What we have here is an animated cartoon which can be found at www.infonegocio.com. It was produced by the Italian producer Bruno Bozzeto, famous for doing a lot of animated movies. He was awarded many prizes among which the Golden Bear for “Mister Tao” at the Berlin Film Festival in 1990 and the Oscar nomination for “Grasshoppers” in 1991. This clip is a satyre where Bozetto mocks the Italians by comparing all stereotyped views of the Italian reacting in everyday situations to the “classical” European behaviour.The Italians are compared to the rest of the
Europe, as a unit, as regards to their way of driving; then as regards to their political behaviour; and finally socially, The producer makes us laugh at all these little “eccentricities”
At first, we have, for example, European cars (symbolized by circles with the color of the European Union) driving carefully along the highway, keeping a certain distance between each other. Then we have the same highway in a real mess with Italian cars driving like crazy, criss-crossing in all directions, crashing etc…In the “political” part, we can see European flags in a shape of circles passing and sitting on a chair which seems to be a “throne”. We presume that the “flags” stand for the presidents. These presidents are passing and sitting one at a time for the same period. The Italian president,however, sits and stays, and stays, until he starts creating roots.And finally, we have a typical stereotype of the Italian’s daily pleasures: at first six Europeans sit in a bar and every one of them asks for the same coffee, same size, look etc… unlike the six Italians who sit in the same bar but each starts asking for a coffee combination (cappuccino, alittle espresso) and at the end we have six different orders.
I actually found this movie clip very funny, not very mean with Italians.the I don’t think the objective of the producer was to mock the Italians, since that the producer is an Italian himself, but to actually mock indirectly the rest of Europe which is too disciplined (which is ironically a stereotypes as well) and shows this little eccentricity and exotism of the Italian people. This clip is based on very famous stereotypes, mainly the Italian way of driving. I have been to Italy several times, I visited this country a lot, and I can say that some parts of this clip are actually pretty true : the way of driving is quite the same (it’s exaggerated in the video, of course, but it’s the spirit), especially in Naples. The coffee and the cell phone part are also quite true.
