Dagos, Mobsters, Cooks, Latin Lovers, Saints and Whores: Italians in Spike Lee's Summer of Sam

As is well-known, Italians and Americans of Italian descent have been the subject of a very vast number of American films since the times of the silent era. Throughout the years such representations have contributed to creating stereotyped images of Italian Americans, which have been portrayed in various film genres. In fact, even if today the Italian American community is an integral part of American society and culture, “Hollywood Italians continue to stand out as a group in the Hollywood pantheon, remaining far more ‘ethnic’ than their real counterparts” (Bondanella 2004: 12). Such stereotypical representations concern both male and female characters representing Americans of Italian descent, who keep being represented as “the Other”. Moreover, these characters are also linguistically connoted, as their variety can be defined as an ethnolect, and quite often also as a sociolect. It is interesting to note that also Italian dubbing professionals tend to perpetuate the same choices when it comes to translating such variety into Italian. Consequently, we can talk about sterotyping also in translation. The use of the Sicilian regiolect, indeed, seems to have become a conventionalized practice for some specific characters, though not for all of them. The aim of this paper is to present the various stereotyped characterizations of Hollywood Italian American men and women taking as a case study the film Summer of Sam (by Spike Lee) and the strategies used in Italian dubbing to transpose their variety.