Carol Maltesi and the morbid narrative of female victims

In the last few hours the attention of national public opinion has shifted from the war to a news story. This is the femicide of Carol Maltesi, a twenty-six-year-old woman, murdered by the neighbor with whom she had had a relationship in the past and with whom, according to the confessions given by the murderer to the investigators, they had cordial relations. There are two elements that have contributed to making this femicide a media phenomenon: the first is the brutality with which the murderer of Maltesi, Davide Fontana, killed the victim; the second element is that Carol Maltesi worked as an actress in the porn industry.

Looking at the news cases involving women, a very disturbing detail stands out, namely that the more the victim is a young woman , the more beautiful she is, the more dramatic the circumstances of her death, the more space will be devoted to the details of her murder.

Telegram channels have doubled where intimate photos and videos are shared without consent Groups grow by 89 to 190 in twelve months. The diffusion of child pornography material is increasing. This was revealed in the report for 2021 by the Permesso Denato association that deals with combating non-consensual violence in Italy Read the article This was the case of Luana D'Orazio, who died at work at the age of twenty-two and mother of a very young son. In the aftermath of his death, the home pages of news sites were full of photos in which D'Orazio looked smiling and beautiful: at the same time in the articles that reconstructed his death, the details of the accident were not spared to readers. told for days by sites, broadcasts and posts on social media with exasperating brutality.

It was the case of Chiara Ugolini, the young student killed by her neighbor, a man with a criminal record. At the time, an article published in the newspaper la Repubblica caused a sensation in which Ugolini's femicide was told with the outlines of a dark fairy tale: she was a "beautiful and impossible" young woman who wandered around the house in her briefs - particularly on sui si sono a consistent number of reconstructions lingered - he, Emanuele Impellizieri, 38, portrayed as a "kind of evil monkey who wants to surprise, rape, take his neighbor". Not even in the case of Chiara Ugolini, also young, beautiful and photogenic, the details of violence and death were spared which, as in the case of Luana D'Orazio, bounced on the media and on news sites for days and at any time of day. , so much so that for anyone with access to a social network or a TV, it was impossible not only not to know the tragic end of these two young women, but also the most morbid and bestial details.

In the case of Carol Maltesi , at her young age, her good looks, her being a mother too, was added the fact that she worked in the porn industry. Her profession has amplified the attention of the media and public opinion, which has not spared showing off its lower instincts, especially on social networks. The most striking case concerns the comedian Pietro Diomede who wrote in a tweet: "That the corpse of a torn-up pornstar is recognized by the tattoos and not by the diameter of the hole in the c ** or does not play in favor of the victim's fame. ". The rain of criticism that overwhelmed Diomede led to the cancellation of his imminent participation in a Zelig evening: “We have received reports following a tweet from an artist who was supposed to perform at the Zelig on April 12th. We completely dissociate ourselves from that Tweet, which we absolutely disapprove of. Consequently, the artist was excluded from the Zelig programming ".

Statistics tell us that in Italy a femicide takes place every three days, but so that these crimes rise to the headlines - especially in very crowded periods news like the one we are experiencing - it is necessary that the killed person respond to certain characteristics: they must be young, they must be beautiful, have social channels from which the editorial offices can draw images that can attract attention and finally, particular not to be little, the causes of his death must be particularly bloody.

The fetishism of female bodies and their continuous sexualization are able to transcend the brutality and tragicity of a news story. Indeed, where circumstances would require respect and modesty, especially when minors are involved, it is there that attention becomes more morbid and it is there that more details are required, more and more brutal, more and more bloody, more and more intimate. And the more reality resembles a film, the more reporters and reporters linger in telling it, as if those who reconstruct the facts and those who must stick to them, want to take a sort of revenge on those who work in fantasy: you see - they seem to say - as much as you can be creative in inventing dramatic stories and gory reality, in all its brutality, will always win and reporters and reporters will always be the audience's favorite storytellers. It is the revenge of the news on storytelling, that of journalism on entertainment, of reality on fantasy.

There is something ancestral that reason cannot overcome in cases like that of Carol Maltesi. There is the need to exercise possession, yes, but also to judge to feel better, to get out of the monotonous repetition of our life to say that if she hadn't gone to him, if she had been in his place, if he hadn't offered her body in the gaze of others, perhaps it would still be alive.

It matters little that the data give us a different scenario and tell that the killers of women are for the most part fathers, husbands, companions, that the conduct deprived of the victim has nothing to do with it, that age is indifferent: casuistry says that we are all in danger.

But nobody seems to care about this. Our animal instincts come before reason, but also before the common sense of keeping silent in front of a motherless child, in front of parents who have lost a daughter, in front of the umpteenth free woman who has met death.