Víctimas invisibles: representación de la mujer y la vida cotidiana en los noticiarios Luce de la Segunda Guerra Mundial (1939-1945)

Abstract

La Segunda Guerra Mundial trajo consigo una serie de consecuencias y cambios sociales de gran calado en Italia: la población civil vio trastocada su vida cotidiana con los continuos bombardeos y el hambre. La población civil, especialmente las mujeres, tuvieron que adaptarse a los cambios sociales: además de movilizarse, las italianas estuvieron entre quienes sufrieron e hicieron frente a los problemas de la supervivencia diaria. Este artículo analiza la representación que ofrecieron los noticiarios cinematográficos Luce de estos aspectos, centrándose en la imagen que se ofrece de la participación de las mujeres en este contexto bélico.

The Second World War brought about a number of consequences and social changes that left its mark in Italy: the daily lives of the civilian population was disrupted by continuous bombings and hunger. Civilians, especially women, had to adapt to the social changes: as well as mobilize themselves, Italian women had to suffer and face the difficulties of day to day survival. This article analyses how the Luce cinema newsreels portrayed these issues, focusing on the image depicted by the participation of women on the home front. There are other studies about the portrayal of women in cinema during both the fascist and Franco regimes, but these focus primarily on gender stereotypes spread by fascist propaganda. This article, however, focuses on the Second World War, and especially on the everyday life of the civilian population. It addresses in depth the consequences of the war on the daily life of Italian women and this presents a new angle to previous studies which focused specifically on the depiction of the Second World War in the Luce newsreels. It also makes a comparative study of the presentation of these topics in the Italian media –especially the press– as well as the female models in war propaganda in countries involved in the conflict such us Germany. In order to explore these ideas, this article makes a quantitative as well as qualitative analysis of the Luce newsreels, the main source used. The newsreels were an important propaganda tool given that their screening was compulsory and they held the monopoly on audiovisual communication during those years. This analysis reveals the propaganda intentions of the Mussolini regime: military aspects take centre stage, death is censored, news about bombings or food shortages are avoided. This results in an image of the war far from the reality of civilians, and in particular, women.