sienamystic (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sienamystic) wrote2005-08-01 03:25 pm
sienamystic) wrote2005-08-01 03:25 pm
The Venetian Dilemma
What do you do when a city is so alluring to the entire world that it becomes nearly unlivable for its own citizens? When a city is beautiful, appealing, ready to accept tourists without hesitation, and yet is so fragile that the same tourists that are its lifeblood are also destroying it?
The Venetian Dilemma, a film by two Americans who also live in Venice, poses this question, and provides some insight into both sides of the coin by letting Venetians speak for themselves. We hear from a tough-minded graphic designer who crusades for child care, an older writer who runs a group that petitions the mayor to enforce boat speed limits (heavy backwash from propellers is literally eating away at the foundations of the buildings), a fruit and vegetable vendor fighting to keep his stall in the same campowhere it has been since the 1950s, despite heavy pressure from the government to have it demolished, and finally, a representative of City Hall itself, a charming and well-spoken man who thinks that the solution to many of Venice's problems is a high-speed underwater metro and new convention center.
Venice has approximately 65,000 residents. In one year, it is visited by 14 million tourists. Many of them are day-trippers, coming in on cruise ships or on the train. They buy a mask, a keychain, and they have lunch. They use the bathroom. They go to Piazza San Marco and take a picture, and feed the pigeons, and then walk over to the Ponte de Sospiri. Then they go home. The next day, another wave arrives.
"I have to go two kilometers to get to a bakery," comments the fruit vendor. "But along the way, I pass fifty mask shops."
The conflict between Venice as a museum, and Venice as a place where real people have to work and live is a fascinating and painful one. I love Venice. I've visited it several times, and walked her streets as night in fascinated awe. I remember my first time, stepping out of the train station and seeing the city before me, and thinking that it couldn't really be - this was too much like I had imagined the city for it to be real. I tried to be a responsible tourist in a few ways: I stayed for several days, got a room in a small pensione, tried (and probably failed) to eat at owner-operated restaurants, and in generally attempted to be a polite, unobtrusive, informed, and respectiful tourist. Many of the cruise-ship tourists, (who I dislike, but I know that it is in some way a stereotype on my part) and the day-trippers seem to love coming to Venice. Some of them may be as interested in the city as I am, some may not - you don't have to pass a Worthiness Screening to be permitted into a city – but I doubt that many of them are informed about anything beyond a few historical dates and a story about Casanova.
This is a very difficult topic to write about without sounding like a snob of one variety or another. One always wants to distance themselves from that type of tourist – the sort that Monty Python made fun of: “…What's the point of going abroad if you're just another tourist carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Coventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors, complaining about the tea - "Oh they don't make it properly here, do they, not like at home…" Living in a heavily touristed place like Washington DC makes you all too aware of the bad kinds of tourists. And being interested in Venice and her problems doesn’t make me any more than an interested observer, until the day comes that I win the lotto and buy an apartment there. In the end, all I can say is that I love the city, I’m interested in her welfare, and I watch and hope that a better day may come for her and all her citizens. Venice has always welcomed foreigners, most of whom promptly fell in love with her, so at least I’m following in a grand tradition.
Reviews of the Movie
(I will note that I didn't particularly care that the movie wasn't shot on the highest quality film, and that the occasional reviewers who fuss that the movie didn't show Venice off to good advantage may perhaps be missing the point. Also, some reviewers seemed to expect the film to answer all the difficult questions it posed, which I doubt very much any film could do. And, that although I am a certified Venice and Italophile, my more disinterested husband enjoyed the film very much, as did the rest of the audience. Then again, residents of Washington DC may be expected to sympathize with the problems faced by the Venetians, especially when one of the people in the film commented ruefully, "This is the problem with democracy. When the majority is made up of shitheads, they elect shitheads to office.")
The Onion AV Club review
Metacritic
NY Times review (registration required)
Rotten Tomatoes
Links on Venice
VeniceBanana, a useful site, plus webcams of the city
Photographs of the city
Lonely Planet
Venice in the Dark
Masks and mask making (since it’s impossible to separate Venice from masks. Anyway, I love masks, so I want this link around for myself.
The Venetian Dilemma, a film by two Americans who also live in Venice, poses this question, and provides some insight into both sides of the coin by letting Venetians speak for themselves. We hear from a tough-minded graphic designer who crusades for child care, an older writer who runs a group that petitions the mayor to enforce boat speed limits (heavy backwash from propellers is literally eating away at the foundations of the buildings), a fruit and vegetable vendor fighting to keep his stall in the same campowhere it has been since the 1950s, despite heavy pressure from the government to have it demolished, and finally, a representative of City Hall itself, a charming and well-spoken man who thinks that the solution to many of Venice's problems is a high-speed underwater metro and new convention center.
Venice has approximately 65,000 residents. In one year, it is visited by 14 million tourists. Many of them are day-trippers, coming in on cruise ships or on the train. They buy a mask, a keychain, and they have lunch. They use the bathroom. They go to Piazza San Marco and take a picture, and feed the pigeons, and then walk over to the Ponte de Sospiri. Then they go home. The next day, another wave arrives.
"I have to go two kilometers to get to a bakery," comments the fruit vendor. "But along the way, I pass fifty mask shops."
The conflict between Venice as a museum, and Venice as a place where real people have to work and live is a fascinating and painful one. I love Venice. I've visited it several times, and walked her streets as night in fascinated awe. I remember my first time, stepping out of the train station and seeing the city before me, and thinking that it couldn't really be - this was too much like I had imagined the city for it to be real. I tried to be a responsible tourist in a few ways: I stayed for several days, got a room in a small pensione, tried (and probably failed) to eat at owner-operated restaurants, and in generally attempted to be a polite, unobtrusive, informed, and respectiful tourist. Many of the cruise-ship tourists, (who I dislike, but I know that it is in some way a stereotype on my part) and the day-trippers seem to love coming to Venice. Some of them may be as interested in the city as I am, some may not - you don't have to pass a Worthiness Screening to be permitted into a city – but I doubt that many of them are informed about anything beyond a few historical dates and a story about Casanova.
This is a very difficult topic to write about without sounding like a snob of one variety or another. One always wants to distance themselves from that type of tourist – the sort that Monty Python made fun of: “…What's the point of going abroad if you're just another tourist carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Coventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors, complaining about the tea - "Oh they don't make it properly here, do they, not like at home…" Living in a heavily touristed place like Washington DC makes you all too aware of the bad kinds of tourists. And being interested in Venice and her problems doesn’t make me any more than an interested observer, until the day comes that I win the lotto and buy an apartment there. In the end, all I can say is that I love the city, I’m interested in her welfare, and I watch and hope that a better day may come for her and all her citizens. Venice has always welcomed foreigners, most of whom promptly fell in love with her, so at least I’m following in a grand tradition.
Reviews of the Movie
(I will note that I didn't particularly care that the movie wasn't shot on the highest quality film, and that the occasional reviewers who fuss that the movie didn't show Venice off to good advantage may perhaps be missing the point. Also, some reviewers seemed to expect the film to answer all the difficult questions it posed, which I doubt very much any film could do. And, that although I am a certified Venice and Italophile, my more disinterested husband enjoyed the film very much, as did the rest of the audience. Then again, residents of Washington DC may be expected to sympathize with the problems faced by the Venetians, especially when one of the people in the film commented ruefully, "This is the problem with democracy. When the majority is made up of shitheads, they elect shitheads to office.")
The Onion AV Club review
Metacritic
NY Times review (registration required)
Rotten Tomatoes
Links on Venice
VeniceBanana, a useful site, plus webcams of the city
Photographs of the city
Lonely Planet
Venice in the Dark
Masks and mask making (since it’s impossible to separate Venice from masks. Anyway, I love masks, so I want this link around for myself.
no subject
E.M. Forster dings those sorts of tourists in A Room With A View as well: "Rome is where we saw the yaller dawg!" (the best part of that bit being that the Rev. Mr. Eager is as bad as the Americans :) ) Not a new problem, and it seems as if we don't have any better solutions now than we did 100 years ago. Alas.
no subject
if you've read Michael Dibden's thriller DEAD LAGOON you'll know his half-satirical portrait of native Venetians. In that novel he posits a quasi-nationalistic politican who's all for imposing horrific taxes on tourists, using those taxes to erect a flood barrier on the Adriatic, then draining the Grand Canal and its main arterial canals and filling them with cement. One's first reaction is horror; one's second is the grudging realization that of course the locals are going to want Venice to survive even at the expense of that beauty. And if that means no more water, well... Dibden's gone for the deliberately grotesque, but it makes a much-needed point.
One final question - do you know the works of Michelle Lovric? CARNEVALE, THE FLOATING BOOK, THE REMEDY? Fun, lush, and proudly Venetian ;)
no subject
I have read Dead Lagoon, but it was a while ago. Dibden proved kind of hard for me to read - a combination of bleak and despairing that just didn't work for me. (I posted something on Italian mysteries here a while back. Since then, I've read the Andrea Camilleri books, which are great.) But yeah, I can see where he was going now, even with the extreme example. It's an interesting topic to look at, but it's also hard on us who both love the city and don't want to see the Venetians losing their own city.
I'll add Michelle Lovric to my list - there's a volunteer at my office who is a fellow Veneto-phile, and she may have them for me to swipe. Plus, yay - more books!
no subject
I am a big fan of the noir genre, so I don't mind the concept of universal corruption and the detective's futile struggle to find justice, but like you I take exception to the too-easy slur on the Italian character. Having recently read Tobias Jones's THE DARK HEART OF ITALY I am inclined to believe in an Italian tendency to obfuscate rather than clarify, but even Jones would not go so far as to make the denial of justice a national trait. (TDHoI is not as good a book as it could have been, btw: it covers necessary subjects like Berlusconi's hold on Italian daily life and the Mafia, but in a light beach-read manner that doesn't linger long in the memory.)
Anyway, thank you for a thought-provoking post!
no subject
Ooh, and another book to put on my list! Thanks so much for reading and commenting - you've given me more to think about.