No political satire please... we're Italian
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been accused of suffering a sense-of-humour failure after his media group sued a comedian for spreading 'lies and insinuations' about it.
Today, instead of broadcasting her stand-up political satire act on state television as planned, Italian comedian Sabina Guzzanti is preparing to decamp to a concert hall in Rome, disappointing the two million viewers who tuned into the first edition of her show last week.
Since Berlusconi's media group Mediaset took legal action against the comedian, the state television company RAI has shelved the show temporarily, citing legal reasons.
In the first instalment of the show, called RaiOt (pronounced 'riot') - Weapons of Mass Distraction, Guzzanti tore into almost every figure in Italian public life, including the Prime Minister and the director of state television. She also touched on issues such as the public display of crucifixes and international support for Israel.
'Nowadays comedians have to say serious things... if you have a Prime Minister who tells jokes, what else can you do?,' she asked, dressed up as Uma Thurman, one of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad in the bloody revenge film Kill Bill.
'Italy ranks 53rd in a worldwide index of media freedom, after Benin, Ghana and Bolivia,' she said, referring to a list drawn up in 2002 by the campaign group Reporters Without Borders.
'Did you hear anything about that in the news? No. But then again, if you had we would not rank 53rd, would we?'
She also impersonated the media tycoon Prime Minister addressing television networks, sitting at a massive desk against a backdrop of huge gold-coloured curtains.
One feature of the show - a graphic which showed Mediaset winning hands-down in the advertising war with the rest of the country's media - raised the wrath of billionaire Berlusconi's media group, which saw shares drop on the stock exchange after the show.
'The idea is to talk through an issue,' Guzzanti explains. 'Saying things that you don't hear on TV. We are taking on the job of filling that gap.'
A Mediaset statement accused the comedian of disseminating 'lies and extremely serious insinuations', which had 'harmed the honour of a company registered on the stock exchange'. The company complained the programme was particularly offensive since it was broadcast on state television, with which Mediaset is a direct competitor.
RAI said that it was forced to suspend the show because of the huge legal costs - potentially running into millions of euros - that it could incur. The remaining five shows are still being made but will not be broadcast for now.
As Guzzanti prepares to improvise in Rome today, she said she had received thousands of emails expressing solidarity. More than 100 opposition MPs have signed a petition calling on RAI to run the show as scheduled. 'I am determined to see this through,' Guzzanti told journalists. 'It is a serious precedent for freedom of expression. It's like asking a journalist to write today's newspaper for publication in three months' time.'