“Amore” by Roger Friedland, Investigating Love in Rome
Melanie Flaccus 2 March 2015

The Santa Barbara-based scholar works in the field of comparative research of sexual customs, utilizing a cross-cultural perspective to consider psychological analyses of preferences and fears, investigations of power relations between gender, relationships between sexual life and a society (or a country’s) social and political organisation. In articles for the Huffington Post and Reset-DoC, Friedland has made observations about the life of couples and the role of the female body in the United Arab Emirates as well as in Erdogan’s Turkey, bringing to light a great deal about both of these countries. Just as the status of women is always a revealing means to understand culture, destiny and also politics of a country, Friedland’s perspective proves useful for larger political analysis. In turn, his observations also reveal a great deal about the observer and his society of origin. This is true also of authors in other fields: cinema, literature and the media. For example, this happened with Woody Allen’s “To Rome with Love,” which ultimately proved more telling of the nervous tics of American youngsters, and about the director, than about the love lives of Trastevere-natives. This phenomenon, without a doubt, applies to this book dedicated to both Rome and Italy (two different realities that in the book are superimposed and alternated in an almost undifferentiated manner, which one might object to).

Life in Rome, however, in Roger’s mind, is different: love, family and courting art still part of everyday life there. That is what he used to tell his daughters. In fact, this was a project that from the very start revealed a desire of a family-model different from the one prevailing in our times, a desire of something we have lost in the Western world, something like a lost treasure. This is an extremely strong sentiment in the United States, and so the author decides to move with his wife Debra and their two teenage twins to Rome only to find that the famed city of romance bears surprises far beyond the beauty and love it seemed to have promised.

Amore, An American Father’s Roman Holiday (Harper Perennial, 2014) is the title of the wonderful book that emerged from Friedland’s experiment. The author invites the reader to join in the family’s voyage through time and space searching for “love lessons.” But ultimately, it is the author who finds himself, not his daughters. His hypothesis that the twins would explore “desire as a public good, a beneficent fact to be displayed, played with… in a flood of flirtation and joy” in the city proves itself false. One of the daughters gets deeply hurt and, instead of finding flirtation and joy, she is bullied by Roman guys who don’t want an intelligent, feminist and self-secure American girl; in other words, a “woman that will not abide a romantic world built on the power of men.”

As his enthusiasm for the Mediterranean culture fades, the author polemically faces the question of feminism as it is understood in America, and the  lack of that kind of feminism in Italy. “After all, these strong women and weak feminists qualify as over-protective mothers of weak sons,” – that’s Italy, while – “the American way suggests that women cannot  endure an increasing loveless world in which they can participate, but one fashioned in the image of men.” For the author, while America’s model is both cause and consequence of its economic success, the author deducts Italy’s economic stagnation and Berlusconism is actually predicated on this lack and on the “mother’s weak sons”.

Attributing psychological characteristics to a city, to a people, and even to a nation, does of course involve a degree of risk. For better or for worse, one is obliged to generalise when describing real or alleged vices and when exalting virtues, also in turn real or alleged. Inevitably, all generalisations end up excessively including or excluding something, paving the way for stereotypes that are then contradicted by a slew of exceptions. Friedland, however, moves lightly and cleverly amidst such risks thanks to his prodigal style and endearing sincerity. It is thus that it is no longer the sociologist describing social situations, but rather the loving and concerned father, an author simply revealing his most intimate thoughts without excessive concern for scientific rigour.

Friedland does not find the answer to which model is the better, but in the end the family returns happily to America.

But this book is also about beauty. I would not like to have given the impression that the author speaks only of himself and his family. Roger Friedland has much to say about Rome. Roger Friedland is one more writer in a long list of Americans who have traveled to Rome for its beauty, its centuries of culture and all the layers buried beneath it. While turning over the ancient city’s stones, uncovering its habits and customs, he analyzes page after page of his own family’s life. Friedland does indeed reveal his own relationships with the women dear to him, but through his selection of locations and situations he selects for the reader all that a native Roman might never be able to transmit or even analyze (let alone a tourist guide): terms and habits which lead deep into the Roman society’s tissue. Any traveler who reads this book will be equipped with a profound glimpse into the city’s reality and customs. When Friedland looks towards “the Roman citizens’ neighbor, the Vicar of Christ,” he lets us smile over a Vatican “where cassocked men who never have had sex and wear silk scarlet silk stockings seek to regulate other citizen’s sex lives.” Surprise: they might offer the best love advice, either.

Love is as central to Friedman’s research, his teaching, his life, and to this story as it is for mankind. He concludes that it is “the capacity to share in the fashioning of a common reality… if you can’t make love, you cannot really change history, neither your own nor that of your society” … and concludes “without love there is no freedom, nor justice…. we should be less concerned when and how our sons and daughters cover their genitals, and much more whether they can uncover their hearts.”

SUPPORT OUR WORK

 

Please consider giving a tax-free donation to Reset this year

Any amount will help show your support for our activities

In Europe and elsewhere
(Reset DOC)


In the US
(Reset Dialogues)


x