Let the HBO adaptation of the movie "My brilliant friend" of Elena Ferrante turn you into a socialist

The socialist television of prestige is here. Yes, awareness can be increased through any medium, including one that costs more than $ 100 * per month, such as premium cable. Gradually, anti-capitalist sentiments have infiltrated into the most important cultural product of our time, from Samin Nosrat's cooking show "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" to, more recently, the new adaptation of the series by Elena Ferrante of HBO Neapolitan Romans, "My brilliant friend."

The series, like the Ferrante Quartet's first novel, is told by Elena "Lenù" Greco, an elderly woman who reflects on her youth in a working-class neighborhood of the 1950s in Naples. In her story, little Lenù befriends Raffaela "Lila" Cerullo, daughter of a shoemaker and most intelligent girl of her class. Lenù, also an excellent student, is impressed by the brains of her rival, but also by her rebellious spirit and courage. Early on, Lila showed little patience with bullies and social norms. The two children become inseparable and cling to a deep but deep friendship, even as their paths separate in adolescence and early adulthood: Lenù continues her education and becomes more and more detached. of the social violence of his neighborhood. Lila is forced to give up her studies and immisce in attempts to improve her condition, both by socialist ideology and by stratagems to design and sell quality shoes. superior in his father's shop.

If the Neapolitan novels of Ferrante had been published under the name of a man, they had presented a friendship between two poor but smart boys from Naples or perhaps they had come to the United States. United a few years later, conversations about the quartet would have begun his passionate explorations of Italian politics – especially the socialist organization. This is a central and unavoidable concern of the series. In one Jacobin article from April, Dawn Tefft Ferrante was hailed as "the organizer of the organizer". The following books, which unfolded in the political upheaval of Italy in the 1970s, deal with the logistics of organizing workers, the roles of the privileged and the oppressed in militant spaces, the l & # 39; Urgency and the overwhelming impossibility of revolution.

Ferrante's hit series arrived on US shores in the midst of pop feminist enthusiasm for female friendships – squads of girls, best friends, even the fragile and perilous joys of a frenzy like that of the narrator Lenù and his "brilliant friend" Lila. In mainstream society, feminism was ascendant and somewhat entangled in capitalism, an egalitarian movement that manifested its respect for leaning, feminine bumps and the millennial pink merch sporting pro-women slogans. The socialist preoccupations of novels, for many, have emerged more as a historical detail than a theme with contemporary significance.

The context has changed. Socialism, as recently stated my colleague Zach Carter, is good nowand this means that the economic policy of books is no longer a historical context but an open question. "My Brilliant Friend" arrives at HBO just as America is ready to tackle its socialist themes – and the novel's adaptation by Saverio Costanzo, co-produced by HBO and the Italian network RAI, does not hide them.

Translate a novel to the screen, especially a book as meditative as My Brilliant Friend, is a process tainted by changing relationships of interiority and externality. If the perception, anxiety and contemplation of a character fill the pages of the book, a meaningful look can be the action that takes place on the screen. Indeed, we often see Lenù, the public substitute described by Elisa Del Genio and, later, Margherita Mazzucco, lost in a silent thought, looking sadly or even blank. Her occasional dubbing narrative fills certain gaps, clarifies her bitter-sweet adoration for Lila (Ludovica Nasti and Gaia Girace) and her intellectual insecurities. But inevitably, the clamor of the obsession of all her life with her friend fades in front of the camera. What can be more easily understood in this relative silence are the political conversations that Ferrante already had in My Brilliant Friend.

Take, for example, the violent assault in which the neighborhood is held by Don Achille Caracci, then by the Solara family. The threat of these wealthy men is deeply rooted in novels, but on screen, the cries of terror that accompany fights in the street and beatings are more shocking than they are when it is mediated by the thoughtful, even narrative narrative of Lenù. These men control the capital and are therefore able to continue to accumulate more wealth and operate with impunity in a largely impoverished neighborhood. At the beginning of the series, carpenter Alfredo Peluso lost his business due to predatory loans from Don Achille; it is left ruined and bitter, with nowhere to turn. The Solaras, who operate the only bar in the city, offer him a job and a ploy to release the influence of Don Achille on the neighborhood. But nothing changes when power changes hands, with the exception of men whom everyone must fear.

We may be reluctant to consider the postwar economy of Italy, which operated under very different conditions, as a lesson to be learned from the failures of capitalism for Americans of today. # 39; hui. However, the way the capital works in neighborhood markets should look familiar in many ways. Those who have money are able to invest in systems to get more; those who have no money simply struggle to avoid debt. Those who have money commit crimes without incurring consequences; those who do not have money have no choice but to remain silent.

The education offers an escape to Lenù and Lila, who are particularly talented (Lila in particular). Their teacher, Maestra Oliviero, quickly realizes the potential they have and insists on their parents to allow them to continue their studies in college while most of their peers will finish their studies to start work or help their mothers to do the same. household. But let it be remembered that if education is an opportunity to get out of the working class, it is a mechanism to maintain a stratified society. Maestra Oliviero wants to get Lila and Lenù out of the stuffy mud of their poor neighborhood, but when Lila is forced to abandon formal schooling in the second episode, "Money", the teacher fires her former student in cruelly classist.

"Elena, do you know what the plebs are?" She asks. "The plebs are a very bad thing. And if anyone wants to stay plebeian, he, his children and the children of his children deserve nothing. Listen to me: forget Cerullo and think of yourself.

Her attentive attention to these girls, we realize with the force of a slap, comes from the stock she puts on the market, value of a sharp mind. Those who do not have the obvious promise of a more lucrative and better trained job do not deserve to worry. Even Lila's boundless curiosity, her self-taught habits, and her creative gifts deserve no consideration from her teacher unless they are directed by the traditional educational system toward the success of the middle class. In fact, the dismissal of Maestra Oliviero follows the presentation by Lenù of a beautiful little book entitled "The Blue Fairy", written and illustrated by Lila.

Disdain for the lower classes and anxious attachment to the current social order are not universal in the girls' district. The carpenter in ruins Alfredo Peluso and his son Pasquale, a friend of Lila and Lenù, would be communists and therefore would be considered dangerous. When Pasquale pays romantic and ambiguous attention to Lenù during an event at the library, his parents and maestra Oliviero strongly insist that she does not associate with him. Lila, who refuses to resign herself to the rule of exploitation of Don Achille or Solaras, is intrigued by Pasquale's policy. After leaving a dance party during which the Solara men stole their weight and stole a dance with Lila, Pasquale tells his friends how a wealthy family organized a black market in his bar and collected the votes of monarchists. and fascists. "

"People talk and do not know anything. You know a lot, "Lila told her clearly. "Explain to me what are monarchists and fascists and what is the black market?"

"Some people pulled money out of hunger during the war," he replies. "They sold bread, pasta, coffee at exorbitant prices. People were forced to buy them to survive. Everything you see, houses, cars, buildings, everything has been bought through someone else.

This is an unusually didactic moment for a TV show – a mini-seminar on the evils of lowering prices, a first step towards radicalization – and, although faithfully rendering the book, it is no longer presented through obscure strata of Lenù's memory and interpretation.

In the book, for example, the scene ends with Lila's questions. When Lenù continues her narration, she is immersed in uncertainty and preoccupied with her own past and present emotions about the event: "[O]At that moment, she recalls, Pasquale's responses had no concrete effect. But [Lila], in her usual way, was so moved and changed by them, so that all through the summer, she tormented me with a single concept that I found quite unbearable. The reader feels this moment as an impressionistic representation of political awareness.

But in the show, the viewer feels Pasquale's speech as directly as Lila, like a transfer of knowledge and a call to arms. In times like this, adaptation is on the side of outspokenness, leaving no doubt about his socialist interests. These should become more explicit only in the coming seasons, as Ferrante's subsequent books plunge into the workings of trade union organization and leftist activism, as well as cumulative traumas. inflicted by oppression based on class and gender.

While the kind of Americans who pay for premium cable is slowly adapting to the possibilities of socialism, "My Brilliant Friend" is perhaps exactly the series to be seen: a film that traces a political awakening that must must be followed, work heartbreaking.

* Or as little as $ 14.99 per month, plus the cost of your Internet connection via HBO Go – a flight.