Watching Sympathetic Perpetrators on Italian Television

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

   PDF

2. Introduction: Sympathetic Serial Offenders

   • Dana Renga

   Pages 1-37

3. Rai: “Educate While Entertaining—Entertain While Educating” in L’ultimo dei Corleonesi, “Niente di personale,” and Il segreto dell’acqua

   • Dana Renga

   Pages 39-62

4. Mediaset’s Middlebrow Model: Il capo dei capi, L’ultimo padrino, Il clan dei camorristi, and L’onore e il rispetto

   • Dana Renga

   Pages 63-104

5. Sky’s Offer You Can’t Refuse and Romanzo criminale. La serie’s Criminal Payoffs

   • Dana Renga

   Pages 105-139

6. Faccia d’angelo: “The Allure of Evil”

   • Dana Renga

   Pages 141-162

7. 1992 and 1993’s Difficult Masculinities

   • Dana Renga

   Pages 163-191

8. Making Men in Gomorrah 1 and Gomorrah 2

   • Dana Renga

   Pages 193-229

9. #ciaonetflix: Suburra. La serie as “International Patrimony”

   • Dana Renga

   Pages 231-255

10. Conclusions: Gomorrah 3 and Italian Television Abroad

    • Dana Renga

    Pages 257-272

11. Back Matter

    Pages 273-334

    PDF

This book offers the first comprehensive study of recent, popular Italian television. Building on work in American television studies, audience and reception theory, and masculinity studies, Sympathetic Perpetrators and their Audiences on Italian Television examines how and why viewers are positioned to engage emotionally with—and root for—Italian television antiheroes. Italy’s most popular exported series feature alluring and attractive criminal antiheroes, offer fictionalized accounts of historical events or figures, and highlight the routine violence of daily life in the mafia, the police force, and the political sphere. Renga argues that Italian broadcasters have made an international name for themselves by presenting dark and violent subjects in formats that are visually pleasurable and, for many across the globe, highly addictive. Taken as a whole, this book investigates what recent Italian perpetrator television can teach us about television audiences, and our viewing habits and preferences.

• drama
• reception theory
• audience
• masculinity
• mafia
• antihero
• politics
• TV
• criminality
• American television
• serial

Dana Renga’s Sympathetic Perpetrators succeeds admirably in leading us on an extraordinary journey through the ins and outs of Italy’s crime series output, which has raised the quality bar and prompted a real renaissance in Italian TV. The book explores titles such as Romanzo Criminale, Gomorrah or Suburra—to name but three of the most internationally renowned—and applies a close textual analysis to laser in on characters who elicit empathetic appeal while raising ethical dilemmas in viewers’ minds. In doing so, it provides pivotal insights not only for understanding a key aspect of Italy’s contemporary popular culture but also more broadly for contextualising the significance of anti-heroes in today’s television drama, which creates a hidden yet strong link from quality US output (from The Sopranos to Breaking Bad and beyond) to the European offerings.” (Massimo Scaglioni, University of Milan, Italy)

 “This ground-breaking work examines the representation of organised crime and its perpetrators on Italian television. Renga’s readings of these problematically attractive ‘sympathetic perpetrators’ are original and convincing: she digs deep into the Italian fascination with glamorous male criminals, bringing in audience responses and industry marketing. This welcome book offers a new take on both series that have had international success (Gomorrah, Romanzo criminale, Suburra), and those that are avidly consumed by audiences at home.” (Catherine O'Rawe, University of Bristol, UK)

“Dana Renga’s authoritative account of criminals, mobsters and corrupt politicians in Italian serial television reveals that her ‘sympathetic perpetrators’ have evolved differently from those on US television. Spoiler: the Italians are bad but beautiful! Renga teases out how viewer sympathy for these attractive antiheros refracts international fascination with Italy's murky recent history—hence the success abroad of Gomorra and other series. This comprehensive account is likely to be the point of reference for some time to come.” (Alan O’Leary, University of Leeds, UK)

• The Department of French and Italian, The Ohio State University, Columbus, USA

  Dana Renga

Dana Renga is Associate Professor of Italian at The Ohio State University, USA. She is the author of Unfinished Business: Screening the Italian Mafia in the New Millennium (2013), the editor of Mafia Movies: A Reader (2011), and has published extensively on Italian cinema and television. 

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