Pizza, my parents just started dating in the summer of 1977 and they always told me they were Terrified that the Son of Sam would come over the bridge to Jersey and kill them when they were on dates...
It was no joke if you lived in the outer boroughs, especially the East Bronx. Spike Lee overdid it in his film, especially the way he portrayed some Italians, but he was correct in that there were dozens upon dozens of us
hoping he'd show up. Of course, we were armed like the Israeli army, but that's another story entirely
.
and I cant believe I wasn't born until 1984
See, I have 25 years on you, kid
.
Pizza, I ain't even gonna say how many years ya got on me Paisan.
Spike Lee's first film, "Do the Right Thing" (yeah....'89), I wrote a lengthily essay on regarding the portrayal of race in film. College communications class. I went a bit off topic and wrote deeply of the portrayal of Italian-Americans in film, especially by that hack Spike Lee, and then briefly touching upon how Italians are portrayed as racist, blue-collar thugs....especially by Spike Lee (he must've really hated Italians growing up in NY). I even referenced the mobsters in "New Jack City", but devoted quite a bit of the paper to then-current MTV.......yeah "The Jersey Shore", and then compared it to, what I consider, the unoffensive, unoffensive portrayal of Italians on "The Sopranos".
The professor was a 60 year old black woman. She loved it.
Fuck Spike Lee.
Seriously though, the, by far most damaging image of Italian-Americans, are of blue collar roughs that are poorly educated. See: The Simpson's episode when Homer becomes a tow truck driver, Spike Lee films (all, if not most), etc.
Here's a link I just discovered, via Google:
https://www.osia.org/documents/Advertising-Report.pdfPS:
Oh, and I wrote extensively of the race-relations of Italians and Blacks in NYC, especially the several incidents in the 80's; Yusef Hawkins, Howard's Beach, and "an unemployed weightlifter named Gino Bova"
I wrote of "A Bronx Tale" quite a bit
