The lurid giant of Italian populism’s career grew out of his media empire, which heralded post-ideological society with a consumerist dreamworld
Silvio Berlusconi was, in more ways than one, the televisual prophet of the neoliberal age. Though he officially entered politics only in 1994, his cultural hegemony began long before. From the early 80s, Berlusconi ruled Italy by means of entertainment, managing political life the same way he did his media conglomerates, translating Reaganite hedonism into Italian. His private TV channels changed the tastes of Italian audiences by bringing the action-filled dreams of American capitalism into their living rooms.
The fuel that propelled the early days of Berlusconi’s Mediaset empire was cinema, mostly American cinema. The budget for original content was limited, so pay TV filled programming schedules with films. Films that, back then, one could not see on other channels. For more than two decades, Mediaset successfully challenged the state television monopoly, thereby paving the way for the privatisation of everyday life. With the expediency of a pirate, he steered the nation away from the cinema of Fellini and Antonioni, towards the inexorable Americanisation of mass culture.
