“Ti regalerò fucili”. Ironia e saggezza nelle parodie del primo Eco

In his first works Umberto Eco reveals himself to be a multifaceted author, able to move easily from scientific essay to parody, one considered as the reverse or the negative of the other. There’s a relationship of specularity between the pieces of Diario minimo and the essays on mass culture of Apocalittici e integrati, which clearly emerges from a parody like Fenomenologia di Mike Bongiorno, where Eco literally destroys the popular figure of the anchorman with the excuse of describing it analytically. Yet parody in Eco, despite its corrosive force, does not have a moralistic or inquisitorial value, but a sceptical-ironic one: castigat more ridendo. It is an essay of “serious entertainment” that functions as an “extreme litmus test” to verify the validity of the cultural references of its time, both the “high” ones and those linked to mass culture. Diario minimo is crossed by a subtle pedagogical tension which, as Paolo Fabbri claims, “has the aim of transmitting a morality […] based on an unsuspected common sense, but conveyed by a humorous and ironic form” (Fabbri 2010). Beyond the right to be irreverent which is invoked by the author on the back cover of the book there is not a need for “semiological guerrilla”, but a form of minimal wisdom that disguises itself as a playful spirit.