May 2021 by Elleen Xue
Perusing the pages of my digital MIT Technology Review, my eyes became arrested by a photo of what seemed like a paradox: an image that looked as if an IKEA store had married a hospital, and I grew both puzzled and transfixed.
For an Italian photo, this one was the least polychromatic I had ever seen. It was mostly black and white, with splashes of bold color only here and there, unlike the live Italy I was accustomed to on holidays with my parents. But what immediately captured my eye was the undulating, and hypnotizingly-striped wallpaper, like a tiger’s skin, that adorns the makeshift walls in this vaccine clinic in Rovioli, Italy, after it was announced that the government would extend the time period in between the receipt of the very coveted first and second vaccine doses. Why do so? To allow for Italians to avail themselves of something even more prized: summer vacation.
The large room functioning as a vaccine clinic, resembles more the inside of a luxury hotel, or posh nightclub that a mass vaccination site in a stadium. The lighting is soft and subdued, with an attention for angularity, as accent lights are keenly placed to illuminate plants, or other decorative items in the room most other doctors would feel superfluous or even distracting.
This vaccine venue, I can share assure you, is quite unlike any you have ever seen, especially in the USA or China. The Italians, I once read in the book “Blood of my Blood” put great emphasis on appearances, perhaps even more so than the Chinese do, as Nakamura pointed out is his treatise “The Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples.” In Blood of My Blood, the author argues that rather than substance, style must always come first, and although I am hesitant to judge an entire country I do not know that well, this picture would seem evidentiary testimony to this contention.
But it is not just the décor of the room that evinces this cultural value. As one looks closer, the doctors themselves are dressed impeccably, as if modeling, and even the patients appear to have gotten dressed in their best to show up, with one older man fumbling to remove shirt cufflinks to roll up his sleeves. Moreover, a discriminating eye can discern that almost all the people captured on film are to some degree posing for the camera, many smiling or averting their gaze with one eye to appear disinterested as they also maintain a solid look at the photographer with the other. And the younger, more handsome boys seem blissfully unawares of the artist’s presence, defiantly staring off into opposite space, and the older men slick their few hairs back and seem to be saying “make sure you capture my best angle in your photograph…or else!”
The men shown seem to speaking in grave and hush tones, with the quintessential gesticulation of animated hands towards the heavens, as if to invoke or evoke divinity, while yet another doctor gestures to his own genital area, and displays a nonchalant “you don’t have to worry about that look,” in an attempt to allay perhaps, a vaccine recipients query about the vaccine’s effects there. Another male patient sits with has hands defiantly held on his hips, an awkward way to sit, arms akimbo and astride as his particular doctor leans in with a determined, almost aggravated look to lecture or console him. Nearby, a woman adjusts her mask, but not the plain surgical ones we are used to seeing here; this mask looked silken and embroidered, as if to match her outfit.
Looking even closer, there are speakers affixed to the speakers, but not loudspeakers – more Bose musical ones, the kind my uncle has in his den. A nurse can be seen keeping an on eye the waiting room, and also an older CD player, since one can imagine the vaccine clinic replete with soothing music. And while it may be just a snapshot in time, it does bear mentioning that the nurses are all women, and the doctors all men.
The photo, so lightheartedly arresting, was so fashionable, that it was one of the few times in a newspaper the accompanying picture stole the show for attention, not the headline: “Italy’s Vaccine Drive Runs Up Against a Sacred Institution: Vacation,” because the only thing more sacred than life itself in Italy, is leisure time with family, to enjoy it.
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