Last weekend I found my Italian heroine. I’ve never been a great fan of Superman or Batman. It’s easy to be a badass when you’re a man. But finding a tough female hero, with all the risks and prejudices tied to her role, that’s something totally different.
But now Italy has one. Her name is Inspector Imma Tataranni and she fights organised crime, drug dealers and murderers in Italy’s deep-southern city of Matera. Imma is the star of a successful ongoing TV series watched by a vast number of Italian viewers, and I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them were women.
I love Imma. She’s unique. She wears bright-red high heels, so out of place in the winding, uphill stony alleys of Matera, yet the shoes match her fiery red curly hair. Her wardrobe is extravagant. I would never wear those flashy clothes, but they perfectly suit her style. Imma doesn’t care about what locals, or people in general, think of her. She’s independent and straightforward, a kickass woman who is too smart and funny for any man. She’s loud and not at all the female prototype of the south, and even her shy male collaborators can’t keep up with her exuberance. And I love that.
But what makes her truly great is that she’s not just an investigator. Imma is a multi-task heroine: she’s married to a man who’s her exact opposite, and she has a rebel teenage daughter who gives her headaches. I admire the way she balances work and life – it makes her all the more human.
For me, Imma is an Italian Wonder Woman. What makes me love her all the more is her ability to kill male prejudices against women that are inbred in Italy, particularly in the deep south, which has always been a patriarchal society. Women tend to be looked down upon, and are still, in many rural areas, perceived just as wives, daughters or sisters who can only do a bunch of limited things: cook, clean the house, wash the clothes, get married and have kids. Nothing more than that, let alone go around chasing robbers, murderers or interrogating suspects.
The last time I visited Basilicata I was shocked by the fact that there were so many policemen, firemen and male cops around, and not even one law enforcement woman.
Watching the Imma series made me consider for the first time the “hidden” power of Italian women – they have so much potential energy, but are still gagged by society and the institutions.
My neighbour, Franca, has been an Imma Tataranni fan since season one and can’t wait for season three. “Imma’s not beautiful, and that’s great because we don’t want another Barbielike starlet taking the stage,” she tells me. “But she’s simple, with imperfections, and embodies all of us with our flaws, outbursts of anger and occasional fits of hysteria.”
Another friend of mine, Barbara, the one who got me hooked on the series, is glad Imma finally “sent to hell that stuck-up, arrogant Inspector Salvo Montalbano”.
Newspapers welcomed the Imma Tataranni show as a fine “female substitute” for Inspector Salvo Montalbano, the Sicilian investigator whose TV series ran for 15 straight seasons.
I couldn’t stand Montalbano: he was a know-it-all, selfish “Latin lover”, despite his bald head and wobbly gut, but always the star. Just because he was a man, living and working in deep Sicily, everything was easy for him.
For Imma it’s much tougher to be Wonder Woman, and I have sympathy for her. She’s like my next-door neighbour. Someone familiar.
