Italian Americans

The church scene is a stereotype of the Italian American Gangster, a lot of them commit awful crimes but are at the same time very religious, The Godfather church scene stresses this by showing violent scenes of the heads of the families being killed, these are ordered by Michael while he is in a religious service giving a commitment to his religion. A christening is a re-birth, before you a christened you are a normal human being, but after you are a part of a religion, this links in with the murders because it shows the re-birth of Michael Corleone and then him changing to Don Corleone with the violent scenes.

The Godfather uses many stereotypes of the Italian American, the first shot of the film is a close up which tracks backwards to a medium close up, this makes us identify with the character and feel his emotions, which are anger and sadness, the frame tracks further to a over the shoulder shot, this leaves us in suspense because we want to see who is so powerful that people come to plead to them. The messages that come up in this are friendship, traditions, and justice, the Italians in this are very traditional.

The scene where Michael proposes to kill Solozzo and Mclusky shows that with no male role model, traditions go out of the window, and there is no backbone, as Don Corleone doesn’t want to get Michael mixed in his family business. The shot while he says this is a medium shot, it is shot from low angle, which connotes weakness, and he is portrayed as weak at the start because he is the youngest brother. The shot slowly tracks in to Michael; we start identifying with Michael. This shows the loss of tradition as the family is diminished. People eat round the table, there is no talking, Sonny has a vest on and Michael is smoking, this shows the mess of family because they are always seen eating round a table as a family.

These couple of scenes have told us that Don Corleone is a influential and powerful character, it shows as soon as he is away the family's traditions are lost. 

The film industry has portrayed Italian Americans in a bad way since they have been in film, the films all suggest they are someway involved with a mob, if you ask the public their stereotypical Italian American they would describe them as having greasy hair and saying 'Forget about it' all the time. The archetypes are 'The Don' 'Soldiers'. Woman have small roles in these films, they cook, clean, get cheated on and know about it, the representations of Italian in my opinion is a racist one.

"To represent also means to symbolise, stand for, to be a specimen of, or to substitute for, as in the sentence, 'In Christianity, the cross represents the suffering and crucifixion of Christ"

Joe Pesci in Goodfellas is just a specimen of Italian Americans, this representation is used a lot in film, this angers Italian Americans as the publics perception of them is that they are all gangsters, most Italian American films have strong stereotypes, How ever the film "My Cousin Vinny" uses the stereotype of the Italian American but then has Joe Pesci playing a lawyer, Vinny is discriminated through out this film for being a Italian American.

"One implication of this argument about cultural codes is that, if meaning is the result, not of something fixed out there, in nature, but of our social, cultural and linguistic conventions meaning that they can never be finally fixed."

-"The Godfather was one of the first movies to come out about Italian American's being associated with he mob. The Characters in the film gave definition to Italians being highly associated with food violence and family."

I disagree with this quote, there are many films with Italian Americans, films that starred James Cagney where he mostly played a mob characters, these films were from the 1930s, way before The Godfather in 1972.

http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/LOTARDO/ 

In the film Goodfellas, the main character Henry Hill is an example of the hierarchy of ethnicity in America, Tommy DeVito is a character who is set for a ceremony, Henry cant have this as his Father was Irish, this shows that the Italian community didn’t want to mix their ethnicities because it was frowned upon by other people.

Total Italian Related Films since Sound Era (1928)	1220
Films which portray Italians in a positive light	374 (31%)
Films which portray Italians in a negative light	846 (69%)
Individual Categories	1220
Mob Characters	487 (40%)
(Real mob characters)	58 (12%)
(Fake mob characters)	429 (88%)
Boors, buffoons, bigots, or bimbos	359 (29%)
Positive or complex portrayals	374 (31%)
Influence of The Godfather (1972)
Mob movies prior to The Godfather	207 (43%)
Mob movies after The Godfather	280 (57%)
Total Number of Italian Americans (1990 U.S. Census)	14.7 million
Total Number of Criminals (1999 F.B.I Statistics)	1,150 (.

http://www.umich.edu/~themafia/stereotypes.html