I always wondered if actors like Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci feel like they are going against their culture by degrading their ethnic backgrounds as uneducated mobsters. My father refuses to watch The Sopranos because he feels that the show is insulting his culture which I can understand. Italian Americans have worked so hard to get where they are today. Many of them like my grandfather moved to America with nothing and they worked their way up because of their skills and hard work ethic. Italian Americans who take up a large part of the population would like to see Hollywood eliminate unflattering images of their culture.
The two most popular Italian-American directors are Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese. They have made brilliant films such as The Godfather, Mean Streets and Raging Bull. I feel that these amazing directors would try and change the media’s opinion of the stereotypical views of Italian Americans because of their roots but it seems they took the opposite route.
In the reading Italian-Americans in Film: From Immigrants to Icons there was an interesting section that discussed Francis Ford Coppola’s opinion of The Godfather Saga. There was a quote in there that caught my eye it read, “The Godfather is a fictional account of the activities of a small group of ruthless criminals. It would be erroneous and unfair to suggest that they are representative of any ethnic group.” That quote completely disgusted me being that the film is shot mostly in Sicily, many segments of the film were spoken in Italian with English Subtitles, and the characters names were predominately Italian. The awful part about all of this is that many people are not culturally aware about Italian American’s and other ethnic groups. Therefore they get most of their information and facts from these Hollywood films instead of reading a book which is a shame. I think the media would be surprised to see how educated, loving, affectionate, faithful, family oriented, and hardworking Italian-American’s really are.
In the film “Analyze This,” there was one scene that I remembered being ridiculous. It was the scene that showed Billy Crystal and his son driving to the celebration of his fathers book signing. He was arguing with his son and by an accident he crashed into a car in front of them. It turned out to be Paul Vitti’s assistants. Due to the force of the crash the car in front’s trunk popped open. It then showed a guy tied up in the trunk kicking. Two Italian-American men step out of the car close the trunk and start conversing with Billy Crystal who is all apologetic. They tell him, “It’s not a problem,” which is a typical expression used in gangster movies. Billy Crystal is surprised to see that the two men aren’t upset and are so calm. Though this movie is a spoof on wiseguys it still was such an exaggerated scene that again made Italian-American’s out to be violent criminals.
Hopefully in the future Hollywood will enforce better laws about making films that criticize Italian-Americans. Also I would like to see more Italian-American directors to show more respect for their culture and start making films that depict Italian-Americans for who they really are and not what the media want to see them as because they find it entertaining.
