Seventeenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

“La Dolce Vita” of 1960 offers a panorama of Roman postwar journalism and high society centered in the character of Marcello Rubini (played by Marcello Mastroianni) in seven episodes wit a prologue and an epilogue. From the point of view of Marcello, a tabloid journalist whose ambitions are akin to those of Mr. Paparazzo, crucial moments are presented that expose the frivolity and mass consumerism of modern decadent Rome, such as compulsive affairs, orgies, and ghoulish news seeking. Marcello becomes increasingly caught up in the mechanisms of exploitative reporting and the allurements of hedonism. He has one reprieve from self-alienation while working on his novel at a trattoria where he chats with a young woman who resembles an “angel” and who appears crucially at the film’s end. From an archetypal perspective, this paper explores how the mechanisms of greedy ambition and lust mire the protagonist existentially in a materialistic world.