Tear Along the Dotted Line & This World Can't Tear Me Down

 

In 2021, I was scrolling through Netflix and saw a trailer for some animated show about a mopey bloke bickering with an Armadillo. It's called Tear Along the Dotted Line, It scratched my curiosity itch, so I decided to give it a chance. I knew it was a European series, Italian to be more precise, and since Netflix usually has terrible dubbing of European content I made sure to pick subtitles with the Italian audio. And nearly abandoned the show in the first five minutes. I don't speak Italian, but I am familiar with some words and phrases and my reading speed is pretty good. The main character Zero spoke so fast I could not keep up. 

Instead of surrender, I bit the bullet and switched to English audio, and was surprised because the dubbing was great. The protagonist Zero is a Roman working class type associated with lefty politics, the punk scene and the pop-culture of a 1990s childhood. So, whichever company did the dubbing figured out correctly that there is a British version of Zero out in the wild and cast him to do the voice. The monologue is very authentic, the slang used sounds like something a character like Zero would use in real conversation and avoids the trap of trying too hard to sound streetwise. The references that don't translate to an international audience or can't be replaced with a British equivalent are explained clearly and quickly, and each episode has an extremely snappy pace.

The plot of the series revolves around a shock revelation, so I won't spoil that. The premise though is the life of Zero, a real life Italian comic artist, and his struggles with his own emotional hang-ups. The Armadillo is supposed to be an imaginary representation of his conscience, but it seems more interested in manipulating him into negative behaviours. The show is autobiographical and uses a stream of consciousness narrative, Zero not only narrates the events and his emotional state but does all the voices of the other characters. It was surprisingly engaging seeing him struggle with imposter syndrome social anxiety and his slow, constantly halting progress towards a better place. 

In short, I really enjoyed the show it had a lot for me to chew on, the jokes landed for me more often than not and despite guessing what the revelation was going to be I still felt an emotional punch once it was out in the open. It's the sort of thing I wished I had bothered to write about when it was new, I recommended it to some friends, all of whom agreed it sounded interesting and all promptly ignored it. And the series ended pretty conclusively, or so I thought. I was surprised to see that this year they had released a second series, This World Won't Tear Me Down.

Which is why I'm finally getting off my proverbial backside to talk about the show now. Now strictly speaking This World Can't Tear Me Down, is standalone, you do not have to watch Tear Along the Dotted Line to understand what's going on. It re-introduces the characters and how the show works very well and while there are references to what happened in Tear Along, they are not crucial. I would strongly recommend you watch Tear Along first, though. Watching them out of order, you lose the sense of Zero's emotional progression. Zero is still the protagonist and a stream of consciousness is how the narrative progresses, but the voice cast is expanded, Zero only does other people's voices when he's explicitly recounting events, so he has finally learnt to let his friends take part in his world and doesn't treat them like props in his play. And the Armadillo while still a glass half empty grump has stopped trying to manipulate Zero into stagnation and does give advice that's more reasonable and leave it up to Zero to make the decisions without pressuring him.

Zero's narcissism has declined sharply since last time, though he is still struggling with a "the world rests on my shoulders" attitude and is still struggling with imposter syndrome thanks to his further commercial success. This World, also vindicates my choice as there are multiple jokes about how even Italians struggled to keep up with his motor mouth in Tear Along.

Fans of Tear Along, will find plenty to like in This World. I certainly did, ended up watching the all six episodes in one night, though admittedly I was sick at the time so had difficulty sleeping and had nothing to do the next morning. 

The story has expanded beyond Zero's personal life to looking at how his struggles are part of what's going on in Italy and the world. Much of the conflict this time revolves around the growing boldness of Italian Neo-Fascism. In Tear Along, Zero's disgust with the far right is noticeable, but it's part of the background of the world Zero lives in and what makes him tick. It was good to see that emotional issues aren't a barrier to opposing the forces of reaction, politically and socially, Zero seems pretty sound. However, the first series came out in 2021 and a lot has changed since then. Now fascist posters are littering the streets Zero walks down, and the police have been arresting Zero's friends for counterprotests against far right political groups.

I should stress these two series are autobiographical, the events they depict are true, it's just names and identities are changed. Half the new characters are represented by alias and drawn as some kind of Dinosaur to protect them. This creates a bit of a clash with the gritty street level of the events, but you get used to seeing a Triceratops deck a black shirt or a Pterodactyl slag off the local council for capitulating to an obvious strong arm tactic. This World Can't Tear Me Down is an open and overt Anti-fascist animation. And not just because of the baddies' goose-stepping into battle, their ideology and strategies are explored, exposed and condemned. 

The Fascists or Nazis as Zero keeps calling them* are opportunistic thugs exploited the failures of the Italian state to rally the discontented to their banner to pressure a weak and complicit political establishment to make concessions which will strengthen them further to repeat the cycle. They're doing this in two ways, first in a deprived area of Rome the government shipped a number of refugees into a building that was abandoned. The Nazis are targeting this district with posters and other propaganda accusing the government of selling out the local population and "Pure" Italians for these foreigners, with a major source of tension being the proximity to a school. And the second case is how they recruit new members. A childhood friend of Zero's called Cesare has returned to the neighbourhood after a long absence and is having trouble reconnecting with the community. He was in a clinic for drug addiction and in addition to find readjusting to life outside to be a challenge, he resents how he and his family were treated by the authorities. He is not a true believer, but the Nazis are exploiting both his resentment and isolation to get him to join up. They seem sympathetic to him, and they've used the lack of support for him to stoke anger over the refugees. 

In both cases, they're shown to be opportunistic deceivers. The refugees were placed there recently, but the district has been stagnating with a loss of services and employment opportunities for decades. Forcing a few dozen desperate people to move somewhere else will do nothing to fix that, it just makes life harder for people. And as for Cesare, encouraging an addict with a criminal record into further acts of violence isn't in his best interests, it will not help him reconnect with the world outside, it keeps isolated and in conflict with the few friends he had left, and their false comradery breaks down once Cesare fails to transition into a good malleable soldier. They abandon him to his fate after that. There is no happy ending here, the anti-fascists successfully break up this one attempt to divide the community, but the Nazis are still around and Cesare is free of the negative influence of the far right squadisti and probably won't go to prison because the only direct evidence of his actions was recorded by the anti-fascists who delete it rather than turn it over to the police, but he's still adrift and having to struggle with a community that in addition to difficulties understanding addiction now know he's associated with violent extremism.

It's a tough watch, but it's important, this isn't fiction it's real life. I know first hand that society fails many of its members and leaves them isolated and resentful. The scenes with Zero visiting Cesare and his mother at the beginning were a little painful to watch as they reminded me of how I and my family treated several people who were addicts** at first, constantly torn between addressing it or just trying to ignore hoping they'll just tell us the boundaries without havign to be asked. The pitiful amount of resources set up to process refugees in conditions that are just bleak at best and prisons at best isn't sufficient to address that problem, but is more than enough to create footholds for opportunistic peddlers of hate, and the respectable political representatives who are supposed to improve society are completely incapable of addressing these issues and that's assuming they aren't directly complicit which increasingly is the case. 

In a sense This World Can't Tear Me Down, is rather bleak, there is no magic cure all presented in the conclusion of the show. Italy (or the UK or France etc) is fundamentally broken, and no solution will come from it. However, despite that people can work together, reject the lies and resist the manipulation by outside forces and resist the reactionary turn. To drive that message home, there is a sequence where Zero makes conversation with some of the refugees who are grateful for the show of support but weren't worried too much about the Nazis, because instead of being the vulnerable victims Zero and the Anti-fash assumed they were they due to there experiences of violence and depredation were used to fighting and had formed a defence ring around the building and had built up an armoury or improvised weapons. The events unfolded with the Nazis failing to get inside the grounds (lucky for them I guess) so the refugees were relegated to spectators. The implication being that while what Zero and his friends did was important and a good thing, it would have been more beneficial had they communicated with the refugees and worked with them instead of just acting on their behalf.

Also this bit of dialogue from Secco really spoke to me.

"Where did I grow up? I'm an orphan. I was on the streets from the age of 15. I've never had a job, no one to support me nothing. Everything I have, I got for myself and I've never taken anything from those who were worse off than me. I get that you feel guilty but do you think that Zerocalcare is the only enligthened one that knows right from wrong?"

This was in response to Zero's handwringing about not judging Cesare for supporting the Nazis. It doesn't deny that Cesare has struggles but it shootsdown the idea that these are in anyway valid explanations or excuses for supporting far right bandwagons and lashing out at others. There's been a growing divide in anti-fascism for sometime over how to deal with the alienated recruits of the contemporary far right in Europe. Its a difficult issue to address but Secco is 100%, I also felt bad for Cesare but that isn't an excuse for what he's doing and not all addicts join up with the supporters of the new Reich. Throwing bricks through the windows of foreigners won't help Cesare or any of the alienated footsoldiers, and nor would it make what they're doing okay if it did somehow solve their personal problems. It treats Fascism and how to oppose it seriously and with nuance and years of experience, several episodes even explain tactics for street clashes and how to take precautions. 

Its anti-fascist content is enough for me to recommend it as an educational tool, its emotional maturity and clever handling of personal drama and dark humour make it one of my favourite shows.

*This is addressed directly. Fascism has managed to become semi-respectable in Italian society again, whereas Nazism is still a no-go area. So, in response, anti-fascists like Zero have resorted to using the Nazi label to describe the diverse ecosystem of far right grouplets to remind wider society of what the end game of these people are. 

** If you're wondering why I keep referring to individuals who have been clean for sometime as addicts its because that's what the family and friends I know who have gone through view it. Addiciton and rehabilitation are complex issues with many different ways of working with it, I'm not an expert and just going off of what little I know, I apologise if this has caused offense.