Articles by: Tom Verso

  • File 8670_Anonimo, tina, san francisco s_1239727684.d
    Art & Culture

    Tina Modotti – “Some Kind of Lady!”

     In the first week of February 1939, as Spain’s Civil War wound down, a Mexican diplomat was driving through an abandoned Spanish village about 20 miles south of the French border.  To the north, refugees by the ten’s of thousands were trying to get into France, escaping the vicious Guernica-esque Fascist onslaught coming up from the south.

    The diplomat noticed a women “sitting alone at one of those outdoor coffee shops”.  She was small, slightly more than five feet, a very slender middle-aged woman. He offered to take her to safety.  In his words: “She refused…She was waiting for the [retreating Republican] army which was on its way to that small town, and she knew that [her companion] was coming with it.  I told her she was in great danger [from the Fascist]…I tried to persuade her to come with me…Well she refused my offer firmly…I left, it was about six in the evening the sun was shining but gave no warmth.  The whole scene, the entire situation reinforced by the winter sun, the peasants escaping from the mountains, the army retreating and the image of her, sitting alone,

    with that waiting, searching, contemplative look…”

    This small unpretentious contemplative solitary lady sitting at a table in an abandoned war torn village belied an Olympus giant.  She was the unity of Apollonian reason and Dionysian passion that Nietzsche thought the essence of Greek Tragedy: a tragic hero driven by Dionysian passion to bring Apollonian order to a chaotic world; who understands her fate is to suffer and fall because the world will not yield – nor will she.  She was a sweat-shop machine operator, seamstress, model, stage and screen actress, photographer, business manager, artist, spy, hospital administrator, intelligence operative, writer, bodyguard, linguist, nurse, combatant…In short, she was Tina Modotti.

    ……………..

    Born in Udine, Friuli, Italy in 1896, at the age of 13 she had to drop out of school to help support her family.  She worked in a silk-spinning factory.   The labor of such workers, the majority women, was hard and exhausting.  It was in the Udinese sweatshops that Tina began her journey towards radical proletarian photography, politics and war.  She started work scooping up silk cocoons from basins of hot foul-smelling water, and peeling off their coverings.  After a few days her hands were swollen and raw.  She was promoted to steam-powered winders, working with arms and hands flying in a blur, and overseers always at their backs evaluating production quotas.  Still the girls working those machines maintained spirit by singing “They Call Me Mimi” from La Boheme and Friulian love songs.  Scenes of the singing women rice workers, in the film “Bitter Rice” comes to mind.  Showing discipline under conditions of adversity already at this young age, she was promoted again to a weaver’s position.  However, promotion did not mean easier work or significant wage increases.  Years later, Tina summed up her families condition succinctly: “Misery and hunger unite a family more than riches and comfort.”  By that standard, the Modotti family was

    very united indeed.

    In 1913 Tina left Italy to join her father, a 1906 emigrant, in San Francisco.  A mature disciplined worker, she found work as a seamstress. She developed into a beautiful girl and she benefited from the universal law of society: ‘beauty avails opportunity.’  Her employer realized that she would be a good model for the dresses they manufactured.  It was at this point that she began the transition from proletariat to artist. 

    Amateur theatrics abounded in the city’s garment industry and Tina’s beauty afforded her an

    opportunity to enter into the acting profession.  She had a remarkable stage presence, the intelligence to memorize lines, and a gift for recitation.  She was a great success.  Beauty, of course, brought men.  And, one in particular would put her on a trajectory that would determine the rest of her life – Roubaiz de l’Abrie Richey or simply ‘Robo, as he was called.  Robo brought Tina into a circle of Bohemian artist and writers.  Perhaps predisposed by singing songs from La Boheme in the Udine factory, Tina immediately embraced their art and anti-middleclass conventional life style.  She was leaving her proletarian life for the life of the arts.  However, as she matured as an artist her proletarian roots would manifest themselves again in her work.  Eventually, she would come full circle, returning and immersing her total being in proletarianism as a revolutionary communist.

    At the point where her fame as a stage actress was reaching a zenith in 1918, she, without notice, simply up and left San Francisco with Robo and went to Los Angeles.  She just walked away!  Her beauty and acting experience lent itself to getting parts in silent films.  While her beauty served her well, she was, as the saying goes: “Not just another pretty face.” 

    Tina was intelligent and had an inner demon that drove her on a ‘spiritual quest’; the desire to find a meaningful and purposeful life beyond material wellbeing.  Indeed, the willingness to forgo material wellbeing for the spirit would come to be her predominate trait. What was characterized as a ‘bohemian’ life style should not be construed as a sixties-esque hippy dropout counter culture.  Hers was a proactive intellectual and spiritual quest for meaning and purpose within, not apart from, society.  For example, while in L.A. she became steeped in the works of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and especially his book “Beyond Good and Evil.”  Later in life, her favorite saying of his, one that would come close to the essence of her life: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”  The tempered steely woman sitting alone in that abandoned war torn Spanish village was the product of aggregate pain that time and again came close, but did not kill her.

    In Los Angeles Tina encounter two things that would affect the rest of her life.  She was introduced to Mexican culture and the renowned photographer Edward Weston.  She became Weston’s favorite model at the same time Robo went to Mexico City and found that it was an “artist’s paradise.”  Tina went to join him; however, he was taken with smallpox.  By the time Tina got there he had passed away.  Nevertheless, she became intrigued with Mexico.  Accordingly, in July 1923 when Edward Weston offered her a job as his assistant for a photo project in Mexico and said he would teach her photography she accepted.

    In Mexico she acquired the craft (photography) to express her artistic passions.  By December 1924, Tina had mastered the craft so well that Weston could confidently leave her in charge of his studio and return to the U.S.  There upon, she began finding her own identity as a photographer.  At first, that identity was expressed as pure art: composition, form, and contrast of objective subjects.  For example, what she could do with flowers, telephone wires, sugar cane, etc. was truly amazing.  However, soon her identity took her back to her proletarian roots in Italy.  She presented the poverty, the beauty and the dignity of Mexican peasantry that is unrivaled in photography.

    As her artistic instincts brought her closer and closer to the plight of the peasants, her politics naturally move in the same direction.  She became increasing involved with the Communist Party of Mexico.  The great traumatic turning event in her life came on January 10, 1929 when world-renowned exiled Cuba revolutionary Julio Antonio Mella was assassinated while she walked with her hand in his arm.  He literally fell into her arms. She loved him as a man and shared his passion for the liberation of exploited people.  The assassination was associated with an intense Mexican government repression of the Communist Party in general and Tina in particular. 

    She was arrested on February 7, 1930 and held in solitary confinement for five days.  Then

    things really got bad!  She was brought to the Peniterciaria prison; know for its inhuman conditions.  She was put into a cell of steel and stone, with an iron bed that had no mattress, a filthy toilet, no electric light, rancid food, and allowed no visitors.  She was released after thirteen days and given two days to prepare to leave the country.  She was put onto a rat-invested ship for a thirty-four day journey to Europe; eventually entered Germany for a six-month sojourn, and in October 1930 she moved to the Soviet Union.

    In the Soviet Union she threw herself into the organization know as International Red Aid, which was an international social service organization, connected to the Communist International. The organization conducted campaigns in support of communist prisoners and gather material and humanitarian support for workers.  Fluent in six languages she started as a translator and writer.  Later these same facilities with languages lead her into international courier and intelligence work for the organization throughout Europe.

    When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, Tina was sent to Spain to organize Red Aid

    hospitals and other humanitarian services in support of the elected Republican government.  She worked with the famous Doctor Norman Bethune who invented the ‘mobile blood bank’ system that, for the first time in history, made blood transfusions in the field possible. Tina was with him administering aid on the Malaga-Allmeria highway where columns of women and children refugees trapped between sheer stone cliffs and the sea were strafed and bombed mercilessly by Fascist planes. 

    After the war, Tina managed to get back into Mexico with an illegal passport.  On January 5, 1942, at the age of 45, she passed away from a chronic heart condition.  A photo of her face while lying in casket shows a serenity that brings to mind her sitting alone in the Spanish village.  As then, the outward appearance of serenity contradicts the raging passion that characterized the life of Tina Modotti – ‘Some Kind of Lady!’

    ……….

    Italian Americans know so little about their history. They know so little about the insults and degradations foolish Italy heaped upon their grandparents, who in turn heroically shouldered their burden and created a new Italian culture in America.

    There is no culture without history!  There can be no Italian-American culture if there is no Italian-American history.  We get so exercised over our children getting College Board AP Italian credits.  We want them to know the language their grandparents never spoke; we want them to order food in Tuscany their grandparents never ate; we want them to see the Renaissance art works their grandparents never saw.  But, we don’t want them to know their grandparents!  Meanwhile, our diasporic history and culture continues MELTING into the POT!  From the point of view of Italian Americana: a child of Italian descent reading one of the many biographies of Tina Modotti has more value than knowing all the vocabulary, conjugations and inflections on an AP Italian test.  
  • Op-Eds

    Mafia Justice: Puzo and Aeschylus

    In recent years there have been countless books, films, documentaries, etc. produced about the ‘horrors’ of the Mafia. “Excellent Cadavers”; “Midnight in Sicily”; “Letizai Battagia Photographs of Sicily”; most recently,  “Another Corleone: Another Sicily” are just a few that come to mind.  Virtually all these productions are from the point of view of moral agents (good and just people) who have suffered at the hands of, and struggle against, amoral agents (bad and unjust people).  The world, in these works, is Manichaean: “the struggle between a good, spiritual world of light [idealism], and an evil, material world of darkness [power & greed].”  There is no moral ambiguity from this point of view.  Good is unequivocal, obvious, intuitive; so too Evil.  The Mafia is evil – “plain and simple”.  In the absence of moral ambiguity: right and wrong, just and unjust are not subject to discussion or debate – only indignation.  And, how could anyone possibly think otherwise reading and viewing the heart felt scenarios of pain and suffering of ostensively innocent (good) people at the hands of undoubtedly malicious (evil) Mafiosi. 

    However, there was a time in primordial Sicily when the moral world was not thought to be Manichaean; good and evil were not so obvious and intuitive, reality was morally ambiguous.  That was the time when Sicily was known as Magna Graecia.  Then suffering as a result of injustices was not, in the minds of philosophers and tragedians, a cause of indignation; rather, a call for contemplation – a quest for understanding.  For example, Greek-Sicilians by the thousands would flock to the theaters in Segesta, Taormina and Siracusa to see Tragic plays such as Aeschylus’ “Agamemnon” wherein the protagonist Clytemnestra soliloquized:

    “So in the twofold issue of the strife
    Mingle the victor’s shout, the captives’ moan.
    For all whom the sword has spared
    Cling weeping – some unto a brother slain,
    Some childlike to a nursing father’s form,
    And wail the loved and lost the while their neck
    …‘neath the captive’s chain.”

    “Strife, moaning, weeping and wailing” was the stuff of great poetry and drama in those times.  There was no thought to overcome or transcend them.  Rather, through “catharsis”, to come to a greater understanding, and learning to live and deal with their eternal presence.

    Similarly, Plato went to Sicily, as describe in the “Seventh Letter”, to advise leaders on the meaning and nature of ‘justice”, which was not thought to be intuitive and obvious.  Rather, it brought forth great speculative philosophy.  Plato’s dialogues like the “Gorgias” and “Republic” view ‘justice’ through a multifaceted prism – an ever metamorphic transforming reality.  Also, Thucydides’ narrative about the Sicilian front of the Peloponnesian War is laced with philosophic discourse about the nature of justice.  In short, “man’s inhumanity to man” in ancient Sicily was the stuff of great literature and philosophy.

    Today, there seems to be few remnants of those ancient philosophic roots in the commentary on Sicilian culture.  The “bedda martri” wail of a Sicilian widow or mother suffering from the unjust killing of an innocent husband or son does not conjure in us perplexity and wonder.  Neither does it call forth the poet or philosopher’s muse. Questions about why or how such terrors come to be does not provoke contemplation, art or philosophy.  There is no moral perplexity in a Manichaean world. Quite simply, unjust and innocent suffering happens because evil men in pursuit of material wealth and power victimize good men who struggle for an ideal. End of conversation!  There’s no more to be said; only remorse and indignation are warranted.

    Mario Puzo was an exception.  He carried a recessive philosophic gene of our ancestors and it manifested itself in the “Godfather” novel and movies.  He saw the complexity of morality and ambiguity in the milieu of Mafia cultural. 

    Italian film director Paolo Sorrentino criticized Francis Coppola for having “mythologized organized crime”.   Yes!  That is precisely the point - just as Greek tragedy is based on mythology.  Mythology is the genera of perennial and eternal issues; the incomprehensible issues that keep beckoning us to comprehend.  Tragedy dramatizes and puts mythology into a human context.  Tragedy is not sociology!  Sorrentino is a sociologist.  Puzo and Coppola are tragedians. To my mind, the philosophers, tragedians and their audiences in ancient Sicily would have reveled in the opening scene of the “Godfather".
    Amerigo Bonasera asked to meet with Mafioso Don Corleone to make a request.  Two young men

    had assaulted his daughter; “they beat her like an animal.”  She was a “beautiful and trusting girl.”  Now she will never be beautiful or trust people again.  She is physically and psychologically scared for life.  She reported the crime to the police.  The men were arrested, tried and convicted.  Then they were given a suspended sentence; essentially no punishment for the physical and psychological suffering inflicted on this innocent child. 

    In the spirit of Aeschylus, Plato and Thucydides, Puzo raises the question ‘what is justice?’  The whole of the novel and movie trilogy struggles with that question.  The answer is not obvious or intuitive or ever resolved.  Puzo like his ancient literary progenitors does not see the world as a Manichaean dichotomy wherein the diametric poles of good and evil are obvious; the choice between them easily made.

    Bonasera, in his words, “went to the police like a good American…I wanted to be a good American…[Yet] I stood in the courtroom like a fool and these bastards smiled at me as they walked free without punishment.  And, I said to my wife: We must go to Don Corleone for justice.”  The Mafioso replies:

    “[For years you avoided me] you thought you did not need me.  After all, the police guarded you, there were courts of law, you and yours could come to no harm. Now you come to me and say: ‘Don Corleone give me justice.’”  Again, Bonasera says: “ Yes, I ask you [Mafioso Corleone] for justice.” In short, he went to the Mafia for the justice that the American court, the State system of justice, had denied him.

    To appreciate Puzo’s ancient moral mindset in this scene, compare it to one in “Agamemnon”.  Note the similarity between Bonasera’s and Clytemnestra’s experience and response in the following:

    Clytemnestra’s husband Agamemnon sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia to the god Artemis to obtain a favorable wind to take the Greek fleet to Troy.  When he returned from Troy Clytemnestra brutally kills him.

    Clytemnestra appears, standing over the corpses of her husband. She declares that she has killed him to avenge Iphigenia:

    “This is the sum and issue of old strife,     [i.e. the pain of her daughter’s death]
    Of me deep –pondered and at length fulfilled. …
                                         [planned – not act of spontaneous passion]
    I trapped him.
    Then somte him… and at each wound
    He cried aloud…[with] each dying breath
    Flung from his breast… [a] rain of blood
    [Falling] upon me; and I was fain to feel
    That dew-not sweeter is the rain of heaven…
    I bid you to rejoice, …    [rejoice: this vicious killing is cause for celebration?]
    Justly-ay, more than justly-on his corpse     [justice is done?]

    When the Chorus chants lamentations, Clytemnestra responds:

    “O ye just men, who speak my sentence now …   
    Ye had not voice of old to launch such doom
    On him, my husband , when he held as light’
    My daughter’s life as that of sheep or goat…
                                               [judges had nothing to say when her child was slain]
    That deed of his [was ignored]…
    By ye, who then were dumb, [now] are stern to judge [me]…  
    My guilt thou harpest, o’er and o’er     [judges harp on her guilt but not Agamemnon]

    Chorus

    “Thou guiltless of this murder, thou!
    Who dares such thought avow”
                                     [Clytemnestra does not think she committed a crime; rather an act of justice]

    Clytemnestra responds

    “By the sword his sin he wrought,
    And by the sword himself is brought
    Among the dead to dwell”
     

    In sum, both Bonasera and Clytemnestra had innocent daughters brutalized for no just reason.  Both found the State system of justice oblivious to the crimes - the judge in Bonasera’s case and the “just men” in Clytemnestra’s.  Both had to go outside the State for ‘justice’ – Mafia justice, if you will.

    Moving from literature to real life biography, Peter Mass in his biography of New York Mafioso Sammy ‘The Bull’ Gravano relates a similar story of State vs. Mafia justice.  When Sammy was 13 years old, he was working in the office of his father’s dress manufacturing shop.  Two Irish men came in demanding ‘pay-offs’ from his father or else harm would come to him.  After they left, Sammy was emotional.  His father seemed completely unfazed.  He told Sammy not to worry he would talk to Zuvito.  When the men came back the next day, they were completely different.  “Why didn’t you tell us Zuvito is you “compare’?  We’re sorry.  We apologize. Don’t forget, please tell Zuvito we were here, and that we apologized.” 

    Zuvito was a Mafioso.  Sammy’s father did not feel that he could get protection from the State’s police.  Like Bonasera and Clytemnestra he did not feel that the State was willing or capable of dealing with the injustice that would have been done to him and his family.   Justice could only prevail outside of the State’s system.

    In all three of these scenarios (Clytemnestra , Bonasera  and Garvano ) the role of the State in defining and administering justice is called into question.  The great tragedian Sophocles, in his tragedy “Ajax”, specifically addresses ‘State Justice’.  Menelaus’ says:

    “Never can the laws have prosperous course in a [State] where dread hath no place; nor can  [it] be ruled discreetly … if it lacks the guarding force of fear and reverence…where there is license to insult and act at will, doubt not that such a State…sinks into the depths.”

    The Irishmen who came into the Garvano office had no “dread, fear or reverence” for the laws the State.  They were free to “act with license, insult and at will.” 

    The boys who assaulted Bonasera’s daughter had no “dread, fear or reverence” for the laws of the State. They were free to “act with license, insult and at will.”

    Agamemnon had no “dread, fear or reverence” for the laws of the State. He was free to “act with license, insult and at will.”

    It was only when the “dread, fear and reverence” of the Mafia was brought to bear that justice prevailed for Mr. Garvano.  And, the role of “dread, fear and reverence” in the administration of justice is a theme of the “Godfather” and “Agamemnon”.

    Today, the Camorra in Naples, the Ndrangheta in Calabria and the Mafia in Sicily, have no “dread, fear or reverence” for the laws the State.  They are free to “act with license, insult and at will.” Manichaeans describe and explain these criminal phenomena as the forces of darkness and evil prevailing over goodness and light.  Philosophers and tragedians wonder about the role of the State in this ramped criminality.  For example, 150 years after the Risorgimento, does Rome still govern as though “Italy ends at the Garigliano”?  Just a thought!
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    Italian American Culture: Robert Venturi vs. Frankie Valli


    Anthony Tamburii wrote: “We need to take our [Italian American] culture more seriously. We simply cannot continue to engage in a series of reminiscences that lead primarily to nostalgic recall. Instead, we need to revisit our past… and reconcile it with our present.”


    The “nostalgic recall” he refers to, I believe, is an attempt by post ‘Little Italy’ Italian Americans to redefine their Italian identity.  It seems to me, Italian Americans are struggling to find Italianita threads; i.e. objects, people, signs, and images that represent symbols of what it means to be Italian.  They are seeking the cultural threads that connect the 19th century southern Italian /Sicily peasant culture with the early 20th century urban “Little Italy” culture with the present 21st century suburban culture. Italian Americans have a profound sense of being Italian, but cannot articulate what it means to be Italian; they are not Italian nationals (nor do they what to be) and they are no long residents of “Little Italy”(nor can they be).


    Below, I suggest, the biographies and work of Italian American artisans Robert Venturi and Frankie Vallie’s “The Four Seasons” brings to light one such Italianita thread that connects today’s Italian Americans with their progenitors, and may help us define our Italianess in post “Little Italy” America.

    ----------

    Recently I happened upon some library books by and about the architect Robert Venturi.  I explored the books and frankly I was not impressed with his work. I found it to be uninspiring, uncreative – dare I say – boring.  As it turns out, I’m not the only one. 


    The renowned architect Philip Johnson wrote about the plans Venturi (et al) submitted for the 1967 Brooklyn Housing Project competition:


    “To the majority [of judges], of which I was one, [the Venturi and Rauch-Kawasaki submission] seemed a pair of very ugly buildings.  We felt…that the buildings looked like the most ordinary apartment construction built all over Queens and Brooklyn since the Depression, that the placing of the blocks was ordinary and dull” (LFL ‘72 p135)


    Interestingly, such lack of beauty and inspiring form in Venturi’s work was not to his mind a failure, rather a manifestation of his design philosophy.  He specifically rejects ‘beauty’ as an architectural criterion.  He says:


    “[I] use ‘ugly and ordinary’ (boring, if you will) elements in a building like Guild House –brick, sash window, the TV antenna – to give a realistic expression of the use of the building and a meaning familiar to the inhabitants.  Actually the term ‘ugly and ordinary’ derived from a derisive description of our Transportation Square office-building project in Washington, D.C., which we adopted as a positive slogan.” (interview p147)


    In short, Venturi’s goal as an architect is to achieve structures that are ‘ugly’, ‘boring’ and ‘ordinary.’  Respectfully, I think a survey of his work demonstrates that he is very successful in achieving those objectives. 


    When I think of 20th century Italian names in architecture; names like Pietro Belluschi and Aldo Rossi come to mind.  Venturi doesn’t remotely approach their creativity. Compare, for example, the brickwork on Venturi’s much discussed Guild House with that of Belluschi’s St Philip Neri Catholic Church and you will understand what Ventrui means by ‘ugly and ordinary’ verses, what I would call, a quest for eloquence and beauty. More generally, perhaps because he rejects ‘beauty’, there is nothing about Venturi’s work that conjures in me a sense of Italianita, a sense of being Italian.


    If any single characteristic permeates the culture of the Italian people it’s ‘beauty’.  From per-Roman mosaics to Renaissance frescos and sculpture to contemporary Milan fashions to the vegetable and flower gardens of my Italian neighbors, the 2500-year history of Italian culture is differentiate and defined, to my mind, by a single concept - ‘fa bella figura’.  Even our gangsters try to “show some class.”  Venturi’s explicit rejection of beauty as a characteristic of architecture made me wondered if he was Italian in name only.


    However, according to Sal Primeggia, who kindly responded to an H-ItAm inquire I posted; Robert Venturi's father had migrated in 1890 from the town of Attesa, Abruzzi. His mother’s parents came from Puglia. Venturi is absolutely Italian.  The apparent contradiction of a hundred percent Italian American artisan rejecting beauty was perplexing and in turn lead me to reflect on the nature of Italian American culture.


    Nature and Nurture


    Psychologists say an individual’s behavior, ideology and indeed total Being is the product of ‘nature’ (genetics) and ‘nurture’ (environment).  While, Mr. Venturi’s ‘nature’, per his parent’s nationality, was very much Italian, his biography indicates that his ‘nurture’ was very much not Italian American. 


    Young Robert Venturi attended school at the Episcopal Academy in Merion, Pennsylvania. “The Episcopal Academy, founded in 1785, is a private school for grades Pre-K through 12 and has been consistently ranked as a top private school in the nation by various media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal.” 


    Notable alumni include:

    Lionel Barrymore - 1931 Academy Award winner for Best Actor

    Richard Harding Davis - Managing Director of Harper's Weekly.

    R.W.B. Lewis - professor of English at Yale, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize

    John C. Bell, Jr. - Pennsylvania Governor and Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief Justice


    Significantly, in the much longer list of notable alumni, Venturi is the only Italian name.  Venturi then went on to graduate summa cum laude from Princeton University; again, not a school where Italian Americans are generally found. In short, his education is not what one would call the ‘nurturing’ of ‘the typical Italian American boy’.


    Further, he married far removed from Italian Americana: Denise Scott Brown, a Rhodesian born Jewish woman who went to a South African university and came to America via London.  An architect, she became his colleague in teaching, business and design.  Also, Venturi’s professional life was not characteristic of Italian Americans.  Relatively few Italian Americans get teaching positions in Ivy League Universities.  Venturi taught at three Ivy League Schools: University of Pennsylvania, Yale School of Architecture, and Harvard University's Graduate School of Design.


    In sum, while he was very much Italian by ‘nature’, the life (nurturing) of Robert Ventrui was not remotely similar to Italian Americans generally.  In statistical parlance, if one were to randomly sample the population of Italian American males, Venturi would be a very atypical “outlier” – indeed.


    “The Four Seasons”


    At the same time I was reading about Venturi and wondering about the absence of Italianita and the quest for beauty in his work, I went to see the fantastic stage musical production “Jersey Boys” about the lives of Frankie Valli’s group “The Four Seasons.”  WOW! If you want an example of creativity, passion, and the pursuit of beauty, one would be hard pressed to do better than those four Italian American boys from Little Italy neighborhoods in New Jersey.


    Tommy Devito, the founder of the group quit high school in the 8th grade.  His family was so poor during the Depression that he would steal milk. The other members of the group came from similar backgrounds.  In short, the “nurturing” of the Four Seasons’ singers was very different than Robert Venturi’s, and much more typical of Italian American males through the 1950’s.  In statistical parlance: if one where to randomly sample Italian American males of Devito’s generation, the nurturing experiences of Four Season’s singers would be close to the mean.


    Street Corner Society


    Near to the last scene of “Jersey Boys”, the Frankie Valli character, reflecting on the phenomenal success of the group, waxes nostalgic and harkens back to his singing origins “under a street light”.  Immediately what came to my mind were the two great anthropological studies of Italian Americana: W. F. Whyte’s “Street Corner Society” and H.J. Gans’ “The Urban Villagers”.  The lives of the four Italian American boys who created the music of The Four Seasons were quintessential examples of the Italian Americans described in those great social scientific studies.  They were ‘urban villages’ whose social life centered on ‘street corners.’

     

    In sum, the present day culture of the Italian American people is the product of the 19th century peasant culture of southern Italy and Sicily modified by the early 20th century ‘urban village’ culture of American Little Italies.  I’m wondering if the architecture of Robert Venturi does not speak to me of Italianita because, unlike the Four Seasons, he was insulated from and did not absorb the historic ‘bella figura’ culture of Italy as it was filtered through American Little Italies.  Given his Italian bloodline and his masterful craftsmanship, I can’t help but wonder what ‘beautiful’ things he might have designed had he gone to public school, hung out on a street corner, and studied architecture at a Community College – just a thought.


    Finally, Anthony Tamburii writes: “We need to be sure that our progeny is aware of our culture.”  To my mind, the most important thing we can teach our children about Italian American culture: whatever endeavors private or public, humble or grand, cultivating a fig tree or carving marble – ‘make it beautiful.’  In our efforts to redefine what it means to be Italian Americans, ‘fa bella figura’ is a very good place to begin –indeed!


    Tom Verso
  • Op-Eds

    Thinking about American Italian Identity - R. D. Lang and Gabriella Gribaudi’s Theory of “The Other”




    After graduating high school I worked as a mason apprentice for immigrant Italian masons.   One day an Anglo American on our crew (wondering if I was “off the boat”) asked what my nationality was.  Almost perplexed by the question, I said “American!”, in a tone that implied “of course, why would you ask?”   At which point one of the “off the boat” Italians started to laugh and said: “What you write on paper is American.  What’s in your veins is Italian.” 


    I had no idea what he was talking about, and given that ‘profound fatigue’ is a ‘rite of passage’ into the ranks of Italian masons, I was too tired to explicate the poet-mason’s metaphor.  It was lunchtime, and my only interest was eating the delicious lunch my mother prepared for me: soppressata, pecorino, olives, focaccia, and cuchidahti.


    More recently, I periodically meet with former high school friends.  We are all full-blooded Italians (i.e. four grandparents “off the boat”) who are proud of and live our Italian heritage.  At a recent meeting, one of the fellows brought a 1956 yearbook from the high school we attended.  As it made its way around the table the overwhelming fascination that became the subject of conversation was how many Italians went to our school.  The question that arose in my mind: Why, 50+ years later, were we surprised to see “so many Italians” in the high school we attended? What's more interesting, the high school was a neighborhood school (i.e. before busing) and the neighborhood was a quintessential "Little Italy Urban Village" where the original pre-WW I immigrants (e.g. our grandparents) were still very much present. Yet, while going to our Italian neighborhood high school, we were not conscious of the student population’s preponderant Italian composition.


    The significance of these two anecdotes is that the grandchildren of pre-WW I Italian immigrants growing up in a post WW II “Little Italy”, had not developed an Italian consciousness. We were not aware of our Italianness while living in an Italian environment.  The question then is; when did we become conscious of being Italian and why?


    There is a social-psychological theory that may explain this phenomena of latent and belated Italian identity and may have significant implications for the future of American Italianita.


    The Existential Psychologist R.D Lang posited: “All ‘identities’ require an Other: some other in and through a relationship with whom self-identity is actualized.” (“Self and Others” 1999 p. 66 emp.+). 


    Similarly, Gabriella Gribaudi (University of Naples Professor of History and Sociology) writes: “An identity is the product of a comparison. Whenever one imagines an 'Other', one starts with categories and images which reflect the culture of the society in which one was born and lives...” (“Images of the South” in “Italian Cultural Studies: An Introduction” David Forgacs, Robert Lumley; Oxford University Press, 1996. p 72 emp+)


    In short, my friends and I did not develop an Italian identity until we left our “Little Italy village” and encountered the Other (i.e. non-Italians).  Once we encounter the Other, we began to “reflect [upon] the culture of the society in which [we were] born and lived.”  


    For example, my first memory of an Italian identity encounter with a non-Italian Other came when I was 16 and got my drivers license.  Some friends and I drove across town to a teen hangout in a non-Italian neighborhood. In the course of conversations, one of the Other boys mentioned our high school football team that dominated the city league for years.  We gloated.  He laughed and said his high school could hardly field a team and when it does, they never win.  However, he went on to note that his school won more scholarships than any other school in the city. Our football 'tough guy' response, essentially: "So what! Who cares!"


    Then came the Italian identity encounter.  He went on to say; first, that we had such a good football team because we were (succinctly paraphrasing) an “Italian School” and second, his school led the city in college scholarships because it was (succinctly paraphrasing) a “Jewish School.” My fiends and I had virtually no previous encounter with Jewish culture; there were no Jewish students in our high school and no Jewish owned stores or synagogues in our neighborhood.  Further, we never thought our football prowess had anything to do with our Italian grandparents. 


    Moreover, we did not understand the social-psychological significance of what had transpired.  An Italian identity had been foisted upon us by a non-Italian Other.  We were forced to think about our ethnicity.  However, it was an ephemeral identity moment, and soon we were back in our ‘village’ telling the guys on the corner about the girls across town.


    The last year of high school was punctuated by such periodic forays out of the village into the non-Italian Other world.  Each encounter with the Other brought a glimmer of Italian identity.  However, it was not until we left high school and entered the Other’s world in earnest that we became fully aware of our Italianness.  For many Italian American boys in the 1950’s and 60’s, the first totally comprehensive enveloping encounter with the Other came in the military.  Those were the days of the draft and the draft meant the Army.


    The Army constituted a profound Italian identity consciousness-raising encounter with the Other.  Beginning with Food! Within hours of getting to an Army base a meal is served.  Needless to say there was a profound difference between the food Italian Americans were accustomed to and what was served in the Army.  This difference made us conscious that food in our homes was Italian.  Prior to the Army, we did not think of our home cooking as Italian.  It was just the food that we ate.  Only when we encountered the Other’s food did we, in Gribaudi’s words, "... [engage] categories and images which reflect the culture of the society in which [we were] born and lived...” In short, we began to think about what Italian food was and, in turn, what it meant to be Italian.


    Further, the encounter with the Army Other was not limited to an individual self-awareness of Italianness.  Experiences with the Other were the basis for a community of Italians from all over the country.  For example, all the Italians, no matter were they were from, laughed at the putty like spaghetti with “tomato soup poured over it”, and the southerners who eat it vigorously wondering why the [Aye]talians didn't like it. Soon we found that no matter what city or part of the country we came from, we shared a common culture.  Not just food. We spoke a common idiom punctuated with Italian words and phrase.  We knew the same jokes about priest and nuns. We played the same card games. We had tempers that would flash for the same reasons.  In short, we found out that we were Italians we were different from the Other.


    After the service we went to work with the Other and lived in the same suburbs with the Other.  Many Italians became the Other.  That is to say, they lost their Italian culture and “melted”, as it were, into the “pot” - soft sliced bread purchased at supermarkets replaced crusty Italian loaves from bakeries. 


    However, in my community, I see significant evidence of nostalgia that is bringing my generation back together celebrating their Italianness.  From small weekly breakfast club meetings to large semimonthly lunches that draw ‘hundreds’, there is a magnitude of Italian esprit that I have never seen before.  I write monthly articles for an Italian American newsletter.  Whenever I write about one of the old “Little Italy” neighborhoods, I get phone calls and e-mails from people telling me how much they enjoyed the article and how they wish they could go back to those days.


    In short, after about fifty years of living and working in the Other’s world, we have an Italian identity that we never had when we lived isolated in our Italian ‘villages’.


    However, the fascinating question remains about the Americans of Italian descent who are the great-grandchildren (about age 30-40) and the great-great-grandchildren (about age 20-30) of the pre-WW I immigrants.  They have no living memory of the immigrants or “Little Italy”.  They were born and raised in the Other’s world.  Indeed, raised in the Other’s family.  As a result of mixed marriages, “what’s in their veins” is not all Italian.  A child with only one Italian parent will be inculcated in part with non-Italian cultural.


    The generation of pre-WWI immigrant’s grandchildren is passing. In 20 years, there will be no more gatherings such as I described above.  When we project the future, what do we see? Will there be an Italian American culture?  What will it look like? Are we witnessing the twilight of Italian American culture born in the beginning of the 20th century and ending in the beginning of 21st? Is Italian American culture a Phoenix that will rise again from the ashes of the previous generations?  Interesting!






     
  • Art & Culture

    “Mount Allegro” revisited in terms of Gribaudi and Dickie’s historiography


     

    The essence of the "historian's craft" is to describe and explain past social phenomena based on information about the phenomena in documents (e.g. newspapers, government statistics, letters, literature, etc).  The first lesson that an historian must learn before 'putting pen to paper' is that “with pen and paper anyone can write anything.”   Accordingly, a document cannot be thought of as a 'mirror to society’.  Documents are not necessarily accurate descriptions of persons, places, events, etc.; they may contain errors of: omission, exaggeration, computation, ‘flat-out’ lies, etc.  Excellence in the historian’s craft is the ability to identify errors contained in documents and differentiate true statements from false.


    Recently, two historians of southern-Italian society have written about the need to critique documents in terms of how prior “images” and “stereotypes” of the South affect writers’ descriptions of southern Italy.  For example, Gabriella Gribaudi, in her essay “Images of the South”, wrote: “The Southern question continues to be discussed as… pre-existing stereotypes… [and] ..images…(see: “Italian Cultural Studies: An Introduction” by David Forgacs, Robert Lumley p 72-74;  emp.+) 


    Similalry, John Dickie in has book “Darkest Italy - The Nation and Stereotypes of the Mezzogiorno, 1860-1900”), wrote: “…representations of the South from the centers of political and cultural power in Liberal Italy were informed by a repertoire of stock images…[and] stereotypes …[e.g.] illiteracy, superstition, corruption, brigandages, dirt, disease, idleness, ‘mafiosita’…” ( emp. +, p 1)


    Translating the terms “images” and “stereotypes” into epistemological concepts, I understand them to mean ‘a priori assumptions’.  That is, prior to any empirical observations of the object in question, the observer assumes certain characteristics (images, stereotypes) are inherent in the object and ignores evidence to the contrary.  Accordingly, what Gribaudi and Dickie are saying, is that much writing about southern-Italy post 1860 are not completely objective observations; rather, manifestations of the writer’s unquestioned, presumed to be true, a priori assumptions (images and stereotypes) even when evidence to the contrary is available.


    For example, Dickie writes about documents created by travelers:


    "The perceptions of the traveler in strange territory, it need hardly be said, are never wholly spontaneous or immaculate.  Travel is a culturally saturated experience, structured through powerful precedents...." (p7 )


    The purpose of this note is to consider the document “Mount Allegro”, a book written by the American traveler Jerre Mangione, in the context of Gribaudi and Dickie’s historiographic principles. The book is essentially in two parts:  First and primarily, a reminiscence of Mangione’s childhood family and neighborhood.  Second, his trip to Sicily “…to look at the earth of my ancestors and meet [the relatives my Rochester family] left behind.” (p239) 


    When reading this book (document) it is especially important to keep foremost in mind Dickies characterization of a traveler:


    “The perceptions of the traveler in strange territory are never wholly spontaneous or immaculate.  Travel is a culturally saturated experience”. 


    Thus, it should not be assumed Mr. Mangione’s report is an accurate representation of reality (‘mirror of society’).  This is not to say or imply that Mr. Mangione was consciously deceptive and misleading.  Rather, as Gribaudi and Dickie note, a reader has to take into consideration “pre-existing paradigms, images and stereotypes” affecting the writer’s point of view.  Reading “Mount Allegro”, one should especially be on guard about such affects, for there is not even agreement about whether the book is fiction or factual autobiography.


    “Mount Allegro was first published as a work of fiction, over Mangione's protest.  Despite this initial confusion, Mount Allegro survived to acquire the appropriate subtitle: A Memoir of Italian American Life.” (“Italian Signs, American Streets”  p79)  Also, in 1960, highly esteemed and prolific Rochester City Historian Blake McKelvey referred to “Jerre Mangione’s reminiscent novel, Mount Allegro”. 


    For purposes of this discussion, it is important to note that while Mangione claims that he is describing his family and neighborhood in Rochester, NY, there is absolutely nothing that is factually denoted and therefore verifiable.  All the names of people are admittedly fictitious.  Further, all the streets, factories, churches, schools, etc. that the writer refers to are nameless.  It is impossible to verify anything that the writer says about his family, neighborhood or city. 


    On a personnel note, I was born, raised and have lived in Rochester my whole life.  If I had not read interviews with Mangione in Rochester newspapers, I would not know that the book was about Rochester or what neighborhood Mangione lived in.  This is especially significant because as it turns out, I knew the so called “Mount Allegro” neighborhood well, and from time to time visited people a short walk away from the Mangione house. Again, this is not to say Mangione was untruthful.  On the contrary, there is no way to know if he is truthful or not.  The reader can believe or not believe.  But, the reader cannot know.


    When reading the section of the book dealing with his Sicilian trip, Mangione’s “pre-existing paradigms, images and stereotypes” and his travel being a “culturally saturated experience, structured through powerful precedents” are blatant and unequivocally stated.  He is a passionate anti-Fascist who wrote for the American Communist publication “The New Masses.”  This is not to say or imply that he was a Communist.  Rather, associating himself with writers such as, the renown Communist editor of “The New Masses”, Whittaker Chambers is indicative of how passionately anti-Fascist Mangione was at the time of his 1936 Sicilian trip, when in his words: “there was Fascism all over Italy.  In my years of becoming an American I had come to understand the evil of Fascism and hate it with all my soul.”


    Also, the reader should wonder about the son of an immigrant who graduated from Syracuse University during the Great Depression.  Such an education would have put him in a very small and elite group of educated Americans in general and an unheard of level of education for children of Italian immigrants at the time of the Depression.  Nevertheless, given this excellent education, he shows an incredible lack of knowledge of the history and historic conditions of Sicily.


    Mr. Mangione manifests his anti-Fascist and unhistorical presuppositions of Sicily by stating or implying that observed negative aspects of Sicily are caused by the Fascist while ignoring long pre-Fascist history of those same problems.  This results in significant misrepresentations of the historic reality of Sicily.


    For example, he writes:

    “I had come to Sicily expecting to see green meadow softly undulating hills, and long stretches of vegetation…. Within an hour after I took the train from Palermo to Girgenti I was plunged into a Wagnerian maze of naked solid-rock mountains…the Gates of Hades, indeed.” 


    HADES INDEED!!! He seems totally unaware that the train from Palermo to Girgenti went straight through the former sulfur-mining regions of Sicily that left the land blighted.  Indeed, he more than likely went through the town of Campofanco were 25 years earlier Booker T. Washington saw and described in great detail the hideous mining conditions that the de facto enslaved children of Sicily were subjected to in HADES.  Further, Mangione’s family came from Girgenti.  Didn’t anyone tell him that this was the port where the sulfur mined by those slave children in HADES was loaded on to ships? 


    He wrote that before going to Sicily he “read   books ... historians … Pindar, Asechylus, Archimedes and Empedocles.”  If he had read something more contemporary he would have learned that these child slave mines were own and operated by the “ANGLO-Sicilian Sulphur Mining Company which was exempted from taxation and legal dues, and The Bank of Sicily was obligated to make advances to them for up to four-fifths of the value of sulfur in warehouses.”  All of this long before anyone heard of Mussolini and the Fasicst. (see: Britannica 1911 vol. 25 p 22)


    Further, Mangione gives no indication that he knows anything about the agricultural regions of Sicily.  For example, just 35 miles west of Girgenti, is the town of  Sambuca di Sicilia where Donna R. Gabccia did her study of 19th century western Sicilian agrotowns.  She describes the “Physical Setting” of such agrotowns as “surrounded by corona oasis of greenery.” (“From Sicily to Elizabeth Street” 1984 p13)


    Another a-historical presentation is his rightful condemnation of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia.  However, he leaves the impression that this is a manifestation of Fascism per se; when in fact Italy under a Liberal government invaded Ethiopia in 1895 and suffered a major military defeat in 1896 at the Battle of Adowa, where Italian dead and missing numbered 7,000 and the Africans many thousands more.


    In short, Mangione does not seem to understand that Mussolini and the Fascist he hates so much may be in Hell.  But, they may not be alone.  The pre-Fascist Liberal politicians may be there also atoning for the sins they committed against the people and children of Sicily and Africa in their effort to enrich their corporate patrons.  As Jesse Jackson so eloquently observed about the American political system, “It makes no difference whether you are riding a donkey or an elephant, if they are both going in the same direction.” 


    One final example of Mangione seeing only what his presuppositions allow him to see is his mocking tone of Fascist’s attempt to get Italy’s trains to run on time.  Even though he lived a few blocks from the New York Central Railroad and could hear the fright trains from his house, he does not appreciate the role that efficient train systems played in the development of the American industrial system.  He does not seem to understand that Italy could not become a modern industrial power without an efficient train system.  And, again, he shows no understanding that long before Fascist came to power, the Liberal governments of Italy poured enormous resources into the train system.  For example, the Italian Parliament in 1884 passed a railroad bill called the “Convenzioni” in an effort to increase railroad construction and efficiency.  Again, in 1905 the Parliament acted with the creation of Ferrovie dello Stato (State Railroads). 


    In sum, Mangione’s book is probably best read as a good novel.  But, as a description of Sicilians in Rochester and the culture of Sicily it is seriously wanting.  I could never understand why it is held in such high esteem by the Italian American literati.  But, let’s face it, how many Italian Americans have become Ivy League professors?  In the American University system, if it’s Ivy it must be good. Nay more – Great!

    Addendum notes


    1. None of the above should be construed as criticizing Mangione’s rightfully justified hatred of Fascism.  The evils of Fascism are a matter of historic record.  There is no debate about that.  When the book was first published in 1942, thousands of American born sons of Italian immigrants were fighting Fascist in North Africa and Italy; many from Rochester and a few from my family.  The value of their sacrifice is never in doubt and always appreciated.


    Nevertheless, if the historian is going to accurately get at the factual reality of a society, then s/he is obligated to differentiate ideological value judgments and presuppositions from factual propositions. It does not matter if the document was created in 1942 A.D. America, or 1942 B.C. Egypt. The same historiographic concepts, methods and techniques are applied to the analysis of the document in an effort to know the society in question.


    Objective history demonstrates that Fascism, unlike “Athena”, did not “leap from the head of Zeus a complete form.”  Rather it evolved and metamorphosed from prior social, political and economic preconditions.  If the evils of Fascism are to be avoided in the future, then those preconditions must be understood and acted upon. Only objective historical studies can inform and alert society about those preconditions. If the pre-Fascist Italian governments had not been sanguine about eating the children of Sicily or introducing colonial ideology into the social milieu, perhaps the people of Sicily would not have be so susceptible to Mussolini’s rhetoric.


    Students of history seeking to know and understand the reality of Sicilian history must be able to differentiate ideological rhetoric from factual reality. Further, it is this writer’s opinion that the strongest ideological debates are based on facts.  The factual shortcomings of Fascism were legion.  The best way to discredit it or any malicious ideology is with facts, not more ideology.


    2.  Forty years and five editions after the first publication, Mangione added a “Finale” chapter that clearly identifies his childhood neighborhood long after the immigrants had passed away, their children moved away, houses and streets bulldozed away, and city officials going out of their way to heap accolades on the Ivy League professor son of the city, and placing a historic marker in the neighborhood no more distinguished than other city neighborhoods just because a book was written about it.  There are no historic markers honoring the people in the truly homogeneous “Little Italy” neighborhoods consisting of the cities largest ethnic population up to the 1950s.  Also, he wrote the “Finale” while in Sweet Briar, Virginia – so not Rochester!
  • Op-Eds

    Southern Italy Patriarchal Family: The evidence and critique of Gabriella Gribaudi’s counter argument


    In my 5/16 blog entry “Sinatra – the dialogue with Joey Skee continues,” I wrote: “…paternalism was a part of southern Italian culture. That, I believe, is an empirically verifiable proposition; at least I am aware of a great deal of empirical data to that effect.”  In the comments section, the following request was made: “Please provide the data you have.


    It is the purpose of this note to describe the evidence supporting the contention that southern Italian family structure, at the time of the great migration circa 1880-1920, was patriarchal.  Part I will describe the evidence. Part II will discuss its veracity in terms Gabriella Gribaudi’s counter-contention, that patriarchy was not representative of southern Italy, in her article “Images of the South” published in an anthology “Italian Cultural Studies: An Introduction”, edited by David Forgacs, Robert Lumley; Oxford University Press, 1996


    Part I The Evidence


    ORAL HISTORY:


    I am old enough (and fortunate enough) to have know the pre-WW I southern Italian immigrants.  As a boy I experienced the behavior of immigrant grandparents, relatives, neighbors, etc., and I listened to their recollections of southern Italy.  Reflecting, as an adult, on those experiences and stories left me with a distinct sense that the patriarch family (“the man is the head of the household”) was the norm in southern Italy.  Virtually, all the southern Italian families with which I was familiar manifested some degree of patriarchism.  One example to illustrate:  I worked in a grocery store owned by a southern Italian immigrant.  His wife worked in the store with him and their children.  One day one of the daughters took her mother in her car to shop or visit or some such innocuous event.  The mother had been reluctant to go.  They were speaking Italian and I did not understand what was transpiring.  At the time the husband/father was not in the store.  When he returned and was told that his wife had gone off with his daughter in the car, he was incensed.  When the wife and daughter returned a short time later he vented his anger.  Again, it was all in Italian and I didn’t know what was going on.  Later, I asked the daughter what happened and she told me that he never wanted her mother to go any place without him.  She said, contemptuously: “He thinks he’s still in Italy.”   I saw variations on this family patriarch theme many times in many families in my youth.  This is not to say I saw many family arguments.  Indeed, there were few such arguments. Rather, the tacit patriarchal rules were accepted and governed behavior by consent or tradition.


    TRAVELER’S REPORT


    When I began reading books about Italy, I found traveler’s reports that reinforced this patriarch perception.  For example, Booker T. Washington traveling in Sicily in 1910 wrote:


    “Sicilian women, who are looked upon by the men as inferior creatures and guarded by them as a species of property, live like prisoners in their own villages. Bound fast, on the one hand, by age-long customs, and on the other surrounded by a wall of ignorance which shuts out from them all knowledge of the outer world, they live in a sort of mental and moral slavery under the control of their husbands”


    And: “For this reason, the journey to America is for the woman of Sicily a real emancipation. In fact, I do not know of any more important work that is going on for the emancipation of women anywhere than that which is being done, directly and indirectly, through the emigration from Sicily and Italy to the United States, in bringing liberty of thought to the women of Southern Italy”


    LITRATURE


    Also, I found patriarch representations in literature; e.g. Lampadusa’s “Leopard” being the quintessential patriarch.  Also, in Sciascia: one scene in particular comes to mind from “The Ransom”.  The guest says to the Don: “May we have a word in private…Mother and daughter arose … and at a nod from Don Raimndo left the room... Later, Don Raimondo sent the maid to inform the ladies that they might return.”


    INDIGIOUS REPORTS


    Gabriella Gribaudi, reports on southern student surveys she conducted: “I have examined students of contemporary history at the University of Naples on a text which amongst other things dealt with the family in European history. I tried many times to ask students what type of family they thought was prevalent in Southern society, and they all replied: the patriarchal family”.  


    SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC REPORTS


    In that same article, she reports the work of Edward Banfield, “an anthropologist and political scientist, who lived with his family for a year in a poor and isolated village in Basilicata.”  He to saw “extended patriarchal and patrilineal family” characteristics of southern Italian families.


    Such is the type of evidence (but not limited to these anecdotes) that I base my characterization/generalization of southern Italian families as patriarchal.


    Part II Veracity of Evidence


    The above evidence does not prove beyond a doubt the patriarchal family structure of southern Italy.  Indeed, in the very same article cited, Gabriella Gribaudi challenged virtual all of the evidence I presented and concluded the opposite; i.e. southern Italian families were not patriarchal. I will revisit each of the above categories of evidence in terms of Prof. Gribaudi’s interpretation and, in turn respond to her.


    1. Literary evidence


    The literary examples I cite (and the many more that could be cited) depicting southern patriarchal families, would be considered irrelevant by Prof. Gribaudi because they depict aristocratic/bourgeois families, which she concedes are patriarchal but not representative of southern families.  She writes: “…patriarchal family practically does not exist [in the south] (if one excludes bourgeois and aristocratic families of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, which were in any case patriarchal throughout Europe at that time).”  


    She provides no historiographic or epistemological justification (or references) for excluding a whole body of documentary evidence and a whole segment of the society described in those documents from the analysis and characterization of southern Italian society.  She simply stipulates that southern aristocratic/bourgeois patriarchy is not representative of the south.  Rather, it seems Southern Italian aristocratic/bourgeois families are a European class that just happen to live in the south of Italy.  They are ‘in’ but not ‘part of’ southern Italian society. I wonder: what about the European class characteristics of southern peasants; e.g. feudal?  To the extent that southern Italian peasants are part of a feudal economy, should they be considered part of Europe and removed from analysis and characterization of southern Italian society.  More generally, should any group manifesting class characteristics that are trans-national be excluded from the analysis and characterization of the society they live in?


    Accordingly, until sound historiographic or epistemological justification is provided to the contrary, I believe that the historian’s motto that “no document can be ignored”, when describing the society that produced those documents, should prevail.  Otherwise, the historian could, as they say, “cherry pick” the evidence; i.e. pick and chose the evidence that supports his/her contentions.  In sum, if there is a literary pattern representing patriarchal families in the society such as seen in Lampedusa, Sciascia, etc., then that pattern must be taken into consideration and reconciled with other evidence when analyzing and characterizing that society. It cannot simply be ignored (‘ruled out of court’ – so to speak).


    2 Observational evidence


    Examples of three categories of observation were described above reporting patriarchal patterns of (non aristocratic/bourgeois) families: mine, Neapolitan student’s and Booker T. Washington’s.  They also are not relevant by Prof. Gribaudi’s standards because they are not reports of experts.  In her words: “The experts in the field are practically the only ones who avoid this mystification.”  This is a classic example of the fallacy argumentum ad verecundiam (Latin: argument to respect) or ipse dixit (Latin: he himself said it) or its reciprocal ‘ad hominem attack’.  In short, Prof. Gribaudi is an expert, therefore what she says is true; or, you are not an expert therefore what you say is false.


    Even if one grants such a self-serving epistemology, what about Edward Banfield, “an anthropologist and political scientist, who lived with his family for a year in a poor and isolated village in Basilicata”?  Is he not an expert?


    In sum, according the Professor, anyone who does not agree with her observations is either not qualified to make the observation or if qualified like Banfied is wrong.


    3. The Truth according to Gribaudi.


    “[W]omen have a 'traditional' power [in the South] which is unquestionably greater than that of other Italian women -- division of wealth between the sexes according to an equitable method, careful protection of the dowry throughout a woman's life and its direct inheritance by her children, enormous moral and contractual power within the family, and so forth.”


    To my mind none of these descriptions of southern Italian women negates the proposition that southern Italian families were patriarchal.  To say that a family is patriarchal does not imply that women have no power or prerogatives.  Rather, those powers and rights are subordinate to the patriarch’s.  For example, in the store were I worked, the wife was a very tough de facto manger of the day-to-day operation of the store.  Similarly, she held a great deal of sway over the running of the household and raising the children.  However, these rights and powers were exercised in a context determined by the husband, which in turn were determined by tradition.  For example, the decision to own a store or to sell the store where his and his alone. Decisions about what was appropriate behavior of wife and children, etc. were his and his alone to make.  He may be cajoled. But, he could not be ignored.


    Similarly, Booker T. Washington observed that men often went to work in the fields for a month at a time.  Clearly, this would entail allocation of household power to their wives.  Also, women at grape harvest and winemaking times left their families and villages to work in fields and wineries.  Again, this would entail a degree of independence.


    In sum, while the nature and character of southern Italian families is still open for discussion, there is a significant body of evidence supporting the contention that the southern Italian family was generally patriarchal. It is not historiographically or epistemologically sound to reach conclusions by selecting data that fits one thesis.


    The historian does not have the luxury of law court judges who rule evidence admissible or inadmissible.  In the historian’s court all evidence is and must be admitted.  However, like law courts, truth in the historian’s court is based on the “preponderance of evidence” and “reasonable doubt”.  Indubitable truth comes under the purview of natural science and theology.
  • Op-Eds

    Italian American Culture: Illusion or Reality?


     

    Authoritative sources posit, 'culture' involves at least three components: “what people think” (i.e. ideology- e.g. religion, ethnicity, etc.), “what they do” (behavior), and the “material products they produce” (work). Further, culture is taught/learned; each generation teaches the next generation its ideology, behavior and work skills.
     
    In the first half of the 20th century, there was a distinct observable Italian America culture. What Italian Americans ‘thought’, ‘did’ and ‘produced’ clearly defined their culture, and differentiated it from other cultures. Two great sociological works were written describing and analyzing that culture: “Urban Villagers” & “Street Corner Society”.  Essentially, that culture was the immigrant’s Italian culture modified by the American urban/industrial environment.  
     
    In the second half of the 20th century that culture passed. The second generation (children of immigrants) did not learn/teach the culture of their parents. They learned/taught the suburban American “melting pot” culture. By the end of the 20th century, with the exception of nostalgic reminiscences, little if any observable measurable phenomena that could be called Italian American culture existed. There was little if anything being taught to children of Italian descent that constituted Italianita. 
     
    In social scientific terms, if one took a random sample of high school students descended from Italian immigrants, the ‘ideology’, ‘behavior’ and ‘work’ they are taught would not differentiate them from other Euro-Americans. Accordingly, the questions that can reasonably be asked: Who are Italian Americans?  What are their distinguishing characteristics? Who and what are Italian American scholars and commentators talking about; beyond critiques of fiction and film about Little Italy days?
     
    Today in America, there are manifestations of what may be called PhiloItalianoism; i.e. the love of Italian (not Italian American) culture such as food and tourist attractions (Greek, Roman and Renaissance). However, this PhiloItalianoism is essentially a pop-culture.  Pop-culture is a mass culture, not identified with any specific group, and is essentially ephemeral (e.g. 1950’s TV westerns, rap music, etc).
     
    Also, currently, there are traces of a Nuevo Italian American culture generated by post 1960’s Italian immigrants. However, it already shows signs of meltingpotism. Raised in heterogeneous suburbs and totally encompassing mass media; the children of these recent immigrants have ‘melted’ (as it were) even more quickly than the children of the original pre-WW I immigrants.
     
    Finally, for the number crunchers, consider the pages of i-Italy itself. On Saturday (AM EDT) 4/19/08, 19 of 21 articles on the HOME page were either about Italian things or written in Italian (19/21*100 = 90%). One of three columns ‘above the (virtual) fold’ was devoted to AP Italian. In the MAGAZINE section, 20 of 23 articles were about Italian things or in the Italian language (20/23*100 = 87%).
     
    In sum, to my mind, Italian American literati should concentrate on establishing that there is, in fact, such a thing as Italian American culture beyond reminiscence and nostalgia. If so, articulate its characteristics. Most importantly, how and by whom will it be taught to the next generation? Or, should we settle for PhiloItalianoism? 
     
    “Will you join me and other descendents of Sicily at Harry’s Bar in Venice, where we can celebrate out heritage dining on Carpaccio?”
     
     
  • Art & Culture

    Bob Giraldi’s movie “Dinner Rush”: The future (if any) of Italian American culture



    In the first half of the 20th century Italian American culture was defined by the immigrants in their Little Italy urban villages.  In the second half, Little Italy nostalgia, driven by Italian American movie makers such as Coppola and Scorsese, characterized Italian American culture.  Today that culture seems adrift.  The immigrants and their urban villages are gone and nostalgia has run its course.  There doesn’t seem to be any defining ideology to take their place.  Italian American academicians have largely been silent. Those in the Italian American community promoting Italian language, history and culture courses in schools seem to think that we should become nuevo diasporic Italians; albeit in the suburbs.  Our artist, while not having any answers, have dramatically presented the dilemma. Don DeLillo, for example, in his novel Underworld raises the generation question: what does it mean to be Italian American – if anything - out of the village and into the ‘melting pot’?

     

    Another artist, Bob Giraldi, in a little know but highly acclaimed and award winning film “Dinner Rush”, brilliantly depicts the transition from the unequivocal Little Italy culture to the metamorphosing post-immigrant culture. What differentiates Dinner Rush from films such as Godfather and Goodfellows is its contemporary relevance.  Godfather and Goodfellows look back telling us about our past. Dinner Rush, looking forward, is about the transition from the “Little Italy” Italianita generations to the younger generations questionable Italianita.

     

    However, Dinner Rush is not a sociological study.  It’s a movie and movies are meant to be entertaining.  Dinner Rush is a very entertaining movie; a kind of ‘kick-back munch on your popcorn’ type of movie.  A great many reviewers rightfully recommended this movie for its entertainment value. It touches on a full range of melodramatic emotions: humor, suspense, fear, pity, a smidge of sex (without being obscene), a touch of violence (without being grotesque) and it has a fabulous sound track.  The main reason we watch movies is because we want to be entertained and Dinner Rush fulfills this in spades.

     

    However, Dinner Rush is much more than entertainment.  It is a work of dramatic art.  As such: the action, dialogue, spectacle, sound track, etc., while entertaining at the same time explores the cultural characteristics and values of Italian Americans.  Unlike popular Hollywood movies with the sole purpose of entertaining; Dinner Rush rises to the artistic level by depicting a microcosmic view of the Italian American culture with macroscopic implications.  It explores ideas and issues associated with the generational changes the culture is currently experiencing.  Also, it follows the historic tradition of using drama as a medium to explore the horns of a perennial moral dilemma - a good man’s struggle with evil.

     

    A work of dramatic art, unlike scientific observation, is not something viewed objectively.  In objective scientific observation, everyone agrees on what the object observed looks like.  Regardless of the viewer’s cultural background and experiences, a bug is a bug – so to speak.  Anyone who looks at it will see the same features: size, color, shape, etc.  Drama is not objective.  Drama is art.  Drama is subjective.  Cultural background and experiences influence what the viewer sees and determines its significance.  Accordingly, non-Italian Americans will not appreciate Italian American cultural nuances idiom, intonations, gestures, expressions, dress, behavior, etc.

     

    The present review is from an Italian American point of view and directed to Italian Americans.  Its purpose is to bring this little known yet great film to the attention of Italian Americans; celebrate yet another work of Italian American film artistry; and, most importantly, consider the significance of the cultural and moral ideas presented in the film.

     

    The plot of Dinner Rush is driven by two conflicts: generational change and criminal extortion.   The first conflict is represented metaphorically by food, the second by gangsters.  In the classical tradition, the ‘conflicts’ are introduced in the exposition act, the ‘crises’ caused by the conflicts are developed in the middle acts, and conflict ‘resolution’ is achieved in a suspenseful climatic dénouement.  Further, the film adheres to the “three classical unities”: unity of action (no sub-plot), unit of place (all action in one physical place) and unity of time (all action within 24 hours).  {“Forget about it” - Aristotle would absolutely love this plot, it could have been performed at Taormina.}

     

    The opening scene of the exposition plunges the viewer in medias res (“into the middle of things”).  Louis Cropa is having lunch in his New York City (TriBeCa) Italian restaurant, before the evening “dinner rush”, with Enrico his good friend and partner in a bookmaking (gambling) business.  They are eating a traditional Italian American dinner (rigatoni, fagioli, roasted peppers, cheese, olives, etc.).  They are talking and joking about the “old days” and the “old neighborhood” and how things have changed. The whole movie, with the exception of a couple of short scenes, depicts one night in Louis’ restaurant and much of the dialogue and action has to do with food.  Food, in Dinner Rush, is the cause of conflict between Louis and his, chef soon to be owner, son Udo.  Louis and his deceased wife built the business by serving traditional Italian food. Udo is a culinary school trained chef who is developing nouveau cuisine such as carpaccio.  When Louis complains about the change from traditional Italian cuisine, Udo says to his father: “we don’t serve meatballs here any more.”  Meatballs vs. Carpaccio!  Metaphorically: the old and the new! 

     

    The predominate role of food in this movie has led many reviewers to conclude that the movie is “about food.”  To say that Dinner Rush is about food is like saying Oedipus is about incest and Medea is about infanticide.  Food, in the film, is a metaphor for the Italian American culture and the generational change it is currently undergoing.  Third generation Italian Americans (grandchildren of the pre-WW I immigrants) are in the process of passing the baton to the forth generation.  The forth generation has no living memory of 'nonna' wearing their hair in a bun, dressed in black and praying the rosary. In short, the food conflict in Dinner Rush is a metaphor for the future of the Italian-American culture.  Dinner Rush dramatizes this generational cultural change.  It forces Italian American viewers to think about the change and the question: “were do we go from here?”

     

    The second conflict and parallel plot of Dinner Rush is criminal extortion.  This too is laid out in the opening lunch scene of the exposition act. Louis refers to two gangsters called, “Black and Blue”.  Reference is made to them hustling Louis and Enrico.  Louis tries to convince Enrico to give them the bookmaking business.  He says: “These guys are not nice guys, let’s give them the book”.  Enrico refuses and, foreshowing future action in the plot, says: “Give these guys and inch and they’ll take a yard.  The next thing you know they’ll want the restaurant.”  Louis responds emphatically, creating the basis for the second conflict. “Never the restaurant!”

     

    In the next scene of the exposition act, out on the street, Black and Blue shoot and kill Enrico.  As Louis had observed: “they are not nice guys.”  But, what carries the action of the plot forward is what Enrico, oracle like, foretold: “The next thing you know they’ll want the restaurant” and Louis’ vow: “Never the restaurant.”

     

    Between the exposition act and the dénouement the action serves to develop both conflicts between: Louis and Udo, Louis and gangsters.  Udo’s Nuevo Cuisine is becoming renown and the restaurant is filled with a Nuevo patronage that is consistent with the food (food critics, artist, and generally upscale New Yorkers).  As one character rhetorically asks: “When did it all change?  When did eating dinner become a Broadway show?”   Enrico’s daughter says to Louis: “The problem with your world is no one gives a [expletive] about it any more.”  Gesturing to the restaurant crowd, she goes on: “Welcome to the new world.”  Louis resigns himself to the change and is prepared to let Udo have the restaurant.  But, Black and Blue have other plans in mind.

     

    Louis invited them to come to restaurant for dinner and to offers them the bookmaking business. Louis goes to their table and says: “OK the book is yours.  Now finish your dinner and leave.”  As Enrico had predicted, they now want more - the restaurant.  Louis tells them “that is out of the question.”   “We are not leaving until we are partners the food business,” they respond.  Leaving the table, Louis makes an oblique comment about “greed.”  The conflict has entered the crisis stage and the film moves into the dénouement act – the resolution. 

     

    Why was Louis determined not to give them the restaurant?  Because, as he says in one scene: “A real man takes care of his family.”  Udo was his family.  If he gives the restaurant to Black and Blue, he hurts his family.  This was: “out of the question.”  “Take care of your family!”  Easily said and routinely done by most men.  But what does a man do when there is a threat to his family? 

     

    An absolutely brilliant visual poetic scene introduces the climaxing act of the movie.  The scene is set with a wide-angle view of the restaurant floor.  Udo is walking towards the viewer on the main floor in the middle of tables filled with customers.  On the terrace level (about four steps above the main floor) directly behind him are the gangsters who have come to extort the business from his father.  At one point all three heads are in a line.  Udo is framed between the two gangsters.  He is dressed in all white chef’s garb and smiling - personifying innocents.  They are dress all in black with sinister looks on their faces - quintessentially evil.  As he walks, the gangsters stand up.  At one point the gangster Black, who shot Enrico, actually seems to be hovering over him.  Symbolically in the scene and literally in the plot, he is about to pounce on his victim.  Udo is innocent; he has no idea what is transpiring.  Only his father knows.  A father who believes: “A real man takes care of his family.”  What is a father to do when confronted with brut force driven by unmitigated greed and a society (police) that does nothing about it?  A GOOD man does what?  Turn the other cheek and accept injustice, even at expense of his family’s well being?  Or, like Hector at Troy, forsake security, overcome paralyzing fear, and confront the perpetrator?  This is the question Louis must answer in the concluding act of Dinner Rush.

     

    No review of Dinner Rush would be complete without reference to the brilliant cinematography.  For example, how can a sauté line and waitresses running up and down stairs be made beautiful?  This beauty is achieved by controlling the speed of the film and the use of perfectly selected background music.  More importantly, this beauty is not spectacle for spectacle’s sake, not visual art for visual art’s sake. It is used to punctuate and enhance the dialogue and contributes to the overall dramatic effect.

     

    In sum: by any generally accepted standard of dramatic film excellence - Dinner Rush wants for nothing.  The artist’s muse speaks to us, hermeneutically, through the artist’s medium.  Italian-Americans should: See this film! Think about it! Talk about it! Learn what Bob Giraldi’s muse is calling on them to consider: the perennial philosophical question about good and evil, and the more recent Italian American question: “where do we go from here.”  

     
  • Art & Culture

    Child Slavery in Sicily 1910


     

    Anthony Tamburri of the Calandra Institute posits: “We need to take [Italian American] culture more seriously. We simply cannot continue to engage in a series of reminiscences that lead primarily to nostalgic recall. Instead, we need to revisit our past, reclaim its pros and cons…we need to figure out where we came from”
     
    One “series of reminiscences” leading to “nostalgic recall” and needing disengagement is the pastoral romanticism about the conditions in Italy at the time of the diaspora. Sadly, in my opinion, some our most outstanding writers and scholars such as Jerry Mangione, Ben Morreale, Donna Gabaccia, etc. have been instrumental, by errors of omission, of perpetuating images of Italy that lend themselves to “nostalgic recall.” In an effort to “revisit our past”, “reclaim its pros and cons” and “figure out where we came from” one can do no better than to read Booker Taliaferro Washington’s book “The Man Farthest Down.”
     
    In the year 1910 Booker Taliaferro Washington – former African American slave and founder of Tuskegee Institute - traveled to Europe to acquaint himself, in his words: “with the condition of the poorer and working classes in Europe, particularly in those regions from which an ever-increasing number of immigrants are coming to our country each year.” In as much as, at that time approximately a hundred thousand Italians were arriving in New York every year, not surprisingly he traveled extensively in Italy. He published his observations and conclusions in a book he called: “The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe.” 
     
    Mr. Washington presents an ‘oh-so-not’ romantic description of the horrific reality of diasporic Italy, including the de facto enslavement of sulphur mining children in Sicily. Child-slaves which Italian Americans have conveniently forgotten in their quest to meticulously reproduce St. Joseph Tables. After reading Mr. Washington’s book, one wonders: who exactly ate at those (dare I say ‘mythical’) St. Joseph Tables; other than “The Leopards?”
     
    Mr. Washington devotes five and a half chapters to describing life and labor in Italy and Sicily. In chapter XI, “Child Labour and the Sulphur Mines”, he makes one of his most cogent and poignant observations: “Certainly there is no other country [i.e. Sicily] where so much of the labour of all kinds, the skilled labour of the artisan as well as the rough labour of digging and carrying on the streets and in the mines, is performed by children, especially boys.”
     
    Mr. Washington recorded descriptions of child labor in Catania, Palermo and Campofanco. In Catania Mr. Washington describes macaroni production, metal tool making, mandolin fabrication, boat and tile manufacturing. His description of a “little girl” metal worker and boy tile makers captures the essence of the others.
     
    He writes: “About nine o'clock Saturday night my attention was attracted to a man engaged in some delicate sort of metal tool-making. What particularly attracted my attention was a little girl, certainly not more than seven years of age, who was busily engaged at this late hour in polishing and sharpening the stamps the man used. I could but marvel at the patience and the skill the child showed at her work. It was the first time in my life that I had seen such a very little child at work, although I saw many others in the days that followed.”
     
    “I came across a tile manufacturing plant where almost all of the actual work was performed by the children, who ranged, I should say, from eight to twelve years of age. The work of carrying the heavy clay, and piling it up in the sun after it had been formed into tiles, was done by the younger children. I am certain that if I had not seen them with my own eyes I would never have believed that such very little children could carry such heavy loads, or that they could work so systematically and steadily as they were compelled to do in order to keep up the pace. I was so filled with pity and at the same time with admiration for these boys.”
     
    In Palermo, Mr. Washington goes on to describe what reasonable may be characterized as ‘boy-mules’ - he writes: “I remember, one day in Palermo, seeing, for the first time in my life, boys, who were certainly not more than fourteen years of age, engaged in carrying on their backs earth from a cellar that was being excavated for a building. Men did the work of digging, but the mere drudgery of carrying the earth from the bottom of the excavation to the surface was performed by these boys. It was not simply the fact that mere children were engaged in this heavy work which impressed me. It was the slow, dragging steps, the fixed and unalterable expression of weariness that showed in every line of their bodies.”
     
    But all the exploitation of children that Mr. Washington saw in Catania and Palermo, as shocking as it may have been, was ‘a day in the park’ when compared to the “carusi” of the Campfranco sulphur mines. “Carusi is the name that the Italians give to those boys in the sulphur mines who carry the crude ore up from the mines to the surface.”
     
    He describes the organization of the work in a sulphur mine: “The actual work of digging the sulphur is performed by the miner, who is paid by the amount of crude ore he succeeds in getting out. He, in his turn, has a boy, sometimes two or three of them, to assist him in getting the ore out of the mine to the smelter, where it is melted and refined. The caruso is purchased by the miner from the parents.”
     
    Then he describes the process of enslavement: “The manner in which the purchase is made is as follows: In Sicily, where the masses of the people are so wretchedly poor in everything else, they are nevertheless unusually rich in children, and, as often happens, the family that has the largest number of mouths to fill has the least to put in them. It is from these families that the carusi are recruited. The father who turns his child over to a miner receives in return a sum of money in the form of a loan. The sum usually amounts to from eight to thirty dollars, according to the age of the boy, his strength and general usefulness. With the payment of this sum the child is turned over absolutely to his master.”
     
    Mr. Washington a former slave himself concludes: “From this SLAVERY (emp.+) there is no hope of freedom, because neither the parents nor the child will ever have sufficient money to repay the original loan.”
     
    READ AND WEEP- Life of the Sicilian boy-slaves:
     
    “Strange and terrible stories are told about the way in which these boy slaves have been treated by their masters…one sees processions of half-naked boys, their bodies bowed under the heavy weight of the loads they carried, groaning and cursing as they made their way up out of the hot and sulphurous holes in the earth, carrying the ore from the mine to the smelter…
     
    “The cruelties to which the child slaves have been subjected, as related by those who have studied them, are as bad as anything that was ever reported of the cruelties of Negro slavery. These boy slaves were frequently beaten and pinched, in order to wring from their overburdened bodies the last drop of strength they had in them. When beatings did not suffice, it was the custom to singe the calves of their legs with lanterns to put them again on their feet. If they sought to escape from this slavery in flight, they were captured and beaten, sometimes even killed.
     
    “As they climbed out of the hot and poisonous atmosphere of the mines their bodies, naked to the waist and dripping with sweat, were chilled by the cold draughts in the corridors leading out of the mines, and this sudden transition was the frequent cause of pneumonia and tuberculosis.
     
    “Children of six and seven years of age were employed at these crushing and terrible tasks. Under the heavy burdens (averaging about forty pounds) they were compelled to carry, they often became deformed, and the number of cases of curvature of the spine and deformations of the bones of the chest reported was very large. More than that, these children were frequently made the victims of the lust and unnatural vices of their masters. It is not surprising, therefore, that they early gained the appearance of gray old men, and that it has become a common saying that a caruso rarely reaches the age of twenty five.”
     
    “It seemed incredible to me that any one could live and work in such heat… in a burrow, twisting and winding its way, but going constantly deeper and deeper into the dark depths of the earth where the miners loosen the ore from the walls of the seams in which it is found, and then it is carried up out of these holes in sacks by the carusi.”
     
    “All the ore is carried on the backs of boys. In cases where the mine descended to the depth of two, three, or four hundred feet, the task of carrying these loads of ore to the surface is simply heartbreaking. I can well understand that persons who have seen conditions at the worst should speak of the children who have been condemned to this slavery as the most unhappy creatures on earth.
     
    Mr. Washington sums up: “I am not prepared just now to say to what extent I believe in a physical hell in the next world, but a sulphur mine in Sicily is about the nearest thing to hell that I expect to see in this life.”
     
    Today a Google search of ‘Campofranco’ brings forth scores of web sites celebrating the beauty and pageantry of the town. Most interesting from the “reminiscent nostalgic recall” point of view is the complete absence of any reference to or signs of the sulphur mining days. Campfranco is seen today in an idyllic setting nestled in a valley between the panoramic mountains. How different is Mr. Washington’s description the Campofranco countryside:
     
    He writes: “For many miles in every direction the vegetation has been blasted by the poisonous smoke and vapours from the smelters, and the whole country has a blotched and scrofulous appearance which is depressing to look upon, particularly when one considers the amount of misery and the number of human lives it has cost to create this condition. I have never in my life seen any place that seemed to come so near meeting the description of the "abomination of desolation" referred to in the Bible. There is even a certain grandeur in the desolation of this country which looks as if the curse of God rested upon it. I am not prepared just now to say to what extent I believe in a physical hell in the next world, but a sulphur mine in Sicily is about the nearest thing to hell that I expect to see in this life.”
     
    I am sure that all the professors of Italian American studies nod their heads in agreement with Prof. Tamburri admonitions to “revisit our past [and] reclaim its pros and cons.” I wonder how many require their students to read “The Man Farthest Down”?
     
     
  • Art & Culture

    Art vs. Reality: Why Italian Americans like “Mob Movies”



    Recently, over at H-ItAm, there has been a discussion about the results of a survey of teenagers conducted by Zogby International and posted on the John D. Calandra website. The purpose of the survey was “to determine whether or not teenagers in general and Italian American teenagers in particular perceive stereotyping on television and in the movies and if they do, how such stereotyping affects them.” The results showed “teenagers perceived” that Italian American stereotypical media images were “crime boss, gang member, or restaurant worker.” Further, “when Italian American teens were asked if their ethnic heritage was accurately portrayed on television or in the movies, 46% agreed and nearly 30% said they were proud of their TV image.”

     

    In response to this report, the usual lamentations about the negative affect of media on Italian Americans were posted. For example, one member wrote: “Fact is, as time goes by, the negative results from this survey will only increase.” Another, “Italian Americans who support the media's negative images of the IA ethnicity are our biggest enemies…” 

     

    For decades, we have periodically been told by one source or another that media images of Italian Americans are negative and in turn having a negative affect on Italian Americans. However, there is evidence to the contrary. For example, days before the Zogby discussion, there were postings on H-ItAm celebrating the increasing numbers of Italian American college graduates and numbers of Italian American doctors and lawyers. Also, one cannot ignore two Supreme Court Justices, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, a major Presidential candidate and numerous CEO’s of international corporations who are Italian Americans. In short, there is data suggesting that media images of Italian Americans are not having significant measurable negative affect on Italianita (Italian American culture).

     

    One may wonder why the apparent contradiction: negative media images – no negative affect. It may be the case that Italian Americans are wise enough to ignore inaccurate media representations. However, there is evidence suggesting that Italian Americans are not ignoring media images; on the contrary, they embrace those images. Note, the Zogbe survey reports that almost half of the surveyed Italian American youth thought the media images “accurate[ly] portray their ethnic heritage and nearly 30% said they were proud of their TV image.” In short, a significant percentage of Italian American teens felt that what they see in the media is consistent with what they see in reality and liked what they saw. More generally, an H-ItAm commentator is not alone when suggesting that Italian Americans liked their media image. He wrote: “So many IA's have been the strongest patrons of shows like The Sopranos….”

     

    In short, the case that movie/TV images are negatively impacting Italian American self image, while not to be ignored, is not conclusive. Indeed, if critiques of movie/TV shows would get beyond the criminality and make more comprehensive literary critiques of these dramas, they will find many positive literary qualities which may explain their popularity with Italian Americans.

     

    Essentially and more generally, this issue of negative Italian American media images falls under the aegis of the perennial debate of ‘art vs. reality.’ That is: to what extent movie/TV dramas (art) distort the ‘reality’ of Italian American history and culture. This ‘art vs. reality’ issue has been pervasive throughout the history of Western Culture. For example, Plato argued that “poets and tragedians” should be barred from his ideal state ‘The Republic’ because they distort reality and mislead the populous. Similarly, in the early 19th century, Alessandro Manzoni’s, arguably the best indeed definitive historical novel, “I promessi sposi” gave rise to a great European debate that included Goethe about historical novels and historic reality. More recently, Lampedusa’s absolutely brilliant novel “Il gattopardo” was early on largely ignored in Italy because it was considered not realistic. And, today there is a great debate about the reality of the genera pejoratively characterized as “Mob Movies” (“The Godfather”, “The Sopranos”, etc).

     

    To my mind, the concerns raised by mob movie critics are largely based on an oversimplified single facet of those dramas – i.e. the gangster image. Specifically: criminals are bad; therefore they represent an unrealistic negative image of Italian Americans. However, more comprehensive literary criticism of movies like “The Godfather” and televisions series like “The Sopranos” reveal literary qualities that may be the basis of their popularity with Italian Americans. To see only the criminal aspect of the characters in these dramas is to ignore the historical/cultural context of the crimes, and the complex inner-conflicted character of the criminal protagonist.

     

    The Godfather trilogy, for example, clearly has the characteristic of Greek Tragedy (i.e. “…the downfall of a noble hero or heroine, usually through some combination of hubris, fate, and the will of the gods…”). The Michael Corleone character from the beginning of the first Godfather movie to the end of the third is continually trying to escape the criminal life. But, because of his hubris (i.e. excessive ambition) he cannot escape his self-destructive destiny. He says: “Every time I try to get out [of crime], I get pulled back in.” Finally, in the last scene of the trilogy he is seen “like Hecuba languished and alone” – the tragic protagonist who could not escape his destiny.

     

    It is important to keep in mind that the concept of tragedy and destiny are integral to the southern Italian/Sicilian culture rooted in the Ancient Greek culture. Ancient theaters where Greek Tragedies were performed still exist in Sicily. Thus, where some see a negative image of a “Don” or “crime boss” to be scorned, others see an unyielding albeit self-destructive protagonist struggling against an inescapable fate. Those who are so offended by the brutal vengeful mob movie characters, like Michael having his brother killed and Tony Soprano’s mother plotting to have him killed, have never read the Oresteia or Media.

     

    The ancient Greek-Italian progenitors of today’s Italian-Americans did not flock to the theaters in Syracuse, Taormine and Segesta by the tens of thousands simply to indulge themselves in the gore of Media killing her children or Orestes killing his mother. Rather, they were responding to a primordial subliminal cultural impetus - a “tragic sense of life” imbued with moral ambiguity, suffering and destiny. We should be open to the possibility that the Italian American progeny of those ancient Greek-Italians are responding to a similar if not the same cultural impetus.

     

    The best of the mob literature (films and novels) manifest this same juxtaposition of suffering, destiny and moral ambiguity (“when is killing justified - Socrates”). They can be found in the “Godfather Trilogy”, “The Sopranos”; Alberto Lattuada’s “Mafioso”, Ben Morreale’s “A few virtuous men [Li cornuti], etc. Should the artists who create this literature be exiled from the Italian American “Republic” because they misrepresent our reality? Or, should they be studied that we might better understand our reality?

     

    In sum: to understand why the ostensive negative images of Italian American reality are appreciated by Italian Americans requires a more comprehensive literary criticism and historical culture studies that get beyond the criminal behavior and articulates the artistic nuances which metaphorically captures the far more complex and profound Italianita reality. Only then will we understand why Italian Americans like “Mob Movies.”

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