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The second pillar of Raffa is her imperfection.
You can find it clearly spelled out in her Spanish broadcasts, where Raffa makes fun of herself while she makes fun of other people's languages by getting words wrong, or inventing them and taking a piss at them. This candid representation of the television idol as a truly next-door person, with all her defects, goes hand in hand with that of an iron-clad resourcefulness, strong-willingness, an internal strength constantly catapulting Raffa into the world of becoming.
No sweat if Raffa at times is a bit out of tune, nor that there's a perceptible hoarseness in some of her harmonics, when she sings. The media-created imaginary "duel" between Loretta Goggi and Raffa in that sense was inane. Loretta has a top musical intelligence and her ability to imitate any voice is outstanding, yet Goggi has no identity of her own, Raffa has a hell of one.
Carrà, with a voice that sometimes gets very thin, even when chasing the intonation, retains a recognizable and pretty human character. Furthermore, even if sometimes her breathing is shaky, the whole act is commanded by such a strong-willed professionalism that it leaves you convinced by such felt expression of vital energy.
Listen to her in press conferences at 70 years old: how lucid, alert, determined and focused on the future. Impressive. And since the beginning she always talks about projects, in this quintessential woman, and looks forward, rarely back, rarely gossips (when she does, she does it briefly and with the precision of a great surgeon who knows where to cut - she is still a prima donna).
Ballet is perhaps the area where imperfection is practically always lurking. Together with Ether Parisi you see that the other one is truly made for dance and she is not. And yet it would not be the same thing a perfect Carrà, who wouldn't lose her breath or appear insecure when up-held by the arms of her boys. And that time when a bra strap snapped she managed on stage to saw it back: either a pseudo-scandal stunt, or ruthless professionalism.
Willpower and imperfection: the two ingredients that, mixed in the right combination, led Carrà to be a cultural anchor for an absolutely centric segment of Italy (and Spain! at least as much!) between 1970 and 2000. An ideological container.
"La Romana"
To open “La Grande Bellezza” Sorrentino uses Raffa's A far l’amore comincia tu as remixed by Bob Sinclair, the latter adding a raw pulse and the techno bass drum and 90s synth.
The melody -in itself- is cut like a log with an axe: it navigates territories close to nursery rhymes: and yet it has a tremendous hook, that sticks to your neurons and placidly hangs out there for hours. The lyrics flutter lightly, speaking of love (perhaps, I don't know: "And if you attack with feeling/Take it to the bottom of a blue sky/You're the only one who makes his fears of that moment explode"), perhaps of explicit or almost explicit sex ("he explodes, he explodes, he [fucks me]...", of conquered sexual freedom.
The scene reminds us that for decades Carrà hung out in the Roman political power. Long before there were Berlusconi's 'independent' Northern broadcasters speaking with a Milanese accent, TV was monopolized by Roman accents, because Italy's public TV, RAI, was in Rome.
Raffa was one of those artists who went "to the South" (which is more like the Center of Italy) and also came... to terms with the parties of RAI. Stationed in Rome. Like Raffa - who for a few hot years had the entire Italian people in her hands.
Animated by a continuous electric current, a first-in-class attitude (years later, during the filming of "Colonel Ryan", instead of going to get drunk and get white noses, as she did Sinatra in the evening, she would review her parts.) She gave a shot at the multi-artistic versatility of Broadway trying to make it as singer, dancer, and actress. But it was the television shows (60+ in Italy, 17 abroad) as a anchor woman cementing her image as a woman: populistic, empathetic, sparkling and Italian.
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National-pop and post-modern transgression mixed with cooking recipes, truly heartbreaking stories, interspersed with "science and technology" (a constant feature, starting from her Barbarella-style spatial costumes.)
It is a successful attempt to codify transgression and make of it a mere label, a style that is sometimes subliminal. In short, to corroborate a decades-long trend towards the progressive loosening up of costumes, today's debauchée twerking by leaning against a School Bus full of kids on a typical spring break party in Miami.
Raffa would never have twerked. BUT she was essential to convince the Italian housewives (a little reluctant) and much more so the Spanish ones (in the post-Franco times of the Democracia and changing of mores) to unleash themselves in a libertine feminism leading to the sex-tourism weekends in Cuba in search of gigolos.
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