The Folklore of Femininity and Stardom

Women occupy a precarious position in the Italian cinema, both as filmmakers and as subjects of works by male filmmakers. Only within the past two decades have studies begun to appear analyzing the position of women in Italian culture – in literature, cinema, other visual arts, and even in advertising. Victoria de Grazia's How Fascism Ruled Women examined the position of women during the Fascist era, paying attention to how women were represented through radio and cinema. Giuliana Bruno's studies of the silent cinema have focused on the works of a female filmmaker, Elvira Notari. Bruno's collaborative effort with Maria Nadotti to investigate various dimensions of women's role in the Italian media have high-lighted feminist concerns about the history, character, effects, and changing perspectives governing women's representation in Italy. The exploration of gender requires an understanding of what is meant when the name of “woman” is invoked. How are perceptions of Italian culture and society shaped by beliefs in the “truth” of “woman”? Despite certain commonsense meanings, there is no universal and absolute meaning to the appellation “woman,” Binary distinctions attached to “masculinity” and “femininity” derived largely from biological distinctions between the “sexes,” and conceptions of gender are largely determined by their social, legal, and cultural construction. For this reason, a study of cinema is a primary means for deriving the cultural character, force, and changing dimensions of circulating representations of femininity. Cinema is a cultural encyclopedia drawing on various strata and artifacts in the culture, both “high” and “low”: novels, poetry, painting, music-hall entertainment, popular magazines, the sights and sounds of the city, classical and popular music, conceptions of the human body, of health and disease, religion, juridical practices, and writings on psychology.