Sexy. or sexist?

Everyone remembers the scene in This Is Spinal Tap when rock guitarist Nigel Tufnel (Chris Guest) and the band are being told by the record label that the cover for their latest album, “Smell the Glove,” is sexist. “So what’s wrong with being sexy?” shrugs Tufnel.

That’s kind of the charge leveled against Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in Erik Gandini’s controversial documentary Videocracy, and the PM’s disconnect is classic Nigel Tufnel. “So what?” you can easily imagine Silvio saying with a shrug.

So Berlusconi is a former media mogul who also happens to be the longest serving prime minister in Italy’s history. And he brings this background to bear on Italy’s media environment (mostly through state-owned TV network RAI) by moving powerful players around to keep audiences happy.

And what keeps Italians happy? Gyrating young females on TV shows. Broad smiles, glitzy sets and big breasts. In revved-up scenes of TV titillation that make Wowowee! seem tame in comparison, Videocracy traces the phenomenon of scantily-clad Italian women and the audiences who love them down through the decades.

It all started with a late-night TV quiz show back in the late ‘70s staged in an actual bar where the hosts fielded questions to phone-in guests; if they answered right, a woman onstage would strip off an item of clothing. The show caused a stir because factory workers were missing too many days of work due to staying up late, watching.

That was three decades ago. Nowadays, according to one interviewee in the film, the ambition of 80 percent of young Italian women is to become a velina. That’s a TV showgirl, usually dressed in a sexy dress or bathing suit. Usually they come in pairs: one stands on each side of the (male) host, kind of like gyrating arm candy. Sound familiar? Obviously, Wowowee was not a pioneer in this phenomenon.

It’s crucial that the velina not speak — only smile and toss her hair fetchingly. She breaks into a short sexy dance (stacchetti) in between segments, then poses seductively, sometimes on top of a news desk. Veline contests are held nationwide, usually in malls, and they are like meat markets: the judges have the girls twirl onstage, bare their bums, lift their hair, demonstrate their stacchetti skills. Perhaps it’s not so far removed from the countless beauty contests decorating so many provincial towns in the Philippines. Except these Italian chicks have only two basic ambitions: become a velina on TV, and “marry a billionaire footballer.” At least Filipina beauties got talent.

Titillation may be nothing new to Italian entertainment, but Videocracy tries, somewhat successfully, to link Berlusconi directly to its rise and supremacy on television. The Italian PM is a well known, er, ladies man, but the documentary also shows how the media can be used to seduce the public into equating Berlusconi with Italy. A Silvio campaign video sounds practically orgasmic in its praise, with young women on camera singing Meno male che c’e Silvio! (“Thank God for Silvio!”). It almost feels like a Spinal Tap satire, but it’s for real.

Also for real is Ricky, a mechanic who lives at home with his mom. In his spare time, he hones his singing, dancing and numchuk skills (while his mamma looks on adoringly). His sole ambition is to be on television. He sits in TV studio audiences so often, he can almost taste fame. “If you are on TV,” Ricky explains, “you are 10 steps ahead of everybody else.” The problem for Ricky, though, is this: “Too many girls, that’s all people want to see.” Not gyrating martial arts-skilled male singers.

We encounter other people in Videocracy, like super-rich TV agent Lele Mora, who adorns his white-mansion swimming pool with half-clad male flunkies and plays Mussolini ringtone “hymns” on his cell phone for the camera. (“I’ve never tried to hide my admiration for Mussolini,” he says.) A link is drawn between Mussolini’s fascist grip and Berlusconi’s power over the televised image (which is, in fact, what “videocracy” refers to: how society is shaped by image). The idea is that what Berlusconi wants is what Italians want, and this is what keeps Italy happy. In fact, the Italian PM even appoints a former velina as his Minister of Gender Equality. Better for photo ops, one imagines.

You could make an argument that Italian women using their sexuality to gain power is empowering, à la Madonna or Lady Gaga. But the rules, roles and limits are all written by men here, and there’s a general vacant quality to the stylized cavorting shown in Videocracy (in one group stacchetti scene, they look a lot like wind-up dolls). And tellingly, none of the wannabe veline are interviewed: we can only surmise that what goes on inside their pretty little heads is not camera worthy.

Arguably, director Gandini is guilty of some of the same sexist exploitation that he accuses the Italian prime minister of indulging in. After all, the trailer of the movie (which was denied broadcast in Italy) shows plenty of naked flesh on parade, in case viewers forget the movie’s primary focus. Basically, he is allowed to have his cheesecake and eat it, too.

Gandini throws in a couple key stats during the end credits (Italy ranks 84th worldwide in terms of gender equality; 80 percent of Italians get their information from state-owned TV) and maybe simplifies his argument by blaming Berlusconi for the trend, instead of probing what it is exactly about jiggling female flesh that so appeals to Italians. (Duh!) But he does show us how, for many Italians, happiness is defined as getting on television, because this seems the quickest pathway to fame, power, and wealth. 

One sour apple in the bin is paparazzo Fabrizio Corona, who makes a living taking shots of celebrities in scandalous “private moments.” “I hate these people,” he tells the camera. “When I see them, I don’t see a person. I see money.” In an innovative twist, he sells such candid shots back to the celebrities themselves rather than to media outlets. Call it blackmail or just plain entrepreneurship, he eventually does 80 days jail time for this (his friend Lele Mora is cleared of all charges) and emerges, tattooed and tanned, with a vendetta against the government and its sleazy power plays. He claims to hate the paparazzi game and celebrities, though he finds himself selling his own “Robin Hood” image to the mass media, boasting that he collects 10,000 euros for every club appearance, and going full frontal for the documentary cameras. He’s a media whore through and through, but in Videocracy, who isn’t?