Reconstruction 5.3 (Summer 2005)

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Peter Bondanella. Hollywood Italians: Dagos, Palookas, Romeos, Wise Guys, and Sopranos. New York: Continuum, 2004. 352 pp. Hardcover. $29.95. ISBN: 082641544X

In the cinematic universe, stereotypes are more than just a convenient shorthand for delineating characters, they also reveal clues about the cultures that produce them. That is especially true for one that purports to reflect the goal of assimilation and the disappearance of ethnic or racial markers in favor of a "melting pot" or overarching American identity. Hollywood Italians by Peter Bondanella is an ambitious attempt to trace the myriad of stereotypes relating to one of the largest and most mythologized ethnic groups in America. He traces the chronology of the Italian immigrant experience along with its connections to the various categories of stereotypes, which as his subtitle suggests, include Dagos, Palookas, Romeos, Wise Guys, and Sopranos. With the latter case, although Bondanella acknowledges that the HBO series includes "complex" characters, he misses the choice opportunity to investigate the show's purposeful play and exploitation of long-standing stereotypes to create vulnerability out of brutality, victims out of villains, and a full house of women who routinely defy la famiglia's trouble-free mamas and Mob wives.

Although this book is a valuable resource for the sheer breadth of examples and details he includes, and which span nearly a century of Hollywood cinema, Bondanella fails to interrogate his criteria for ethnic belonging, which sometimes is as marginal as an Italian surname. Unlike his previous and excellent book on Italian Cinema, which assumes a more stable and unified national ethnic identity, his approach in Hollywood Italians often roots itself in the same essentializing processes that produced and perpetuate the stereotypes under scrutiny. He writes, as one example, that Italians are often caricatured as "creatures of emotions," but neglects to mention that this supposed ethnic tendency is by no means exclusive to people of Italian heritage. Nor is it uniformly considered an attribute-much as the stereotyped athletic ability of an African American may be viewed as a plus on the playing field but a barrier in the boardroom, where the white mind was once privileged (and perhaps still is) over the black body.

Moreover, in his attempt to historicize the evolution of Italians in America, he mentions their earned "whiteness," in part, being responsible for their eventual acceptance. But he avoids a more critical look at how the intersection of race and ethnicity has been fundamental rather than incidental to their American identity. As Toni Morrison and others have noted, their whiteness is constructed primarily through contrasting itself with what is not white, and which involves depicting shades of color as representations of deviance. In other words, the onscreen Italian American has not only had to shadow box with his own persona, but with other ethnically and racially marginalized groups. Although Bondanella is cognizant of American society's color consciousness-once responsible for linking Italian swarthiness to dark behavior-he reduces the eventual acceptance of Italian Americans to cultural reflections that simply and eventually catch up with the changing reality, and when positive generalizations replace negative stereotypes. This not only romanticizes the process of assimilation in America, but also ignores the influential and performative role of American popular culture.

Eric Lott and others have outlined ample case studies of the use of dark people and dark stories as enviable sites of catharsis and resistance, but which Bondanella leaves out of the picture. He too often traces the movement of Italian Americans-on and offscreen-from a marginalizing deviance to an admirable defiance, ensconced in straightforward fusions of Old World codes of loyalty with all-American audacity-whether embodied by Vito Corleone or Arthur Fonzarelli. These are compelling parts of the whole story, but inadequate when presented as inevitable and self-contained narratives.

On the upside is Bondanella's attempt to painstakingly track the evolution and significance of stereotypes that have survived a century. Moreover, he includes rare performances and forgotten films from silent cinema that rarely earn space in most books about Hollywood. Yet, the book's exhaustive reach is also what sacrifices its depth, making room for one-line descriptions of films like Corky Romano, which seems only to merit attention because its title contains a surname that ends in a vowel. This approach forsakes much needed and valuable insights into the role of stereotypes, including those about Italians, which rather than serve as mere interludes in American history that a particular population group overcomes, play an integral role in America's ability to imagine and produce a portrait of itself.
Without such stereotypes to put asunder, the star power of a Rocky Balboa or Saturday Night Fever's Tony Manero would not shine as quite brightly. Initially framed as ethnically challenged underdogs, their struggles to embody the American hero are all the more vigorous because they first had to quiet the ghosts of fellow paisani, who have long served as some of Hollywood's most vivid and memorable anti-heroes.

Marilyn Yaquinto

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