Italian American Stereotypes
Poems, letters, and stories of Guest Contributor Salvatore Buttaci have been published in The New York Times, Newsday, U.S.A. Today, The Writer, Cats Magazine, and widely elsewhere in America and overseas. His newest book, A Dusting of Star Fall: Love Poems, is currently available directly from the author. Buttaci lectures on Sicilian American pride, conducts poetry workshops and readings. He lives in Lodi, New Jersey, with Sharon, the love of his life. This is his post.
Italian American gangsters of the past, like Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Albert Anastasia, and even those of recent times like “Gotti the Dapper Don,” became bigger-than-life heroes. Books about their lives sold millions of copies. Films were made about them. Finally, their allure had become so overwhelming, it made sense to HBO producers to hire an Italian American named Chase to write a series about a fictitious Mafioso named Tony Soprano who suffered the same angst as the rest of us, raged over the same trivia, tried to keep himself together in a world falling apart around him. He had a family: a wife and children. And he had a Family: mobsters at his command who did his bidding without question.
If the story of the celluloid gangsters ended there, it would all be harmless eye candy. Unfortunately, it goes well beyond being simply movies for the masses. By equating gangsters with my Italian American ethnicity, the Media Monsters––not even subliminally!––convince the millions of viewers of an illogical syllogism:
Film gangsters are Italian Americans
There are over six million Italian Americans
Therefore, all Italian Americans are gangsters
Viewers of The Sopranos who live in towns devoid of Italian Americans accept the negative image the media project. Recently I met a man in West Virginia who told me I was the first Italian American he had ever met. When I offered my hand to shake, I’ll bet he expected me to shake him down! Sophisticated people in metro cities might claim, “I have friends who are Italian Americans.” They can watch The Sopranos and know it’s meant to be dumb fiction. But what bothers me are those who learn what an Italian American is by watching The Sopranos or The Godfather or any of those shows or films that portray us as violently uncouth, dumb as hammers, and married to Italian American bimbos who can aspire to nothing more than perhaps becoming “a little less stupid” than the next bimbo.
Something has to be done to end this ethnic discrimination. When Don Imus of radio fame can be dismissed for saying on the air, “nappy-headed hos,” how come he wasn’t fired long before that when he laughingly put down Italian Americans as “skuzzy grease balls” or “Mafiosi”? And how is it that so many radio and TV commentators, even meteorologists who are supposed to forecast the weather, find it humorous to refer to Italian Americans with gangster remarks? Why is it all right to slander my ethnic group but not the Jews or the African Americans or the Hispanics or any of the others? Why is it advertisements are free to sell their products in the context of Italian American gangster tales?
