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The Politics of Pinocchio – The Atlantic

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Asked to name the two most important things about Pinocchio, most Americans would answer: First, his nose grows when he lies, and second, he is a wooden puppet who dreams of becoming a real boy. At this, Carlo Collodi would most likely shake his head. The 19th-century Italian author, who wrote the book that inspired the Disney movie and countless other adaptations (including the live-action reboot released last week and another version from the director Guillermo del Toro coming out later this year), saw his character very differently.

A radical political commentator who turned to children’s literature late in life, Collodi wrote a complex, unsettling novel—miles away from the morality tale that Pinocchio’s story has become. Collodi’s is a multilayered work of fiction that, although primarily aimed at young readers, is imbued with social criticism and pessimistic humor, and can be read, among other things, as an irreverent attack on established authority.

What became The Adventures of Pinocchio really encompasses two novels. In Italy, a Catholic country, the joke is that Pinocchio is “two in one,” just as God is “three in one.” Pinocchio was first published as a short serial of 15 episodes, from July to October 1881. It was brutal and frightening. The Fox and the Cat aren’t tricksters, but assassins. The Blue Fairy isn’t a reassuring motherly figure, but a ghostly and possibly dead little girl who refuses to help Pinocchio, because she’s “waiting for my coffin to come take me away.” Pinocchio grows his nose, but just to annoy Geppetto, and kills the Cricket in a fit of rage. Also, no happy ending: The puppet ends up dead, hanged on an oak tree.

But, likely prompted by the popularity of the story, Collodi resumed the serial the next year. Pinocchio, it turns out, wasn’t really dead. The 21 episodes that followed, published from February 1882 to January 1883, introduced the elements that the modern public would recognize and that eventually became fodder for Walt Disney. The uncanny little girl—who, the reader assumes, wasn’t really dead either—becomes a fairy, disciplines Pinocchio by making his nose grow when he lies, and promises to turn the puppet into a real boy if he starts behaving (which, spoiler alert, he eventually does). But the author’s attitude toward this redemption is ambivalent: Collodi, and with him the reader, roots for Pinocchio because the puppet is a mischievous rule breaker, not in spite of it. As the scholar Caterina Sinibaldi puts it, the “pedagogical attitude” is “ambiguous.”

The Adventures of Pinocchio, which combined both novels, was published as a book in February 1883, with minor changes. Different in tone and plot, Pinocchio’s two parts share the same themes. Poverty dominates throughout the story and is often the subject of bitter humor. “What’s your father’s name?” a character asks Pinocchio. “Geppetto,” Pinocchio responds. “And what’s his job?” “Being poor.” “Does he make a lot of money doing it?” Haunted by a “hunger so real it could be cut with a knife,” Pinocchio is reduced at various points to eating fruit cores and performing strenuous labor for a meager glass of milk. Distrust of authority is central as well. Doctors are pompous incompetents. One is said to “solemnly” intone, “When the dead cry, it means they’re on the way to recovering.” The police? Always blaming the victim. The judiciary? Literally apes. At one point, Pinocchio gets thrown behind bars for getting robbed—“This poor devil has been robbed of four gold coins. Therefore seize him and put him straight in jail”—and needs to convince the guards that he is not an innocent victim (“but I’m a crook too”) in order to be set free.

There is also a palpable sense of disillusionment. As the translators John Hooper and Anna Kraczyna note in a recent critical edition published by Penguin, it’s no coincidence that the utterance “Pazienza!” occurs 15 times throughout the novel. Literally, it means “patience” and can be translated to the English phrases “oh well,” as Hooper and Kraczyna do, or “too bad”—although in Geoffrey Brock’s translation for The New York Review of Books, it sometimes becomes “don’t worry” or “oh all right.” It’s a quintessentially Italian admission of defeat, conveying frustration and acceptance in equal parts—an acknowledgment of one’s powerlessness that, as Hooper and Kraczyna note, “echoes centuries of unwilling yet unavoidable resignation.”

In other words, Pinocchio harbors a strain of systemic injustice and deep betrayal. That has a lot to do with the historical context in which it was written: two decades after Italy’s unification.

At the time, many of the intellectuals who had mobilized during the so-called Risorgimento—the decades-long process by which Italy became a nation, following a wave of failed revolutions and wars of independence—felt betrayed by the direction that the newly founded nation had taken. One of them was Collodi. Born Carlo Lorenzini in 1826, in what was then the Grand Duchy of Tuscany (Collodi was a pen name, after the Tuscan village of his maternal family), he started editing a satirical newspaper, Il Lampione, in 1848. Soon, he garnered recognition as a voice of the most progressive side of the Risorgimento—one that hoped to build an egalitarian and democratic nation. As a political commentator, Collodi stood out for his republican stances: “Trusting in a king, we took up arms and lost; let’s take up arms again, trusting in the people, and we shall win.” He was also a wry aphorist: “The habit makes the person. Take black suits away, and you’ll no longer find a single serious man on the face of earth,” he once wrote.

Collodi fought in Italy’s first two independence wars, in 1848 and 1859. However, by the time the country actually became an independent, unified state in 1861, the pro-democracy camp that he represented had been sidelined; Italy had become a monarchy where only a few people had the right to vote while the majority-illiterate and wretchedly poor population was kept at the margins. Disaffected, Collodi became a bold critic of the nation he’d helped found. He wrote a famous invective against the government’s decision to make early education compulsory, objecting not to the idea of educating the poor but to the hypocrisy of expecting starving families to send their children to school when they could not even feed them. “Man needs, first and foremost, to have food, water and a shelter,” he wrote in an 1877 open letter titled “Bread and Books.” “Only then he can be in the state of mind of listening to his conscience and feel the ambition of improving himself.” Proving Collodi’s point, the law remained largely unapplied, and severe poverty remained rampant in Italy’s poorer regions well up to the 1950s, forcing families to send their children to work in order to put food on the table.

Pinocchio is, incidentally, the tale of a hungry child who cuts school. Readers acquainted with Collodi’s earlier writings might be tempted to think that the author was approving the choice as both inevitable and an act of rebellion against hypocritical authorities. The novel, as Sinibaldi puts it, can be read as a “denunciation of bourgeois social policies.”

But Alberto Asor Rosa, a literary critic and staunch Marxist who has enjoyed a legendary status in Italy, offered a more nuanced interpretation. In his seminal 1975 essay, “Le Voci di un’Italia Bambina,” Rosa suggested that Pinocchio’s central political theme was, in fact, the acceptance rather than the rejection of the compromises that go with nation-building: “It’s a universal tale, destined to repeat itself for every person and for every nation. There always comes a moment in which individuals or communities become more adult than they used to be and, looking back, mourn the time when they could be puppets, i.e. do what they pleased.” According to Rosa, Collodi’s greatness lay in his understanding that coming of age, both privately and politically, entails a loss: “Growing up means gaining something but losing something else: A puppet has riches that a boy could never have.”

Taking Rosa’s reasoning a step further, we can read Pinocchio’s arc as a defeated idealist’s acknowledgment that his vision failed and that the only thing to do is have pazienza—perhaps this is the way things are meant to be. If being a puppet represents uncontrolled rebelliousness, and becoming a real boy—actually “un ragazzino perbene,” a well-behaved kid, in Collodi’s words—means submitting to the social order of a modern nation, with all its hypocrisies and injustices, this would explain the bittersweet, slightly nostalgic tone of the novel’s conclusion: “How funny I was when I was a puppet! And how happy I am now to have become a good little kid!”

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‘Disgraceful:’ N.S. Tory leader slams school’s request that military remove uniform

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HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.

Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.

A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”

Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.

“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.

In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”

“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”

Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.

Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.

Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.

“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.

“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.

“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”

Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.

“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”

NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”

“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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Saskatchewan NDP’s Beck holds first caucus meeting after election, outlines plans

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REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.

Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.

She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.

Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.

Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.

The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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Nova Scotia election: Liberals say province’s immigration levels are too high

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HALIFAX – Nova Scotia‘s growing population was the subject of debate on Day 12 of the provincial election campaign, with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill arguing immigration levels must be reduced until the province can provide enough housing and health-care services.

Churchill said Thursday a plan by the incumbent Progressive Conservatives to double the province’s population to two million people by the year 2060 is unrealistic and unsustainable.

“That’s a big leap and it’s making life harder for people who live here, (including ) young people looking for a place to live and seniors looking to downsize,” he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.

Anticipating that his call for less immigration might provoke protests from the immigrant community, Churchill was careful to note that he is among the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon.

“I know the value of immigration, the importance of it to our province. We have been built on the backs of an immigrant population. But we just need to do it in a responsible way.”

The Liberal leader said Tim Houston’s Tories, who are seeking a second term in office, have made a mistake by exceeding immigration targets set by the province’s Department of Labour and Immigration. Churchill said a Liberal government would abide by the department’s targets.

In the most recent fiscal year, the government welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the department’s limit by more than 4,000, he said. The numbers aren’t huge, but the increase won’t help ease the province’s shortages in housing and doctors, and the increased strain on its infrastructure, including roads, schools and cellphone networks, Churchill said.

“(The Immigration Department) has done the hard work on this,” he said. “They know where the labour gaps are, and they know what growth is sustainable.”

In response, Houston said his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.” And he said the province had long struggled with a declining population before that trend was recently reversed.

“The only immigration that can come into this province at this time is if they are a skilled trade worker or a health-care worker,” Houston said. “The population has grown by two per cent a year, actually quite similar growth to what we experienced under the Liberal government before us.”

Still, Houston said he’s heard Nova Scotians’ concerns about population growth, and he then pivoted to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia, an assertion the federal government has denied.

Churchill said Houston’s claim about asylum seekers was shameful.

“It’s smoke and mirrors,” the Liberal leader said. “He is overshooting his own department’s numbers for sustainable population growth and yet he is trying to blame this on asylum seekers … who aren’t even here.”

In September, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said there is no plan to send any asylum seekers to the province without compensation or the consent of the premier. He said the 6,000 number was an “aspirational” figure based on models that reflect each province’s population.

In Halifax, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it’s clear Nova Scotia needs more doctors, nurses and skilled trades people.

“Immigration has been and always will be a part of the Nova Scotia story, but we need to build as we grow,” Chender said. “This is why we have been pushing the Houston government to build more affordable housing.”

Chender was in a Halifax cafe on Thursday when she promised her party would remove the province’s portion of the harmonized sales tax from all grocery, cellphone and internet bills if elected to govern on Nov. 26. The tax would also be removed from the sale and installation of heat pumps.

“Our focus is on helping people to afford their lives,” Chender told reporters. “We know there are certain things that you can’t live without: food, internet and a phone …. So we know this will have the single biggest impact.”

The party estimates the measure would save the average Nova Scotia family about $1,300 a year.

“That’s a lot more than a one or two per cent HST cut,” Chender said, referring to the Progressive Conservative pledge to reduce the tax by one percentage point and the Liberal promise to trim it by two percentage points.

Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Houston announced that a Progressive Conservative government would make parking free at all Nova Scotia hospitals and health-care centres. The promise was also made by the Liberals in their election platform released Monday.

“Free parking may not seem like a big deal to some, but … the parking, especially for people working at the facilities, can add up to hundreds of dollars,” the premier told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.

— With files from Keith Doucette in Halifax

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