Fascist Spectacle.pdf

Fascist Spectacle http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft18700444&chunk.id=0&doc.v...
Figure 2.
Mussolini as lion tamer.
― 70 ―
little lioness, "Italia," riding an automobile initiated the vogue of Mussolini as tamer. A postcard
sponsored by the Pirelli wheel factory reflected this image, showing Mussolini in a coat and bowler hat,
a lion on his lap, being driven in a car. "The daily car ride of His Excellency Mussolini," the caption
read, yet another sign of the publicity surrounding the Duce.
Mussolini also came across as the courageous experimenter with new sports and the dominator of
modern mechanical media. The image of the Duce wearing large road goggles and driving motorbikes
and automobiles became part of the iconography of his myth, especially in the first ten years of his
government, and again millions of such photographs were distributed in the postcard market. [173] But
most of all, the Duce's presumed skill as an aviator made him a gallant hero. These were times when
Charles Lindbergh's transoceanic flight struck people's imagination. [174] Airplanes were symbols of a
new era, and aviators, like actors, were saluted as stars. In fact, most major actors sooner or later
played the role of a pilot, most often a war pilot, in a film. [175] Fascism, as futurism had done earlier,
appropriated the airplane as its own symbol and transformed it into a cult. [176] Airplanes embodied
qualities such as dynamism, energy, and courage—attributes that fascism worshipped and claimed as
its own. Mussolini as aviator automatically represented and promoted those virtues. [177] He had
begun to take flying lessons from the pilot Cesare Redaelli in the summer of 1920. In the words of his
teacher, he had been an exceptional, astonishing student with an attention span superior to any other
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