Stereotypes of Italian Americans in Film and Television

Italian Americans  may be European in ancestry, but they were not always treated as white in the United States, as the pervasive stereotypes about them demonstrate. Not only did Italian immigrants to America face employment discrimination in their adopted homeland, but they also faced violence by whites who viewed them as â€Å"different.† Because of their once marginalized status in this country, ethnic stereotypes of Italians persist in film and television. On the big and small screen, alike, Italian Americans are all too often portrayed as mobsters, thugs and peasants hawking spaghetti sauce. While Italian Americans have made great strides in U.S. society, their characterization in popular culture remains stereotypical and troublesome. Mobsters Fewer than .0025 percent of Italian Americans are involved in organized crime, according to the  Italian American News website. But one would be hard-pressed to know that from watching Hollywood television shows and movies, where just about every Italian family has mob ties. In addition to films such as â€Å"The Godfather,† â€Å"Goodfellas,† â€Å"Casino† and â€Å"Donnie Brasco,† television shows such as  Ã¢â‚¬Å"The Sopranos,† â€Å"Growing Up Gotti† and â€Å"Mob Wives† have perpetuated the idea that Italian Americans and organized crime go hand-in-hand. While many of these films and shows  have won critical praise, they do little to complicate the image Italian Americans have in popular culture. Food-Making  Peasants Italian cuisine is among the most popular in the United States. Accordingly, a number of television commercials depict Italians and Italian  Americans flipping pizzas, stirring tomato sauce and squashing grapes. In many of these commercials, Italian Americans are portrayed as heavily accented, robust peasants. The Italian American News website describes how a Ragu commercial features â€Å"several elderly, overweight Italian American women in housedresses [who] are so delighted with Ragu’s meat sauce that they turn somersaults and play leapfrog in a meadow.† An undue amount of food ads portray Italian women as â€Å"elderly, overweight housewives and grandmothers wearing black dresses, housecoats or aprons,† the site reports. â€Å"Jersey Shore† When MTV reality series â€Å"Jersey Shore† debuted, it became a pop culture sensation. Viewers of all ages and ethnic backgrounds faithfully tuned in to watch the group of mostly Italian American friends hit the bar scene, work out at the gym, tan and do laundry. But  prominent Italian-Americans protested  that the bouffant-haired stars of the show—self-described Guidos and Guidettes—were spreading  negative stereotypes about Italians. Joy Behar,  co-host of ABC’s â€Å"The View,† said that â€Å"Jersey Shore† did not represent her culture. â€Å"I do have a master’s degree, so a person like me is rather annoyed with a show like that because I went to college, you know, to better myself, and then these idiots come out and make Italians look bad,† she said. â€Å"It’s awful. They should go to Firenze and Rome and Milano and see what Italians really did in this world. It’s irritating.† Bigoted Thugs Anyone familiar with Spike Lee’s films knows that he has persistently depicted Italian Americans as dangerous, racist thugs from New York City’s working class. Italian Americans such as these can be found in a number of Spike Lee films, most notably â€Å"Jungle Fever,† â€Å"Do The Right Thing† and â€Å"Summer of Sam.† When Lee criticized Django Unchained  director Quentin Tarantino for turning slavery into a spaghetti Western,  Italian groups called him a hypocrite because of the thread of anti-Italian bias that runs through his films, they said. â€Å"When it comes to Italian Americans, Spike Lee has never done the right thing,† said Andre DiMino, president of the Italian American One Voice Coalition. â€Å"One wonders if Spike Lee is indeed a racist who hates Italians and why he harbors a grudge.† One Voice voted Lee into its Hall of Shame because of his portrayals of Italian Americans. In particular, the group criticized â€Å"Summer of Sam† because the movie â€Å"descends into a panoply of negative character portrayals, with Italian Americans as mobsters, drug dealers, drug addicts, racists, deviants, buffoons, bimbos, and sex-crazed fiends.†

Disaster Preparedness Is A Homeland Security Program...

Disaster Preparedness Randy Fay is a Homeland Security Program Manager for Snohomish County Emergency Management (R. Fay, personal communication, June 20, 2016). In this role he coordinates the needs of whole populations with a specific focus on vulnerable populations in disasters. Also, this role assures appropriate supplies are delivered to responders. Randy is also the crew chief of the Snohomish County Search and Rescue Helicopter Rescue Team (R. Fay, personal communication, June 20, 2016). In fact, on March 22, 2014 Randy and others were out on a training mission in the helicopter when a mudslide struck Oso, Washington. The helicopter was on scene within minutes, and Randy personally rescued some of the 14 survivors of the slide (R. Fay, personal communication, June 20, 2016). Randy knows disaster planning and response well. He spent many weeks in the Oso disaster command structure, and many months after preparing paperwork for proper reimbursement from the government. Top Three Disasters According to Grand Canyon University (2011), disaster preparation can be a high stress activity. One reason for this is the fact that there are many disasters to take into consideration during planning. Some disasters are unique to geographic areas, such as hurricanes, and tornadoes. Yet, other disasters occur regardless of geography such as fires, or pandemic outbreaks (Grand Canyon University, 2011). According to Mr. Fay, the number one disaster that local planners take

Life of Picasso Persuasive Essay Example For Students

Life of Picasso Persuasive Essay On October 25, 1881 Maria Picasso Lopez gave birth to a son. Little did she know that that child was an artist. Picasso himself once said every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. So the question is, was Picasso right, was he an artist from birth or did the way in which he lived make him the artist that he became? Pablo Picassos father, Jose Ruiz Blasco, was an artist and a teacher at San Telmo school of arts and industrial design in Malaga, Spain where Pablo was born. As a child Picasso would draw amazing pictures without looking at is paper and without lifting his pen. As a young adult his fathers position in the world of art helped Picasso make progress with his art. With his fathers guidance Picasso was able to make his debut as an artist at age fourteen and was admitted to the La Jonja academy in Barcelona, where his father taught, when he was 16. Picasso became a member of a group of bohemian artists during his years at the academy. In this group he met other young artists who introduced him to current styles of painting. During this time Picasso was excepted to the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid. Pablo did not stay at the Royal Academy for long and soon was off in the world working as an artist. He continued to win prizes for his art. Then in 1900 he took his first trip to Paris and returned to Barcelona a year later. Around 1903 Pablo entered his blue period and started signing his paintings simply Picasso leaving behind the use of his entire name on his paintings. In 1905 Picasso moved to Paris and ended his blue period. In 1906 Picasso entered what is known as his rose period and began doing his earliest known sculptures and engravings. In 1909 Picasso began the style known as Cubism with his work Les Demoiselles dAvignon and created his first clearly Cubist landscape in 1911. In 1918 Picasso married Olga Koklova and moved to Rue La Boetie in Paris and when his son, Paul, was born Picasso created many mother-son paintings. However, the marriage was a shaky one and in 1935 Picasso and Olga separate for the last time. Around this time Picasso has a daughter with a women named Marie-Therese Walter who had become a regular model in his works. In 1947 nearly ten years after the outbreak of WWII and eight ears after the death of his mother Picassos second son, Claude, was born and only two years later Paloma was born. Picasso continued to work up until his death in 1973 at the age of 92. For his eighty-fifth birthday he was commemorated with three simultaneous exhibitions in Paris. In the years before he died Pablo created over 500 pieces, completing 347 etchings created in and eight month period. He also showed 140 of his canvases at the Palace of the Popes in Avignon before donating 2,000 of his early oil paintings and drawings to the Picasso museum. A final commemoration and one of the highest honors ever bestowed upon a living artist came as celebration for his 90th birthday. Picassos works were exhibited in the Grande Galerie of the Louvre. Pablo died in his Villa in Mougins. Many of Picassos paintings are recongnisable even to those of us unfimliar with many specific artists. But no painting style is more connected to an artist than Cubism is to Pablo Picasso, although, Picassos style went through many transformations. He began creating art as a young boy sketching and painting

What I Learned this Semester Essay Example

What I Learned this Semester Essay I did not know it before but I learned in myself that I am capable of changing myself for the good, or for the improvement of my outlook in life. For so long I was stuck to my old beliefs which concerned most of my daily dealings. Whenever I get to encounter certain situations, I make a point that my decisions and actions would have to abide by my earlier decisions and actions. It was perhaps the one thing which kept me away from refining myself precisely because I was hindering myself from fitting into a new and better mold, so to speak.The times are changing, as the classic saying goes, and therefore people should adapt themselves in these changing times to better improve the self at the least and to survive at the most.   I did not fully understand before that I can change myself if only I was attentive enough to the signs of the times and diligent enough to do my share. Knowing more about myself will help me in at least two ways. First, I will be more acquainted with what I am capable of doing and what I am not capable of doing. Second, with the knowledge of my limitations and capabilities, I can be able to realign myself accordingly by focusing more on the potentials and giving just the right amount of attention on my limitations so that I can be guided in my quest for a better life ahead of me.However, there are many things in my life which restrain from me from being able to perform my absolute best in the classroom. As I have mentioned before, I knew very little about my capacities and limitations in earlier times, thereby giving me a huge roadblock in front. During those times, I was not fully aware of what I can do, and thus when the opportunity knocks before me, prompting me to do something useful and purposive, I was not able to rise up to the occasion and meet the challenge. Today, the task to improve and to be more motivated is a significant necessity simply because the improvement and motivation of myself would very well enable me to participat e more actively in the classroom. I can at least try to open myself to the tasks that must be done so that I can be more motivated in classroom activities. One example to these methods is to make a close list of the current and future classroom activities so that I can have a listing that will guide me on what to expect in the coming days. By having a guide, I can be able to prepare for the upcoming classroom events and prove my worth not only to the class but also to myself.In this class, I have learned that individual potentials greatly vary among the students and that each potential can be unique and, hence, can serve the purpose of giving the student the chance to do well in school assuming that the student makes full use of his or her realized potentials.The strengths quest activity has helped me develop and maintain relationships with others by enabling me to find strength in others thereby sustaining my inner strength not only in terms of the physical sense but, more importan tly, in terms of the mental strength. By engaging in a strengths quest activity, I was able to ideate my inner thoughts into actual possibilities by effectively communicating myself to others. In the larger society, communication is vital to any business and would aid me or any other person in being able to express or present my technical knowledge and capabilities to others. Blocking communications is considered to be destructive in relationships (Gray, p. 95). Strengths quest can also reinforce my capacity to obtain new ideas from my immediate surroundings which shapes my awareness into being well-rounded. By correlating my self through communication with my immediate surroundings, which includes the people I have a direct and indirect relationship with, they will provide insight into the feeling of others which allows a comfortable and a more productive learning environment.There are changes I can make in order to be able to improve the relationships in my life and that there, to o, are things which I can retain and build on so that I can continue having a harmonious relationship with others. I can retain my traits of having an open mind to the suggestions of other people and of being critical about the things that happen around me. More importantly, I can change my unwanted habits or traits which can impede me from realizing a better relationship with others.I have learned that my qualities of having an open and critical mind can greatly aid me in my future career. I believe that most careers require a certain amount of open mindedness and a critical mind in order to function well according to one’s tasks. Without having an open mind, I may suffer from being numb about the suggestion of my co-workers. Without having a critical mind, I may also suffer from losing my convictions quite easily. I also believe that there should be a balance between my critical and open mindedness. That is to say that while maintaining an open mind for changes, I should no t compromise my convictions in life which I have greatly gained much beneficial experiences and values. A proper consideration for both aspects should still be my greatest weapon in times where change is inevitable. These things will efficiently and effectively prepare me in my future.One instance during this semester where the knowledge I have gained in class strengths affected the way I approached a situation is the instance when I needed to engage with others in terms of interviewing them for the purpose of obtaining a differing view. I was cautious enough to consider their positions which some conflicted with the ones I hold so that I can be able to get their convictions without bias and prejudice on my position. I used my open and critical mind in carefully ‘extracting’ the ideas of others and suffusing them into my own.