Mi faccia il piacere! Totò e la sovversione dell’ipocrisia borghese: un’analisi socioculturale

This paper explores the actorship of Italian comedian Totò, from a sociocultural perspective. We investigate its ability to subvert the rules and social customs, through the subversive gesture and the reinvention of the grammatical and lexical structures. The essay will reflect on the construction of an original actorship, built with high and low sources (Commedia dell'arte, Futurism, avanspettacolo, varietà, film parody). Toto undermines the hypocrisy of social conventions, by staging a series of strategies: deception and lies; the disarticulation of the body; the irreverence of the spoken word.