A Girls' Eye-view: Girlhood on the Italian screen since the 1950s

2019年，我们询问了一群年龄在18-25岁的意大利年轻女性，她们对意大利电影中少女时代的表现有何看法。“我们的产品在哪里？”这群人问道。第二组是14-16岁的女孩，她们理所当然地认为“她们的”产品实际上是美国制作的电影和电视，而意大利的电影和电视是“给她们父母看的”。那些针对和描绘年轻女性的意大利制造的产品到底在哪里？随着平台服务模糊了电影和电视之间的界限，改变了传统的权力结构，它们为吸引年轻女性提供了新的机会（Buccifero, 2019）。最近的电视剧《我的好朋友》（RAI/HB0, 2018年）和《宝贝》（Netflix原创，2018年）吸引了年轻女性观众。这一充满希望的转变使意大利电影业适时地建立了这些观众。虽然意大利观众一直重视美国产品，但在20世纪50年代，年轻女性是意大利电影地址的重要元素（Morreale, 2011）。然而，在过去的十年里，它转向了男性观众，并停留在那里（Fanchi, 2007）。该项目将及时为意大利电影的新包容性做出贡献。它旨在围绕少女时代的问题，通过女权主义和代际视角，将女孩和女性的声音带到前景，让电影行业与女性观众、女性观众与意大利电影重新建立联系。在英国和意大利之间，与一个跨代团队合作，我们的项目将制作一本英语和意大利语的书，一篇文章，以及一个双语多媒体网站和数据库。我们的专著将首先追溯20世纪50年代以来新闻话语与屏幕上的女孩之间的关系。我们将绘制意大利电影和电视及其周围的少女时代表现的历史；初步的档案研究表明，这些问题总是与性和国家政治问题密切相关。随着观众转向男性和色情作品的泛滥，这些模式建立了一种对女孩形象的偷窥，这种偷窥仍然出现在今天的屏幕上。通过档案研究，我们还将探讨后女权主义和流行女权主义话语是如何与当代意大利谈论女孩的方式纠缠在一起的。在这段历史的背景下，我们将对当代意大利电影和过去十年中选定的电视进行更详细的分析。我们的大部分文本分析将把意大利女孩（14至18岁）的回答整合到我们的分析中，利用通过个人访谈、筛选和焦点小组讨论产生的数据。我们的项目还将把年轻女性对意大利产品的消费置于她们更广泛的媒体消费模式的背景下，并询问意大利产品对她们的成长过程有多重要。如果他们不认为它们是相关的，为什么呢？如果是，他们会如何回应？这些发现将是我们项目影响的核心，因为我们要求电影行业的利益相关者也解决这些问题。这个项目还考察了文化记忆作为女孩的一个关键因素。正如历史学家弗兰卡•宾比（Franca Bimbi）所言，在意大利，成为一名女性不仅取决于同龄人对这一过程的理解，也取决于前几代人对这一过程的理解。因此，在项目的最后阶段，将采用参与式口述历史的方法，让年轻女性与前几代女性就电影与成长之间的关系进行对话。通过这种方式，我们通过口述历史回到本书开头所考察的时期。意大利的女性观众在很大程度上被忽视了。这个项目不仅希望为他们的恢复做出贡献，而且还旨在将他们置于恢复过程的创意中心，从而最终使他们成为行业未来的利益相关者。

In 2019 we asked a group of Italian young women, aged 18-25, what they thought of screen representations of girlhood produced in Italy. 'Where is the product for us?' the group asked. A second group, of girls aged 14-16, took it for granted that 'their' product was in fact US-produced film and television, and that Italian cinema and television were 'for their parents'. Where indeed are the Italian-made products that address and depict younger women? As platform services blur the boundaries between film and television and shift traditional power structures, they are opening up new opportunities to address young women (Buccifero, 2019). Recent television series like 'My Brilliant Friend' (RAI/HB0, 2018) and 'Baby' (Netflix original, 2018) are attracting younger female audiences. This promising shift makes this a timely moment for the Italian film industry to build these audiences. Whilst Italian audiences have always valued US products, in the 1950s young women were a strong element of Italian cinema's address (Morreale, 2011). Over the decade, however, it turned towards male audiences, and stayed there (Fanchi, 2007). This project will contribute in a timely fashion to a new inclusivity for Italian cinema. It aims to re-engage the film industry with female audiences, and female audiences with Italian cinema, around the question of girlhood, using a feminist, intergenerational perspective that brings girls' and women's voices to the foreground. Working between the UK and Italy, with an intergenerational team, our project will produce a book in English and Italian, an article, and a bilingual multimedia website and database. Our monograph will initially trace the relationship between press discourse and girls on screen from the 1950s. We will chart the history of representations of girlhood in and around Italian cinema and television; preliminary archival research shows that these are always closely tied to questions of sexuality and the body politic. With the turn towards male audiences and the proliferation of pornography, these patterns established a voyeuristic gaze upon the figure of the girl, still present on today's screen. Through archival research we will also interrogate how postfeminist and popular feminist discourses have become entangled in contemporary ways of talking about girls in Italy. In the context of this history, we will then carry out a more detailed analysis of contemporary Italian cinema and selected television from the last decade. The bulk of our textual analysis will integrate the responses of Italian girls (aged 14 to 18) into our analysis, drawing upon data generated through individual interviews, screenings and focus group discussion. Our project will also set young women's consumption of Italian products in the context of their broader patterns of media consumption, and ask just how important Italian productions are, or could be, to their process of growing up. If they do not perceive them as relevant, why is that? When it is, how do they respond to them? These findings will be central to the impact of our project, as we ask stakeholders in the film industry to address these questions too. This project also examines cultural memory as a key element of being a girl. As historian Franca Bimbi argues, in Italy becoming a woman is still as dependent on previous generations' understanding of the process as it is on that of the peer group. Therefore, in its final stage the project will use a participatory oral history method to put young women in dialogue with previous generations of women about the relationship between cinema and growing up. In this way we return to the periods examined at the beginning of our book, through oral history. Female audiences in Italy have largely been ignored. Not only does this project want to contribute to their recovery, but it aims to put them at the creative centre of that recovery process, thereby finally making them stakeholders in the future of the industry.