When Benny the Groin and Tommy the Tongue Whacked Lou the Wrench: Cultural and Linguistic Representation of Italians in Mafia Comedies

Italians and Americans of Italian descent have been the subject of a very vast number of American movies, since the times of the very birth of cinema. Throughout the years the representations of these characters have contributed to creating stereotyped images of Italian Americans, which have been portrayed in different film genres, such as the image of the immigrant, the cook, the Latin Lover, the prize-fighter, and, especially, the mobster. Images of Italian criminal activity and the so-called wise guys can be found in American cinema since the silent era and have continued to be popular throughout the years till the present age. Moreover, the Italian gangster genre has given birth to a subcategory, namely the mobster/mafia comedy. In the films belonging to this genre, the comic mobsters reflect even more of an ethnic stereotype than their more realistic counterparts, in large measure because any form of comedy relies heavily upon stereotypical characters and stock situations. Indeed, if the representation of Italian characters in mafia movies undoubtedly revolves around the perpetuation of a series of recurrent narrative and linguistic elements, it is a fact that in mafia comedies such traits are taken to their extremes. A study conducted on three films representative of the genre (namely, Analyze this, 1999, and its sequel, Analyze that, 2002, both by Harold Ramis, and Mickey Blue Eyes, 1999 by Kelly Makin) has revealed that the protagonists and the situations represented are indeed extremely stereotypical and present all the elements that are usually selected by Hollywood screenwriters and directors in order to convey the ethnicity of Italian characters in cinema. Moreover, these traits are overemphasized with the specific purpose of adding to the comicality of the movies. Such elements act both on a narrative, or cultural, level, and on a linguistic one. Finally, the study also aimed at analysing the strategies used in Italian dubbing when dealing with the transposition of the characters’ variety, and the findings concluded that also in translation the language is over-characterized, with the purpose of amplifying the comic dimension.