th
# 62 • June 12 , 2015
(middle school).
Film is the ONLY industry in
American society where Italian
Americans have very little true
In 2015 you updated your very power. Yes, Francis Ford Copinteresting years-long study of pola and Martin Scorsese get
Hollywood's treatment of the movies made … but what kind
Italian mobster, "Film Study: of movies? Again, as the study
A Century of Little Progress" reveals, even so-called artists
(1914 - 2014). What is this like Coppola and Scorsese are
study, and when and why you “limited” in their scope when
had the idea of working of so- it comes to painting different
mething like this?
images of Italian Americans.
Prejudice still exists.
As a trained journalist and
film critic as well as educator, I
found it imperative that the Ita- Which are the most important
lian American community get results of the study?
serious about analyzing the
reality of our history in Ameri- To me, the most important reca. Far too many Italian Ame- sult is that nine out of ten Italian
ricans complacently accept gangster images in American
the “reality” of what they see movies (86.9%) are completely
on American movie screens as false; they have no basis in re“Italian culture,” even though, ality. They are simply caricatuin real life, most Italian Ame- res. For every film about say, Al
ricans will admit that a majo- Capone, there are eight other
rity of these negative images films with a gangster named
are false. They feel that most “Vito” or “Tony” who isn’t real.
non-Italians share this false And yet, people accept them
sense of security. They don’t as “true!”
realize the power of images to
shape peoples’ perceptions.
Consequently, as the study re- I found particularly interesting
veals, such complacency has the part where you refer about
allowed Hollywood to distort the relationship between the
our true history in America. total number of Italian Ame-
ricans (17 millions according
to 201 Census) and the one of
Italian criminals (1.150, as to
say 0,0068% of the community)…
As did I. This proves how distorted things are between
“real” life and Hollywood’s
“reel” life. And the gangster
obsession isn’t just limited to
movies; you also see it in TV
shows, newspaper articles, novels, and—if you can believe it—
cartoons aimed at children.
Sadly, even il bel paese has internalized this negativity. I’ve
been a fan of Italian cinema
since I was a child, and I’ve noticed that Italy itself is suddenly
producing a high number of
films about gangsters: the Camorra, N’drangheta, etc. Either
Italy is now a cesspool of a nation dominated by gangsters
(which I don’t believe) or Italian filmmakers are imitating
their cugini across the Atlantic, eager to exploit this genre
to gullible Americans (which I
do believe). Both Italians and
Italian Americans don’t understand the power of imagery.
Is there something in the study
that is not well known among
the Italian American community, but still you think it’s important to be told?
Before “The Godfather” in
1972, the number of gangster
films was quite low, 98. There
was a more balanced approach to our community. With the
WE THE ITALIANS | 7
www.wetheitalians.com