Detached retinas: empathy and the transmedial interstices of RAI fiction

In this essay, we analyse two mainstream Italian TV dramas about the Mediterranean crossing produced by the Italian national public broadcasting company RAI. Lampedusa dall’orizzonte in poi (2016, Marco Pontecorvo) and I fantasmi di Portopalo (2017a,b Alessandro Angelini) were both two-part mini-series broadcast in prime-time slots on consecutive nights on RAI 1. Inspired by real events which took place in 2008 and 1996, respectively, the first features the well-known actor Claudio Amendola, while the second stars Giuseppe Fiorello, perhaps the most popular face on Italian state television. The essay examines the ways in which these two specifically national productions both reproduce conventional media representations of migration and offer the viewer new ways to approach the topic through their transmedial presence on multiple platforms. We analyse the narratives and cinematography of the films themselves and explore how the star personae of the main actors and their appearances across different platforms affect audience reception. Our argument is indebted on work done in the field of critical race theory to illuminate the representational logics of agency in the Mediterranean and the definitions of the human which they produce.