The Many Saints of Newark is offal we must refuse. In darkening the silver screen with this lurid prequel to The Sopranos, David Chase concocts an origin story for the thuggish Tony Soprano that resurrects all the anti-Italian tropes and blood libels that made the original HBO series a showcase for society’s only socially acceptable prejudice.
Picking up where The Godfather left off, The Sopranos allowed audiences to revel in the trendy schadenfreude afforded by the program’s vile depiction of Italian-Americans. Chase lustily revivified anti-Italian intolerance, garnering himself fame and a motherlode of filthy lucre. The new film is not Shakespearean fare. Nor is it a gritty coming-of-age tale set against a backdrop of an America torn by racial ferment. And Michael Gandolfini’s role as the young Tony Soprano amounts to an illusion of storytelling complexity, a cinematic trompe-l’œil. In truth, this hastily contrived film represents Chase’s last stab at prominence. And he attempts to do so by doubling down on the defamation of Italian-Americans. In addition to portraying the scions of Italy as a clan of gun-toting Neanderthals, Chase has transmogrified them into uber-Bull Connor racists. One wonders if Chase, director Alan Taylor and the movie’s cast — especially Gandolfini, Alessandro Nivola and Leslie Odom Jr. — are even aware of the mass lynchings, internments and discrimination endured by Italians in their journey to America. Do these show business savants know that Italians produced the Pax Romana, capitalism, modern science, Western jurisprudence, the Renaissance arts, instrumental and vocal classical music, banking, accounting, the newspaper and atomic energy?
The scions of Italy are not the sausage-and-pepper spawn of Tony Soprano. Rather, they are a people whose ancestral homeland was hailed by John Milton as “the seat of civilization and the hospitable domicile of every species of erudition.” RAI
[This letter was published in the NY Daily News on 20 Sept 2021]
It seems the only stereotyping allowed in “Holywood” filmmaking now is of Italian-Americans.
In part it happens because many Italian Americans could care less. When I complain, I have been told lighten up, it is only a movie! Many Americans care when some groups are vile but many don’t see movies The Many Saints of Newark as anti-Italian
intolerance.
People consider me borderline rude when I call this “cultural Jim Crow,” but consider the point:
African Americans were allowed into the polling places in the south, but were not allowed to vote.
Italian Americans are allowed to work in Hollywood, but they’re not allowed to show Italian Americans as anything but mobsters or morons.
In both cases, people are not allowed to express themselves or to fully participate in our democracy, be it voting or making a film. True?
Money always seems to come first.
To be fair, a new TV show just came out (Black Mafia Family). It looks like the African-American version of the Sopranos. It is produced by Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson. I guess there are sellouts in all ethnicities.
“Uncle Toms,” if you will. But they are few and far between. For every “Black Mafia” project, there are 10 or 15 “positive” ones. Look at the Academy Award nominated films last year featuring Black actors: A Night in Miami, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and Judas and the Black Messiah. All positive and/or dignified portrayals of the Black experience. Bravi!
Black filmmakers also won the Short Subject film Oscar, as did African American costumers, make-up artists, and songwriters.
The Revolution WAS televised! And it was a positive one. Not so for us.
If there’s any organized protest that anyone is aware of please let us know.
Grazie