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Dec.26/04 - Jan.2, 2005 |
5 - An attack strategy for Italian language
Study of la bella lingua is on the increase in the universities of the United States of America
By Antonio Maglio
Originally Published: 2003-01-19
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Edoardo Lebano, professor at Indiana University
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Let's pick a few random quotes from U.S. newspapers.
"There has never been, ever since New York's foundation, such a lowly and ignorant class of immigrants as Southern Italians." (New York Times, March 5, 1882)
"These Sicilian spies and cowards, descendants of gangsters and murderers, who brought to this country the institutes of outlaws, the customs of cut-throats, the secrecy of the societies of their country, are a scourge without remission for us." (New York Times, March 12, 1891)
"There is a quantity of organic diseases in Italy, and many deformities, many lame and blind, many people with sick eyes. These children are displayed by their parents or relatives to elicit pity and charity from passers-by." (Leslie's Illustrated, March 23, 1901)
"It is well known that Italians are great criminals. Italy is first in Europe for violent crimes." (New York Times, May 14, 1909).
"This country does not need the man with the spade, dirty of the soil he's digging and driven by a mind marginally superior to that of the ox his brother." (North American Revue, May 1925).
A couple of years ago the Italic Studies Institute of New York examined over 1,000 Hollywood movies dating from 1928 to the present, portraying Italian characters or scenes about Italians. Only 27 percent of the films send a positive image; the remaining 73 percent shows Italians as mostly criminals, and then unrefined buffoons, stupid and bigoted.
Although the New York Times of today would not dream (we hope) of printing the same words it did one century ago, the collective imagination of the Americans long included the negative stereotypes about Italian immigrants. Cinema, a very faithful probe of collective minds, shows it clearly. For instance, in Avanti!, the 1972 movie set in Ischia, one can find an unctuous hotel manager, a blackmailing Sicilian valet, peasant accomplices that dispose of corpses, and the unavoidable Southern-Italian moustached chambermaid. Also, in Harlem Nights (1989) the very corrupt police sergeant bears the name of Phil Cantone, hardly a Scandinavian surname.
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