Beyond Recognition: Lotharios, Thugs, Buffoons, and Gangsters -- Italian Americans and the Entertainment Industry
When Italian Americans of my grandparents' generation stepped out for an evening's entertainment, they had their choice of early vaudeville, where they could hear the songs and see the dances of the old country, or, if they could afford it, the great operas of Verdi, Puccini, and Rossini. These two extremes, from lowbrow to highbrow, reflected the culture of their native land and were performed in their mother tongue.
By the time my father's generation was reaching adolescence, the varied popular entertainment of immigrant communities had morphed into the movies. Hollywood, however, was not portraying Italian American culture in the rich context of the European tradition of theatre and opera but in the narrowed new focus of gritty urban reality -- we were transformed by the Hollywood moguls and image-makers into Latin lovers, sentimental mama's boys, kind-hearted simpletons, and vicious gangsters. These were the stereotypes that helped drain us of our self-esteem and our cultural identity and vitality -- with our consent, it must be said. These were the oversimplifications that stuck with us, for Americans then, as now, prefer the convenient label to the complex reality. They became our burden and our shame until we were partly redeemed by the heroism of the Italian American soldiers of World War II and the hard work of the tightly-knit families in their suburban communities of the post-war era. Nevertheless, this redemption proved temporary and in need of renewal (yes, like a license) by each succeeding generation.
When my own generation was carrying our Roy Rodgers lunch boxes to school, entertainment had become the mass media of television and the Saturday matinee at the local movie house. The Disneyfication of some gutsy fairy tales was underway as they were sanitized and splashed across the big screen. In the 1950's, the homogenization of America was at its peak. As a result of this tidal wave of trivialization, every trace of early Italian American culture with all its beauty and earthiness was completely obliterated. Most Italian American entertainers had retained their family name, but they were Americanized in every other respect, and their image was cleansed of any taint of the Old World. They were utterly devoid of authenticity as the descendants of a great European culture. Dean Martin, Perry Como, Jimmy Durante, and Annette Funicello were some of the brightest luminaries of the 1950's and all of them had succeeded in eliminating any connection to their families' immigrant past.
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