Can common sense exist in satire? Can. Needs to. We need an ethical point of view that, behind the mockery, the stinging self-analysis, the useful cynicism, allows us to glimpse a solution that is only apparently out of focus in the background. That is us. The commitment, syncopated, upbeat, so that the world, when we leave it, is a little better than when we were born.
Sergio Staino, who abandoned us a few months ago with the usual sober disillusionment, slowly, as if he didn’t really believe it, was exactly this: a gentleman from Scandicci who aspired to modify the time around him, to rewrite its connotations, even when those he no longer saw the connotations. One comma at a time. Because punctuation, as Minister Valditara teaches, is always useful. Those who think badly, write and draw badly. And he makes you laugh especially when he doesn’t want to.
If there is one thing dangerous for satirists it is beatification. Even posthumously. But that memory is really useful. Because correcting morals by laughing is based precisely on the intersection of past and present, of high and low, of pencil and thought, of Marx and Mickey Mouse, of the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party.
Ilaria Staino, Michele, his other son, his wife Bruna, that is, the characters from Bobo’s strips who, like him, have never aged, are looking for a way for Sergio Staino, his life, his path, to be available to everyone . With the forgetful drift into which we have gotten ourselves, it is a good and right thing. Because not knowing how to laugh at the present forces us to relive history. Since ultimately, what happens to us resembles a summation of post-war Italy innervated by Redbull, where the good things of the First Republic in very bad taste have become very bad things with a slightly rancid taste, the white Christian Democrat gloves fade in the black dolce vita , ministers who do not speak Italian move from the Remo Gaspari vote pools to the management of school classrooms with collapsing roofs and roofs that divide whites from blacks.
The Staino foundation, its archive available to all, the digitization of a human and artistic journey that is different for everyone, serves to photograph a particularity: the focus is more on the voters than on the elected representatives. The entirely progressive ability to doubt oneself in principle, the awareness that behind a poor politician there is always a confused or colluding citizen. Maximum systems, small and witty stories, minimal morality, low morale, momentary happiness. Molotov, Sergio, Bibi, Ilaria… fragile and funny actors in a world in which the only cogent political gesture is their own, and this is the reason why we are almost never certain. The doubt with which the road to laughter and thought is paved. One brick after another. Like what can be added so that Sergio’s complete work ends up online. The initiative is called Satire and dreams: without one, there is no other. And viceversa. Because, without Sergio we would all have been a little less cheerful, and a little less dreamy. Instead, it helps.