The Magic of Mika Penniman
Or, why you should watch Stasera Casa Mika
If you don’t currently live in western Europe or eastern Asia, you’ve likely never heard of Mika. You’d be forgiven for this. Despite being a household name in Italian and French speaking countries and a serious force in Korea, China and Japan, Mika is a virtual unknown in the English speaking world. This is a real shame. Mika is a pop star with a message and a countenance and a fandom distinct from any other. His greatest work is his 2 season Italian primetime variety extravaganza, Stasera Casa Mika, but it’s truly impossible to understand the show or its importance without an understanding of the man and the people who love him.
Mika is a man of many places and many languages. He was born in Lebanon, raised in Paris and London, is a fixture of television in France and Italy and keeps homes in Paris, Milan, London and Miami. One of his most immediately impressive talents is his ability to rapidly switch between speaking 3 or 4 languages across just a few sentences. On top of his native French and English and fluent Italian, he also speaks Spanish (moderately) some Arabic, and some Chinese. Search for him on YouTube and you‘ll find hundreds of videos of the man meeting his fans; it’s not uncommon to see him speak to 3 different people in 3 different languages, switching to respond in any language without so much as pausing. He’s tall and certainly handsome, albeit the latter in a non-traditional sense. His hair is curly and voluminous and sometimes completely out of control. His eyes are golden brown with hints of green, his jawline is sharp; yet still he describes his own face as “odd”. The chiseled handsomeness is offset by plump, often flushed cheeks and deep dimples. His smile is wide and bright and his front teeth are crooked. His appearance truly depends on his expression: when neutral or serious he’s solidly what anyone would call sexy. But he’s giggly and good natured, he smiles easily and often, and as soon as he does he shifts from sexy to simply adorable. With the crooked front teeth and plump pink cheeks he sometimes looks something like a bunny or a chipmunk. But still, a beautiful chipmunk.
Even with his beauty it’s his personality that’s earned him so many fans. He’s bubbly and energetic on television and onstage, and while that’s 100% genuine, it’s more one of his moods than an accurate representation of his personality as a whole. There’s another side to him, equally entertaining but very different. Mika was snarky and loud when he first rose to fame at the age of 23 but as he’s aged he’s mellowed and calmed quite a bit. It’s an absolutely lovely transformation to witness if you’ve been following him for some time. Young Mika was hilarious and good hearted but sometimes brash and rude (to be fair, always entertainingly, endearingly, sassily so). The man he is now is pure and gentle. He’s soft-spoken and exceptionally kind. Watching him interact with his fans is like watching the human version of a cup of hot tea. The man also seems to have stunning talent for feeling a room. He picks up on his fan’s emotions without a word being said. One of the best “Mika picking up on people’s feelings” stories involves him noticing a woman in his audience of thousands crying, and pulling her onstage mostly to hug her. Another fantastic tale tells of him going out of his way to ensure one of his fans felt included in a conversation when another person seemed to be getting all the attention. He told a fan on an airplane that he would meet her at the destination airport baggage claim to take a picture with her, and not only did he make good on that promise, the fan discovered he had no luggage of his own and went to baggage claim exclusively to wait for her. He’s got 2 dogs he dotes on and a penchant for sweater wearing. There’s something about him that just seems inherently huggable.
Mika’s claim to fame is his one of a kind brand of dark bubblegum pop. He pairs cheery, poppy music with dark, sometimes disturbing lyrics. Between the beat and the brisk singing, it’s easy to miss the lyrics entirely and get wrapped up in dancing around; this is the key to the success of formula. You may be thinking that cheerful music and dark lyrics are not unique, but this isn’t Melanie Martinez. Mika doesn’t lean on the darkness of his lyrics, singing to the camera with dramatic pauses to make sure you get it. He just sings, and trusts that his audience is smart enough to understand the point on their own. It’s on you to notice that the cheery song about teenage freedom you’re singing gleefully to on a summer afternoon contains the words “Left here on my own/ I’m gonna hurt myself”.
Mika’s first two albums, Life in Cartoon Motion and The Boy Who Knew Too Much, are about his childhood and adolescence viewed through an abstract lens. Most of the songs are vignettes about imaginary characters in metaphorical and absurd situations, but all of what might first seem like nonsense has meaning. It’s a distanced way to talk about real things, and Mika has plenty of real things to work with. His family was evacuated from Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War in 1983 and his father was held as a hostage in the Gulf War for 8 months when Mika was just 8 years old. Mika suffered badly from dyslexia, did poorly in school (not helped by cruel teachers), and was mercilessly bullied to point of going mute for a while. His music draws on all this inner pain and a talent for empathy to write darkness in a way that feels authentic. It never feels like just an emo aesthetic. His third album, The Origin of Love, diverges from theme for an airier sound and more cheerful lyrics. It’s an album about love in forms both positive and negative, and it feels much warmer and more optimistic than the work that came before. His 4th (and as of this writing, most recent) album, No Place in Heaven, is another departure from his previous work. If Life in Cartoon Motion and The Boy Who Knew Too Much discuss Mika’s life and problems in metaphor and simile, No Place in Heaven is the clear, plain English version, without the euphemistic wordplay. The album discusses Mika’s anxieties, from the trivial to the existential, with detail and without fear. No Place in Heaven is the modern English facing page translation to Life in Cartoon Motion and The Boy Who Knew Too Much’s Shakespearean stanzas. “Good Wife” is about the pain of a gay man in love with his straight friend and speaks his thoughts that he would be a much better partner than his friend’s unkind wife; “All She Wants” is an unflinching description of Mika’s fears that he’s a disappointment to his mother. “L’amour Fait ce Qu’il Veut” is an uncomplicated love song which manages to simultaneously remain unpolitical and make a clear statement by simply using the grammatical gendering system of the French language to assign male pronouns to the entity of love. The musical sound itself is different from his previous music. It’s more singer-songwriter, more guitar-heavy, and less electronic, but the whole thing is still recognizably Mika. This album feels like a catharsis for him. It’s not that he ever seemed sad or depressed, but post No Place in Heaven Mika seems like a new man. He looks healthier and happier than he ever has before. It’s as if a weight has been lifted off his shoulders.
Mika’s honest lyrics and cheerful music have attracted a large, exceptionally dedicated and tight-knit fan base. Mika’s fans aren’t fans simply because they enjoy his music. They’re fans because they find comfort in his lyrics and his philosophy. You’ll always find at least some people in any fandom who feel this way, but for Mika fans it’s the rule. Ask any of them why they love Mika or how they discovered him and they’ll tell you a story that describes Mika or his music being there for them at a point in their life when it was most needed.
Mika is deeply important to people. Celebrities have fans, Mika has a flock. His fandom, largely (though not entirely) young and mostly (though not entirely) female, flourishes predominately on Twitter, Instagram, and a dedicated fan forum, where they communicate with each other across time zones and language barriers, often learning parts of languages they otherwise don’t speak. There’s a warmth here, a deep love and concern for each other. These people, most of whom are in some form of school, are spending their spare time learning languages by choice only to understand each other, and Mika, better. Due to Mika’s aforementioned cross-language popularity and success, to be a Mika fan is to be at least partly bi- or tri-lingual. A short venture into #mikainstagram on Instagram (Mika and his fans have dedicated their own tag based on his Instagram handle, as #Mika is flooded with posts about a coincidentally named anime character) will show you thousands of affectionate posts about Mika, common for any fandom, but they talk about him in the kind of elevated language people normally use to discuss royalty. Even the absolute briefest interactions with his fans prompt deeply emotional responses. Even a smile matters. And it’s sincere - there’s no sarcasm here, no snark, absolutely no “too cool for it” artificial lack of concern. The people who speak about how Mika’s smile changed their life aren’t kidding in the slightest. He genuinely has that power and that kind of energy; it’s unique and almost impossible to understand without being inside it. When he’s part of Q&A sessions (he tends to do at least one a year), he doesn’t get asked nearly as many questions about himself and his music as he gets asked for general life advice. When given the opportunity, Mika’s fans literally bring him their problems, as if to the world’s coolest advice columnist.
All this information is necessary because what Casa Mika is and the effect it has is hard enough to explain on paper alone, and becomes completely impossible to explain without all the context (watching the show, however, will provide all this context pretty immediately whether you’ve ever heard of Mika or not; he really is magic and you’ll pick up on his energy immediately). Mika is a source of wisdom and a protective presence to his fans. He’s trusted and relied on in a way that celebrities rarely are, and he therefore finds himself in a position of power to influence many young people’s lives for the better.
Being a judge on the Italian version of The X Factor launched Mika into household name status in Italy as people who discovered him through his television appearances then discovered his music. Italy has become his strongest market since his time on X factor. Italy also has a long tradition of primetime variety television shows, and 2016 they were ripe for a new one. Mika’s creative wheels happened to be turning, and so Stasera Casa Mika was born.
Casa Mika (almost always referred to in this way, the “Stasera” is generally left off) is a very hard thing to put into words simply due to it being…really hard to put into words, but “variety show” still comes the closest to a concise description. The concept is fairly simple: Mika is your host, inviting you into his home. “Stasera Casa Mika” translates roughly into “Tonight at Mika’s house” in Italian. There are skits, comedy segments, and many musical performances, some starring Mika and some not. In between all this Mika talks to the camera and undergoes a breathtaking number of outfit changes. The first episode opens with Mika driving the tiniest car imaginable and singing to his dogs, and it really only gets warmer and softer from there. He’s got a co-presenter in both seasons. The first, Anglo-Italian actress Sarah Felberbaum, has a presence and warmth that mixes perfectly with Mika’s. They make fantastic presentation partners. Sarah is replaced in the second season by Luciana Littizzetto, who’s a pure gem and brings a whole lot of love and light with her. It works extremely well in the context of the second season.
There’s a whole genre of media that I adore but find it hard to put a name to. For lack of a better term, call it “self-confident”. It’s art that doesn’t care if it’s objectively good or if it has wide appeal. It’s only concerned with being whatever it’s going to be, and trusts that the right audience will find it. Sometimes it turns out objectively good and sometimes it doesn’t, but’s always interesting. Within this genre you’ll find the shamelessly and unabashedly joyful and pure things. Joyful and pure are not en vogue. Media was forcefully sugar coated and inaccurate to real life for so long that a collective decision was made that everything has to be realistic and gritty, that we’ve got no time left for fearless joy. But every now and then you find a movie or show that’s just good and pure and has no qualms about being so.
My personal benchmark for this genre is Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. If you’re a child of anywhere between the early 70s and the late 2000s and you spent time watching American public television, you probably at least occasionally watched Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Hosted by Fred Rogers, a man who can only be accurately described as an angel walking on the face of this undeserving earth, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was a slow paced and kind children’s show which discussed very real and serious problems and current events in grounded and intelligent ways that children could understand. Yet between the much needed and challenging social commentary was a lovely, caring show that wanted nothing from you. It protected you. Fred Rogers ended every episode with a lovely song about how he loves and cares for you, he’s just happy you’re alive. Mister Rogers and his show hold a very special place in the hearts of the people who grew up with them. For those people mere mention of it is bound to start them crying. It stuck with people, and it does to this day.
Casa Mika, to me, feels like a version of Mister Rogers for adults. It manages to be joyful without ignoring problems in life and in the world. Old media was joyful as it pretended that life was always perfect and nothing was ever thorny. Casa Mika is joyful despite the thorniness of general existence. It doesn’t shy away from problems or politics; it just takes them in its joyful stride. It’s sort of like an uplifting emotional movie. You’ll cry but it will still bring you up in the end. Mika talks about human and civil rights, about poverty, about crime, about prisons, and you still come out the other side feeling a whole lot better than you did before.
Most episodes of Casa Mika follow a similar format: Mika opens the show with a pre-filmed skit that leads into the opening number of the show, a large and energetic performance of the show’s theme song. The show itself is a mishmash, with any number of live and pre-filmed skits and performances. Common segments include: Mika driving a taxi, learning how to do a job from someone, traveling Italy meeting talented musicians from unlikely places, musical performances by Mika and others, and interviews with celebrities. Mika ends every episode by climbing into an oversized bed while wearing pajamas, gently bidding goodnight to the audience, and shutting off the studio lights. It’s important to know this show originally went off at 11:30 PM – people really were going to bed; he’s truly bidding his audience goodnight.
Stasera Casa Mika promo photos
The cheerful opening, the calm come-down ending, and the clearly defined structure brings to mind children’s night time television. It brings to mind children’s television in general; it brings to mind Mister Roger’s Neighborhood. And somehow that’s exactly what it is, simply aimed at a very different audience. Casa Mika is Mister Rogers for the 2018 young adult or teenager. It’s darker and slightly cracked. It’s facing the real problems of the world but it’s facing them led by this lovely, protective figure of a man. He’s even got the sweater and sneakers at one point. It’s as if Mister Rogers was painted by Picasso.
It’s important to draw a distinction between the two seasons of Casa Mika. They’re two seasons of the same show but they’re still separate entities in a lot of ways. They’re both uplifting but season one is more purely joyful while season 2 deals more consistently with harder topics. Season 2 introduces Gregory, a large monster who looks like he jumped straight out of Where the Wild Things Are. Gregory is introduced as Mika’s close friend, and It’s made clear in unambiguous language that Gregory suffers from crippling, chronic depression. If you started watching Casa Mika to forget all your problems this show has other plans for you. Mika’s more or less taking care of Gregory, and he explains that he does this because sometimes you have to, and that sometimes the best way to help people is to simply be present. Gregory gets a whole lot of screen time over the course of the season, and every moment he’s on screen is taken as a moment to provide some simple but effective comfort for everyone watching who’s going through a mental illness of some kind or other.
The first season of Casa Mika is free, joyful, loud and pure. The skits and performances are hilarious and uplifting. It’s all one giant party, bringing as much energy as it can straight to your heart. It lifts you out of your problems enough that you feel strong enough to look them in the eye. The second season of Casa Mika gently guides you through those problems, in the kind of way that makes you weep, but it’s a good weeping. It’s a cathartic, detoxifying weeping. Casa Mika came right on the heels of Mika’s newfound lightness after No Place in Heaven, so watching the series feels a bit like joining him on a journey, an emotional experience you’re on together. Much like you, the viewer, Mika takes a season to be truly free and the next to face problems, some of which are quite clearly his own. If you watch the show, the whole show, all 8 episodes, in order, you’ll be taken on a teary eyed trip through Mika’s mind and your own, and all the dark corners of both.
If you go into this show with a feeling that no one cares about you and no idea who Mika is, you’ll come out the other side feeling slightly better because now you know there’s a guy named Mika who cares about you. And like Mika’s music, this somehow manages to feel truly authentic. While there have been a million people and a million celebrities who speak and post and tweet encouragement to mental illness sufferers, Mika is easier to believe. I tend to think it’s in his presentation. His message is less of a blithely optimistic (and often annoying) “THINGS WILL GET BETTER” and more of a soft hug from a friend telling you that yes, things will eventually get better but even more importantly that they still love you while things AREN’T better. Mika focuses on the normalcy and okay-ness of sadness and depression, that there’s nothing to be ashamed of in your struggles. He’s got so many of his own (it’s heavily implied that Gregory is not only a fictional character but an anthropomorphization of Mika’s own mental health struggles) that he’s able to talk about mental health from the perspective of someone who’s not only been there but has developed a philosophy that holds optimism and realism in just the right balance to be comforting but not infuriatingly positive. Like a really good therapist, Mika makes you feel better about the future without making you want to punch him.
It’s all written and presented in such a way that it will only really affect you if you too suffer – if you have no struggles, Casa Mika’s discussion of them won’t bring you down. The show remains uplifting and energetic throughout, and if you take it on without needing any particular catharsis it will simply be one of the best and most entertaining things you’ve ever watched. Mika is like human sunlight, an actual joy on your television. But let’s face it: that’s not the case for most of us. Something about the present is just hard for everyone, and most of us are struggling with something. Maybe you, reader, don’t. And that is FANTASTIC! Now go find a TV and watch Casa Mika, because it will only make you happier. But perhaps you DO suffer from something. Many things. Maybe you’re a little sad or a little afraid. Or maybe it’s worse. Maybe you’re reading this in a bed you don’t feel like you have the energy to get out of. If that’s the case, here is my advice. Join mikafanclub.com . It’s free and easy and all they want is an email. Joining will give you access to their thread of English subtitles. As Casa Mika’s broadcast language is Italian, you’ll probably want them. From that thread you can find watch links for all 8 episodes of Stasera Casa Mika. Watch them. Watch them all, in order. They’re about 3 hours each, so it’s a solid 24 hours of television. I recommend a pace of about half an episode a day. There’s a lot going on and there’s so few of them, so it’s best both to give yourself time to absorb each half episode and to stretch them out as long as you can. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry a lot.
To be clear, I’m not claiming or suggesting that 24 hours of Italian television will cure your depression. But it will put you through something. You’ll be made happier and more introspective in turn. And in the end, the very end, the part where I always end up grossly sobbing, you’ll probably be grossly sobbing too. And it’ll feel like crying out emotional toxins. Like a really intense therapy session, emotionally exhausting but purifying. Sometimes the cure we all need is a little bit of snot running down our faces.
Find me on Instagram Twitter Mika Fan Club
Mika Fan Club (site with English subtitles for Casa Mika available after free registration)
Stasera Casa Mika on Rai 2 Season 1 Season 2 (watch for free,no registration required, no strings attached)
Casa Mika season 1 trailer
“Won’t You Be My Neighbor” (documentary film about Mister Rogers) trailer if you aren’t familiar with Mister Rogers
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