The Benefits of Ignorance

While Italy is under the pressures of those social categories opposing to any attempt to modernize this unlucky country, I have decided to use these moments in this boring Monday just to be a little unfair. In this blog I always try to be politically correct: today I can't... 

Of course I don't want to add further controversies against the above mentioned categories: too many people are doing this right now. I have nothing to say now about it.

I rather prefer to describe my personal experiences.

Well.. 

Yesterday in the afternoon, I have decided to go to the multiplex cinema with my wife because the weather wasn't good. There were some films in the programme but not particularly interesting: a stupid italian comedy, an animation film for children, a pseudo-horror film for teens and an american film about the racial discrimination in USA during the '60s (I don't know if you have understood what film it was). Considering the general level of these films, we have opted for the last one (it seemed to me to be not so stupid).

We have found very long queues at the box offices. Nonetheless, quite surprisingly, we realized that all the people were buying tickets for the other films (even adults with no children). Other cinemas were sold out, while we were less than 20 persons for our film.

What could one conclude from this? Considering that I have found such a situation in other circumstances (exhibitions, theatres: if you are in Paris at Louvre it's very difficult to meet italians because they all are  in Eurodisney) one could say that the average cultural level in Italy is so low that even a mid-level movie is considered too difficult, too intellectual, too serious. In brief we are coping with a so diffused infantilism that films for babies and children are considered good also for adults: they are the maximum an average adult spectator can achieve. 

Sometimes some sociologists highlight that parents are tending to assume styles and fashion clothes of their sons/doughters above all when they are teenagers. But parents are assuming their mentality too. Too many adults are showing not only the behaviour of a child but also the same mental schemes. The cultural level has become about the same: the same confused heap of notions learned once at school, pieces of info from TV, rumors from Internet. In Italy the most inportant sources for political, economic and cultural information are sport newspapers...

 We are in a very bad condition in Italy. But a benefit from this mounting wave of ignorance can be found in all this: when I will go to the cinema for a good film I'm sure that I'll find a seat...