The man without a face.

On this historical day for Italy – the ,,decadenza” of Berlusconi – I finally found some time to post some material my students developed two years ago, about the theme ,,Satire in Europe”. Especially the person of Berlusconi and how he managed to endanger press freedom and freedom of speech in a democratic country like Italy, got the attention of one of my students, Bram Braet. We were puzzled by the way he countered satirical programs on his person; we were also interested in more cultural and philosophical questions such as, how far Europe has a common culture concerning humour and more specifically in satire. We confronted our Comenius guest students from Pesaro (IT) and Marseille (F) with our contributions. Some of them were really shocked by the images we gave of their country.

Here you find the contribution of Bram Braet (6th year social & cultural studies, Royal Atheneum Ostend I) to the project:

the man without a face

Bram Braet: ,,Welcome to the drama-democracy! It becomes more clearly every day, the political landscape expires continuously to a theatre in which the politicians are the actors. The best actor gets most of the votes. Especially Americans know what I’m speaking about. Where Republicans are spreading propaganda in which they try to win votes by smiling their shiny teeth to the audience and then walk into the sunset with a rifle on their shoulers. But also in Europe we have some good actors like Mr. Berlusconi. For this reason I had the idea of outlining the picture of Berlusconi such as he really is: ,,a man without a face or character.” Someone with a hollow personality who sets-up a mask whenever the situation asks for it.” (1)