The media significantly impacts the public’s perception of Italian-Americans and the mafia. Some of this is due to personal experiences with Italian mobsters, but often, it is due to how Italians are portrayed in popular culture and the events surrounding them (Cortes 110). As a matter of fact, contrary to popular belief, only a tiny number of Italian-Americans are criminals, as implied by stereotypes and generalizations about the ethnic group in the media and elsewhere.
Prizzi’s Honor, John Huston’s satiric take on the mafia, capitalized on audiences’ knowledge of Italian-Americans to flip the script on the Mafia motif. In other ways, Prizzi’s Honor served as a reaffirmation of the mafioso image’s iconic strength (Cortes 117). For all its flaws, it succeeded due to the image-building strategies of its predecessors, which it drew on and parodied. In addition, various sources found evidence of the stereotype’s pervasiveness. According to Cortes (118), it was common practice for films not explicitly about Italian-Americans to feature them as supporting characters, even if their ethnicity had no bearing on the story. They discard Italian-American criminals whose ethnicity had no bearing.
These characters could be of any race. The directors made them Italian-Americans to capitalize on viewer predispositions, such as earlier cinema stereotypes. Media portrayals of Italian-Americans impact public view as criminals, violent, and unpredictable (Cortes 119). Surnames and ethnicity would be Pavlovian without character development. Slow filming, sure, but also stereotyped Hollywood cinema since the Indian barbarian and Mexican bandit antagonists of early silent films. This shoddy filmmaking method dates to decades where the Italian-Americans have become symbols of injustice.
Work Cited
Cortes, Carlos E. “Italian-Americans in the film: From immigrants to icons.”Melus 14.3/4 (1987): 107-126.