Italian stereotypes come in many forms. The most popular Italian stereotypes include our being violent, dumb and promiscuous. This post focuses on the media's near constant portrayal of Italians as dumb. We have also written posts about Italians stereotyped as violent and Italians stereotyped as promiscuous.
Italian Stereotype # 1- Sweet, But Dumb
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| The Two Joeys |
Timeline:
Somewhere, somehow Italians became stereotyped as sweet, but dumb. This means that they weren't intelligent - but they were lovable and non-threatening. One can make the argument that this trend started and became popular in the 1970s and has lasted to the present day. Let's take a look by decade:
1970s
The decade that gave us these cultural gems: Vinny Barbarino of Welcome Back Kotter, The Fonz in Happy Days, Tony Banta of Taxi, Tony Manero of Saturday Night Fever and of course, Rocky Balboa.
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| Italian Stereotype Hell |
Gave us Coach Pantusso on Cheers and Tony Micelli of Who's The Boss?
1990s
Gave rise to the mega-popular Joey Tribbiani of Friends and Joey Russo of Blossom. Joey Tribbiani was known for his catch phrase "How you doin'?" Joey Russo was known for his catch phrase, "Whoa!"
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| Left to Right: Joey Russo and Joey Tribbiani |
Here are some of their famous clips:
Joey Russo on Blossom:
Joey on Friends
2000s
The "reality age"- where Italians are stereotyped as "real" idiots. Of course, these new portrayals do include Italians being violent
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| From Left to Right: Real Housewives NJ, Brooklyn 11223, Mob Wives & Jersey Shore |
All of these characters share a common theme: they are sweet but dumb Italian Americans. For as nice and loveable as the characters may have been, they were never as smart as their non-Italian counterparts.
And there you have it
Four decades of the popular media portraying Italians as nothing more than loveable idiots.
We close with some of the above characters' greatest quotes - many of which are monosyllabic:
Joey (Blossom)- “Whoa!”
Vinny Barbarino (Welcome Back Kotter)- “What? Where?”
The Fonz (Happy Days)- “eyy”
Tony Micelli- (Who's the Boss)- “Ay, oh, oh ay”
Joey (Friends)- “ Its a moo point. Its like a cow's opinion- it doesn't matter”
Coach Pantuso (Cheers)-”You skipped a grade, Coach?” “Yeah. I skipped four. High school I think they called it.”
Jersey Shore: "A crow comes and it starts quacking at us... or not quacking, what does a crow do?"
Its at this point that I'd like to remind everyone that Italy and its inhabitants were the creators of the Roman Empire (the cradle of Western Civilization) and the Renaissance.
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