It is a famous phrase: “Vedi Napoli e poi muori“– See Naples and die! The point is that Italy’s third-largest city is such an overwhelming feast for the senses – of food, art, history, museums, music, etc. – that there is nothing left to see once you’ve experienced it.

Alas, on Searching for Italy, the CNN series which began on Valentine’s Day hosted by actor Stanley Tucci, I saw Naples and did want to die – of embarrassment. Despite the hype and anticipation, the first segment of this six-part series, dedicated to Italy’s “city by the bay”, left me unmoved.  

In short, in keeping with the show’s emphasis on food, it left you feeling not hungry for more, but just plain hungry.

Americans are woefully ignorant about Italy, Italians, and Italian culture, either through indifference (they’ve never been to Italy) or as passive consumers of information (they absorb the mainstream media’s well-heeled cliches). The advance excitement for this series, at least to those of us who take more than a passing interest in Italy, was that a major cable news network hired a witty, literate actor of Italian American heritage (who himself lived in Italy for a year as a pre-teen) to guide viewers on a “culinary” journey through its regions, with asides on the people and culture. That goodwill evaporated. 

I try and view a series like this from the perspective of NON Italian viewers, including Italian Americans who are Italian in name only. Here is what I think the average non-Italian learned:  Neapolitans are poor and live in chaos; Neapolitans are also criminals; the calzone was the precursor to the pizza; San Marzano tomatoes grow in a small patch of land near a highway; some Italians eat bunny rabbits; gypsies are entrepreneurs; a lot of lemons grow on the Amalfi Coast; and Stanley Tucci and his wife, Felicity Blunt, have been incorrectly cooking one of their favorite Italian dishes (spaghetti con zucchine). 

This is the complete opposite of a Lucullan feast. It’s more like an appetizer dish. 

Is it unfair to demand too much of a show which blatantly states that its goal is to use food as a conduit to culture? I don’t think so. The late CNN food and travel host Anthony Bourdain did. Rick Bayless, the PBS chef who trumpets Mexico and its cuisine, does so regularly. But look at the difference between what Tucci did and what Bayless doesn’t do: Tucci found time to profile the Camorra criminal gang and to include a comment by a Neapolitan cop that “Al Capone’s parents were from the Campania region” (thus staining the millions of decent Italian Americans whose grandparents emigrated from there). 

Unless I’m mistaken, I don’t think Bayless ever used his show to promote Mexican drug cartels. What would that have to do with food? 

In my previous blog, I quoted Tucci complaining – and rightly so – about Hollywood’s relentless stereotyping of Italians: “It’s not what you see in the movies, it’s what you don’t see.” He meant that the media focuses on negative images and ignores more truthful or complicated ones. 

Searching for Italy, at least via its Naples episode, is guilty of doing the exact same thing. 

What you didn’t see – what wasn’t even mentioned – were famous Neapolitans like Enrico Caruso, Sofia Loren, or filmmaker Francesco Rosi; treasures of Naples such as its archeological and art museums; the nearby Palace of Caserta, which far out-shines Paris’s Palace of Versailles; and even, on a simpler yet no less profound level, its wonderful tradition of cameo craftsmanship. Naples’s renowned coffee culture was also diminished: When Tucci and the cop went for an espresso break, they went to a street vendor! Not even a visit to the Caffe Grambinus, one of the most distinguished in all of Italy. 

In nearby Pompeii, the classical Roman city buried in ash when Mt. Vesuvius exploded in 79 A.D., there are body casts of actual victims, frozen at the moment of their deaths. Though silent, they still “speak” to us. Searching for Italy used sound and imagery and yet didn’t say much about Naples at all. 

We can only hope that its next few episodes have more to say, and convey, about Rome, Bologna, Florence, Milan and Sicily. Stay tuned! -BDC