Please, Professor Ben Lawton, with your expertise and credentials*, you are one of the few that could write a "sensible" book of the Media Portrayal of Italian Americans,
and it's Vicious Legacy!!! Maybe as a Co-Author with a Psychologist??

I'm very disappointed with "scholar" Peter Bondanella's version!! He may know about Films, but he obviously knows little about the "Psychological Impact" !!!
"Hollywood Italians: Dagos, Palookas, Romeos, Wise Guys, and Sopranos"
I still recommend "WOP" by Salvatore J. Lagumina.

Philadelphia Inquirer
By Carlin Romano
Inquirer Book Critic
October 5, 2004

Shark Tale, the slick yet fishy animated feature cartoon from DreamWorks that set an October record for film debuts this past weekend with $49.1 million in ticket sales, tells the comic story of a young Mafia shark and sissy, Lenny - a vegetarian - who keeps failing to live up to the family expectations of his powerful father, Don Lino.

Talk about a Hollywood hook.

In this "once more into the Nemobowl" offering,...sometimes all-wet version of a reef-like Manhattan (here's the real fantasy) still under the thumb of the Italian mob...

Shark Tale works hard to be an equal-opportunity stereotyper, ..so far, though, it's mainly Italians getting steamed, while DreamWorks wishes they'd clam up...

CARRES, the Washington-based Coalition Against Racial, Religious and Ethnic Stereotyping that includes such Italian American groups as the Order Sons of Italy in America and the National Italian American Foundation, is calling for a national boycott of the film and its corporate products and sponsors, among them Coca-Cola, Krispy Kreme and Hasbro Toys.

DreamWorks Studio,...when challenged...on the movie's marketing of ethnic stereotypes to children, defended it as a good-natured take-off on familiar types, not a pronouncement that all Italians or blacks resemble the film's characters.

[Yet, Spielberg, the studio's principal, is an outspoken opponent of stereotyping and discrimination, claiming that as a Jewish kid growing up, he suffered from Negative Stereotypes.]

[In a New York Times article published on March 9, 2004, Spielberg was quoted, “We are in a race against time for the conscious mind of young people” and need to teach them “the dangers of stereotyping, the dangers of discrimination, the dangers of racial and religious hatred and vengeful rage.”]

[In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in July 1994, Mr. Spielberg said, "People learn to hate."]

[Steven, THEN WHAT is going on in your Mind???? Has your real life "Nebbish" character made you a "closet" hater??? Everyone Else, or Particularly Italians???

[Now, how else can you describe Spielberg's actions other than HYPOCRISY!!!]

>From critics, the movie drew mixed reviews. Carrie Rickey in The Inquirer thought it "sinks in a sea of product placement." Lou Lumenick of the New York Post judged it "a shipwreck." But A.O. Scott of the New York Times credited the sharks with "a doughy integrity," deeming the film "reasonably good fun," and Jack Mathews of the New York Daily News called it "a lush cartoon" and "the first must-see family movie of the fall."

For Italians and others trying to figure out how to react - I mean, Give up Krispy Kremes? - here's the right catechismal question: What would Peter Bondanella do?

A top scholar of Italian literature and film at Indiana University, with a helpful expertise (for these purposes) in Fellini, Bondanella turns his attention to the larger Dream Factory's portrayal of Italians over nearly a century in Hollywood Italians: Dagos, Palookas, Romeos, Wise Guys, and Sopranos (Continuum, $29.95), a sweeping, scholarly, virtually film-by-film analysis of its subject.

And so, with graceful scholarly confidence, Bondanella reflects in Chapter 1 on how "people are generally more sophisticated about dealing with stereotypes in their cultures than is generally assumed or acknowledged."

[If I were to have to choose who is smarter on the subject of Stereotyping between Bondanella and the ADL, I'll go with the ADL. Bondanella is naive, and ignores all studies to the contrary AND Common Sense.]

...In his comprehensive, common-sense approach, packed with full plot descriptions, Bondanella -...cites Hollywood's many positive depictions of Italians over the years.

[Mr. Bondanella, What a "lame" analysis!!!! Tens of Millions of Negative "images", and a few Dozen Positive "images" (Many of those even often as written as fatally flawed, i.e. Sinatra and DiMaggio), and that's OK???

... [ Bondanella, In line with that incredibly "upbeat" approach, Bondanella also defends The Sopranos, arguing (that Chase) ends up with "a fuller and more compelling portrait of contemporary Hollywood Italians than any other movie or group of movies to date."....OMIGOD!!!! What cesspool did Bondanella grow up in???

...Bondanella's history, however, suggests that rather than boycotting or attacking Hollywood honchos like De Niro and Martin Scorsese for depicting Mafiosi too often, we should shame them for what they've only rarely done: exhibited the courage to devote their talents to less cliched and retailable parts of Italian American experience.

[Yes Peter, and what is going to be the name of that book?]

Has it not really occurred to such box office players that, say, a film of Sinatra's life, interpreting how that up-from-the-streets personality could both punch out hecklers and phrase lyrics like an Upper East Side sophisticate, might be a greater artistic challenge than one more predictable lark about goombah goons?

[Yes, Why do all the Italian Americans with "Finer than Fiction" Lives, go unnoticed by Hollywood, and this almost pathological fixation on "mobsters"??]

Does Shark Tale deserve to tank? Should Italians and others toss it back? Instead of trying to "find Nemo" on the cheap, suggests Bondanella's insightful study, American filmmakers would do better to find themselves through fresher material.

Contact book critic Carlin Romano at 215-854-5615 or cromano@phillynews.com.

Philadelphia Inquirer | 10/05/2004 | Movies can do better by Italians, scholar says
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/
entertainment/movies/9841848.htm