6 Revenge of the Fans

“Waiting for a TV star in the street for hours to get an autograph is not only stupid, even worse . . . it is something that maids do.”1 With these words, Edoardo Albinati in the 2016 novel La scuola cattolica (The Catholic School) interprets his mother’s perspective when she forbade his sister to join her friends outside the hotel where “the actor playing Sandokan in a TV series” resided.2 The Italian mini-series in six episodes based on Emilio Salgari’s novels about a Malaysian pirate named Sandokan was broadcast on RAI’s number 1 channel in 1976. By that time, according to Anna Bravo, the photoromance (like other forms of mass culture) was considered “merce per plebe arretrate” (commodities for backward hicks) because the medium goes against any norms of social and cultural respectability. But the situation in which Albinati’s sister found herself is not only a case in point with regard to the class shaming that reading photoromances or being a fan of TV celebrities could bring to a middle-class girl (and her mother). It is also an example of how fandom could signify a generational rather than a class conflict. In this concluding chapter, I will discuss this question in the particular historical context of 1970s Italy to provide a nuanced understanding of the political and social relevance of reading photoromances during and after the sexual revolution and the second wave of feminist movements. Following Janice Radway’s advice, I will consider fans’ own theories about what they read and who they worship. Thanks to the World Wide Web, I explore photoromance fandom in the past through its collective and individual memories in the digital present.

The Rise of Lancio

Starting in 1961 with the publication of Letizia, Rome-based publisher Lancio began its successful path to become the major figure in the Italian press du cœur. By 1972, Lancio owned eleven titles in Italy alone and sold millions of copies per week. Bolero Film officially closed in 1984, while Lancio acquired Sogno in 1974 and its series were distributed globally and were the first to hit the U.S. market in the late 1970s. In 1979, as I mentioned in the introduction, Lancio’s Darling and Kiss invaded the world of American pulp fiction with “TV soap operas in magazine format.” Grand Hotel continued to be relatively successful through the decade but did not attract the same young readership of its Roman competitor. In an interview with media scholar Ulrike Schimming, photoromance director Paolo Brunetti argued that, in the seventies: “50% of Italians were reading our [i.e., Lancio’s] photoromances. But nobody has the courage to confess it—stupidly.”3 In fact, many more people read the same Lancio stories in both North and South America. According to Carlos Roberto de Souza, there were 130 issues of Lancio’s Kiling published between 1972 and 1984, fifty-nine of which were reprints of Italian stories; the rest were Argentinean-produced adventures.4

Contrary to common assumptions, Lancio’s publications were not technically unsophisticated. The quality of photographs in their black-and-white editions was unbeatable, compared to others, and they were the first to publish entirely in color.5 Furthermore, the in-house celebrities were incredibly successful in Europe: “beautiful, skilled, magnetic” actors and actresses who exclusively played in Lancio’s photoromances. Above all, Franco Gasparri, “the most handsome man in the universe,” especially paired with Claudia Rivelli, as well as Franco Dani, Katiuscia, Michela Roc, Max Delys, and many others. Their physical beauty attracted loyal buyers and convinced casual readers to purchase every episode of the saga Le avventure di Jacques Douglas (The Adventures of Jack Douglas, starring Gasparri and Rivelli), or the latest issue of the other crime series, Le avventure di Lucky Martin (The Adventures of Lucky Martin, with Dani, Katiuscia, and Roc), as well as any other magazine featuring their favorite actor/actress as protagonists or side characters. Fans stood in awe of their favorite celebrities, imitated their clothing fashions and hair styles, and dreamed of becoming like them (perhaps not as famous but similarly adored and sought after). Some fans even hoped and planned to meet their photoromance idols in person, at Lancio’s headquarters in Via Tiburtina. Further, the convenient publication of complete stories in single issues encouraged readers to buy Lancio photoromances exclusively and to religiously store the copies in order to read them (in their words) anytime they wanted, as many times they wanted, alone or in groups.

Lancio readers are not bothered by the fact that Lancio celebrities’ fame is limited to the world of photoromances, because readers rather value the affective relationships they have with these stars and the collective experience of discussing photoromances with others who share their passion. Also, these fans are no longer ashamed of whom they like and what they read, because they find in the Lancio fandom an outlet for their innermost feelings as well as a common, constructed identity.

These assumptions are not my own description of a hypothetical readership, but rather summarize my observations on contemporary digital platforms and social media where Lancio fans are today actively sharing opinions and personal stories of past consumption. To my knowledge, there are currently at least twelve different Facebook groups dedicated to Lancio magazines and celebrities (“Lancio Facebook Groups” [LFGs]); many members subscribe to multiple groups and administrators know each other, at least online. The transnational scope of the Lancio fandom is demonstrated by the fact that profiles of group members reveal they are not only located Italy, but also in other countries, in particular, in France, Argentina, and Brazil. However, most of them can post in Italian and the most active members are usually either foreign nationals living in Italy or having some connections to Italy. In addition to the various forms of narration and self-expression present on these platforms, my account draws from data collected through an ongoing research project sponsored by the University of Texas at Austin since January 2018. In the fall of 2017, I became a member of several LFGs in order to immerse myself in their cultures and understand the extent of the social phenomenon that they represented. My intention was to undertake the project from a combined cultural studies and ethnographic approach. In September 2017, I introduced myself to the largest of these LFGs, named “Noi, i lettori dei fotoromanzi . . . Lancio!!!” (We the Readers of Photoromances . . . Lancio; from now on, “We the Readers”), sharing my academic interest on the world of Lancio readership.6 Their enthusiasm was overwhelming. I also created an online anonymous survey, which I posted on my Facebook page titled “Fotoromanzi: Chi, Come, Quando, Perchè” (Who, How, When, Why) and on LFGs’ timelines, in order to collect qualitative data regarding readers’ past experiences (asking, for example, when they started reading; what did they like about the magazines; what stories did they remember and which photos; did they prefer to read photoromances or to go to the movies/watch TV and why, etc.) and current habits (do they still read photoromances; what do they like about them now; are they members of any LFGs and what are the motives for their choices).7 I also gathered information about gender identities, occupation, and level of education; however, this was not for statistical purposes but rather to add background information to the answers that I received. According to the survey’s report from February to June 2018, forty-five out of sixty-six respondents read photoromances in the past, while nineteen read them today and in the past (nobody identifies only as current reader); twenty out of fifty-nine responded affirmatively to the question of whether they are a member of LFGs; most respondents read Lancio exclusively and these respondents also took more time in writing detailed answers to my questions. Numbers are useful to understand that the responses I will quote in this chapter are broadly from Lancio readers, however, not necessarily from users who identify as members of online communities. In addition to the survey, I engaged in individual conversations with members of LFGs via Facebook Messenger and observed their interactions on the web. This data will also be included in the discussion that follows. I do not claim that the materials I collected in these months of research provide an exhaustive or objective picture of Lancio readership in universal terms. Rather, my goal is to understand the dynamics and structure of a contemporary culture (i.e., Lancio fandom) “through ‘thick,’ detailed, nuanced, historically-curious and culturally-grounded interpretation and deep description” of the world of online fans and communities.8

My goal is to demonstrate that the rise of Lancio in the 1970s signaled an important shift in the structure of Italian cultural industries toward media convergence, which was defined by the increased relevance of fandom and of participatory culture. According to Anna Bravo, Lancio publishing was a marginal event in the transition from the 1960s to the 1970s, one of the many stimuli for increasingly demanding Italian mass audiences. On the contrary, I argue in this chapter that the company’s editorial strategies resulted (intentionally or not) in a distinct realm of celebrity culture and an object-specific fandom, which ensured the longevity of the brand (as demonstrated by the dominant presence of LFGs). In Bravo’s words, Lancio cast “unknown beauties” as regular cast members and turned them into celebrities, making their role in the industry less relevant than that of other publishers, which instead employed film stars, television personalities, or singers. On the one hand, one can argue that Lancio did not capitalize on the established fame of performers and that made their magazines less appealing to a broader audience. On the other hand, by inventing “the professional photoromance actor,” as director Brunetti claimed in the previously mentioned interview, the publisher ensured the lasting loyalty of readers and their attachment to the Lancio’s “lovemark.” Beyond the brand, the success of these magazines is based on a kind of loyalty beyond all reason, exploiting both the emotional investment of fans and their reverence toward the performers.9 More specifically, as an LFG member who signed her comment via Facebook Messenger “Lancio nell’anima” (I am Lancio in my heart) explains, Lancio is perceived, engaged with, and represented as a family rather than a company, both by the industry and in the various forms of self-expression of employees and consumers. These dynamics of personal investments, and how they speak of Lancio fandom and fanship, on the one hand, and the publisher’s editorial strategies, on the other, will be the object of this study.

The vast majority of users who were and are Lancio readers claim (either in the present or in the past) “a common identity and a shared culture with other fans”; that is, in the words of Henry Jenkins, a fandom. Noticeably, users call themselves lancetti (male Lancio fans) and lancette (female Lancio fans), or ragazze Lancio (Lancio girls). Lancio’s editorial strategies that nurtured its fandom are immediately evident in surveying a sample of their series published between 1970 and 1979, such as Charme, Kolossal, The Adventures of Jack Douglas, The Adventures of Lucky Martin, Idilio (Idyll), and Sogno.10 All issues have in common the specific attention toward readers not as aspiring celebrities, as in Bolero Film, but as loyal customers, with both an emotional and an exclusive attachment to the Lancio “family.” Katiuscia’s response to a fan who had sent a few pictures hoping to get an audition helps to exemplify this point. In her words, “Lancio does not hire its performers this way. It’s a joke, at the very least, while we have for readers the utmost respect.”11 Rather than the usual contest for aspiring artists, typical of Bolero Film, Kolossal announced one to win “a day with your favorite star” (to participate, readers must also buy the soap bar “Panigal,” advertised by Lancio actress Claudia Rivelli).12 The relationships between fans and celebrity and fans and industry are thus built, in the words of both Lancio management and its employees, on the basis of affection and reciprocal understanding, while evidently embedded in consumerist culture. In the words of Rivelli, in her response to a fan’s letter: “Lancio can sense your desires and tries to support them, even to beat you to them.”13 Fanship is represented in narratives: in “Il ragazzo venuto dal Texas” (The Boy from Texas, The Adventures of Lucky Martin), for example, Katiuscia is caught by her distant boyfriend (Franco Dani) as she sighs while reading a story starring Franco Gasparri.14 Moreover, fans are used as characters, for example, in “Fotoromanzo dedicato a Lia” (Photoromance Dedicated to Lia, Kolossal, September 1979), which tells the story of a terminally ill admirer of Max Delys who finally manages to make him fall in love with her, after tirelessly waiting outside the Lancio headquarters where she stood every day, waiting be noticed. In the photoromance, Delys addresses readers directly and introduces them to his life as a Lancio celebrity. “The most pleasing and most difficult obstacle . . . ,” he comments in a caption, is “overcoming the most faithful fans, who never get tired” (figure 6.1). The cover of the issue also features the typewriter Lia used to write a story that was meant to star Delys (figure 6.2). As the photoromance develops, Lia eventually becomes the protagonist of a photoromance in the photoromance, with the leading man also played by Delys.

In contrast to Mondadori and Universo, Lancio magazines did not prioritize educational goals, but instead invested in commercial strategies that enticed casual readers to become loyal fans. Even though publishing stories in complete monthly or biweekly issues (rather than installments) was a Lancio innovation, the Roman publisher exploited seriality too, perhaps even more than the two “majors,” since each issue of a series like The Adventures of Lucky Martin was in fact an episode in an open-ended saga. Actors and actresses played the same characters, often in couples, such as Gasparri and Rivelli in the Jack Douglas series and Katiuscia and Dani in the Lucky Martin series. Furthermore, Lancio’s stories did not try to elevate the supposedly low culture of the photoromance, by using nineteenth-century novels as inspiration for the photo-textual narratives. According to Barbara Mercurio, Lancio’s stories were in this respect more “modern” than those of competitors because they used fiction to talk about contemporary issues in real-life settings. In fact, Lancio did more than just modernize photoromance plots in order to broaden its readership, as I mentioned earlier; some Lancio magazines also exploited recent and successful film genres, particularly the giallo (Italian horror subgenre) and the poliziottesco (cop movies), introducing comic characters along with suspense to the plotlines, and alongside the usual romance.

Fans’ recollections and current personal accounts support the idea that Lancio nurtured a new kind of reader-industry relationship and a new type of fan, who was so loyal that her fandom survived the company’s closure in 2011. This is not to say that Lancio fans are all the same or that, like in any other family, there are no signs of discord. On the contrary, the goal of this book is to review the cultural significance of Lancio’s success from the viewpoint of historical audiences, in order to highlight nuances and contradictions in previous accounts that understood readers as universal subjects. My communication with fans took place exclusively via the Internet, which is in fact the only space where a Lancio fandom exists today, since the publisher discontinued new productions in the late 1990s and officially closed in 2011. The term netnography is therefore more appropriate to signal “not only the presence but the gravity of the online component” in the ethnographic part of my research.15 This component does not limit but rather opens up new opportunities for researchers interested in studying how readers today respond to these photoromances, or in gathering readers’ memories of past experiences of this form of cultural consumption—or both. Since most online fans of Lancio publications started to read the magazines in the 1970s, they can help build the cultural memory of that period. In addition, online communities can give researchers access to data regarding the habits and preferences of current audiences. In sum, social media and other digital platforms allowed me to collect memories, observe fans’ interactions and self-narratives, and examine various forms of fan-made extensions (for example: photomontages, renarrations, digitized issues). These extensions of the original stories are a rich source of information about the photoromance fandom in general, and are telling of the unique status of Lancio magazines, vis-à-vis other publications of the same genre.

Even though Grand Hotel is still sold in newsstands and Lancio’s Letizia or Lucky Martin series are not, readers of the latter are predominant on the web, particularly on Facebook, making their performances visible (and readable) to other users. In fact, most Facebook pages created by Lancio fans are closed groups and members consistently express in their posts not only their devotion and fidelity to the brand (above all, to its celebrities), but also their thankfulness toward other members and page administrators. LFGs thus perform different functions. They are (1) safe spaces where lancette can talk about their own identity as fans; (2) open platforms where they can discuss topics related to the objects or subjects of Lancio fandom (other fans, narratives, celebrities, the industry . . .); (3) marketplaces where members can sell and buy issues; and (4) “rogue” archives, where fans can store digitized copies of their favorite issues and collect creative examples of “archontic” literature (re-narration of stories, remaking of layouts, cutting and pasting of single photo-text, and so on). In the following sections, I will discuss these functions in more detail in order to understand the social, psychological, and industrial dimensions of Lancio fandom.

Coming Out

By communicating exclusively through digital media and focusing solely on online communities, I took advantage of what Robert Kozinets highlights as four specific factors of the electronic language: anonymity, alterity, accessibility, and the possibility of archiving.16 The first two factors are important with regard to how fans exchange information and expressed themselves with me as well as with other members—the second factor particularly so in defining the space of the community in which such communication takes place. Most LFG users (as well as my survey’s respondents) were teenagers in the 1970s, which often means that they have little familiarity with digital tools and language. In many occasions, though, the lack of skills becomes a topic of conversation as well as a way for more seasoned members of the community to engage with newcomers, and for the latter to express their own insecurities and feelings. Eventually, the second nature of electronic language use becomes for fans the only way to be in contact with “la vera Lancio” (the true Lancio) or, in the words of a woman in the LFG, “We the Readers,” to “meet people whom I unfortunately do not know in person, but who have been close to me on many occasions.”17

The fundamental role played by digital media is thus the emancipation of readers that the Internet facilitates, allowing users to finally come out as fans. According to Jenkins, to speak as a fan is “to forge an alliance with a community of others in defense of taste which, as a result, cannot be read as totally aberrant or idiosyncratic.”18 When considering Lancio fans, I agree with Jenkins that readers speak out as fans because they can speak from a position of collective identity. Further, as Jenkins also argues, “One of the most often heard comments from new fans is their surprise in discovering how many people share their fascination with a particular series, their pleasure in discovering that they are not ‘alone.’”19 In the words a member of “Noi lettori,” the group is a place in which to exchange opinions “in a civil way” with people who share the same interests and, as another member states, to discover that other people have the same passion, “without looking stupid.”

In her chapter on the photoromance audience, Bravo argues that female readers have remained underground since the time in which habits of cultural consumption started to matter across the social composition of the Italian population. She describes a trajectory in the degree of readers’ awareness of what I would call their abjection: from the immediate postwar period when readers only knew about moral judgments against them but ignored cultural discredit of the genre, through the late 1960s when aspirations of social and cultural respectability were expressed by means of (self-)contempt toward “low” products such as TV and tabloids and, above all, photoromances.20 Her analysis culminates in the example of a series of interviews conducted in the late 1970s by a group of researchers in the popular Roman neighborhood of Trastevere.21 Published outside academia, the work of these researchers was highly original. Although it did not lead to further inquiries, their findings provide a unique historical background to my analysis of today’s fandom. The qualitative interviews that they collected verified that stories were discussed and re-narrated communally with other readers. At the same time, while thirty-two photoromance readers agreed to answer the researchers’ questions, many more refused, denying that they ever looked at the magazines, or even attacking its narratives and characters for their “stupidity” (despite the fact that they actually read photoromances regularly). These acts of rejection are meaningful to make a point about the sense of shame that many readers shared. According to Bravo, women read photoromances for entertainment, but knew that they were being shamed for it and eventually came to despise themselves and what they liked.22

Today fans of Lancio recall past experiences of prohibition and shaming, and express relief in having found a community that allows them to be part of a community of like-minded fans. Respondents to my survey and members with whom I communicated via online messaging speak of different situations in which their parents or, more specifically, their mothers discovered stacks of magazines and trashed them, or punished them on finding out that their child had read a copy. For example, S.C. remembers that she began to read photoromances when she was seven, in 1973, against the wishes of her mother (S.C. described her as “a bit rigid and severe”) who thought that reading was, in general, a waste of time.23 S.C. writes: “How cute I was when, as a little girl, I would go to the newsstand in the afternoon to buy photoromances! The seller was a bit skeptical, but in the end, he would even keep copies for me aside until I had money to buy them. And at that time there were so many new issues! Luckily, my dear aunt E. would gift me some. Over the years, I did not miss an issue and I had a collection that I always needed to hide because otherwise it would end up in the trash.”24

In many of the fans’ memories that I collected, adults who were against them reading photoromances judged them according to Bravo’s twofold description: either as not respectable—photoromances were stuff for maids, affirms B.B.; or morally dangerous—to people of their age, writes A.C.A.25 However, when recalling these memories, all fans describe themselves not with shame but with pride, because they were transgressing parental rules either for their own enjoyment or to bond with their girlfriends. Social media today, then, becomes a newly found safe space where they can share their opinions freely with people who “understand them.” Although numerically less significant, the experiences of masculine fans could be useful to study how gender-labeled readings functioned, and continue to do so, in negotiating masculine identities and how digital platforms may constitute a safe space where they can come out as fans. Nonetheless, most respondents to my survey (sixty-one out of sixty-six) as well as all members who agreed to communicate with me via online messaging identify as women. To remain faithful to my intention of basing my assumptions on fans’ narratives and personal accounts, this chapter is dedicated to the lancette or “ragazze Lancio” (Lancio girls), with the hope that future research will bring the experiences of masculine fanship to the fore.26

It’s a Family Affair

In their own recollections, lancette often blame their parents for preventing them from fulfilling their desires, but also use the metaphor of the family to describe their relationship with the industry. In multiple instances throughout the data that I gathered, fans replace the materialistic nature of commercial transactions with imaginary bonds of an affective nature. In the present day, LFG members perform activities that are at the boundaries of legality (digitizing entire stories and making them available to users, for example), but claim consistently that they act for the good of the Lancio family, by which they mean both the industry and themselves, as an online community (sometimes, users even mention personal relationships, encounters, or exchanges with the Mercurio family, who owned the business). This behavior is self-described in the posts of LFGs and in survey responses in continuity with a tradition of reciprocal trust and care set up by the publisher in an undefined past.27 In a relatively recent interview (1997), Barbara Mercurio stated, “We call ourselves somehow a family Lancio and we have a somewhat close relationship with everyone. There’s a chance to be constantly in contact with everyone. And so, this sensation, this relationship is transferred onto the audience as well.”28 Her testimony is in continuity with her declarations of sentimental attachment to both employees and customers. When she announced to readers the end of the series The Adventures of Jack Douglas (no. 180, 1980), after the motorcycle accident that forced main protagonist Franco Gasparri into a wheelchair for the rest of his life, Mercurio stated that her decision was meant as “a gesture of sincere affection” but also “to safeguard a patrimony of experience and popularity” that was based on ties with the audience “beyond the simple economic aspect.”29 The article, posted on the LFG “Noi lettori,” triggered a series of members’ responses that were overwhelmingly in support of Mercurio’s decision and her statement, described as moving, respectful, and intelligent, and reminiscent of old times.30

In this respect, the metaphor of “family reunion” used by C. Lee Harrington and Denise Bielby to define the American soap opera fandom’s relationship with the daytime television industry likewise applies to LFGs, specifically, the return of Lancio in the lives of members.31 Similar to the soap opera fandom, Lancio fans do not have a contentious relationship with the industry, as happens in most cases of fandoms. Unlike Harrington and Bielby’s case example, however, Lancio had left its fans orphans before the opening of LFGs. This situation bestowed on lancette, from their perspectives, the status of inheritors of the brand and of “la vera” (the true) Lancio. S.C., whom I previously quoted, remarks: “Unfortunately, at some point, you would get to the newsstand and the seller, full of sorrow, would give you those few issues that he had found and kept aside for me, until I lost track. Nothing. Not even one more page. I was in mourning. Then, in 2013, I opened my fb [sic] account and with great surprise I found several groups of Lancio enthusiasts. Luckily, I signed up for this. I believe that the true Lancio is now here, thanks to the administrators and to many members, in particular, those who publish so many stories here with so much effort and passion, so that this way they will never die.”32

In other words, lancette consider it fair use to digitize and publish Lancio stories because they see themselves as part of a Lancio family and, moreover, they believe they are simply continuing a tradition—really, they’re doing the industry a favor. A recent article clipped and posted by A.C.A. on “Noi lettori” illustrates this point. Titled “Teniamoci in contatto” (Let’s Keep in Touch), it speaks in the name of the company and is signed by “lancio.” The topic is the opening of a website, thanks to which “chances to talk among each other have multiplied and with them also the possibilities offered to female and male readers to . . . visit us, albeit virtually.”33 The announcement acknowledges that the Internet is only improving practices that were already in use: the website is “like always” a place where fans’ ideas and suggestions will be taken into great consideration; it provides information about actors and actresses who are “present” at the firm, so that fans can organize a visit to meet them in person; it can help all users to communicate with each other and thus build a long-lasting fandom.34 In fact, “Teniamoci in contatto” announced what in reality was only a short-term commitment of the industry to technology. In a comment to the post, E.G. claims that Lancio was unable to maintain the blog, which was removed a few years after it was created. Instead, the webpage (still available online) included a link to another blog, which E.G. herself opened once the official one disappeared, before she transferred her time and effort (and content) onto an LFG. Bottom line: fans are actually more skilled and have more time to dedicate online, in order to keep the communication between fans open.

This episode opens up interesting leads with regard to the peculiar case of the Lancio “family reunion” metaphor. As I said, there is something about the particular history of this company that affects the way in which grassroot extensions of Lancio photoromances are freed from control. According to A.C.A., when the company closed for good, it sold its archive to another publisher that later went bankrupt, leaving the issues of preservation and copyrights unsolved. Also, from E.G.’s claims, it seems that Lancio did not mind that fans might be producing commentaries and other kinds of extensions of Lancio stories on online platforms that were not administered by the publisher itself. On these premises, we can understand the shared belief among lancette that “la vera Lancio” is now made of LFGs, and that the work of members is fundamental in order to keep the memory of both the industry (texts, celebrities, and other related products/activities) and its readership alive. In the words of Lancio actress Anna Maria Cozzolino, who commented on the opening of new LFGs: “Lancio does not belong to anyone in particular, and I am only a small piece in the puzzle, but it belongs to everyone—women and men—who loved her.”35

What interests me in the case of the Lancio fandom, then, is that the family (living in the past and reunited in the present) is not a metaphor, but a modern myth. That is, the family is not an image that I use to describe fans’ interactions among themselves and with the industry. Rather, it is a “type of speech,” in Roland Barthes’s terms, used by fans in the specific social setting of their virtual relationships (among themselves and with the imagined industry) in order to give meaning to individual and collective forms of expression and identities. In its origins, the contemporary discourse on Lancio fans–industry relation as family is built on the representation of the same relationship in these terms by the publisher in the past (as we have seen from my previous examples). In these historical instances, and in the contemporary blogs and FB posts of fans/customers and celebrities/employees, Lancio is everyone’s rather than only belonging to a seller or employer. To put it another way, the modern myth of the Lancio family muddles affective bonds and commercial transactions in an interesting way. On the one hand, in the fans’ point of view, property (in the sense of copyrights) has no place in the world of the fandom, which is also freed from commodification (the profit that comes from such relations): Lancio is not a company, Lancio is everybody’s, lancette are constantly sharing messages of love and friendship together with digitized copies of past issues. On the other hand, online communities enable the sale of issues to collectors, and thus nurture these purchases by building on users’ attachment to the brand, and on their longing for the youthful past that the magazines and celebrities embody. The accessibility of the Internet, and the possibility to archive the objects that keep the relationship alive (potentially ad infinitum) sustain the myth that there are no boundaries to the way in which users can express their attachment to Lancio as much there are no limits (so far) to fair use and under-the-table transactions.

In the next sections, I will discuss the extent to which fans negotiate the meaning of this social and cultural discourse that is the myth of the Lancio family (and its reunion). In particular, I will focus on two relevant aspects: the question of proximity/distance vis-à-vis the relationship between readers, texts, and celebrities; and the practice of archiving sustained by LFG users. These two aspects also indicate internal differences within the Lancio fandom, in particular, between respondents to my survey who claim not to be part of online communities, and those who are active members of LFGs maintaining the memory of Lancio alive in the present.

Mild Resistance

Most respondents to my survey and most members of LFGs began reading photoromances in the 1970s, and their recollections of past experiences of consumption are embedded in the rich political context of workers’ struggles, radical movements, second-wave feminism, and right- and left-wing terrorism.36 However, there is usually no mention of this context in their memories, and there are really no instances of political debate among group members in any FB or blog posts that I read, including discussions on gender, race, and class when debating about narratives, celebrities, or the industry. In this respect, there are no differences between the responses I gathered via survey or via Facebook Messenger, and there is no discrepancy between past and current Lancio fans: they all like to remember the time when they dreamt with their favorite celebrities when they were young, so as to read, remember, and dream once again.37 V.D. is the only one to explicitly refer to the political context, and yet only to say how reading made her “dream” nonetheless. In her words, “Photoromances of the 60s and 70s were the most beautiful thing for us girls who dreamt as we read . . . there were love tragedy death accidents but they still made us dream I grew up with them they conquer me with their stories [sic].”38

The question here is whether the lack of political content and the t(a)int of nostalgia that colors fans’ recollections also indicate the absence of any form of political gesture or political approach to their fandom. Lancio fans were tweens or teenagers at the time of transition from the “hot autumn” to the “post-ideological” era, that is, from the students and workers’ struggles of 1969 to the end of radical movements in the late 1970s. With respect to these fans, the so-called riflusso (re-flux) of the 1980s can instead be called the coming of age of a generation to whom the shaming practices of leftist critics (with regard to the products of mass culture) did not seem to differ from those of the Catholic Church or the bourgeoisie, as they were both embodied in the strict rulings of their middle-class parents. In fact, on the basis of collected data, the social and educational backgrounds of Lancio fans differ from those of the photoromance readership in the 1950s or 1960s: rather than working-class women with low education, they are for the most part (today) white-collar workers (or homemakers) with a high-school degree and they were (in the 1970s) daughters of middle-class parents still attending school. This aspect highlights some limitations with regard to the Lancio fandom, which is clearly a middle-class and white phenomenon. At the same time, responses show that inter-class relationships in the 1970s among teenagers allowed for the spread of publications and, consequently, for the use of this kind of pop culture in ways that were transgressive of the social norms of the middle class. For the question “When did you start reading photoromances?” one respondent to the online survey (A.) wrote this answer:

I was thirteen years old, I was in middle school and I did not know about them. A friend from elementary school, who lived close by, talked to me about them. She had a group of girlfriends who adored Franco Gasparri and parents who were open minded (even though they were the pre-68 generation) and who bought photoromances for her, so that she handed them down to me. Instead, my parents considered them stuff for maids, and so you can imagine that they would never have bought them for me. To tell you the truth, I liked Franco Gasparri, too. To not be “different” I pretended that I liked those stories, but honestly, I thought it was all fake, starting from some actors’ faces (for example I could not stand Katiuscia with her fake upset expression, I found ridiculous the way a slap on the face looked in the pictures, etc.).39

A. does not correspond to the image of women reading photoromances that media representations constructed in the past and that are held as truthful in many historical accounts. A teacher with a master’s degree, A.’s responses are perhaps more articulate than others. At the same time, A. is in many ways similar to most fans, who connect their experience of reading photoromances to a generational conflict. An admirer of Franco Gasparri, A. was, in a sense, a victim of her parents’ sense of cultural respectability, but also defied their standards and transgressed their rules by secretly reading Lancio with her girlfriends. Furthermore, A. shows a degree of awareness, rather than passivity, vis-à-vis her relationship with the texts. While attracted to reading photoromances because of Gasparri, A. admits that she was not completely blind to any flaws in the texts themselves. In sum, A. addresses two aspects that recurrently describe readers’ first encounter with photoromances: (1) the importance of a common identity and a shared culture with other girls; and (2) the presence of both proximity and distance in featuring the relationship between her, the products of mass culture, and the celebrity (in this case, Gasparri). A. remembers her experience as a reader in a communal environment, which both triggered and nurtured her passion, and constructs an idea of the feminine self as willingly transgressing the boundaries of a traditional, patriarchal society, both in terms of class and gender. In their nostalgic portrayal of their youthful experience, other respondents similarly describe the act of reading photoromances as the way in which they undermined the authority of middle-class parents, and crossed the boundaries of middle-class girls’ “appropriate” pastimes. In sum, the fans’ act of mild resistance to elite culture does not have the features of radical politics but questions the idea that passions generated by celebrity culture necessarily derive, in Chris Rojek’s words, “from staged authenticity rather than genuine forms of recognition and belonging.”40 The act of buying (sharing, discussing) Lancio photoromances was the gesture that we may call political. In their expressions, very much in continuity with their recollections, the “ragazze Lancio” communicate a genuine wish to build a collective identity, albeit isolated from the political turmoil surrounding them.

Furthermore, I wonder if proximity to texts, celebrities, and the industry can only indicate a position of submission and passivity on the part of these users. It’s fair to say that Lancio magazines exploited both the usual conventions of romance and those of the Italian cop films, which were very popular at the time, and often narratives ended with the death of the protagonist, her/his departure, or separations. Passionate or thrilling plots, beautiful characters, and dramatic endings suggest the emotional attachment of readers to both narratives and celebrities, especially women who, in the words of Mary Ann Doane, “can only be seen as reinforcing [their] submission.”41 On the other hand, contemporary online platforms reveal the active role played by fans and, as in the above-mentioned case of A., their distance in proximity. Discussion boards deconstruct common notions such as the fact that lancette only liked romances (“I found them comical,” says a survey respondent) or happy endings (“the happy ending diminishes the masterpieces, except for some rare cases,” claims one LFG member).42 Even the relationship with celebrities is often worked through a tongue-in-cheek look back at adolescence. In the words of B.C., who argues ironically that Claudia Rivelli was her model: “I was uglier than a toad and I was dreaming to become a beautiful woman like Claudia (and of course, I am now exactly like her!).”43 In this light, while readers were blamed in public debate for their proximity to the text and the idolatry of celebrities, I argue that that they were, in fact, victims of distance, that is, of the cultural politics of the elites (publishers, authors) who wanted to keep them outside the realm of production.44 In the same fashion as fans of cult movies, in Umberto Eco’s analysis, lancette relate to Lancio as a “complete furnished world” (i.e., the brand is approached as a whole narrative space) and are able to “unhinge [the cult object], to break it up or take it apart,” in other words, to make it their own. Ultimately, I claim that by self-fashioning themselves as the heirs of the Lancio “family” and appropriating Lancio photoromances to rewrite their own stories, lancette revenge those readers of the late forties and fifties whose attempt to own the means of production was chastised on every political front. And, while for past readers like A., this process of appropriation takes place in the private space of memory, made public only in her recollections, for active members of LFGs, their participatory culture is displayed on the web by means of two concurrent practices: that of “archiving” and that of “repertoire.”45

Repertoires and Rogue Archives

In Rogue Archives, Abigail De Kosnik argues that digital archiving “has been most enthusiastically embraced by nonprofessionals—by amateurs, fans, hackers, pirates, and volunteers—in other words, by “rogue” memory workers.”46 In her view, digital archives have been built as an alternative to official, institutional ones, thus democratizing cultural memory: “The rogues of digital archiving have effectuated cultural memory’s escape from the state; memory will never again be wholly, or even mostly, under the control of the state or of state-controlled capitalists.”47 Finally, Internet fan fiction archives provide another function: in Kosnik’s words (quoting Achille Mbembe), they “confer status on their contents, and on the culture and society that produced those contents.”48

In a way, we can look at Lancio fans as “rogue memory workers.” Lancette use FB to preserve the objects and construct the memory of their shared past: by posting clippings and photos from magazines; by speaking of celebrities like Franco Gasparri, Max Delys, Claudia Rivelli, Paola Pitti, Franco Dani, and Michela Roc; by talking about their favorite stories in the past and asking others about their opinions; by bragging about their latest purchase and publishing its cover (or their covers: the more the issues, the better the deal) and, always, asking for comments; by digitizing entire issues and then sharing them with other members. To borrow both De Kosnik’s and Diana Taylor’s terminology, LFGs like “Noi lettori” serves a twofold function: to build the digital “rogue” (De Kosnik) archive of Lancio and to preserve the “repertoire” (Taylor) of its fandom, the embodied memory of their performances as fans.

E.G. and other members of LFGs replace professional archivists by digitizing and making Lancio stories available. Since the company closed without much concern for preservation, fans take on the responsibility to keep its memory alive, employing their passion and much effort to keep pages updated and enlarge digital collections, to allow other fans to enjoy their findings, and constantly speaking about themselves as readers, about celebrities, about issues, covers, and the like. This is what Taylor calls “repertoire,” as different from archive: the physical, bodily acts of repetition and human performance that are needed to maintain actual archives and to feed metaphorical ones. On the one hand, the many personal stories published on FB add to the body of texts that make up the “Lancio archive”; on the other, members can use the same materials to build their own metaphorical archive, that is, to feed the process of their memory-based narratives and thus contribute to the LFG that is the mise-en-scène of Lancio’s collective memory. There could be different reasons why, but all fans did at some point stop buying and reading Lancio, until their recent “rediscovery” via LFGs. As P.F. writes via Facebook Messenger: “I read them and bought them since the early 80s, then I rediscovered them here a few years ago, a dive into my youth.”49 And in the words of M.I.: “It was the seventies and I did not miss reading even one issue. . . . I loved and I love Gasparri especially paired with Michela and I adored Lucky Martins. . . . I read them until Franco’s accident in 1980 then I had a sort of rejection for what happened and I abandoned them . . . until by surfing the web I stumbled upon these photoromances groups and magically the passion exploded again. Thanks to the girlfriends in the group who post them I discovered and read photoromances from the 80s and until Lancio closed.”50

LFGs members do not necessarily see themselves as rogue archivists and do not consider the value of the repertoire of their metaphorical archives. Rather, they show a strong attachment to printed issues and doubt that digital copies can substitute for the actual objects. This behavior creates an interesting situation in which the rogue archive of LFGs serves the commercial purpose to build private collections. Quite interestingly, a unique but still relevant episode that happened in one LFG shows the contradictions inherent in this situation. In a post, A.M. lamented that among members the cost of issues should be lower than in other platforms such as eBay; his plead did not receive any positive responses but rather angry comments regarding the fairness of transactions happening on the group’s page. A.M. then posted a brief message in which he apologized if he offended anyone, and the episode stopped there. However, the event revealed the possibility that in fact not all users believe that the LFGs are only for the sake of keeping the “family” alive. In fact, I believe that A.M.’s suggestion was so bitterly received not only because it was supposedly based on false premises, but also (and perhaps, above all), because it refocused the attention on the commercial nature of the group itself and of the “family” bond as well.

To put it another way, the conflict between the archive and the collector cracks the fantasy of a digital space of free transactions. Indeed, members are willing to share and, while attached to their own collections, happy to blend into a community of other fans, and hopeful they can make a difference as individuals. A very interesting post about the opening of a “museum of the photoromance” serves to trigger a discussion about collecting and the desire to “make history.” F.F. writes in “Noi lettori”:

I have supported it for years

A museum of the photoromance is needed

To establish a museum of the photoromance is essential

I wonder what will happen to my 2000 photoromances when I will die

I would donate them to the museum

And you lancetti who shield your foto [sic] like relics, do you ask yourself what will be of them after your departure?

Let’s collect signatures and ask the Ministry of Cultural Heritage for the only museum of the photoromance in the world

Where, in addition to looking at the virtual history of the photoromance since its origins, one can also read them on the premises

Do you agree?51

As opposed to De Kosnik’s argument about the fact that rogue archives replace state- or capitalist-controlled ones, F.F. hopes for an institutional space to preserve and make public the treasures of private collectors like herself. Her naïveté is disarming: F.F. longs for rather than suspects government control, and believes that the objects in her possession would only be valued if managed by public agencies (despite the fact that not only photoromances, but also their readers have been historically despised; as if the repertoire of fanship and the archive would be of any interest to the government, also allegedly willing to pay in order to handle private collections). Responses to F.F.’s post reveal how Lancio fans are not necessarily similar but in fact have differences from each other. According to R.Q.C, private collections should all be digitized since paper copies can deteriorate; F.F. instead argues that the government should take over where the capitalists failed: “il ministero deve tutelare” (the Ministry must protect), since Lancio lost its patrimony because of bankruptcy. And fans must take over for Lancio by providing the objects (i.e. the photoromances) that enable the repertoire of fandom. Writes F.F.: “We make the museum with our donations / To safeguard and protect them / They could be patrimony of humanity / They traversed a century / From one generation to another is the global culture of photoromances.”52 J.Z. is more skeptical about the government’s interest mostly because of the lack of resources, and while she wonders about copyrights, she also sustains the family myth: “siamo noi soltanto che facciamo vivere il ricordo della lancio” (it’s only us who keep the memory of lancio alive”).

Here, it is important to point out that publishers obviously encouraged collecting issues, to maintain a loyal readership. In the case of Lancio, the practice of keeping past issues shapes a reader’s identity, from the industry’s point of view, because of the added social value that a large collection can give to a true female fan. More specifically, as stated by Katiuscia in her response to a fan’s letter, a girl should welcome the idea of creating a space for herself where she can store and read Lancio magazines, a place she can decorate according to her own taste. Katiuscia writes: “All of us girls want a spot where we can withdraw into ourselves, happily alone to read our favorite magazines, to listen to music and dream about love. If you can fix your attic with little money and a bit of fantasy, you will solve two problems at the same time: how to escape family drama and how to organize your Lancio-library.”53 A consumer-oriented “room of one’s own,” to paraphrase Virginia Woolf, both a literal and figurative place for female fans within a patriarchal society, co-opted by a publisher that, rather than looking down at their readers’ naïveté, had learned to exploit their purchasing power.

The room of one’s own now virtually recreated on the web is always open to new members. It is perhaps in this opening up and sharing with other users that the historical origins of predetermined self-expression can change their course (from the path projected by Katiuscia, for example). Especially with respect to the past, actual familial bonds (linking fans to their mothers, aunts, sisters, and girlfriends) refashion the industrial project of loyal consumership into a shared memory of past experiences that exits the space of commercial transactions. In the words of P.A., for example, printed copies of Lancio issues are only important to her insofar as they speak to the tradition of saving, protecting, and handing them down for others to enjoy. She writes: “Since I can remember, I remember my aunt and my mother and their girlfriends with photoromances in their hands, and I began reading them before I was able to read.”54 Similar to Giet’s conclusions on the readership of Nous Deux, which I mentioned in the introduction to this book, P.A. describes how buy and borrowing issues “can realize connections between generations.”55 Contrary to Albinati’s account of her sister’s conflicted relation to their mother, with regard to cultural consumption, lancette can recognize the positive outcomes of reading photoromances. The point is that the myth of the Lancio “family” does not necessarily mean that sentimental bonds are not “real” in the context of the Lancio fandom. The exposed economic basis of fans’ relations to the industry and to other fans deconstructs the idea of a Lancio family above and beyond the market. At the same time, expressions of genuine affection persist in the space of business transactions, particularly when connected to a shared tradition of feminine fanship. Always both individual and social, lancette’s participation in LFGs intertwines the repertoire with the archive, thus blurring the distinction between capitalist and affective economies, between individual gain and collective individuation.