Dreaming of California

GENOVA, ITALY — "The Beautiful — you know it?" He means, "The Bold and the Beautiful," — by its popular Italian name — and this is the first question I am greeted with on being introduced as an American. When I shake my head in confusion he tries again: "Beverly Hills?" This time I smile. "90210," I say. The Italian and his friends smile and I realize I have been accepted.

Over coffee later that evening I ask my friend Gabriella — a Genoa native starting medical school this fall — what "America" means to her friends and fellow students. "Wealth," she replies, "freedom, opportunity, abundance." Her friend Frederico contributes: "the ideal of freedom, the ideal of the self-made man," and above all, "California." Every Italian youth — or so Gabriella informs me — dreams of living in California, much as the average American college student hopes to spend a summer bumming around Europe. Distant lands are always romanticized, and California is no exception. California, where "everyone is rich and beautiful." And, Gabriella adds, "You can eat as much as you like and always remain thin."

Perhaps it is no surprise that California in particular has become the object of Italian daydreams. The American state shares with the Mediterranean country a nearly ideal climate, miles of beach, acres of mountains, and the reputation for both heavenly cuisine and beautiful people. In a country where memories of fascism are still palpable, where indigent disorganization and socialist government bring rising tides of strikes and unemployment, and where old families and old money still speak loudly, California — at least the visible California of Beverly Hills 90210 — must appear to many as a richer, cleaner, better Italy.

But most of Italy's California obsession must be traced back to another California product: Hollywood. The US export of its lowest common cultural denominator is infamous and Italians have been particularly welcoming. Every corner bar — the staple of Italian social life — sports one or two televisions broadcasting MTV Italia (usually silently and independent of the also-American music). A public beautification project in Genoa executed by local art students has covered the city's metro and subway stops with beautifully rendered Disney characters. This all-pervasive Americanism is surprising but perhaps more surprising is the rationalization given for it.

"Yes it's sad," says Gabriella, "We are losing our cultural identity." But there is no hope, it seems. "The Italian shows are simply no good."

— Katherine Nagel (knagel@phy.ucsf.edu)