Giancarlo Lombardi, DAYS OF ITALIAN LIVES: CHARTING THE CONTEMPORARY SOAPSCAPE ON ITALIAN PUBLIC TELEVISION (“The Italianist”, XXIX.2, 2009, pp. 227-48), examines soap opera in general, and analyses three Italian RAI samples: INCANTESIMO, UN POSTO AL SOLE, and AGRODOLCE, seen partly as derivative from English and American models, and partly as representative of glocal tendencies with their regional content (Sicily in the case of AGRODOLCE, and Naples in UN POSTO AL SOLE).
Among his initial general considerations, Lombardi includes his disappointment with current dismissive criticism of soap operas whereas “influential scholars of television studies have successfully demonstrated that soap operas are a fertile terrain for engaging and innovative research”, and in particular this genre exhibits an “ability to invoke hybridized and multilayered cultural identities” as noted by Chris Baker in GLOBAL TELEVISION (Oxford, Blackwell, 1997) and aspects of “glocal” identity as observed by Joseph D. Strubhaar in WORLD TELEVISION: FROM GLOBAL TO LOCAL (Los Angeles, Sage, 2007).
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