TV Italian Style
The ‘TV Italian Style’ podcast is an A-Z of the golden age of Italian television of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s from the perspective of the ever popular varietà and the famous faces who would host and guest star on these shows. It’s a bilingual podcast, in English and Italian, with conversations with experts on Italian TV and culture alongside clips from all the best shows and performances. Visit the accompanying website https://tvitalianstyle.wordpress.com/ to download translated transcriptions for each episode to support your listening.
TV Italian Style
R: Race and Italian variety television
On this episode of the podcast, I'm really pleased to be joined by researcher and historian Jessica L. Harris to talk about a really interesting aspect of Italian variety television during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s: the representation of race on the small screen. And whilst television in this period in Italy was multicultural, and we’ve seen that already on the podcast as we’ve talked about the fame and success of figures like the German Kessler twins, Italian American Don Lurio, and Guadeloupean Henri Salvador, our focus in particular in this episode is on the representation of blackness on variety television in Italy. Taking stars like Don Marino Barreto Junior, Rocky Roberts, Lola Falana, Grace Jones, and Calimero, il pulcino nero, we examine how blackness is presented on television and and explore some of the debates around blackness that were circulating in Italy during this golden age of television.