‘University is Ill’

Representations of the Italian Student Crisis in 1968 Radar Cinematografica Newsreels

Abstract

In 1968, the protest culture of the younger generation reached its peak internationally, and it was at the universities that students ignited the turmoil. That same year, Italy too intensely experienced such student protest against the political, social and cultural status quo. This article aims at exploring how the events related to the student protests at Italian universities were portrayed in three 1968 Radar Cinematografica newsreel items. After a brief historical contextualization of the Italian student crisis, each newsreel item will be examined for the traces of alterity between students and the ‘establishment,’ as featured in the voice-over commentaries. In doing so, I intend to investigate the extent to which these newsreel items’ representations of the Italian student protest movement depicted the sociocultural fracture between university students and society in that year. As far as the theoretical framework of this article is concerned, it will be shaped by Michael Pickering’s concept of the ‘stereotypical Other,’ since I aim at looking into how the clash of political views and ways of thinking society is portrayed in these newsreel items by means of a process of alterization of the students and their protest actions.