{"id":638,"date":"2020-06-29T12:24:48","date_gmt":"2020-06-29T10:24:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.unibas.it\/life2020\/?page_id=638"},"modified":"2021-02-02T15:28:58","modified_gmt":"2021-02-02T14:28:58","slug":"iermano-abstract","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/web.unibas.it\/life\/iermano-abstract\/","title":{"rendered":"LiFE 2020 Conference – Abstract"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Angelo Iermano
<\/strong>University of Basilicata (Italy)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heroes of the Cityscape: Rome in Lo chiamavano Jeeg Robot<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The purpose of this speech is to investigate the relationship between city and superhero in the italian film Lo chiamavano Jeeg Robot<\/em> (2015) by Gabriele Mainetti. Metropolis has often been the privileged place for the superheroes adventures. The city is the location that creates the prerequisite for their coming to the world and limits, furthermore, the field of their feat. It is impossible to think of Batman, Superman or Spiderman without situate them into their urban context, be they fictional (Gotham, Metropolis) or real (New York). The city environment is an appendix to the hero himself and functional both to his origin and to the action he is called to take.
Similarly, Mainetti\u2019s Jeeg Robot establishes a symbiotic relationship with the city of Rome and its heroic training path passes through well-defined iconic places. First of all, the Rome presented in the film is plagued by chaos and social tensions, a dystopian (but still realistic) reality very fertile for the birth of a superhero. Enzo Ceccotti (Claudio Santamaria) will acquire his superpowers after diving into the Tiber in order to escape the police, therefore we can say that it is the river itself that regenerates him as a superhero. The district of origin of the protagonist is Tor Bella Monaca, one of the poorest and most degraded areas of the italian capital. Enzo is a marginalized man reluctant to what is defined \u201ccall to adventure\u201d, but he gradually manages to conquer the center of his city, first earning celebratory mural paintings on the walls of his neighborhood (which perceives him as a local Robin Hood) and subsequently also reaching the center of the city, after the final clash at the Olympic Stadium against Fabio (Luca Marinelli), psychopathic and narcissistic criminal originating from his own district and who became his twin nemesis after having immersed himself in the Tiber.
In the final shot, which recalls the initial one, an aerial view of the center of Rome comes together with anonymous off-screen voices commenting on the hero\u2019s latest feat, one of which claims that he deserves a square. The shot closes on Enzo who, alone, on top of the Colosseum, puts on the Jeeg Robot mask for the first time. The hero of the suburbs has conquered the center of the city, and from being a neighborhood hero he has become everyone\u2019s hero. He has acquired the centrality of Rome, and can finally mask himself, wearing (in the proper sense of putting himself on) the role of the hero and taking on the responsibilities that this entails. The reference to the square that the hero would deserve and the gesture of self-coronation that takes place on the top of Rome\u2019s most iconic building sounds like a monumental celebration. Enzo has finally become the pure hearted hero that Alessia (Ilenia Pastorelli) dreamed, the hero who watches over the city from the top of his most important monument. Therefore Jeeg Robot is a hero who proves to have a symbiotic relationship with the city that manages to go beyond the American model since it allows you to read, through the places and buildings of the city, the evolution of the character himself and the completion of his path heroic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Angelo Iermano<\/strong> is a PhD student in Film History at Universit\u00e0 degli Studi della Basilicata with a project concerning the figure of the hero within the Italian cinema. His interests of research are the comedy, comic and laughter\u2019s theories. This study took him to publish the monograph La scienza e il comico: la comicit\u00e0 di “The Big Bang Theory” alla luce delle teorie del riso <\/em>(Sinestesie, 2017).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Angelo IermanoUniversity of Basilicata (Italy) Heroes of the Cityscape: Rome in Lo chiamavano Jeeg Robot The purpose of this speech is to investigate the relationship between city and superhero in the italian film Lo chiamavano Jeeg Robot (2015) by Gabriele Mainetti. Metropolis has often been the privileged place for the superheroes adventures. The city is the location that … <\/p>\n

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