THE PORN QUEEN OF PARLIAMENT

Ian Thomson meets

Ilona Staller, the Italian MP and sex enthusiast

ITALY has apparently surpassed Britain to become the fifth industrial power of the Western world: if sorpasso, the Italians call it — 'the overtaking'. As proof of this plump Italianate pudding, the Communist Party newspaper Unita now runs a page of stock market reports and exchange rates— and one wonders what the Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci, co-founder of the Partita Comunista Italiana, would have made of that.

Without doubt, the `sorpasso' is in part the result of what Marco Panella, the distinctly maverick leader of Italy's tiny but influential Radical Party, has called crollo delle due chiese', 'the collapse of the two churches' — the Communist Party and the Church itself. And as examples of their apparent demise we have the Vatican turning to Japanese television to finance the restoration of the Sistine Chapel ceil- ing, and the PCI — which is nevertheless still the largest communist party in the West — having slumped during Italy's recent general election to a 26.6 per cent share of the vote, a 24-year low.

It is not to everyone's taste, this new Italy; and as dubious a product of the `crollo delle due chiese' as one is likely to find must be Ilona Staller, otherwise known as Cicciolina (Italian for `Sweetiepie), the Hungarian-born 'porno queen' of 37 who has now become an eminent parliamentarian. Even five years ago, she would have been quite unable to get away with such public statements as `But I just don't agree with sweetiepie John Paul II. When he says "Make love to procreate", I say "Do it for pleasure."' Cicciolina's rise to political notoriety was rapid. Prior to the general election, she was selected by Panella as an independent candidate on the list of his Radical Party, where she was required to lobby for various Green issues, and fight against military conscription, Third World pover- ty, nuclear energy, etc. Originally, Panella placed Cicciolina 49th out of a total of 50 candidates on his ballot paper, and con- fined her constituency to the province of Lazio, which nevertheless includes Rome. But Signora Staller, who conducted her (largely topless) campaign under such un- usual slogans as 'Vote for a Green from the red light district' went on to poll a total of 10,000 votes, almost exceeding the number won by Panella himself. The 'Cicciolina cyclone' had got slightly out of hand; Panella buried his head in the sand.

Under Italy's proportional representa- tion system, though, Cicciolina obtained a parliamentary seat in the Chamber of Deputies at Montecitorio, where she was recently put on the Commission for De- fence under the newly appointed leader of Italy's five-party coalition government, Giovanni Goria. Needless to say, the communists, whom the pornodiva' calls `cicciolini bigotti comunisti', are outraged, objecting that she was elected to Monteci- torio merely on the strength of a 'fascist anti-parliamentary protest vote'. The Christian Democrats, meanwhile, are none too happy with the Jesus Christ disguise (false beard, wig and gown) worn during the election by Cicciolina's chauffeur. But it is all too late; by now Cicciolina has won for herself the honorific title of Onorevole.

During Cicciolina's electoral campaign, she toured Lazio with a series of markedly lewd 'porno-shows', featuring a leather- clad Neapolitan nymphette wielding a whip or machine-gun, steel-studded gloves and sundry bottle-sized gadgets of an irrefut- ably sexual nature. Usually after urinating on her audience, Cicciolina would climax her performance with an act involving a python named Pito-Pito, which dis- appeared as it wound itself around her body (for which she got into trouble with the Italian Friends of the Earth).

I met her outside Parliament in Rome, underneath the Obelisk of Psammeticus I in Piazza di Montecitorio. 'Ciao cicciolino sexy!', the pornodiva scandalosa greeted me, slapping my wrist in what I took to be a playful fashion. I was half-expecting to find Cicciolina in an insouciant state of semi-undress, but she was most soberly clad — rather resembling a waitress in black skirt and jacket, white shirt and gimmicky bow-tie. Carefully plaited pig- tails gave her the appearance of Bibi Longstocking or even Heidi, although stiletto heels and the gash of violent red lipstick spoke of things rather less inno- cent than that.

We passed the military police at the entrance to Palazzo Montecitorio and the Hon. Sweetiepie sat me down in the cavernous entrance hall. Without further ado, she was throwing slogans at me: 'I am the new Joan of Arc. My mission is to bring out into the light of the sun the sexual inhibitions of an entire nation. I want to make all the cicciolini italiani happy — in a big, big bed!'

The Hon. Sweetiepie permitted herself a girlish giggle. And then continued: 'Sex is pleasure, fantasy, playtime, life. Pornogra- phy equals knowledge, equals less repres- sion, equals less violence, equals the Radical Party!'

She faltered momentarily, admit- ted to being 'absolutely exhausted', as she had just flown back from France, where she publicly — gasp! — bared her left breast in front of TF1 television chan- nel presenter Yves Mourousi. And next week she is off to Greece, to meet `ciccioli- na Melina Mercouri'. And, oh, did I know that Gary Hart had recently refused to appear with Cicciolina on Catalan televi- sion? What hypocrisy!

The Hon. Sweetiepie panted on: 'Nuc- lear energy? No thank you! I'd rather warm myself under the sun, and with the power of love!' She told me how the other day she had stood naked in Piazza del Popolo, holding in one hand a 'radioactive artichoke' — a protest against the 'naughty cicciolini who have poisoned the air'. Swinging in a girlish fashion a pair of white-stockinged legs over the edge of her chair, Cicciolina continued: `I'm against everything that destroys nature, including hunting. That's why I have so many little animals — ten cats, twelve white peacocks, a boa-constrictor. And as a member of the Commission for Defence, I say "Less money on nuclear research, more on the arts." And do you know, I've recently been visiting army barracks, to see just how the cicciolini soldier-boys live!'

And what plans does Cicciolina have for the future? 'I want to enable everyone in jail to have sex at least once a week with their loved ones; to open large parks in every Italian city where people can have sexual intercourse in the open air, amidst the little flowers and animals, free of charge — instead of meeting in sad and dingy hotel rooms; to introduce macrobio- tic and vegetarian foodstuffs into Italian restaurants; to turn the Roman Forum into a children's playground; to open . . .

By the time the Hon. Sweetiepie had finished I felt quite drained. In need of a stiff drink, I walked across the Via del Corso to the Cafe El Greco, just off the Piazza d'Espagna. There I met an elderly journalist who had no time for Ilona Staller, and thought Italy was going to the dogs with the likes of her.

Thumping the table, the journalist began to pour scorn on the idea that Italy was moving into a new phase of economic prosperity, and spoke of the two thousand destitutes who live on the streets of Rome, of the four million families in the south `without financial assistance', of the burgeoning industry in drugs and por- nography, of the miserabili down in the slums of Naples, 'that Belfast of the Mediterranean'. And as for the new McDonald's in Rome, near the pensione where Keats died, well, it was an indiscre- tion akin to dumping a takeaway next to Dante's house in Florence. 'With the dis- onorevole Cicciolina in Parliament,' he continued, 'this country has indeed be- come as Dante once described it.' And leaning forward on his walking stick, he quoted from the Purgatorio:

0 enslaved Italy, a place of grief, A ship without a master in a great storm, Not mistress of provinces, but a brothel!