This volume offers an analysis of fiction according to two criteria: as a theoretical and empirically relevant area in itself and, also, as a bridge to access to the big issues that affect both the relationship between media and collective identity, as well as the implications of the encounter between different cultures.
Milly Buonanno, an important researcher of the cultural and industrial aspects of television, here presents in-depth readings of texts and contexts to reconstruct the modes of representation of the family and the mafia, two spheres of action that, for better and for worse, they are closely linked to Italian culture and society and are perhaps the most recognizable elements of Italian identity for "non-natives". But the author interprets the Italian textual corpus also from a perspective that goes beyond the singular national case. With the paradigm of indigenization, it challenges the still influential theories of cultural colonization and proposes analytical and conceptual referents that allow for a greater account of the real processes that are activated in the intercultural encounter through international television flows.