The idiom “Ray of Light” doesn’t just refer to an expression of hope in challenging times; it’s also the title of singer Madonna’s last big album, which took home a Grammy Award in 1998. I bring this up in defense of the rather brutal beating she took in the press at this year’s Grammy ceremony on her distorted facial features. Madonna said it was the bad lighting. Those in-the-know said it was her years of Botox, surgery, etc.
Either way, watching Madonna reduced to a typically shallow, social media meme was depressing. As professor and cultural critic Camille Paglia has said, Madonna’s role in subverting American pop culture back in the 1990s has secured her a place in history. But to today’s generation, what is history? Everything is reduced to a TikTok video. Madonna is just an old lady who dresses up in leather.
Watching Madonna’s stature in pop culture morph from crescendo to diminuendo is an apt metaphor for how Italian Americans themselves, individually and as a community, are slowly disappearing from American culture. But not completely. There are some “rays of light” on the horizon – albeit feint ones – via some upcoming films.
Two of those rays are hemmed by someone named Ray–Romano, that is. The former TV star of Everybody Loves Raymond has two basketball movies set for release this year: Somewhere in Queens and a still-untitled bio pic of his personal hero, North Carolina basketball coach Jimmy Valvano. The trailer is out for Queens: Romano and Laurie Metcalf (of Steppenwolf Theater and Roseanne fame) play the working-class parents of a teen basketball phenom. Never judge a movie by its trailer but the usual la famiglia tropes seem to be at work (food, loud talk, etc.).
As for the Jimmy V. biopic, how can it not “score”? It is an inspirational story, even with that career blip when he was (falsely) accused of violating NCCA regulations. America is a sports-obsessed nation, and all sports fans are familiar with Jimmy V’s famous “never give up” speech, given when he knew he was dying of cancer. Perhaps this film will take off the way Unbroken, the biopic of WWII hero Louis Zamperini, never quite did.
By taking off, I don’t mean box-office boffo: Unbroken did fairly well and even got a few Oscar nominations in the technical categories. I mean inculcating the culture around us with the positivity of Italic culture. That positivity is something we experience every day, but it is rarely communicated in the media. To our fellow Americans, we are mostly perceived (if I may borrow a phrase from my colleague John Mancini) as “cooks and crooks.” Romano’s films might even spark an interest in the influence which Italian Americans have made in all sports, not just basketball.
Another basketball film is Ben Affleck’s Air, about sports salesman Sonny Vaccaro’s successful effort to have a then-unknown phenom named Michael Jordan sponsor a brand of NIKE shoes. The trailer is out for this film, too, and Damon’s character has no thick accent or identifiably clichéd Italian mannerisms. In short, he looks and talks like a normal American, which is what Italian Americans are and always have been – at least over the past 40 years, when the New York Times officially granted us middle-class, i.e, “white,” status in a 1983 cover magazine story.
To that end, comedian Sebastian Maniscalco also has a film coming out called About My Father. It’s a culture clash comedy about an Italian American man (Maniscalco) who introduces his immigrant father (Robert De Niro!) to his “all-American” (i.e. non-Italian) fiancée.
I use the exclamation point for two reasons: a) Maniscalco’s premise drags us back to what the New York Times liberated us from in 1983 (eternal working-class status) and b) De Niro drags his “mob movie” associations with him wherever he goes – hence he will even taint this allegedly positive film. This is the same actor who called Italian American activists a foul name for protesting his appearance as a “mob shark boss” in the 2004 animated film, Shark Tale. De Niro saw nothing wrong promoting prejudice to impressionable youngsters. Why would he object to acting like an Italian clown for adult audiences? He already did so in Analyze This and Analyze That. The man is truly a one-trick pony.
It’s been a year since Will Smith won an Oscar for King Richard, playing the father of American tennis champions Serena and Venus Williams. Though Smith’s infamous slap overshadowed both his victory and the film, what also was overlooked is that, in the same film, actor Jon Bernthal played Rick Macci, the Italian American tennis coach who also coached the Williams sisters. As if to reinforce this Italic link, tennis coach Nick Bollettieri died on December 4th, 2022, who also worked with them. Anyone who knows tennis knows Bollettieri, a larger-than-life character whose famous Florida tennis camps turned out champions like Andre Agassi, Jim Courier, and Monica Seles, to name just a few.
Can these cinematic “rays of light” finally begin the process of shining a light on our noble heritage? Or, to quote another Madonna song (from a 2002 James Bond film), will we “die another day”? -BDC
There have been a number of movies in the past that have depicted Italian Americans in a more-or-less “authentic” way (for the era portrayed) and are still very powerful and moving in the present day. The movie “Golden Boy”, which can still be seen on Cable TV, is one such movie. It is about a young, promising violinist (played by William Holden) who gets into financial difficulties and decides to earn money as a boxer, even though this may injure his hands. The reaction of his Italian-born father (played by Lee J. Cobb) reflects an expected strong Italian emotional reaction, which is very powerful and moving. So, authenticity portrayed in a positive way can be a beautiful thing in a movie. We don’t necessarily have to be indistinguishable from Matt Damon.
Golden Boy is an excellent example but it’s from the 1930s when Italian American identity was still an identity. Today, we’ve morphed into the “white people” category, which was the point I was making. Though it’s 2023, Hollywood continues to perpetuate gross, one-dimensional, cartoonish stereotypes of us–in short, exaggerations that don’t even have the believability of Golden Boy.
When Matt Damon plays an Italian as a “regular guy,” this mirrors the current reality. The great majority of Italian Americans perceive themselves, and are perceived by others, simply as plain old “Americans.” The only ones who identify
as Italian are generally those who play up to the exaggerated media stereotypes.
What is needed is a balance—either more films about our historical figures (which means more emphasis on the early Italian immigrant experience) or films which show how Italians have become more “American” but who still cling to some sense of italianita`, be it traditions, the language, clothing styles, a love of music, etc.
Example: Captain Frank Furillo on Hill Street Blues (played by Daniel J. Travanti), had an uncle in Italy and a fiancée here who affectionately called him “Pizza Man.”
Peter Falk’s Columbo often talked about his mother’s lasagna recipe.
Where a show like The Sopranos went off the rails is that David Chase and his writers seemed to be thumbing through a manual of “Italian cliches and tropes.” The type of insular, all-Italian enclave portrayed on that show has long since passed.
The idea of a dunderhead like Tony Soprano being versed on famous Italian American historical figures is absurd on its face. The average Italian hood, then and now, barely passed high school. The only thing they read were sports betting books.
Did Chazz Palminteri’s mob boss in A Bronx Tale, allegedly based on a real person, ever read Machiavelli’s The Prince, as he claims in the movie? Well, maybe Chazz did once; however, I’ll bet he decided to include that info in order to make the mob boss character more “two dimensional.” Remember that Chazz also played a mob boss in Analyze This who had to ask a dumb flunky to look up the word “closure.”
The latter seems more likely in real-life, not a thug reading a treatise on power.
Amico Bill – excellent points.