Italy's fascination for the USA is the result of years of cultural (and physical) imperialism.
This song and a number of different cultural acts (such as the famous "Americano" song [0], the Paninari movement in Milan during the 80's [1] and obviously the whole Spaghetti Western movies genre) are the direct result of this.
The root cause of this, in my opinion, is the huge amount of CIA money that has been poured into Italian government, to make sure they wouldn't join USSR during the cold war.[2]
I suggest watching "An american in Rome" with Alberto Sordi to have a clear example of the discrepancies between wealthy American _visitors_ and the local poorer population. It describes the story of a local Roman man infatuated with the whole American dream (short sub-eng part here [3])
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Italy's fascination for the USA is the result of years of cultural (and physical) imperialism. This song and a number of different cultural acts (such as the famous "Americano" song [0], the Paninari movement in Milan during the 80's [1] and obviously the whole Spaghetti Western movies genre) are the direct result of this.
The root cause of this, in my opinion, is the huge amount of CIA money that has been poured into Italian government, to make sure they wouldn't join USSR during the cold war.[2]
I suggest watching "An american in Rome" with Alberto Sordi to have a clear example of the discrepancies between wealthy American _visitors_ and the local poorer population. It describes the story of a local Roman man infatuated with the whole American dream (short sub-eng part here [3])
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikZgUHJys2s [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paninaro [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Italy [3] https://youtu.be/ikZgUHJys2s?t=86