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NYC

NYC; A Stereotype Hollywood Can't Refuse

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July 30, 1999, Section B, Page 1Buy Reprints
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WHAT do you think would happen if a white director went to Harlem and shot a film portraying blacks almost exclusively as gangsters, dopers and sex-obsessed stupes? How long would it take before Al Sharpton or Kweisi Mfume put protesters outside movie theaters? One minute or two?

Yet show Italian-Americans in that kind of harsh and unfair light -- as the black director Spike Lee does relentlessly in his new film, ''Summer of Sam'' -- and all you hear is some low-level grumbling.

Maybe that is how it should be. More finger-pointing from the sensitivity police is the last thing the world needs. Still, Mr. Lee felt obliged earlier this month to deny any racist intent, and he trotted out his Italian-American co-writers as supporting evidence. One authority on Italian-American culture, Robert Viscusi, a writer and an English professor at Brooklyn College, said that if anything, there is ''the sense of Italian wannabe about Spike Lee's work.''

But the issue goes beyond one director and the gremlins that may or may not stalk him. The fact is this:

Among major ethnic groups that have formed the country's social bedrock for at least a century, Americans of Italian origin may be the last to see themselves reflected in mass culture, time and again, as nothing but a collection of losers and thugs. You would be hard-pressed to tell from films and television shows that they have also been corporate leaders, governors and mayors, not to mention shopkeepers and working stiffs.

''The antisocial male is too often played by Italian-Americans even if they are not depicted as gangsters,'' Gay Talese said.

In this age of correctness, other groups have managed to banish the worst stereotypes about them. How often these days do you see shuffling blacks, grasping Jews or drunken Irishmen on the screen?

''You don't,'' said Michael Meyers, executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition. ''Not without a picket line going up, anyway.''

But with rare exceptions -- the 1987 film ''Moonstruck'' comes to mind -- Italian-Americans continue to be shown only as Mafiosi and foul-talking louts obsessed with cheating on their wives and shoving controlled substances up their noses. You would think they were all Gottis and Buttafuocos, judging from films like ''Donnie Brasco'' and ''Married to the Mob,'' to name but two, or from popular television series like ''The Sopranos.''

''It's not that you can't find Italians like the ones you see in these movies,'' former Gov. Mario M. Cuomo said. ''It's the disproportionality.'' A result of the one-sided portrayals, Mr. Cuomo said, is that ''if you have a large assembly of vowels in your name, the first thing some people wonder is if there's a criminal connection.''

FOR consistent portraits of Italian-Americans as inarticulate lowlifes and punks, Woody Allen is hard to beat. ''The mothers in his movies make Olivia Soprano look like Joan of Arc,'' said one Italian-American screenwriter. But some of the most successful purveyors of old stereotypes are Italian-Americans themselves. Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino -- all built careers on the mob.

And the phenomenon continues. ''The mystique of the Mafia exists even when the Mafia doesn't,'' said Anthony Mancini, a novelist and journalist. ''It's just too good a myth to abandon.''

Professor Viscusi is convinced that the negative images have flourished in part because Italian-Americans tend to shy from collective action. They do not have the many advocacy groups that, say, Jews and blacks have at their call. Also, Italians are generally seen as not having suffered nearly as much as other immigrants to America. ''We've had suffering,'' Professor Viscusi said. ''But nobody buys it.''

In the end, Mr. Talese said, there is no way to force Hollywood to ditch the stereotypes. ''You can't do it without taking away freedom,'' he said. ''That includes the freedom of choice to play gangsters.''

Even so, is a fuller representation of Italian-American life unthinkable? ''There would be fewer objections if there were a higher percentage of stories that depicted the Italian-American in a more positive way, which is a more honest way, a more realistic way,'' Mr. Cuomo said.

They don't have to come across as civil-rights training films. All it takes are characters who do more than walk around going ''badda-bing, badda-bang'' the whole day.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 1 of the National edition with the headline: NYC; A Stereotype Hollywood Can't Refuse. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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