Algemeen·NRC·20 apr

Why a big country like Italy acts as if it were small

Calimero, a chick covered in soot who is no longer recognised by his mother, was hatched in an animated advertisement on Italian television in 1963. Ever since he has been moaning about his fate: „Everyone has it in for me because I’m small and black.” Notwithstanding complaints over the racial overtones, he has spread far beyond Italy in a string of cartoon series, the latest launched in 2013. In some countries a sense of powerless victimhood has come to be known as a Calimero complex. The term has been applied to France’s perennially aggrieved farmers. The Dutch, a small nation caught between bigger ones, say a Calimero complex explains their sense that they lack influence over international affairs. And in his recent book „Il complesso di Calimero”, Marco Del Panta, a former Italian diplomat, says his country too views itself as resembling the woebegone chick.