pizza

I agree with your point. How Spike gets away with it(depicting American Italians in a bad light consistently) is sort of a film trick.

In my opinion, there "acceptable" ethnic groups or types that can be broadly stereotyped in American films and media with no recourse.....rural poor White southerners and working class Northeast Italian Americans are two of those groups.

Jokes, slurs,caricatures of these groups are commonplace and until/unless any organization fights to change it...they will remain embedded in pop culture.

Spike knows this, so he uses working class Italian American characters as representatives of whatever "ism" he's trying to discuss in his films.

Mainstream audience doesn't identify with this working class ethnic White so Spike's storyline is more easily received and digested than if the same character were a middle class wasp.

Spike also gets away with it by using a hollywood cliche..."All of the members of a certain group are bad EXCEPT this one...so my film isn't racist" There are characters in Spike's films that exist for this reason only. The younger brother, in Do The Right Thing, for example.

The WW2 film that Spike made "Miracle at St. Anna"was set in Italy...and despite what I expected.....the Italian characters weren't stereotypes or just inserted to highlight racism. Film was ruined by bad acting by the leads and uneven directing but it showed Italians as human beings and not "types".The villagers in the film were so friendly with the Black soldiers that I saw the film as an olive branch by Spike to American Italians....or perhaps a commentary about how American color based racism is learned by immigrants when they arrive here.


At any rate, pizza you are right to call out Spike on this issue. I haven't seen Summer of Sam, but in the Spike films I've seen...he makes concerted effort to craft Italian American characters a certain way.

Until Americans of Italian background challenge Spike for this glaring contradiction..nothing will change. Spike sees that very little resistance is put up against the mainstream culture stereotyping members of this group, so he does it too.
He's wrong and a hypocrite.

But remember, the negative fictional depictions of Blacks in American media didn't go away because the media decision makers just decided to stop writing them. People and organizations had to call them out and protest against them.

"White" people aren't going to protest or call Spike out because he doesn't go after "white" people so hard in his films but specifically Italian Americans.



=============
I'm pretty sure that in Spike's new york stories and films that some characters were written as other white ethnic groups but that pressure from the studios made him change them to Italian.
Would be unacceptable for "jewish" characters to be so broadly stereotyped but studio will greenlight and finance Spike's films throwing Italian Americans under the bus.

I thought Summer of Sam was an outstanding movie. The scene with Berkowitz, looking in wonder, being driven through the raucous mob with the juxtaposition of the smaller group of Leguizamo's friends, blinded by fear, ignorance and confusion that grew throughout movie, ferociously hunting down Richie, all while the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" blared in the background, was cinematic brilliance.

I don't think he was ridiculing Italians, but he used those characters and others (including himself as the incompetent black news reporter and the black looters) in a surrealistic way to heighten the madness and insanity of that summer in New York. While Richie's buddies were a bunch of bigoted dolts, who happened to be Italian, Richie, an Italian, was a Christ figure.

I can see that if you're Italian, you might be more sensitive to the portrayal, but of the movies I've seen of his that include Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever, I never interpreted the movies as a slap at Italians, but I saw them as representing something beyond ethnicity. His movies, at least the three I remember seeing, are evocative and play a little with reality in a creative way.

great description ! the job of the DIRECTER is to hold a mirror in front of society .you know well as i do a SOME italians have been slow on race relations in america .new york was a powder keg in the 60 and 70's black new yorker's were constantly being harrassed.

That's just it, Klyd. You have to ask yourself, if it were an Irish American stereotype being depicted, would it bother you then? And if not, hey, more power to you. You have a thicker skin than I do.

I think I'm a little more sensitive to "Summer of Sam" because a lot of it was filmed right in Throggs Neck (there's actually a shot of our old pool and beach club off Clarence Avenue). And it's ironic, but I have to note that, regardless of some of the high profile Italian mob guys who have lived here, Throggs Neck has always been an Irish neighborhood (I'd have to say Irish, then Italian, then German).

Anyway, you know me well, Klyd. You're my pal. I'm just asking you to put the shoe on the other foot. If the depiction was of an Irish American beat cop, drunk and on the take, a bottle of Jameson's in one hand and a bottle of ketchup in the other, wouldn't it bother you just a little bit?

And for the record, I think Spike is a great fimmaker and a decent man. I just think that he might unknowingly have some anti-Italian bias in him. And contrary to popular opinion, I don't think a litle bias necessarily makes someone a racist. It's what you do with that bias.

PB and Kly, I haven't seen any of the movies ya'll reference. Thus, I don't know how Italians were portrayed in them. If they were portrayed in a negative way, aren't there Italians whose behaviors are negative. Was that the point of the portrayal, or was the portrayal's intention insidious?

I think that's where Klyd and I differ in opinion, Oli. I think it was a little more insidious that he does.

I'd be confused by the bottle of ketchup. I get the whiskey-gulping couch, but I think I'm missing something about my heritage about the ketchup.

I think it comes down to whether the depiction is gratuitous. Does it advance the theme, art, entertainment of the movie. For instance, I think a far more nefarious image of Italians is portrayed in mobster films, but films like The Godfather, Goodfellas, etc. employ them necessarily. A lot of Italians, including my late father-in-law disliked these movies because of it.

But I realize that one of the fascinating things about movies (and I admit I don't often watch movies) and life is that we all look at them from a different point of reference, and therefore we don't always see the same thing.

When my daughter was about 8 or 9 we watched Rear Window, and through it all her eyes were like saucers. After the thrilling ending, she excitedly said that was a really good movie. I asked her her favorite scene, and still excited, she answered, "When they lifted the puppy in the basket." I wish I could still view life and movies from that frame of mind.

Now, pizzaboy, fill me in about the ketchup reference. St. Patty's Day is coming up and I have to be ready.

Just a personal observation, Counselor. But it just goes to show, that's how stereotypes get started. So shame on me .

But for the record, here's where it comes from: I spend A LOT of time in the Irish pubs in my neighborhood (like I said, there are loads of Irish Americans in Throggs Neck). And I've just made the casual observation that some of my Irish friends will order a thirty dollar steak, insist that it's well done, and then pour ketchup all over it . Why bother?

But now that I think about it, it's FAR more likely that they do it because they are, much like me, blue collar shmendricks from the Bronx, and that it has nothing to do with the fact that their grandparents were from County Cork.

Oh, and speaking of Celtic Counties and Bronx Irish bars: Whenever I walk into my favorite watering hole, the bartender, a feisty Irishman, yells out "Here comes County Kill-Guinea."

And THAT doesn't bother me at all. It's all about the context and how familiar you are with the people you're interacting with .

Gotcha. I just wanted to be sure that for years jokes weren't going over my head. I've seen the ketchup and steak combo myself.

I remember you telling me about County Kill-Guinea before, and I forgot to use the line. The vice-president of our local Ancient Order of Hibernians is named D'Amico, and he would get a kick out of it. His mom was part-Irish.

Be well, buddy and I look forward to duking it out with you during the baseball season when we can stare together at how far the Nationals and Braves are above us.

As an outsider, I'd have to agree with you on this point.

Doesn't absolve Spike at all.

I read an article about Spike and Italians..and I sent an email to one of the organizations quoted in the piece. I posed some of the questions to him that I've posed in this thread.

I got a good response. Here are two sites that serve to educate people about Italian history and to combat media stereotypes about Italian Americans.


http://www.italic.org/index.php

http://www.stereotypethis.com/index.php


In so many words, the gist of what he told me was that there are media watchdog groups that speak out against Italian stereotypes, but media outlets are generally not going to cover the stories targeting powerful interests .Spike is somewhat of a polarizing media figure so stories involving him are approved by editors at media outlets.


What's interesting was that in my email, I mentioned a big studio children's CARTOON that had Mafia "joke" in it and I questioned whether the organization had spoken out against that...he directed me to details of them speaking out against that ...but again...powerful interests ....fewer stories about them calling out Spielberg and "Shark Tale".

=============================================================

Because he is a racist just like the Grand Dragon