The Italian American Movie

6 Pages 1518 Words

What Makes a Movie Italian-American?

A cliché of American culture is the metaphor of the melting-pot –a tendency for the children of foreign-born American citizens to blend in, to intermarry with other ethnicities, producing a kind of natural-selection hybrid. In actuality, many ethnic subcultures have retained their separate identities, and the result has been a patchwork quilt of diversity, a source of considerable cultural richness in the United States. A social culture encompasses the traditions, institutions, arts, myths, and beliefs that are characteristic of a given community or population. Any film that is about a certain culture, whether it is deliberate or not, could be considered ethnic. Italian-American films are movies that show the culture of Italian-Americans; the traditions and values that have gone from generation to generation descended from Old Italy.


The Topics of Italian-American Movies

When most people think of Italian-Americans they think of the Mafia. It is as though the world has been taught to automatically assume that all those living in America of Italian descent are gangsters, demonstrating the conditioned reflexes that Pavlov studied. It is a negative evolution that will hopefully change in the near future. Of course many Italian-American films are about the Mafia, one of the most famous is The Godfather. But are these Mafia movies made just for the profit and because it is a popular theme amongst the audience, or because the Italian-American directors, screenwriters, and producers feel the need to portray Italian-Americans this way? One thing most do not consider is that 99% of all Italian-American films are about the South Italian immigrants and their traditions and settlement. Typically, Italian-American films have a few themes that seem to be reoccurring; the first is the family theme. Family seems to be a very important factor in the Italian-American culture and one can usually iden...