential informers.

In the social world of organized crime who can ever know with certainty what criminal with important knowledge will inform? The fluid structure of criminal syndicates and the turbulent world within which organized criminals operate always undermine loyalty and restraint despite what crime bosses anxious about their safety may wish. The most important variables of instability are the waxing and waning of law enforcement's needs, the pressures of political reform movements, and simple ambition. They all have a corrosive effect on the connective tissue of patron-clientage.

Nonetheless, the notion of contained violence still persists, as Buscetta's testimony makes clear, indicating it probably serves other purposes or represents an "idealization" of organized crime. In fact, an "idealized" version of organized crime's development may well aid the bureaucratic needs of state agencies. It also appears to fit with popular though mistaken social science paradigms; in this case that of criminal modernization. In the latter case this theme-- sanctioned murder leading to a more complex criminal organization or the other way round-gained a foothold among criminologists because it seemed so logical. Hence, it was not noticed that it reversed the link between data and interpretation. Underworld tattlers filled in the appropriate empirical slots in an already extant theoretical structure.

The most cogent criminological statement that reveals this backward development was given by Robert T. Anderson several decades ago, In his quite famous article, "From Mafia to Cosa Nostra," published in the American Journal of Sociology, argued that the Sicilian Mafia was changing as Sicily itself underwent the process of modernization. Part of that process can be observed, Anderson noted, in the Mafia's adaptation and expansion of its "techniques of exploitation." Quoting from a 1960 article by reporter Claire Sterling, Anderson found that the Mafia had become urbanized:

Today there is not only a Mafia of the feudo (agriculture) but also Mafias of truck gardens, wholesale fruit and vegetable markets, water supply, meat, fishing fleets, flowers, funerals, beer, carrozze (hacks), garages, and construction. Indeed, there is hardly a businessman in western Sicily who doesn't pay for the Mafia's 'protection' in the form of 'u pizzu.

It is not certain what is urban about all these activities (fishing fleets, for instance), but it is plain that Mafia enterprises had widened from what earlier accounts had suggested.

When all was said and done, the dramatic point was that the Mafia "has bureaucratized," or almost bureaucratized, or was on the road to bureaucratization. Anderson wrote that the old or traditional Mafia was "family-like," lacking at least three of the four necessary "characteristics of a bureaucracy." However, that was all changing as Sicily "poised for industrialization with its concomitant changes." But because Sicily was on the brink of modernization, the Sicilian Mafia was momentarily, at least, a mix of the old and the new. There was no doubt, however, where it was heading.

Remarkably enough, it was the American Mafia that provided the example and model. It had achieved bureaucratization, remarked Anderson, "beyond that even of bureaucratized Sicilian groups." One of the key elements in this process involved a striking change in Mafia custom: "Modern mafiosi avoid the use of force as much as possible, and thus differ strikingly from old Sicilian practice." Here, Anderson intimates that the contemporary Sicilian Mafia is also moving in the same direction--away from violence toward other methods of dispute settlement. His discussion of the American Cosa Nostra holds that this overarching structure which is both a proof and attribute of Mafia bureaucratization serves to "adjudicate disputes…to minimize internecine strife, rather than to administer co-operative undertakings."

- Alan A. Block, "Organized Crime: History and Historiography,” in Space, Time & Organized Crime. Second Edition. New York: Routledge, 2020 (originally 1994). p. 33-35.

[elgallinero]

Practice English

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[gregor-samsung]

“ Nella parte vecchia Lecce è suggestiva, dicono barocca, comunque barocca o no è bella, sa di pace di paese, due ragazze mature si passano di mano ammirate un lenzuolino ricamato, sorridono molto compiaciute. Al sommo della salita, da lassú potevi vedere Tricase-porto. Con il suo mare verde. Allora giù a rotta di collo con le biciclette scassate. Biciclette senza sella, senza pedali, senza freni, senza manubrio, senza ruote. Giú con le biciclette a correre verso il mare. Più scivolavi giú, piú sembrava che si allontanasse finché eri già lí nella sabbia, tra le onde. Io e Tonio. Tonio era una specie di scemo. La madre siccome quando era piccolo era molto triste, piangeva giorno e notte, gli aveva dato molta "papagna" (papavero). Tanta di quella papagna per farlo stare buono che gli aveva toccato il cervello. I contadini usavano molta papagna per i bambini troppo agitati, troppo piagnucolosi. La notte era notte e dovevano dormire per la dura giornata nei campi l'indomani, allora un po' di droga ed il piccolo era sistemato. Poi ce n'era tanto di quel papavero nelle campagne salentine! Giú con allegria verso la sabbia, verso le onde spumose, verso i fondali misteriosi, ci pulsava in gola una gioia irrefrenabile e facevamo "uuuh" "uuuh" alle curve. Tonio faceva "uuuh" "uuuh" ed io lo accompagnavo "uuuh" "uuuh". Giú ci aspettava il mare. Sulla collina tra le biciclette soffiava un vento che ci gonfiava le camicie. Su il vento, giú il mare. “

Tommaso Di Ciaula, Prima l'amaro e poi il dolce. Amore e altri mestieri, Feltrinelli (collana Franchi Narratori, n° 33), 1981¹; pp. 88-89.

[sacredwhores]

Patrice Chéreau - The Wounded Man (1983)

[lafiguraentutapiz]

The Wounded Man. Patrice Chéreau. 1983

[recycledmoviecostumes]

This necklace has been used at least eight times over the years. It was first seen in the 1974 adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express, where Jaqueline Bisset wore it as Countess Andrenyi. In 1979 it appeared on Sarah Jane Curran as Princess Augusta Sophia in The Prince Regent as well as on Clare Higgins as Kitty Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. It was not used again until 1997 when it appeared on Greta Scacchi as Juliana in The Serpent’s Kiss. In 2005 it was seen on the BBC production Beethoven, worn by Holly Radford as Eleonore Wegeler, and in 2007 it appeared in Love in the Time of Cholera adorning the neck of Giovanna Mezzogiorno as Fermina. In 2009 it was recycled by Laura Pyper as Jane Fairfax in Emma, and finally in 2022 it was spotted being worn by Gwendoline Christie as Principal Larissa Weems in Wednesday.

Costume Credit: carsNcors, Shrewsbury Lasses, Aurora

Contact Us: submissions@recycledmoviecostumes.com

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[zanephillips]

Vittorio Mezzogiorno in L'homme blessé (The Wounded Man) 1983 | dir Patrice Chéreau

[primepaginequotidiani]

PRIMA PAGINA Il Quotidiano Del Sud di Oggi venerdì, 13 settembre 2024

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Whether an understanding of cultural rivalries tells us more about violence within Italian-American organized crime, and something about relations between American criminals and those from abroad, is naturally not settled. But it seems a more fruitful line of inquiry than the one chosen which is to see all events, in some cases since 1890, in others 1900, or 1930, or 1931, or 1936 through [Mafia] Commission-colored glasses. Let me suggest that American organized crime would have been more or less the same had Sicilians, Neapolitans, and Calabrians never migrated to the U.S. Though much of American organized crime is ethnically oriented, it never depended on the migration of criminally-inclined Southern Italians to prosper. In fact, as far as drug racketeering is concerned, the important entry of Italian American gangsters came after World War II, and their presence signalled a mostly disastrous reorientation of the American market according to users.

As many addicts attested, Jewish-American racketeers were disproportionately represented in smuggling and distributing opium and opiates. Moreover, their dope was purer and cheaper than what came after they apparently left the scene. The accounts indicate that they were replaced particularly after World War II by Italian-American racketeers who sold terrible heroin (cut far too many times with far too much toxic junk) for exorbitant prices. This ethnic change thus represented an era of increasing pain and desperation for users.

The transformation of notable drug racketeers from Jewish- Americans to Italian-Americans was at least partially the result of the Nazi interregnum which destroyed everything Jewish in Europe including overseas traders who supplied American drug distributors. In addition, the effects of chaos in Asia particularly after Pearl Harbor finished other American-Jewish connections with European-born traders living in Chinese coastal cities such as Shanghai and Tientsin. The comparatively stable connections of the pre-Nazi prewar decades which had produced purer narcotics at affordable prices were terminated. Italian-American racketeers responded to the temporary shortage of narcotics and their new position on the line of production and supply in predictably capitalist ways-prices soared and quality plummeted. It was only the postwar U.S. drug world that was crafted on the distribution of bad heroin by Italian-American racketeers to users who were overwhelmingly African-American. It must also be added that for at least the two decades following the war the overseas suppliers for the Italian-American drug distributors were typically French, Greek, Lebanese, and Syrian traders.

The historical reasons for these factor are not difficult to ascertain. The vast majority of Italian-American migrants to the U.S. came from impoverished rural agricultural backgrounds. The history of the Mezzogiorno from the Risorgimento (1860) through World War 2 maintained that backward exploited agriculture zone deliberately that by northern Italian industrialists their political cronies. Historian Jack Reece notes that Sicilians did not participate in post World War I protest movements characteristic of Northern Italy because social, political and economic structures there were "retarded" - "There were no factory occupations in Sicily because there were virtually no factories."

The typical Mafia crimes of this period were "cattle rustling, robbery and extortion." Politically astute Sicilians complained quite rightly that Sicily was far more like a colonial outpost than a "constituent part of the Italian Kingdom." Ceasare Mori, the Prefecture of Police under the Fascist regime, argued that the Mafia was a consequence of illiteracy and pauperism, malaria and chronic economic exploitation brought about by an antediluvian "Latifundia" system, and the personal politics of "clientelism." As so many historians and social scientists have found, the Mafia phenomenon emanated in the post-Risorgimento movement of estate guards to rural power brokers largely caused by the landlords' endemic absenteeism. Southern Italians who migrated to the U.S. in the latter decades of the nineteenth and the early ones of the twentieth centuries unquestionably lacked entrepreneurial skills honed from a commercial environment. They were a world apart from any phase of international commerce including the commerce of drugs. They were far different in this respect from many of the Eastern European migrants to the U.S. who had these skills and contacts with European, Middle East, and Far East contraband traders.

As common sense suggests, Americans who either shared a communal heritage with overseas criminals or otherwise were prepared to develop overseas contacts were far more successful than those without the heritage or contacts. The latter's primary recourse if they wished to enter the narcotics trade was to align themselves with key U.S. importers and wholesalers which is precisely what was done. Italian-American underworld figures who aligned with Jewish-American ones were thus enabled to work in the more profitable spheres of drug trafficking."

- Alan A. Block, "Organized Crime: History and Historiography," in Space, Time & Organized Crime. Second Edition. New York: Routledge, 2020 (originally 1994). p. 40-42.

[elgallinero]

Practice English

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