Let’s talk ethnicity here. I’m Italian-Polish American. My wife is Italian-American. All of our parents were born in the United States, so we’re not entirely connected to the “old country.” Our own self-images are formed in part by experience, in part by those representations of Italian-Americans in films and television.
The most common stereotype is of course the Mafioso, the well-dressed men with the crooked noses and pinstripes who offered special kinds of insurance plans for small businesses. There are many other popular images, more comical ones like Chico Marx’s playful halfwit, or the jovial overweight “nana.” I also love the image of the two paisans tearing money in Woody Allen’s Broadway Danny Rose; one of them is played by Michael (The Practice) Balducco, and I think his character says, “I been tearing money since my first holy communion… doesn’t mean a thing…”
But it’s the mafia image that remains the most known, and Italian Americans have mixed attitudes about it.
A long time ago, the Italian Anti-Defamation League pressured Paramount Pictures to keep the word “mafia” from appearing in the first Godfather film. Of course, everyone knew what the film was about, and if anything, the film had the effect of equating “family” with “organized crime syndicate,” since that’s the term the mobsters kept using to refer to one another: the Corleone family, the Tataglia family, etc.
The funny thing about the Defamation League is that, according to Sopranos creator David Chase, the League was established by… you guessed it: members of the mafia! And obviously, as Chase’s amazing program demonstrates, the old Godfather images have also had an enormous influence on the HBO mobsters themselves: the strip club Tony runs is called Bada-Bing, an expression popularized by James Caan in The Godfather, and of course Steve Van Zandt’s Silvo has a fondness for imitating Michael Corleone.
It’s not just fictional gangsters who seem to embrace the stereotype. I know many a paisan who love the Mafioso image. One guy I used to know called the Godfather Trilogy “our Roots.” It’s easy to see why the wiseguys are so respected: they’re tough, they’re cool, assertive, have a sense of humor and a certain special understanding of what it means to be in a family. As the old Don said in the first film, “a man who doesn’t take care of his family, can never be a real man.” It goes without saying that the most respected TV and movie gangsters are admired because they are MEN!
I did a very fine Don Corelone impression; I watched the film a lot, but I also had help from John Belushi’s imitation. I enjoy the images of these stereotypes, and the language they speak is one very familiar to me. And I find myself often amused when life imitates image.
I’ve been to many celebrations in my family and my wife’s family, and sometimes you feel that those stereotypes are so true: the men with the big crosses round their necks and the pinky rings, the women with the long nails and big hair – I’ve seen it all. A former colleague told me that one time she went by bus to Staten Island and actually missed her stop because there was a whole slew of girls on the bus and she couldn’t see her stop through all the hair.
But I know there are times when such an image comes in handy.
I am picturing a scene some ten or fifteen years from now:
My wife’s cousins run a beauty supply business; they sell tools of all kinds to hair and nail salons and even surgical tools for podiatrists. They also still continue the business their father started in the shop, a knife-sharpening service. We bring our knives there once in a while. And the “boys” are of course fun and friendly, and always have great stories to share about the people they work with. We take the girls there often and they get free nail polish and sometimes there’s cake or donuts involved.
So the scene I picture is one where we bring the girls and their young teenaged beaus over to the shop, where they can meet cousins Vinny, Joey, and Dominic (actual names, I swear), and watch them say, “hey, howya doin’” while sitting at their machines sharpening some large butcher knives.
Those poor young men who try to win my daughters’ affections!