Apr 21, 2008

Quarto Potere

"Citizen Kane" Orson Welles, 1941









"Have him tell Mr. Silverstone he's a detective from the Central Office. If Mr. Silverstone asks to see his badge, your man is to get indignant and call Mr. Silverstone an anarchist. Loudly, so that the neighbors can hear."

William Randolph Hearst was an American newspaper magnate. Hearst was a leading newspaper publisher. The son of self-made millionaire George Hearst, he became aware that his father had received a northern California newspaper, The San Francisco Examiner, as payment of a gambling debt. Still a student at Harvard, he asked his father to give him the newspaper to run. In 1887, he became the paper's publisher and devoted long hours and much money to making it a success. Crusading for civic improvement and exposing municipal corruption, he greatly increased the paper's circulation.

Citizen Kane, still considered the best american movie ever, was ideated, made and interpreted from an young Orson Welles, it's a fiction about Hearst, a denunce about his power, really brave that time, since Hearst controlled pratically the information, the newspapers in the USA. Was the new against the old, was the new era of cinema and television against the era of paper.
"Quarto poter", "Fourth Power", is the italian title of Citizen Kane, refering to the fact, in modern era, there isn't only three power, how was ideated from John Locke and Montesquieu in the XVIII (quite old, for be modern democracy, no?) The administrative powers were the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary. These should be separate from and dependent upon each other so that the influence of any one power would not be able to exceed that of the other two, either singly or in combination. When the newspapers appear, at the beginning they were free, there were a pluralism of information. But then they've been concentrated and hold only from few people, and then began the Fourth Power. The battle over Citizen Kane was about a new age of information, more free, against the old. And today? still the information is controlled from few people, and the internet universe, more free, start his battle.
In this interview to Pier Paolo Pasolini: http://it.youtube.com/Pasolini (Sorry in Italian) Pasolini describe how, one town builded in Italy from fascist, Sabaudia, has just few exterior caracter related to it. The Fascism wasn't able to leave a sign in the italian culture. But today, the same town is changing. The government has been democratic, and then why this indelebile sign? the consumer driven society, impose it's thought through the Fourth Power. This make us that we have needs we never thought before, make choice, like things, that alone we'll never do. And, at the same time, make us thinking we are still free. But today, with internet, people find different font of information, not controlled just from few people, and, here the first "Citizen Kane": the 23 april, the Fourth Power, will celebrate 100 years in Italy http://www.quartopotere.org (they call themself Fourth Power!). And, as Beppe Grillo (www.beppegrillo.it) said, their funeral. Beppe Grillo, one modern Italian Orson Welles, (try to imagine who is the italian Hearst), but not the only one, will celebrate in 400 town in Italy and everywhere in the world where there is one italian community, their funeral. With this pacific manifestation, the italians will demonstrate for their freedom of information. Until now, we passively took the information from the Fourth Power, without dubt about it.
Now, on the network, people start to expose their own thought, to publish their own news. A lot of garbage, sure, but in this way, overloading the communications channels, we no longer trust the information, the Fourth Power, and we'll restart to think with our own mind, and even us will start a blog, and we'll be confident about our idea.


Riappropiamoci degli spazi!







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