SCANDAL

We can distinguish various types of scandal:

1. The theological scandal: the most famous example is offered by the interpretation that some thinkers (such as  Blaise Pascal or Søren Kierkgaard) have given of Christ’s crucifixion. According to Saint Paul it was «a stumbling block (skandalon) to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called […] Christ [has been] the power of God and the wisdom of God». According to Kirkegaard’s, that of Christ was «the scandal of paradox».
2. The political or financial scandal. There are many examples from modern times and especially from  the democracies of Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries. Famous the scandal of the so-called South Sea Bubble (1711-20), connected with a commercial company that dealt with South-America (it has been represented in a comedy by Noel Coward: South Sea Bubble, 1956). Other examples: the parisian Scandal of the necklace (1785-86), in which were involved the Queen Antoinette, the cardinal of Rohan and Cagliostro (it offered the background to the unfinished novel by Friedrich Schiller Der Geisterseher, 1787-89 and to the novel Joseph Balsamo, 1846, by Alexandre Dumas);  the Bankruptcy of the  company of the Panama Canal (1889), which brought about the financial ruin of thousands of investors (it is represented in the novel by Maurice Barrés L’appel au soldat, 1900); The Scandal of the Banca Romana (1888), formerly Bank of the Papal State, which provoked the fall of the Giolitti government in Italy (allusions in the novel by Luigi Pirandello, I vecchi e i giovani, 1913); The Dreyfus Affair (1894), a case of anti-Semitic prejudice which caused a profound split in French society (portrayed in the novel L’anneau d’améthiste, 1899 by Anatole France and in numerous films); The Stavisky Scandal (1934), which stirred up the popular revolt of February 6, provoked the fall of the French government and inspired many public inquiries on the institutions of the Republic (the episode is evoked in an autobiographic novel by the Dutch writer Edgar du Perron, Land van herkomst, 1935 and has been reconstructed in the film Stavisky, 1973 by Alain Resnais, based on a screenplay by Jorge Semprun); the Watergate Scandal (1972-74) which caused the impeachment of the American president Richard Nixon; the great disruption of the Italian political system that goes under the name of Mani Pulite  or Tangentopoli (1992); the American financial scandal known as the Enron affair (2002); the numerous scandals of Italian politics in the last years (Cirio, Parmalat, Telecom, etc.).
3. The scandals with a sexual content. The places and seasons that have more often been the background of scandals with a sexual content have been, first of all, the princely courts from the Renaissance to Modern times. It is enough to mention the cases of Ludwig of Bavaria (depicted in a famous film by Luchino Visconti: Ludwig, 1972); or the House of Augsburg, with the famous episode of princess Sissy, to which many books and films were dedicated; or the reigning family of the United Kingdom, from the abdication of Edward following the illecit liaison with Wally Simpson to the death of princess Diana (that has inspired the film The Queen, 2006, by Stephen Freers); or the numerous episodes involving the Italian dynasty of Savoia, from princess Maria Beatrice and her affair in 1967 with the popular Roman actor Maurizio Arena to the recent misadventures of Vittorio Emanuele; or the milieus of the avant-garde artists in the early decades of the Nineteenth-century, characterized by numerous episodes of forbidden liaisons, sexual experimentation, homosexuality, etc. and their revolt against the moral principles of the bourgeoisie in London, Paris, Schwabing; or the numerous scandals involving actors, producers, screen-writers in Hollywood or those of the international jet-set (recently the scandal involving one of the nephew of Giovanni Agnelli). We can recall the case of the daughter of  the Burgermeister of Schwabish Hall in Germany (1552), that has been scrupulously reconstructed by a Harvard historian: Ozment, Steven E., The bürgermeister's daughter: scandal in a sixteenth-century German town, New York,  Harper, 1997 (from the book a drama has been derived by Erin Cressida Wilson, who teaches at Brown); the famous Cleveland street scandal, so defined by the newspapers in 1889, which involved many aristocrats who patronized a male brothel in Fitzrovia (London), at a time when homosexuality was a crime even when practised by consenting adults in a private house (an echo in an Italian novel by Paolo Valera I gentiluomini invertiti, 1909); the trial a few years later and condemnation of the writer Oscar Wilde (1895); the mystery that has remained unsolved of the jewels of the Irish crown, in which again were involved a group of gay aristocrats, and is known under the name of The Kildare Scandal (1907); the Profumo scandal (1963), exploded in Great Britain after the revelation of a love story between a respected minister of the Tory government and the showgirl Christine Keeler (othe story is accurately portrayed in the film Scandal, 1988, by Michael Caton-Jones and echoed in the song 'We Didn't Start The Fire' by Bill Joel); The Sex Tapes Scandal (1988), that threatened to put an end to career of the American actor Rob Lowe, after the publication of some video-tapes, in which he appeared in scandalous situations; the Monika Lewinsky Scandal (2004) that brought the American President Bill Clinton on the brink of impeachment (the act of accusation is contained in the Report by Judge Starr, 1998, while the point of view of Clinton himself is given in his autobiography My life, 2004).
4. Books, poems, paintings, films, exhibitions that caused a scandal. (In some cases the scandal has increased the diffusion and fortune of the work. We speak in those cases of «a success of scandal»). The list can be much longer:
   • Ovid, Ars Amatoria, First century b. C.
   • Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Discours sur l’origine et les fondements. de l’inégalité parmi les hommes, 1754
   • Gautier, Théophile, Mademoiselle de Maupin, 1835-36
   • Baudelaire, Charles, Les fleurs du mal, 1857-61
   • Flaubert, Gustave, Madame Bovary, 1857
   • Offenbach, Jacques, Orphée aux enfers, musical parody based on a script by H. Meilhac and L. Halévy (the Gods of Olympus are presented “en goguette”), 1858
   • Ibsen, Henrik, A Doll’s House, 1879
   • Maupassant, Guy de, Bel-Ami, 1885
   • Swinburne, Algernon Charles, Poems and Ballads, 1866. (The book was accused of immorality, especially for poems such as «Laus Veneris», with the figure of the femme fatale).
   • Olindo Guerrini, Postuma, 1877 (collection of poem attributed to a poet who died of tubercolosis: Lorenzo Stecchetti)
   • Strindberg, August, Married, 1884
   • Hardy, Thomas, Jude the obscure, 1896
   • Butler, Samuel, The Way of All Flesh, 1903
   • Lawrence, D. H., Lady Chattlerley’s Lover, 1928
   • Nabokov, Vladimir, Lolita, 1955
   • Rushdie, Salman, The satanic verses, 1989 

   5) Literary texts or films that have the scandal as a theme. Also in this case the list could be much longer:

   • Terence, Adelphoe, 160 a. C. (the play starts with a scandal: young Eschinus enters in the house of pimp Eschinus and kidnaps young and beautiful Bacchides)
   • Domenico Cavalca, La vita di Suor Maria Egiziaca, in Vita dei Santi padri, XIII sec. (involuntary representation of a scandalous conduct: Saint Maria Egiziaca, who lives as a penitent in the desert, recalls her life of sin and tells of a sea-voyage with ten sailors and her own scandalous behavior)
   • Boccaccio, Decameron, 1351, novella I, 1 (the false confession of ser Ciappelletto, meant to avoid a scandal).
   • Molière, pseudonym of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, Tartuffe (1664), IV, v: «La scandale du monde est ce qui fait l’offense, / Et ce n’est pas pécher que pécher en silence».
   • Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, The School for Scandal, commedia, 1777 (two brothers: Joseph Surface, hypocrite and pious, and Charles Surface, of good intentions and prodigal. They are both enamoured of Maria, a young girl whose tutor is sir Peter Teazle, who has married the frivolous Lady Teazle. Around them a gossipy society. From America arrives the rich uncle of the two Surfaces, Sir Oliver, who, in disguise, puts to test the two young men).   
   • Milton, Paradise Lost I, 415 (the mount of Olives is «The Hill of Scandal», because Salomon [I Kings, 11, 7], acting differently from his father David, built there, in front of Jerusalem, a shrine in honor of Camos, the abominable god of the Moabits).

   • Merimée, Prosper, La carosse du Saint Sacrement, 1825 (a story set in Lima: Périchole, the lover of the viceroy of Peru, obtains from him a magnificent golden coach, with great scandal of the other dames of the court. With a sudden good inspiration, she gives away the coach to the Church, in this way gaining the support and gratitude of the bishop. From this story took inspiration the musical comedy La Périchole by Jacques Offenbach, 1868, based on a script by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy and the film La carosse d’or by Jean Renoir, 1952, with Anna Magnani).
   • Maupassant, Guy de, Le bonheur, 1884 («un gros scandale dans la noble Lorraine»: the daughter of the commander of a regiment of Hussars flees with a petty officer. The narrator finds her by chance after many years in Corsica, in a poor and wild zone, and discovers that she is surprisingly happy).
   • Maupassant, Guy de, Le Protecteur, 1884 (the naive Marin is undeservedly nominated councillor of State; he distributes lavishly favors to everyone, iincluding a certain roguish abbé  Ceinture, raising a scandal)
   • Maupassant, Guy de, Mon Oncle Jules¸ 1883 (the plot is dominated by the fear of a scandal)
   • Barbey d’Aureville, Jules, Un prêtre marié, 1881
   • Baebey d’Aureville, Jules, Les Diaboliques, 1874 («The very notion of ‘scandal’ deserves a greater attention. Represented in his ouvre romanesque, impersonated in his dandysm, and in his controversial pronouncements… scandal is one of the main attitudes of Barbey»: J. Petit).
   • André Gide, A note, 1890 (Gide, capturing the atmosphere of Fin-de-siècle aestheticism writes: «Everyting must be expressed, even the most fatal events; - disgrace should hit him who causes a scandal, but – Necesse est ut scandala eveniant. The artist is a man who is truly a man, who lives for something, who wants to sacrify himself. All his life is a preparation fo this: And now what should he express! – he learns it in silence»)
   • Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes: A Scandal in Bohemia,1891 (Story of a possible scandal, due to a photograph of the king of Bohemia together with an actress, who threatens to publish it in occasion of the official engagement of the king. In this case the woman succeeds in being more astute than Sherlock Holmes. The scandal is in any case avoided).
   • Alfredo Oriani, Vortice, 1899 (A suicide in order to avoid a scandal).
   • Wilde, Oscar, De Profundis, 1905, posthumous
   • Popular song (for voice and piano), 1875: «In scandal I revel with joy/ For I glory in making a row/  For I glory in making a row/  I glory in making a row/ In scandal I revel with joy»: from Guest, John - Allen, Oswald - Riley, Will, The Tattler, or, I glory in making a row, London, John Guest. 
   • Bataille, Henry, Le Scandale (1909) comedy (from this text two filmed have been made: The Scandal, 1923,  by Arthur Rooke and Le scandale, 1934, by Marcel L’Herbier).
   • Pirandello, Luigi, Pensaci, Giacomino!, 1910 (The short story was made into a play with the same title, 1916, and also into films. It is the story of a scandalous situation: an old professor; a very young wife; the young pupil, Giacomino, who is protected by the professor and admired for his musical talent; a small child, that all the village knows is not the child of the professor, but of Giacomino).
   • Pirandello, Luigi, La ragione degli altri, drama written in 1895 with the title Il nido, later rewritten with the title Il nibbio, without being staged at the time or published. In 1915 Marco Praga staged it with the title Se non così..., with a bad exit. The last and definitive title La ragione degli altri was given to the play when it returned to the theatre in 1919. It is one of the most old-fashioned plays by Pirandello, especially for its historical background, typical of the provincial Italy of the end of the Nineteenth-century. It is the story of a man who, when he realizes that his wife cannot give him a child, goes back to his old fiancé and from her has a daughter. A scandal seems to be ready to explode, but is stifled).
   • Pirandello, Luigi, Il berretto a sonagli, 1917
   • Mann, Heinrich, Professor Unrat oder das Ende eines Tyrannen, 1905. The novel was trnasposed in the film Der blaue Engel (L’angelo azzurro, 1930) by Josef von Sternberg
   • Mauriac, François, Thérèse Desqeyroux, 1927 (Thérèse is charged of having tried to poison her husband, but is acquitted for lack of evidence and after the testimony given by the victin, who wants in this way to avoid a scandal).
   • Wassermann, Jakob, Der Fall Mauritius, 1928 (Etzel, the son of a very rigid judge, discovers that his father has wrongly and on the basis of prejudices convicted an innocent man, by the name of Mauritius. He leaves home in order to ascertain the truth. He finally succeeds in convincing his father to grant the grace to Mauritius, but the judge refuses to concede a revision of the trial, to avoid a scandal, which could be detrimental for the judicial system,. Moral crisis of Etzel).
   • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith, The scandal of Father Brown, 1935
   • Cukor, George, The Philadelphia Story, 1940 (a film derived from a sophisticated drawing-room comedy by Philip Barry: The Philadelphia Story, 1939. At the centre of the action, that takes place in Philadelphia, is the heiress Tracy Lord [Catherine Hepburn]. She has divorced from a young man of her milieu [Cary Grant] and has married a boring politician. A reporter [James Stewart] succeeds in taming her and bringing her back to the first husband. There is a remake of 1956: High Society directed by Charles Walter, set in Newport).
   • Lubitsch, Ernst- Preminger, Otto, Royal Scandal, 1945 (the film was begun by Lubitch and finished by Preminger. Lubitch had thought it as a remake of his Forbidden Paradise [1924] derived from the play Czarina of Lajos Biro. It deals with an affair between Catherine of Russia and a young officer).
   • Sirk, Douglas, Scandal in Paris (later titled Thieves’ Holiday), 1946 (A film on François Vidock, a thief who at the time of Napoleon made a career in the police)
   • Brancati, Vitaliano, Il bell’Antonio, 1949 (The scandal flares up when people discover that the protagonist is impotent. «Questione di onore»).
   • Jouhandeau, Marcel, La faute plutôt que le scandale, 1949 (on the social role of appearances. The thEsis is that the scandal seems more relevant than an actual guilt).
   • Buzzell, Edward, A Woman of Distinction, 1950. (An English professor arrives in an American college and provokes a scandal, unwillingly revealing a secret of the rigid and puritanical head-mistress).
   • Grace Metalious, Peyton Place, 1956. (Revelation of the hidden life of a peaceful New England village at the time of Pearl Harbour: secrets and scandals, violence, sex, rapes, abortions, suicides, homicides, a trial to Selena Cross who is accused of having killed her father, that had molested her as a child. From the novel the film by Mark Robson Peyton Place, 1957. When the film came out, it was a flop. Things changed when a real scandal exploded, involving the main actress Lana Turner, whose secret love affair with the mafia chief Johnny Stampanato became public and brought the actress’ s daughter to shoot Stampanato. The trial gave an enormous boost to the film).
   • Simone de Beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe, 1949: «The true writer, if he is not dead, is always scandalous».
   • Jean-Paul Sartre, Saint Genêt comédien et martyr, 1952
   • Elfriede Jelinek, Was geshah, nachdem Nora ihren Mann verlassen hatte oder Stützen der Gesellschaft, 1980
   • Elfriede Jelinek, Die Klavierspielerin, 1983
   • Girod, Francis, Le Bon Plaisir, 1983 (film: the president of the French republic [Jean-Louis Trintignant] tries to avoid that an old letter of his, from which it appears that he has a secret daughter, falls in the hands of the press).
   • Festa Campanile, Pasquale, Uno scandalo perbene, 1984 (Film on the case of the so-called «smemorato di Collegno», that had previously aroused the attention of Pirandello and other film-makers).
   • Thomas Bernhard, Heldenplatz, 1988
   • Shelton, Ron, Blaze, 1989 (Film on the liberal governor of Louisiana Earl Long [Paul Newman], who is removed from his office for an affair with a strip-teaser).
   • Hamilton, Elizabeth, The Warwickshire scandal, London, Pan Books, 2000. (Victorian melodrama. Harriette Moncrieffe, daughter of a Scottish baronet, is married for convenience to Sir Charles Mordaunt, who is old and given mostly to hunting and fishing. The young wife has a number of flirts. She gives birth to a premature child. Then confesses to the old husband her many relationships, including one with Bertie, prince of Wales. Sir Charles does not behave like a gentleman and takes a vengeance against the prince.