SAN MARTINO, 11/11/2010 / 11/11/2023

And here it is, another 11 November has arrived! To the tune of Fiorello's San Martino (with lyrics by Carducci), the Wandering Writer shares with her readers a particularly important day in her life: the proclamation of her degree in Modern Literature.

And yes, because the discussion of the thesis took place on 9 November 2010, on the anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, while the proclamation of all Humanities graduates took place on the eleventh that year!

It was a bit like when they decided to make the Matura students vote for a referendum on 25 June, and then make them take the first, second and third exams in three days in a row, without even a day's break between the second and third exams, as they had always done before 2006 and started to do again in 2007!

Let us say that those born in 1987 like the Wandering Writer have often received such 'treatment'!

We should perhaps thank the Morandi / Tozzi / Ruggieri trio who won the Sanremo Festival that year with the song 'Si può dare di piu?'!

That was precisely the phrase that even the Rector of the University of Turin said in my ear when he shook my hand!

You can give more! It's a phrase that everyone always repeats to me! In family, in friendships, as a housewife, as a student, as a worker.

I put my all into everything I do, but I need time to be able to make as few mistakes as possible.

However, I make RichardHTT's words my own, who in a video uploaded to his channel recommends 'EXPERIMENTING', because only by doing can we learn especially from the mistakes we make ourselves!

The dissertation I defended that year was started at the end of 2009. After taking a film exam with Professor Alovisio, I asked him if he could be my supervisor. He did not say no, but he advised me beforehand to also ask Professor Dario Tomasi, as he was on the same degree course as me. When I went to Professor Tomasi, I told him that I wanted to study animation cinema in depth, so he told me to go to the MARIO GROMO library and look for all the reviews published on cartoons from 1995 to the current year (which, I remember, was 2009) in five magazines: Cineforum, Duel/Duellanti, Film Critica, La rivista del Cinematografo, Segno Cinema). Once I had searched, photocopied, read and summarised them, I brought them to him and from those he told me to take only those relating to a production company of my choice, and I chose Pixar (and its subsidiary, Disney).

I am happy with the choice I made, and I bring you the conclusions of this adventure, now concluded, which I jealously carry in my heart!

The relationship between Pixar and its subsidiary, Disney, is one on which many, sometimes conflicting, positions have emerged. It has been argued by Liberti that there is a relationship of mutual exchange between the two makors; Pixar does not totally close the doors to Disney's thinking, but manages to find from Toy Story to Up a synthesis that combines the strategies and ideas of the two film companies in a balanced way. The elements that divide Pixar from Disney are the choral representation of all the characters, which excludes the predominance of some characters over others, in this case making the ideas of the former production company prevail over the latter; the choice of characterising the protagonists with 'real' features, rejecting on some occasions the extreme anthropomorphisation typical of Disney. Precisely to avoid the Disney anthropomorphisation of the characters, the choice was made to 'humanise' objects that are actually inanimate, creating a parallel between them and humans. Pixar, moreover, demonstrates on several occasions that it does not settle for the simplistic solution of entrusting one or more characters with the function of antagonist: the solution always arrives at the moment when the main character realises that what he needs is within himself. Further elements that place Pixar in opposition to its partner are the reticence to use human characters and the re-adaptation of stories already known to the public. (...) In the light of these considerations, the poetics of the film production company under scrutiny consists of the following topics:

1) The proposal of confrontation and knowledge of the outsider as a solution to conflict situations.

2) Diversity is a universal theme, which cuts across all species. The choice of using inanimate objects as protagonists instead of human beings allows the differences to be exemplified and enables Pixar to create a high-level metaphorical discourse. Pixar particularly depicts issues related to diversity in appearance and issues related to diversity as a physical and neurological handicap. Linked to the diversity of appearance is the call for the elimination of racial and gender discrimination.

3) Each individual has the right and the duty to try to realise his or her dreams, trying not to forget the importance of having someone at one's side with whom to share the joys and sorrows that this process entails.

4) The very essence of the entire Pixar production is given by the awareness of the importance of relationships between individuals, made particularly evident in the last cartoon analysed here.

(...)

One can define Pixar's poetics as a 'layered poetics': the four parts listed above constitute a kind of jigsaw puzzle that composes each digitally produced Pixar cartoon in a different way.

Up, having been chosen as the opening film of the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, officially decreed the conquest by drawn animation cinema of a position of equal dignity with 'live-action' cinema.

Woody and Buzz, Flick, Mike and Sullivan, Nemo and Dory, Mr. Incredible and Elastic Girl, Lightning Mc Queen, Remi and Linguini, Wall-e and Eve, Carl and Russell are the "citizens" of a world in which the encounter with the Other and its relative acceptance is an essential condition for the economic and productive progress of the whole of humanity. "

At 36, I carry with me my dad's satisfaction at seeing me graduate, the personal satisfaction of having managed to complete my studies in Italy, a national civil service in a library where for twelve months I worked full-time thirty hours a week for 433.80 euros a month, a European volunteer project in Romania. Now the Wandering Writer is a mother of two little girls to whom I want to give all the opportunities that my dad managed to give me despite the difficulties.

The first of the Cosmopolitan Family released in 2021 was created with the aim of both financing my daughters' future and, in the present time, helping the illustrator make her debut in the publishing world.

In seventeen days stay tuned to the WRITER'S WRITER channels because there will soon be a NEW Cosmopolitan Family that I can't wait to share with all the readers of this blog!

AGHA AJOKA!