Sicilian Culture: News: Some of Us Aren't Even In the Mafia -- Imagine That!

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Some of Us Aren't Even In the Mafia -- Imagine That!
By Elisa Flynn, The Westchester County Weekly
August 9 2001 - - As an Italian-American I am SICK TO DEATH of The Sopranos phenomena and the never-ending depiction of Italians as one-dimensional, cartoon mafioso figures. It's insulting to see your ethnic group constantly compared with and depicted as one very small facet of that group's most negative side.
We have finally reached the point where ethnic groups traditionally put down and marginalized by the media, e.g. African-Americans, are being depicted as multi-dimensional, complex and interesting human beings. If African-Americans were put down and mocked as blatantly as Italians are, there would be lawsuits, protests and an information campaign. But with us there is nothing.
Why are so many young and not so young men more than happy to emulate Tony and his crew? Why is TV's idea of mob fashion considered de riguer? This is not glamorous! This is not acceptable behaviour! Just because a character goes to a shrink doesn't make him an all right guy. He still cheats on his wife. He still participates in illegal activity for a living. Is this what people want to emulate?
Italian-Americans, like any other ethnic group, are a diverse lot. We are garbagemen and Ph.D's. We are senators and sales clerks, family men and artists, biologists and bartenders. We are just like everybody else, but somehow the popular imagination is only allowed to hold one type in its collective mind, and have it hammered in again and again.
I'll tell you a story. My relatives came to this country over a period of about 40 years, from the 1870s to the 1910s. They were uneducated and poor, but they came here to find a better way of life. In Italy they had basically nothing, and they had heard that there were endless opportunities in the USA. Each and every one of them worked like dogs to make a living, learn English, and make a better life for their children. They didn't carry guns.
They didn't push people around. They didn't join the Mafia. My mother's father once accidentally witnessed a Mafia murder, a man being stomped to death.My grandfather was taken to the very edge of a roof of a building so that he had to look down on the street below, and was asked if he would ever report what he had seen. No, of course not, said my grandfather, and he was allowed to go home in one piece. This example was a lesson, something to be feared, and not ever something to be admired or imitated.
Ours is the typical immigrant story and experience. An in-depth and well-written discussion of the Italian-American experience can be found in Maria Laurino's Were You Always An Italian?, published last year. Laurino, who grew up in New Jersey, relates her experiences of growing up as a third-generation Italian in the United States and still being treated like an outsider, still being made to feel less than equal, or something other than a white American. Her personal story discusses all the stereotypes, but also is an interesting tale about the language, food and family we were surrounded by.
I relate to this 100 percent, although my transition to outsider came out later in life than hers did. Growing up in a mixed neighborhood in Yonkers, and attending schools through high school with a healthy mix of immigrant backgrounds, I never really felt different because I was surrounded more or less by my own kind.
That was until I started college, where I soon discovered that not only is the world not filled with Italian Roman Catholics, but somehow I was not the norm. My skin was darker. My food choices were different. I got every kind of comment from "you're the darkest white person I've ever met," to "how could you be named Flynn? You must be Black Irish." (My father's stepfather was Flynn.) It was a whole new world to me, as my life was to my new acquaintances. So what does this have to do with anything?
I am proud of my family; I am proud of the work they did, the struggles they endured, and the way each generation nutured and pushed the next one to do better. I know that there are so many others whose stories are the same.
I do not see these people represented by the media; I see the caricatures in The Sopranos and movies like Saturday Night Fever and Moonstruck (written by non-Italians, by the way). Why is it that people admire this crap? Why do people want to go on a Sopranos Tour (an On Location Tour flyer offering tours to sites used in The Sopranos, including "the diner where Chris was shot" and "the Bada Bing night club," crossed my desk the other day)?
I suppose it's because it looks exciting and macho on TV and the movies. I suppose it's fun to ridicule others. It seems that in this case, some people seem to have a harder time than usual separating art from life. But you know what? It's disgusting and insulting to those of us who can't stand to once again see our heritage and lives become the butt of a twisted stereotype.
I might be able to make a mean marinara, enjoy cannolis, remember Sicilian being spoken at home when I was growing up, and have dark skin, but I do not want to be reduced to a parody.
Let's take prejudice from another angle. Are all Anglo-Saxons tight-assed whiteys? I don't know, but maybe someone should start parodying them in the media as one-sided, stupid, fearful, violent and worthy of mockery, and see if they like it.
The Westchester County Weekly | News&Commentary
www.newmassmedia.com/nac.phtml?code=wes&db=nac_fea&ref=17102

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