The Legacy of the Mafia Minstel Show :: Essays Papers

The Legacy of the Mafia Minstel found After my Grandfather died in the late 1960s, my grandmother came to live with us for a short time. It was a wonderful way to learn well-nigh my heritage and I got to listen to her stories round when my Father was growing up in San Francisco. I remember a story she told me about when my pascal was around eight years old, about the equal time piffling Caesar was in the movie theaters. One day he came home from schooldays and told my Grandmother that some kid at school told him that all Italians were trigger-happys. My Grandmother got very upset and told him to ignore comments like that, that all it did was reveal the ignorance of the soul making that remark, and to always take pride in who you are and your Italian heritage. My Dad looked at my Grandmother and very innocently asked her, Ma, whats a cutthroat? Zoom forward around 70 years. My daughter comes homes from school, about the same time The Sopranos was released on HBO, compl aining that some kids at school were bug her and calling her Mafia Girl. I wish I could say that things hasten gotten better for Italian Americans and how they are portrayed in popular picture and film in the last 70 years, but unfortunately I think it has actually gotten worse. What I call the Mafia minstrel Show, actors in olive skin face playing mobster for the benefit of those pot who lust for violence and racism, is now as insidious as lice. convey to our friends at HBO, the Mafia Minstrel Show has been legitimized as a mainstream genre, not unlike westerns or love stories. So why has the Mafia Minstrel Show survived for the past 70 years? It is very simple, IT MAKES MONEY I remember reading the obituary for Mario Puzo. It listed the sales of his books, his wonderful reinvigorated about Italian American immigrants, The Fortunate Pilgrim, had sold maybe 10,000 copies and The Godfather, a novel that featured the Mafia Minstrel Show, had sold 15 million copies. Mari o Puzo, a man who admitted he had never known a gangster forrader he wrote The Godfather, obviously was given a lot of cash to keep a novel about the Mafia Minstrel Show.