Military and Cultural History: Italian Perspectives

This paper presents, in brief outline, a new approach to the study of the military in academia: though remaining primarily at the purview of military historians and, as such, occupying a rather marginal role within historical studies, looking at the military institution in its cultural and socio-political contexts actually suggests that more could be said about the role and impact of the military on civic society and culture. In fact, musicians, artists, scholars and other civic professionals have often found themselves deeply inspired by, or fiercely reacting against, their military experience, making this experience often central to their later professional and personal lives. Focusing on the Italian context, this paper will set out an introductory path to developing a fresh approach to the military, one that will show appreciation for the existing diversity and multiplicity of cultural material on the military that is already available (though generally unexplored) and that will offer preliminary thoughts about how such a ‘cultural history of the military’ might look like.

Building on the cultural impact of conscription from Liberal to Fascist Italy, this paper looks both at the figure of the conscript and the topic of military service in popular culture and music after WWII, a topic that has been fundamentally neglected in scholarship thus far. The focus of this paper will be on the actual experience of artists and celebrities, who were conscripted in postwar and contemporary Italy (e.g. Adriano Celentano, Gianni Morandi and Luigi Tenco), as well as on the cultural representation of conscripts in pop and rock music. As will be demonstrated, the overwhelming presence of the image of the conscript in Italian popular culture in the 1960s is reminiscent of a broader phenomenon, where international popstars (such as Elvis Presley) act as mediators between the military and civil society.