Italian Americans in Cinema and Media

From early crime films about the “black hand” to more recent films and television shows like Green Book and Jersey Shore, representations of Italian Americans have captivated audiences. As a White ethnic immigrant group in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Italian Americans endured discrimination and social prejudice. Newspapers, politicians, and contemporary media warned that Italians would dilute the racial and cultural purity of “White” Americans, that they were a dangerous, criminal threat prone to violent outbursts and uncontrollable emotions, and that they were a cheap labor source that jeopardized the economic security of middle- and working-class American citizens. Following their mass participation in World War II and their access to the postwar GI Bill and government housing loans, the socioeconomic standing of Italian Americans began to change and so too did media representations of them. In the 1950s and 1960s, the gangster was still a consistent presence in American media, but non-gangster Italian Americans appeared in contemporary films and TV programs such as Marty, Full of Life, and The Rose Tattoo. With the White Ethnic Revival in the 1970s, Italian American–driven narratives like The Godfather, Serpico, and Saturday Night Fever and Italian American characters on programs like Happy Days garnered critical and commercial success (though not always at the same time). Throughout the last few decades, Italian American representations have continued to become more diverse even as old stereotypes have been recycled. Interestingly, Italian Americans themselves have created many of the representations of Italian Americans, including some of the most well known. Filmmakers such as Frank Capra, Francis Ford Coppola (Including The Godfather), Martin Scorsese, and Nancy Savoca; actors such as Rudolph Valentino, Al Pacino, and Marisa Tomei; and showrunners such as Tom Fontana and David Chase have worked to craft the public image of Italian Americans and define the group’s identity for ethnic insiders and outsiders alike. At the same time, Italian American audiences have brought a unique set of cultural experiences to their reception of Italian/American media and those experiences have often led to culturally inflected interpretations and meanings. Through the study of media representations, authorship, and reception, an interdisciplinary group of scholars has illuminated the diversity that exists within Italian America; the ways in which Italian American ethnicity intersects with other identity categories such as gender, sexuality, and generational standing; and the transnational interaction between Italian Americans and the Italian diaspora. Their insights have the potential to inform our collective understanding of Italian Americans and, more generally, the meaning of race, ethnicity, class, and gender in American culture.