Marinetti Futism Analysis

Echoing the words of literary critic, Graziella Parati, “woman is absorbed within Marinetti’s movement as an empty signifier that can be manipulated by the Futurist man” (43). In many of Marinetti’s manifestos involving women, Marinetti deems woman as inferior and useless, but also mentions that the employment of women would be beneficial for the good of the future. Reading Marinetti’s manifestos can be quite difficult due to his hyperbolic and contradictory statements. The power of this exaggerated use of syntax and diction complicates the meaning that Marinetti is often trying to communicate to the public. Although he scorns woman he seeks to liberate women for the good of the future and the “extended man” (Marinetti 55). It is possible
to argue that Marinetti is a misogynist, in opposition of equality for women; however, after learning the different functions for woman that he uses: woman versus women, one may reconsider this determination. Marinetti’s sense of woman implicates the sentimental representations of the ideal and aesthetic woman, and not the actual being.
Mina Loy, on the other hand, is a famous avant-garde artist remembered for her innovative and original poetry. Although many believe that Loy is a Futurist, due to her interactions and affairs with several Futurist men, including Marinetti, she is not a Futurist and only uses the ideals of Futurism for her own purposes. Loy adopts an idiosyncratic feminist stance and writes most of her poetry about women. Loy, like Marinetti, agrees that Italy needs to abandon the traditions of the past and everything that is deemed old in order to regenerate and restore Italy. She also rejects the traditional image of women; her poetry proposes that feminism is more than just fighting for the right to establish a career, gain education, vote, and own property. Women need to destroy the desire to be loved, but not for the same exact reasons as Marinetti; although Loy has been inspired by Marinetti and the Futurist movement, she seemingly separates herself from his perspectives of women and sentimental love. Through the use of a variety of secondary sources, this paper will seek to discover the image of woman that Marinetti alludes to and where Loy argues against Marinetti’s position. Focusing on women, gender, and war, the critical articles and reviews will support and add opposition to the argument and the ways in which Marinetti seeks order, power, and control.
The primary goal of Futurism is to destroy all of the old and traditional elements of Italy: “We wish to destroy museums, libraries, academics of any sort, and fight against moralism, feminism, and every kind of materialistic, self-serving cowardice” (Marinetti 14).
Marinetti, the leader of the Futurist movement, seeks to renovate Italy from an unchanging passive, and worn out country and into a new and enhanced country with speed and agility. He disdains museums and libraries and compares them to graveyards; like graveyards, museums and libraries hold art created by artists that are now dead. They are visited annually but only for a short amount of time. By comparing museums and libraries to graveyards, Marinetti exemplifies how the people of Italy have an obsession of what Italy has been for the past couple centuries. In order to understand the paradoxes in his manifestos, one must understand that Marinetti purposely messes with diction and syntax, especially when it comes to his “scorn for women” (Marinetti 14). The “scorn for women” is not the rejection against all women, but against the transient ideas associated with femininity. Marinetti hopes to give meaning to life through violence but does not seek violence against women. In Cinzia Blum’s “The Futurist Re-fashioning of the Universe,” Blum argues that Marinetti’s destruction of syntax creates a violent empowerment over the traditional “I.” Marinetti does in fact depict a violent and misogynist view of women, but this violent diction and syntax is only employed in order to take control over the interpretation of the text and not over
women.
Marinetti often contradicts himself within his manifestos, which frequently complicates the reading when trying to figure out which stance he takes regarding women. One minute he’s saying that if the freedoms, such as the freedom to vote, are granted to women it would be great, because he believes women will help the Futurists achieve their goal to destroy and wreck the parliament anyway; then, other times, he takes the offensive side and begins to consider how awful it would be if women were to actually become active members of society and had a say or participated in the government. Marinetti uses these contradictory viewpoints and paradoxical statements about women in order to illustrate the struggle between tradition and modernity. Marinetti uses women to illustrate both tradition and modernity because woman is both the eternal image of nature and the past, and the modern reproduction of the past. He uses images of the aesthetic woman to characterize the entangling traditions of love; woman is “haunting and irresistible, whose voice, weighed down with destiny, and whose dreamlike mane of hair extend into the forest and are continued there in the foliage bathed in moonlight” (Marinetti 55). This allusion of the ideal woman mirrors the aesthetic woman that Dante Rossetti paints in his art. The ideal woman is exceptionally beautiful with striking physical features such as her pale complexion and long hair. Woman is an object who is meant to be seen and admire but never heard; she is expected to be voiceless, her voice, “weighed down with destiny” (Marinetti 55). According to Marinetti, woman’s fate and destiny, as a woman, is that she does not get a voice in society; instead, it stays weighed down by all of the men, who are the strong and dominant gender in society.
The artistic and traditional female icon clashes with the women in the contemporary society. Women in the contemporary society are those who are a part of the working and middle-class, of which are tired of being unfairly treated by men and the law. Marinetti’s theory is that these contemporary women dream of gaining political freedom because, “without being really aware of it, they have a deep conviction that as mothers, brides, and lovers, they form a closed circle and are simply totally deprived of any positive role in society” (Marinetti 58). Women know that they deserve more, especially women who are a part of the upper and middle class. Their husbands are granted these freedoms, so if they are of equal class status in society, they should also obtain the same rights and freedoms. Women are tired of being reduced to the stereotypical image of femininity that declares that women are incapable of transcending their weak and inferior traits. Women want to prove that they can be more than just the “tragic plaything,” (Marinetti 55) to men.