Sanremo 2024, songs between love and lightness: what the psychiatrist thinks

Sanremo 2024 will play 'straight drum' songs', uptempo rhythms made for dancing, repeating themselves 'in loop' on the radios and carving new catchphrases in the minds of spectators. Lots of dance, love in every version, some 'busy' themes, but not too many. “A need for lightness” which, in the eyes of the psychiatrist Claudio Mencacci, appears more than understandable after the night of Covid and while the winds of war are blowing strongly, however it hides pitfalls: “The the desire for levity is also one of the symptoms of what is often called the 'Gay apocalypse'that desire for celebration, for continuous gatherings, which infected the Europe of the Belle Époque and which was shattered at the outbreak of the First World War”, one of the most tragic carnages in contemporary history. The expert explains this to Adnkronos Salute, all the day after the report cards drawn up by those who were able to preview the songs from the next Flower Festival.

Thirty songs in which the joys and sorrows of the heart reign supremewith the exception of some text in which current events peek out: from the drama of war and migrants to the vital force of women, the Pink power that defeats bullying and prejudice. Mencacci launches a warning on the other side of disengagement, on the “need for levity which is often intertwined with the victory of indifference”, observes the emeritus director of Neurosciences at the Asst Fatebenefratelli-Sacco in Milan and co-president of Sinpf, the Society Italian neuropsychopharmacology. “Why today a big theme is precisely that of indifference“, warns the specialist. “A sort of eighth capital vice”, he calls it, a drift into which we risk slipping. Indifference to the evils of the world, but also “indifference in relationships with others, which means insensitivity in to the requests of others”.

When lightness leads to intolerance and insensitivity, warns Mencacci, “it confirms that we are increasingly imprisoned in the enclosure of selfishness. Selfishness which leads to solitude and always goes hand in hand with narcissism, understood as boundless love and tragic of the image of oneself. The egoist's extraneousness condemns him to closure to others, to withdrawal into himself”, to blindness to the needs of others. For the psychiatrist, the light on the Ariston stage will however be turned on by women and those who sing them. 'Pink pride' is “a very current theme that I strongly agree with”, says the expert. “It is Italy's true strength at this moment – he comments – the only evolutionary force, a force that looks far ahead, that pursues dignity and humanity, and restores meaning to interpersonal relationships which, to have value, require the ability to listen, understand, solidarity. All this is in the saving power of women.”