Media a szaleństwo. Przypadek Massima Tartaglii
Media vs. Madness. The Case of Massimo Tartaglia

Author(s): Paulina Orłowska
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Social Sciences, Media studies, Communication studies
Published by: Ośrodek Badawczy Facta Ficta
Keywords: madness;myth;non-existence;Italy;Tartaglia;Berlusconi;mental illness
Summary/Abstract: In the chapter entitled "Media vs. Madness. The Case of Massimo Tartaglia", Paulina Orłowska analyses the press coverage of Tartaglia’s aggression towards Silvio Berlusconi, prime minister of Italy at the time the attack took place (the 13th of December 2009). In order to get a closer look at themes the journalists overlooked and to explain their broader cultural context, the author employs semiotic instruments developed by Roland Barthes in his famous Mythologies. As a result, the mythical aspect of madness, to which the media had reduced the event, is disclosed. Correspondingly, the examined articles are shown as referring to the aggressor’s madness in terms of naturalization of history resulting in the extirpation of individual identity and the abrogation of the context. Instead of just reporting the criminal act, Italian newspapers extrapolated the mental illness from Tartaglia’s biography and delimited his identity to one common denominator—madness. This allows Orłowska to explore two paradigmatic forms of media madness narrative: the criminal one and the paternalistic one, both conveying the idea that madness is accounted for in emotional rather than rational terms.

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