Clips Ranked: 4, 12, 39
Total Views: 516015 (10.74% of total views) Total Comments: 2470 (17.05% of total comments) Total 'likes': 593 / 79.81% (12.06% of total likes) Total 'dislikes': 150 / 20.19% (16.97% of total dislikes)
Description
These clips relate to an ‘incident’ in which Berlusconi was allegedly ‘told off’ by a supposedly irritated Queen Elizabeth during a photo op for G20 leaders at
Buckingham Palace. After the photo is taken, Berlusconi can be heard to say ‘Hey Obama’, the Queen can then be heard to mutter something, allegedly words to the effect of ‘why does he always have to be so loud?’ The Palace categorically denied that she had made any such remark.
Combined, these clips have received 516015 views (or 10.74% of total views). With 17.05% of total comments included in the corpus being made in response to this incident. This places it second when ranked by number of comments.
While these clips did attract comment from a large number of users, this high comment ranking is made somewhat deceiving by the fact that an individual user posted over 200 hundred comments in response to the clip ‘Queen tells off
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against Queen Elizabeth, rather than being about Berlusconi. This behaviour prompted antagonistic responses from those wishing to defend the Queen. This individual clip attracted 2171 of the 2470 comments made in response to all clips about the theme. While the discussions sometimes overlapped, it would be fair to suggest that there were two parallel discussions occurring in response to the clip: one about the Queen, and one about Berlusconi. It is this particular discussion about the Queen that sees her mentioned 644 times, becoming the second most mentioned figure within the overall sample. As such her high statistical ranking should be
understood as an outlier when compared to figures such as George Bush, Vladimir Putin, Angela Merkel and Barack Obama, who are frequently mentioned across various clips, whether they are manifestly present within them or not.
Queen Annoyed: Identification and Disidentification
While the persona of the Queen is discursively associated with political tradition and protocol, many of the defences of Berlusconi hint at an international strand of
identification with the ‘political outsider/everyman’ persona, that Berlusconi has leveraged off effectively in Italy (Ginsberg, 2005). One of the more interesting
features of the discussion is the debate regarding whether or not the Queen has any right to be in a photo of democratically elected leaders. It is argued by some that the Queen is a stuffy anachronism, representative of the politics of class and the past, whereas Berlusconi, more so than the other leaders present, represents modernity, informality and social mobility. This type of identification could best be equated to Burke’s first type, consubstantiality through perceived similarity with Berlusconi, which in turn leads to antagonism towards those juxtaposed against him. Some comments simultaneously extend disidentification with the traditional political figure of the Queen, to the other 'traditional' politicians present. The following comments offer illustrative examples of these positions:
"relax bambino, he is just not a double face politician like most these days. He is natural, sincere with his feelings. Anyhow, the italians don't give a sh*t about what the old woman of england says or thinks". (Clip: Queen tells off Berlusconi)
“Silvio Berlusconi should tell that old hag, they were all elected except for her.” (Clip: Queen tells off Berlusconi)
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Many of those displaying disidentification with Berlusconi also appear to view his performance as representative of an 'everyman', although rather than viewing this as positive, it is frequently represented as emblematic of his ‘lack of class’. In some instances commenters invoke Italian stereotypes to extend this perception of Berlusconi to Italians in general. Alternately, some of those displaying cognitive disidentification with him appear particularly exasperated by other commenters favourable characterisation of Berlusconi as emblematic of a more representative democracy. The following comment is emblematic of those disidentifying with him on account of his 'everyman' performance. Rather than viewing his 'commonality' as favourable, it is associated with negative Italian stereotypes:
“Imagine the worst stereotypical Italian male that you can. Misogynistic, racist, greasy and overly concerned about his hair. That's what Berlusconi is like in real life.” (Clip: Queen tells off Berlusconi)
The following two comments offer illustrative examples of cognitive attempts to
challenge the notion of Berlusconi as a representative 'everyman' through articulating discursive associations between Berlusconi and authoritarianism, corruption,
nepotism, media power and sexual deviance.
“It surely is interesting. He managed to turn the italian democracy into an kind of
authoritarian state. Berlusconi and his family control 5 out of six national tv channels and the majiority of newspapers. He convinced the politicians in parliament to make an enormous number of laws that helped him avoid having trials and go to jail. He had sex with whores and with a 17 year old girl, and he elected unexperienced showgirls as
ministers of his government.” (Clip: Queen tells off Berlusconi)
“He also owns the Milan A.C. football team, and many supermarkets. He is suspected of having relations with the italian Mafia, he has trials for corruption and fraud. Please telle everyone than the italian people is not free, our country is seriously menaced by this
stupid dictator-wannabe.” (Clip: Queen tells off Berlusconi)
5)Merkel Left Waiting: