Ateneo

Mentioning Mediterranean noir writers like Andrea Camilleri (whose stories are set in Vigata, Italy), Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (Barcelona, Spain) and Batya Gur (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Israel), this panel reflected on the terms “Mediterranean crime fiction” and “Mediterranean noir”, always highlighting their contribution to the crime fiction genre at large. Even though it is usually challenging to go from local to global, from the nation to the world, attempts to go beyond the national approach in research have been made and similarities among different crime fiction traditions, like the Scandinavian one, have been spotted. In the geopolitical region of the Mediterranean, since the ancient Greeks, the literary and cultural dynamics of the Mare Nostrum have been significant, as the very Latin name immediately evokes the movement of people, history and cultures.

Mentioning a series like the British Nordic noir “Marcella” (2016-present), this panel reflected on how the character of Marcella Backland reflects the pained city of London, littered with bodies and, besides the dead, full of “moribund zombie-like workers”, including DS Backland herself. The scripts, written in Swedish and then translated into English, criticize the economic system of the UK, describing the capital as an “ignominious expression of violence… hidden beneath ideology, mundanity and the suspension of critical thought” (Springer and Le Billon 2016): “Marcella is, in many ways, a product of what it condemns”. Then, the choice of the setting, which is “one of the biggest, most challenging metropolises in the world” meant that it would potentially be a “hit here [in the UK] and in America” (Larder 2019), perhaps introducing the more easily exportable label of “London noir”.

Mentioning Loriano Macchiavelli’s literature, primarily set in the historic centre of Bologna, this panel retraced the geopoetics of the noir identity of the same Italian city to give an example of a so-called “edge city”. Noirisation and fictionalisation of places often lead to various levels and forms of historical, social and political depth. When real and fictional places come to coexist, fans may even want to visit them, constituting yet another source of enjoyment. Riding the hybridization of reality and fictional universes, Bolognese noirists like Macchiavelli have succeeded in exploiting even the symbolic potential of Bologna: in so doing, even street names prove to be germs that can blossom into stories. And when the construction of the place is so powerful and vivid, in later novels or chapters even some tiny details are enough to perceive the noir atmosphere.

As a symbol of humanity’s quest for truth, the figure of the journalist is a crucial one in contemporary noir fiction, sometimes becoming part of wide imagery of a more inquisitorial process. Even when the journalist gets closer to being a spy or when he investigates conspiratorial tendencies, it proves to be an indeed fascinating trend to analyze. The comeback of James Bond in 2006, for instance, shows how “spies had to be, in a way, more noir in order to be successful”. This panel reflected on how noir fiction is the heir of criminal and urban mystery of the XIX century yet showing a strong realistic aim. In this sense, realism can be interpreted as aesthetics but also as a cognitive process. By paying attention to some metaphors that Frédéric Paulin or Dominique Manotti have always used to describe their quest as noir writers, we can also spot the obsessive presence of the image of the underground world (“bas-fond”) exactly as in the urban mystery of the XIX century.

Through the analysis the period between 1966 and 2004, strongly marked by immigration flows, redistribution of political power and also new forms of entertainment, studies on “Modernisation noir” in Greece have shown how Athens, becoming a space of multiethnic conversation, boasts filmmakers with greater awareness and even crime TV series with growing popularity. Nevertheless, talking specifically about adapting literature to cinema or TV, there is still little adaptation, for instance, of the greatest Greek noir writer Petros Markarīs, although his stories have proved to be very good for the small screen, but less easy to export abroad. One of the reasons is the authorial tradition of Greece: filmmakers write their own scripts and most creators are also writers; likewise, on the production side of things, the budget restrictions discourage the purchase of rights.

Analysing the very complex concept of “Romanità” (Romanism, i.e. the idea of Rome) in terms of journalistic coverage and audience’s perception, this panel aimed to show the link between them, all starting from case studies from Italian TV series like “Distretto di polizia” (2000-2012), “Suburra” (2017-2020) and “Rocco Schiavone” (2016-present), which are all set in Rome or otherwise involve Roman characters. Talking about the media in relation to setting, in both “Suburra” and “Rocco Schiavone” we can observe “a transferred idea of Romanism from periphery to the city centre” or, especially in the second case, “from Rome to other cities”. Talking about the audience’s perception, instead, and in relation to characters, it seems that Romanism strongly depends on Roman actors and accent: Romanism, in fact, is “a way of thinking, living and speaking”. When asked to express the level of influence they perceived from the journalistic sources, most of the respondents of a survey answered “Little” and 1 out of 4 answered “Not at all”, so it can be concluded that “the TV series represent the real Romanism storytelling more than the journalistic coverage”.