Rockpolitik

For all those that actually want to what this show was about, Rockpolitik featured Adriano Celentano, accompanied by various celebrities, musicians and actors, giving discourses about political events, commentaries on various social issues and other spiels you would find being debated on public broadcast stations anywhere else in the world.

Where Rockpolitik differed from your run of the mill debate show, aside from the fact that it was hosted by Celentano, was that it played out more like a theatrical piece than a television show. Not least because of the fact that the set was in fact a stage, and not a studio. The audience seated in a large hall, as opposed to a being crammed into bleachers. Celentano would begin a discourse on a topic, without a catchy headline, instead with a dialogue (or diatribe, according to some) that would trail into a theatrical piece, played out by actors on the stage, or would blend into a musical skit, or even a short film, audience involvement in the form of a debate, or a combination thereof.

The show was somewhat hyped, and in true RAI fashion, attempted to be cutting-edge, on a shoe-string budget, and ended up short of the mark. To be honest, yeah, Rockpolitik was poorly executed. Having not been raised in Italy and having not studied the history of Italian Television, far be it from me to comment on whether Celentano's attempt at something different was an example of the "inevitable plunge of Italian television, and culture in general, into the most desolate and squalid depths of ignorance." For as far as I read, the show was canned because, yes, it was costing too much to produce, and not receiving the ratings it needed, but for mostly political reasons, such as Italy's public broadcasting station not legally allowed to be airing content viewed as being of contentious political nature. -And let's not go into politics in Italian television or culture in general, for it would take years to make sense of a thing more entwined and convoluted than perhaps many non-Italians could stomach.

Was the idea original? Yes.

Was Celentano entertaining? I guess that depends on whether you find fuzzy old Italian men romantically rambling about the state of affairs in their country. Judging by the amount of television shows on Italian television featuring fuzzy old men rambling about the state of affairs in their country, my guess is that the format wasn't terribly radical. When blended with the theater, the music and the cheese (Bel Paese? sorry, bad joke) that is RAI and it's way of communicating to it's target audience, it actually did have something to offer.

Perhaps the above reviewer expected hard-hitting cutting-edge anti-myth rhythm-rock shocking. Sadly, that kind of thing just isn't (or, wasn't) permitted, tolerated, or consumed by the masses. Perhaps the above reviewer was on the other side of the fence that doesn't like to see millions of euros thrown at another poor excuse for leftist propaganda.

In any case, Rockpolitik was a good idea, that given the room to adjust, and with right fine tuning, could have been. Unfortunately, never was.

If only I could, I would spend hours jotting away profane insults at Celentano, Rai (the Italian state broadcaster) and Rockpolitik. Unfortunately, I am of a far too indolent predisposition to do so. What follows is a mere sample of the gargantuan variety of disgraceful abuses cramming my already minute encephalon.

It all started some six months before the airdate of the show, with a surprisingly original teaser announcing, with the solemnity of the Archangel unleashing the Apocalypse upon the sinful people of the Earth, that some time in the distant future, Italian audiences would have the pleasure, nay the honour, of witnessing a four-episode Celentano extravaganza. 180 days, €10m and scores of undue trepidation and masterminded controversy later, the show airs loaded with its decidedly immodest ambition of enlightening the TV public of "il Bel Paese" with something so unimaginably different from the mind-numbing, spirit-crushing fare they have been accustomed to in the past decade or so.

Does it succeed? Most certainly not, as even the least deductive of you might have guessed. In a rare exercise blending hypocrisy and presumptuousness, Rockpolitik actually manages to scrape the lowest abyss of the Sea of Banality and the Profanic Ocean. The, some may say unwarranted, tirade is due precisely to the show's self-proclaimed grandiosity and uniqueness. In reality, it translates into an unapologetic repetition of contrived celebrity appearances, comic routines (the use of the word comic is nothing more than the result of the generous Christmas spirit currently prevailing) and lip-synched delights from the man himself, Celentano. The result is, therefore, just as mind-numbing and as spirit-crushing as the status quo it so pitifully attempts to denounce. After four interminable helpings of this rubbish, one cannot help but notice the inevitable plunge of Italian television, and culture in general, into the most desolate and squalid depths of ignorance.