Contemporary paradoxes

The celestial choreography of Palestinian rockets intercepted by the Israeli anti-missile system that explode in the night sky, is the iconic image of this latest conflict that grips our small world globalized also by wars. The closer and more interconnected we are, the more we feel restricted and threatened by our neighbor, by his religion, by his habits, by his traditions, by his language and even by his legitimate aspirations for freedom. The small Al Qassam rockets, homemade by Hamas and the Iron Dome system produced by the Israelis, color the night above Tel Aviv in a succession of long trails and in-flight explosions that pierce television screens all over the world, almost a periphrasis translated into images of the eternal conflict between David and Goliath.

But if we pause for a moment on these tragic glimpses of reality we can grasp the weight and scope of this macabre representation; in the end everything and the opposite of everything is included in an image, the reality of a documentary shot is unequivocal as is the unknown dispersion of an outline of the existing that the shot has excluded, hidden from our senses, precluded from any kind of interpretation or reading. Yet we must know that it exists, or at least suspect that in that precise moment something else existed... a gesture, a silence, an explosion, a scream capable of penetrating and modifying that moment fixed in the image that we perceive. It is the territory of pure imagination, of personal interpretation, often of simple trust that forces us to redraw contours in our mind that at first visual impact we refuse to accept. The magical power of TV aestheticizes images, cloaks fragments of reality with a hidden charm and paradoxically distances us from the tragic scope of events. What we see is a representative but minimal part of what is, the shot crystallizes a moment and gives it to us in the form of a synthesis of a whole that is closed to us and in this combination a great game is played: that of awareness of the facts and the order of magnitude and importance of the same. Then there is another determining factor of television conditioning: the sequential news schedule.

On TG1 at 1.30pm last October, the 4th day of the war between Israel and Hamas, the opening is dedicated to an extensive report on Giorgia Meloni who goes, unscheduled, to visit the synagogue of Rome pays homage to Chief Rabbi Di Segni and pronounces yet another condemnation of the Hamas attacks for the cameras, very close-ups of the prime minister who reassures Italians about the terrorism alert and the government's moves, then gets into the blue car surrounded by guards of the body and moves away. Only after two minutes does the first report on Israel start with the usual connections with correspondents and fighting sequences.

It is yet another simple yet effective way of making political propaganda and promoting the cult of the person, effectively downgrading the tragedy and ferocity of a war in favor of the reassuring image of the Prime Minister... and all Italian children of "mother" ready as always to applaud.


Michelangelo Dotta
NP November 2023