In the public debate, culture is an irrelevant issue. Can the paradigm be changed?

An AgCom report on the journalistic profession during the Covid emergency, released last week, clearly indicates that culture holds a singular record in theinformation sphere: it was the topic that, more than any other, journalists had to leave uncovered in order to devote themselves to topics related to the health emergency. The report found that culture was neglected by 36.8 percent of journalists who routinely covered the topic, immediately followed by news (36.2 percent), but with numbers almost triple that of topics such as the economy (11.9 percent), science (8.8 percent), and foreign affairs (7.8 percent). Even, almost twice as many as sports (21.3%).

AgCom explains very clearly why culture (which, it should be specified, in the context of journalistic categorization is usually associated with that vast container that falls under the name of “entertainment” and ranges from expressionist theater to the most infamous products of trash television) holds the top spot in this ranking, producing, moreover, a brief analysis of the consequences of focusing on the Covid-19 theme: “If, for culture and sports, this choice [that of not covering issues usually covered, ed.] is due to the drastic reduction of events and news related to these issues, it should also be noted that about one-third of journalists have given up covering news stories, the lack of which was certainly not due to fewer events on which to exercise the news function. This, in the long run, could also lead to relevant consequences, given the fundamental contribution of quality journalism in monitoring socially relevant phenomena (such as those related, for example, to organized crime) and thus in ensuring the proper functioning of the country’s democratic life.” To paraphrase: the fact that we do not cover news to follow the emergency is a matter of concern, while, in contrast, if we do not cover culture, all things considered, it is because there is a lack of events.

This consideration by the communications watchdog would be enough to intuit how culture suffers from a serious problem of perception, which leads the media to attribute to it an all-too-reduced specific weight (certainly less than that of the news, one would infer from reading the text of the report). It is a problem that, unfortunately, does not only concern Italy: in September, one of the world’s greatest museologists, the Frenchman Hugues de Varine, wrote on his blog, keeping in mind the reality of his country, that “we must be convinced of a fact: culture [...] is not part of the essential activities for the vast majority of the men and women of our time. [...]. It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t matter, but that it is not at the forefront of our concerns, especially in a crisis, when things go wrong.” And it is a problem the extent of which could be gleaned, even empirically, from the space that is given to culture within the public debate: culture is not talked about on TV talk shows, culture does not make it to the front pages of newspapers, culture does not occupy the thoughts of our politicians too much.

We had proof of this in the press conference of the dpcm on December 3: President Giuseppe Conte did not even touch the subject, and throughout the following day the minister of cultural heritage did not think to comment on the extension of the closure of all culture until January 15. This is a very different attitude from that of other European leaders, who have intervened on the issue several times, including with dedicated messages. There has been no lack of economic support for cultural professionals in Italy, of course, but who remembers moments of deep and widespread public discussion around the importance of culture, even in the crisis? There are essentially two problems: the first lies in what is commonly associated with the word “culture” and the consideration culture enjoys among the media, politicians and even the public. Namely, by most, culture is perceived, rather than as a way to build the future, as a pastime or at best as a mere economic activity acting on the leisure sector, as an ancillary item to tourism. This is not a new theme; Horkheimer and Adorno were already talking about the commodification of culture in the late 1940s. But it is still a very timely theme. The second is the lack of self-assertion of the sector’s protagonists, a theme Chiara Casarin spoke about a few days ago in these pages. The natural consequence of these problems is the substantial irrelevance that culture assumes in public debate.

Are there ways out of this paradigm? One possible solution might be paradoxically contained in the problem: culture has reached such a level of professionalism and specialization that nostalgic returns to the past are unthinkable (and to what past then, one would wonder). It is therefore a matter of thinking about new governance models for the cultural institutes of the future, of improving the current cultural offerings (and, indeed, of incentivizing them: on this space, months ago, we had launched some timid proposals to this effect, starting with tax deductions for those who buy cultural products), to better distinguish, as De Varine proposes, what he calls the pratiques exigeantes (i.e., high culture) from the tourism and leisure industry (which De Varine makes fall under thecultural economy, on the potential of which more serious work should be done to better nurture high culture as well), and all in order to find different answers to different problems, with the goal of growing the weight of culture within the life of the country. It will be crucial to focus on skilled labor and skills, invest in technology, and work on the widespread localization of culture. The public can also do its part by attending more culture and claiming more space for culture in the media.

The good news is that these are for the most part processes that are already in place: even public demand until 2019 was growing, after a sharp setback in the crisis years of 2007-2008. The bad news is that it will take some time to observe appreciable results in the media and political spheres as well: for this reason, in the immediate term, it will be necessary for the actors in the sector to make themselves more and better heard, and to be more united. Not that there has been a lack of interesting initiatives, including appeals, petitions, meetings, and assorted calls for a fistfight. However, one gets the impression that these have been piecemeal initiatives, often hasty, naïve, lacking coordination. And moving within a framework of greater harmony among the components of the system will be crucial to shifting the center of gravity of culture to more meaningful positions.

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