Carlo Calenda is trying in every way to snatch the winning ticket to enter the ballot. Indeed, to resume his electoral positioning, he is making a “serious” effort to wedge himself into that huge slice of Romans, which opinion polls estimate in 40% of citizens, who still have not chosen if and who to vote .
Because, the last minute voters from Rome will be the real decision makers for the race to the Capitoline Hill.
In his campaign, the only one compared to that of the other candidates that has combined thematic content and “pop” incursions with the right balance, Calenda has understood more than all one fundamental thing, the first and most important means of propaganda is not the manifesto or the video commercial, the post viral or the facsimile, but it is the candidate himself: his story, his face, his language and, first of all, his body.
A body that is at the same time the means and content of the campaign, a body that manages to functionally exploit the limits of physicality and age, so as to welcome and transmit the identity message, the pride of belonging, the symbiotic and indissoluble bond to a community culture to defend because it is part of us, a message that has always been contained in four letters: SPQR.
Here in the new tattoo, the third at least if we count those he spoke publicly about – he already has an “A” for Action (taken from the Avengers) and a shark – that Calenda got done on his right wrist, immediately posting the photo on social media , there is all this.
There is a need to renew, a few days after the vote, his visceral relationship with the city, as well as, there is the need to be accredited as the sole defender of the Romanite, there is still the message of sacrificing and sacrificing oneself without any reservations in order to defend the grandeur of the capital.
The body suddenly becomes the main medium of the campaign, the body that manages to amplify and above all make the message that those four simple but very heavy letters are able to deliver to citizens not infected by the polarization of the alignments.
In the choice, regardless of whether it was born out of instinct or from a strategic vision, there is much more to the tattoo. The meanings are different and transversal and among these, perhaps the most explosive in power, and in the perception of a horizontality that this carries with it.
In fact, on the one hand, the tattoo brings the candidate, or rather the man, closer to the many citizens, to the tens of thousands of Romans who have chosen to fix a moment or an affection of their lives forever on their skin. On the other hand, it distances and distinguishes Calenda from all the other candidates, from the archetype of the politician and from that vertical and hierarchical vision that feeds distrust and disillusionment with the institutions and helps to increase the pockets of abstention.
It may be, as Carlo Calenda writes in the Instagram post, that his wife Viola fills him with blows for this “naive” post adolescent, but it is certain that in a few days, we will find out if a tattoo is also worthwhile for the conquest of Rome.
