Introduction
A widespread thought about Italian Americans, caused by the persistent image in films, is that many of them are involved in crime. Even if they are not mafiosos or criminals, they are usually portrayed as rude and tough people who are aggressive and ready to use violence to solve problems.
If Italians are not depicted as explicitly wrong characters, they still have a set of stereotypic roles, which are sometimes positive but anyway create clichés associated with all Italian Americans. Examples of them are hyper emotionality, cunning, love of cooking, and respect for traditions; while in some cases they actually represent their culture, sometimes they are twisted in films and rather depreciate the culture.
All Italian Americans are separate people with unique individuality, and it is wrong to judge them based on stereotypes. Those clichés cause a negative influence on the image of Italian Americans in society and thus, need to be studied to understand this influence and how to reduce it.
Stereotypes and Reality
Criminal Allegiance and Rudeness
Many movies portray Italians who live in the United States as people who are alleged in organized crime, known as the mafia. Many of those films were directed in the 1970s, when the trend of depicting Italian American males as serious and brutal criminals was at its peak.
Godfather is one of the most famous films dedicated to this topic: it was released in 1972 and showed the Corleone family mafia, where the family leader is the mafia boss. The film is extremely popular and, while having a sizeable cultural value, it promoted many wrong stereotypes about Italian Americans. It contains violence in the excessive amounts, and Italian Americans are shown there as mostly cruel people.
Unfortunately, thy tendency to show Italian Americans as inherently violent people is still present in the modern days. For example, in several movies produced by Spike Lee, they appear as racist, aggressive conservators who are not accepting anything new and are violent to anyone different from them. Such an image of an Italian American man as a racist, homophobic, violent gangster, or at least dangerous person, obviously creates many prejudices toward them when people watch all those movies. Even if a person does not dislike them consciously, this image may lead to the unconscious fear toward the real Italians, creating barriers in communication.
In addition, Italians are often depicted as uneducated but passionate workers ready to work in virtually any condition. They often choose to be criminals out of desperation and passion to reach success by any price. According to the analysis of more than 1000 films released from the 1930s to 1990s in Hollywood, more than 70% of Italian American characters are negative. They are portrayed as intellectually inferior, reaching their goals using violence and fraud, despite it is not the case for even a fraction of the actual Italians in the U.S.
Thus, it is common to image them in mass culture as passionate, aggressive, and silly people, who like to use violence for reaching their goals. As one may see, such a position is unjust and discriminatory to the community. Actual Italians have nothing in common with this image, and they mostly suffer from it, as people start to see them as dangerous and uneducated.
Meanwhile, criminal activity is not widespread among Italian Americans more than among other races or nations living in the U.S. Actually, much less than 0.005% of Italian Americans are criminals, according to the statistics. Despite that, the association that virtually all of them are connected with crime, or at least prone to it, is widespread, and it is a social stigma damaging the Italian American community. When people meet Italians in real life, they may be already full with prejudices toward them. Even if they try to behave with them in the same way as with other people, unconscious fears may be present.
To summarize, there is an excessive number of films where Italians in the U.S. are portrayed as inherently bad people, such as Don Corleone from Godfather. Even despite those images may be alluring and make films highly popular, they twist the social perception of Italian Americans in the wrong direction. This means that the image of Italians is converted into a commodity, which is intended to sell for as much price as possible.
Thus, from this position, the picture of a violent Italian gangster is strong and attracts attention. Such an approach, however, is unethical and discriminatory toward the actual Italian people who live in the U.S. and become victims of this twisted image.
Character Traits and Culture
Along with the topic of the mafia, there are traits that are usually associated with Italian American characters and may promote elusive stereotypes about the whole community. Both Italian men and women are often pictured as inarticulate, loud, hot-tempered people who live based on emotions rather than mind.
Films where Italian Americans often appear, along with criminal movies, are various dramas, as Italians, especially women, are often portrayed as highly hyperemotional. In such films, men are often shown as playboys who love only pleasure: while not explicitly, they still mostly use violence to reach their success. Thus, the image of an Italian man who is passionate, aggressive and tend to reach his goals for any price, is prevailing.
Various stereotypic traits are used extensively to image Italian women in mass media as well. They are often oversexualized and shown as alluring beauties with evil characters who tend to seduce men and search for their profit in it. Another common stereotype about Italian American women is a typical overweight housewife with no interests except daily home routine. Both of them vulgarize Italian American women and depreciate their personalities, showing them as irrational and silly, acting only based on their emotions. Those stereotypes create a wrong impression about them and being dangerous to the whole Italian community in the U.S.
While those negative stereotypes are the most dangerous for the actual Italian American community, others may be classified as positive. One of them is high respect for traditions and older generations, which is an essential part of the Italian culture. Another is tasty cuisine, another part of their culture, which includes pizza, pasta, and tomato sauce, which became parts of the American culture itself. Traditions, love for the family, and love to cook tasty food are inseparable from the image of Italians in the mass media.
However, as mentioned, those positive stereotypes are often twisted to grotesque and do not represent their culture fairly. Italians, who usually love to prepare tasty dishes and eat delicious food, may be shown as uneducated peasants obsessed with food. Their love and respect for family and tradition often are twisted, too: Italian American may appear in films as obscurantist, racist, homophobic people addicted to their traditions. Those deviant images worsen the impression of Italian Americans, too, rather than show their true culture and traditional values.
Generally, stereotypes are used to sell films better: they allow producers to create a vivid and easy-to-remember picture. However, while they sell, people are not for selling: they make a negative image of Italian Americans as loud, stupid, cunning, and violent men and women, tending to criminal activity and reckless life.
As mentioned, more than 70% of Italian American characters in 20th-century Hollywood films play negative roles; probably, the reason is that such characters attract more attention. Those stereotypes persist even in 21st-century films, even though roles played by Italian Americans are now much more diverse. They depreciate the Italian culture and mentality, showing them as a set of clichés, often grotesque and comical. By doing this, they convert the whole culture and people who belong to it, into a commodity, despite people are not commodities but individuals.
National Discrimination
As one may see, there is a situation when Italian American characters are consciously created as rude and aggressive people, often alleged in the organized crime and mafia. Men are shown as aggressive and dangerous thugs, and women as sexualized, hyperemotional, and manipulative beauties or obscurantist housewives. Those characters behave in a provocative and usually explicitly negative way, and the reason is simply to create vivid and easy-to-remember images. Some of those films are inspired by Italian culture, but unfortunately, their representation is very twisted and usually shown in a negative and vulgar way.
Such an approach is discriminatory, as it unjustly shows Italian Americans worse than they actually are, as those characters are vivid and alluring, leading to large film sales. It converts people into simple picture and commodity for earning money, and the interest of real people behind this picture is disregarded.
Another reason for such a stereotypic representation is the remnants of the discriminatory approach practiced toward Italian immigrants in general from the 19th century. In the perception of the average U.S. citizen of those times, especially in the Southern U.S. states, Italians were not equal to the other white people. It was the consequence of their skin color and strong traditions, which were different from the traditions of the rest of the U.S. people. Those differences created racial and national tensions between them and the rest of the white U.S. population.
They were often accused of various crimes, and the common thought about them was that they were thugs and killers. Italians might be lynched by mobs in Southern states and accused of violent crimes, and the cases of such tragedies were often at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Nobody was willing to figure out whether Italian Americans are really guilty in those crimes: they usually just wanted them to be killed.
While this cruel practice passed away in the 20th century, remnants of the image of Italians as cruel and silly people had left and became the basis for their representation in films. In that way, the tendency to show Italian Americans negatively in films may be considered as the remnant of this old discriminatory approach toward them.
Therefore, while there are films that show Italian culture, especially cuisine, with dishes such as pasta and pizza, many promote harmful stereotypes about the whole nation. This tendency may be dangerous, as it creates a wrong image of Italian Americans in society. The origin of this image is the discrimination toward them that was usual in the 19th and early 20th centuries. People tend to perceive them as inherently irrational, violent, and rude, judging them based on their nationality.
In addition, even if Italians are not directly associated with the mafia, they are still often portrayed as tricksters, “street-smart” people who are inclined to wrong deals such as robbery or fraud. Other traits which are usually portrayed, such as their hyper-emotionality and addiction to traditions and tasty food, strengthen this twisted image based on cliché. This discriminatory approach is damaging for Italian Americans, strengthen social stigmas, and thus, may be considered unethical.
Conclusion
Many stereotypes about Italian Americans are based on their traditions, culture, and national traits. However, in numerous films, they are highly twisted and hyperbolized, creating an image of an American Italian man or woman full of cliché. They are portrayed as hyperemotional, hot-tempered, often aggressive people who are fanatic about their traditions and ready to struggle violently for their success.
Men are often alleged in criminal activity or are members of the mafia. Another typical role is a playboy who loves pleasure, money, and success and usually achieves them using violence. Women are often portrayed as either hypersexualized beauties or caricatural housewives. Such cinema stereotypes twist society’s perception of Italian Americans and may even lead to their social stigmatization.
Bibliography
Connell, William J, and Fred L Gardaphé. Anti-Italianism: Essays on a Prejudice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Nittle, Nadra Kareem. “How Italian Americans Continue to Be Stereotyped in Film and TV.” ThoughtCo, 2019.
Piersanti, Kristina. “Portrayals of Italian Americans in U.S.-Produced Films,” 2019.
Simms, Norman. “The Italian-American Image during the Twentieth Century.”The Histories 5, no. 1 (2019).
Szczepanski, Karen A. “The Scalding Pot: Stereotyping of Italian-American Males in Hollywood Films.” Italian Americana 5, no. 2 (1979): 196–204.