Supercazzola, the lexical invention born in Mario Monicelli’s film Amici mie from 1975 to indicate a ‘nonsense phrase pronounced with conviction in order to confuse the interlocutor’, may be considered by purists as a word not suitable for parliamentary halls, but it has now become famous and frequently used in politics too.
The Treccani Vocabulary of the Italian Language online now recognizes its lexical value, with an entry by the linguist Michele A. Cortelazzo, ordinary academic of the Crusca and collaborator of the Treccani Italian Encyclopedia Institute, in the column Le parole della neopolitica, hosted on Treccani. it.
“I don’t know what the historians of the future will understand – asks Cortellazzo – when they try to interpret Senator Matteo Renzi’s reply to the response of the new Minister of Culture (“questions for immediate response”) of 10 October 2024, according to which “the political point[…] is that yes, certainly, the Minister’s Monicellian response was “prematured with a hat-happing to the right as if it were antani”, but the key point is that she did not give a cultural policy response”, quoting the well-known catchphrase from Amici mie.
Renzi himself, however, has repeatedly been the victim of the supercazzola. On 24 February 2014, the then President of the deputies of Fratelli d’Italia, Giorgia Meloni, commenting on her government programmatic speech, had declared that “so far, compared to the Renzi’s speech, Count Mascetti’s super-cazzola was a serious government program…».
Matteo Salvini on 30 July 2020, speaking in the debate on the authorization to proceed against him, declared that he preferred “the nice silence of the 5 Star Movement to free super fucks from Renzi and company», suffering in this case a rebuke from the then President of the Senate Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati: «the “supercazzola” terminology is perhaps better kept aside. There are more appropriate synonyms in this Chamber.”
And, from an opposite position, Maurizio Acerbo, secretary of Rifondazione Comunista, had also judged Renzi’s stance on the refugee problem on 18 July 2022 as “another ‘super-cazzola with a move to the right’ to quote the famous film of our comrade Mario Monicelli.”
In short, according to Cortelazzo, thanks to the dictionaries, the allusion to Monicelli’s film will also be evident in the future.