Abstract
With the onset of the new millennium and premium channels, a shift in the representation of queer Italian Americans on television begins to emerge. Although subscription channels pioneer more inclusive programming, queer Italian American visibility continued to exploit antiquated ethnic stereotypes, leaving the situational comedy genre of network television to usher in a more evolved and multi-dimensional queer Italian American character. This chapter considers how Will & Grace, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Difficult People understand LGBTQIA PLUS_SPI characters of Italian descent on television and invites the reader to consider why queer Italian American characters exist only as stereotypes regarding ethnicity or sexuality. Moreover, it questions: Can an Italian American queer identity exist only if it inhabits a fantasy world sustained by television, where stereotypes are a means to make palatable that which was taboo for the Italian American community? Finally, the chapter maintains that, as a lens to observe and understand LGBTQIA PLUS_SPI Italian American identity, humor facilitates discussions about social injustices and changes affecting the queer community. The driving force of the three series, laughter, depoliticizes gender and sexuality and creates more palatable queer Italian American spaces on television.
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Notes
- 1.
While the Italian American characters in my analysis identify as gay and cisgender, I use the term gay and queer interchangeably to indicate sexual non-normativity.
- 2.
HBO’s Sex and the City (1998–2004) and The Sopranos (1999–2007) introduce audiences to Anthony Marantino, (an event planner and close friend of Charlotte York) and Vito Spatafore (a capo of the Dimeo crime family). Vic Grassi (a chef and caterer) appears as a minor character in Showtime’s Queer as Folk (2000–2005).
- 3.
Michael Novotney in Queer as Folk.
- 4.
In the episode “It’s because I’m Gay, Right?” (2:13), the audience, along with Michael, learns that his mother, Debbie, changed her name and fabricated the story about Michael’s father, a soldier who died in combat during the Vietnam war, when, his biological father (Danny Devore) is a drag queen performer known as Divina Devore.
- 5.
Beginning in the early 1970s, the sitcom becomes the first genre to feature openly gay and recurring characters. For a more comprehensive history of LGBTQIA+ representation in the sitcom refer to Jeremy G. Butler, “Comedy, Sex, and Gender Identity,” The Sitcom. (Routledge, 2020), 127–161.
- 6.
When Will & Grace returned to NBC in 2017 the show was revised and altered the original “finale” so that the main characters, Will and Grace, would be single.
- 7.
Jonathan J. Cavallero and George Plasketes, “Gangsters, Fessos, Tricksters, and Sopranos: The Historical Roots of Italian American Stereotype Anxiety,” Journal of Popular Film and Television, 32:2 (2004): 51.
- 8.
Although today, the term Guido is defined as “consumption culture or style,” the designation still bears the marker of difference, “exposing ideological divisions” (Tricarico 179). As Donald Tricarico explains, the expression entered the lexicon of American culture in the middle of the 1980s, but the “particular style” developed in the disco movement of the 1970s, when young Italian Americans from New York City neighborhoods, gravitated to dance clubs, consuming leisure culture as a form of rebellion against the restrictive opportunities of their parents’ generation in the 1960s. As such, the term is marked by class, and race, and is heavily associated with “toughness and delinquency” (180).
- 9.
Donald Tricarico, “Consuming Italian Americans: Invoking Ethnicity in the Buying and Selling of Guido,” in Making Italian America: Consumer Culture and the Production of Ethnic Identities, ed. Simone Cinotto (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 184.
- 10.
George De Stefano, “Identity Crises: Race, Sex and Ethnicity in Italian American Cinema,” in Mediated Ethnicity: New Italian-American Cinema, ed. Giuliana Muscio, (New York: City University of New York, 2010), 168.
- 11.
As De Stefano explains, the image of the “hot Italian cop” is “usually mustached, muscular, and hairy of the chest, presumably heterosexual, but sexually attainable under the right circumstances” (“Identity Crises,” 168).
- 12.
Aaron Baker and Juliann Vitullo, “Screening the Italian-American Male,” in Masculinity: Bodies, Movies, Culture, ed. Peter Lehman, (New York: Routledge, 2001), 213.
- 13.
Baker and Vitullo, “Screening,” 219.
- 14.
De Stefano, “Identity Crises,” 168.
- 15.
Anthony Tamburri, Italian/American Short Films and Music Videos: A Semiotic Reading, (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2002), 30.
- 16.
Tamburri, Italian/American, 30.
- 17.
De Stefano, “Identity Crises,” 168.
- 18.
Mary Jo Bona, in Don’t Tell Mama!: The Penguin Book of Italian American Writing, ed. Regina Barreca (New York: Penguin Books, 2002), 61.
- 19.
“La miglior parola e quella che non si dice.”
- 20.
“A chi dici il tuo segreto, doni la tua libertà.”
- 21.
Online Etymology Dictionary | Origin, history, and meaning of English words, https://www.etymonline.com/, accessed 23 April 2021.
- 22.
Fred Gardaphé, From Wiseguys to Wise Men: The Gangster and Italian American Masculinities, (New York: Routledge, 2006), 16.
- 23.
Michael Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 89.
- 24.
Sherryl Kleinman, Matthew B. Ezzel, and A. Corey Frost, “Reclaiming Critical Analysis: The Social Harms of ‘Bitch,’” Sociological Analysis, Vol. 3, No. 1, (Spring 2009): 54.
- 25.
Kleinman, Ezzel, and Corey, “Reclaiming,” 54.
- 26.
Ibid., 54.
- 27.
Kathleen Battles and Wendy Hilton-Morrow, “Gay Characters in Conventional Spaces: Will and Grace and the Situation Comedy Genre,” Critical Studies in Media Communications, Vol. 19, No. 1 (March 2002): 90.
- 28.
Sheri L. Manuel. “Becoming the Homovoyer: Consuming Homosexual Representation in Queer as Folk,” Social Semiotics, Vol. 19, No.3 (September 2009): 275.
- 29.
Battles and Hilton-Morrow, “Gay Characters,” 90.
- 30.
Rodger, Streitmatter. From “Perverts” to “Fab Five”: The Media’s Changing Depiction of Gay Men and Lesbians, (New York: Routledge, 2008), 118.
- 31.
Battles and Hilton-Morrow, “Gay Characters,” 90.
- 32.
Will & Grace, season 6, episode 18, “Courting Disaster,” directed by James Burrows, aired March 18, 2004, in broadcast syndication, NBC.
- 33.
Vicki L. Eaklor. “The Kids Are All Right but the Lesbians Aren’t: The Illusion of Progress in Popular Film,” Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Winter 2012): 158.
- 34.
Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009).
- 35.
Rodger, From Perverts to Fab Five, 115.
- 36.
qtd. in Rodger, From Perverts to Fab Five, 115.
- 37.
Avi Shoshana and Elly Teman, “Coming Out of the Coffin: Life-Self and Death-Self in Six Feet Under,” Symbolic Interactions, Vol.29, No. 4 (Fall 2006): 560.
- 38.
Kristen A. Murray, “The Last Laugh: Dark Comedy on US Television,” Taboo Comedy: Television and Controversial Humour, eds. Chiara Buccaria and Luca Barra (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 41.
- 39.
The month of October is also devoted to commemorating Italian American Culture and History. The episode, therefore, blends the two in creating its comedy of mistaken gender and cultural identities.
- 40.
Cavallero and Plasketes, “Gangsters,” 56.
- 41.
Cavallero and Plasketes, “Gangsters,” 56.
- 42.
Cavallero and Plasketes, “Gangsters,” 56.
- 43.
Cavallero and Plasketes, “Gangsters,” 59.
- 44.
Although today the piñata is associated with Latin American culture, its historical tradition dates to the Italian medieval “pignatta” used in the celebration of liturgical and popular feasts. When used in contemporary American slang the term has sexual implications. Similarly, in Italian, pignatta is used in reference to a gay man in the passive role. Difficult People’s use, however, suggests more of a means to highlight the episode’s narrative of mistaken perceptions as well as merging the episode’s subplot, in which Arthur (James Unbaniak), Julie’s boyfriend, organizes “a puppy party but with kids” for his boss, Gabbie.
- 45.
Helen Davies and Sarah Ilott, “Mocking the Weak? Contexts, Theories, Politics,” Comedy and the Politics of Representation: Mocking the Weak, (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 7.
- 46.
Davies and Ilott, “Mocking the Weak,” 1.
- 47.
Ibid., 6.
- 48.
Ibid., 10.
- 49.
Michela Baldo, “Familiarizing the Gay: Queering the Family Coming Out and Resilience in Mambo Italiano,” Journal of GLBT Family Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1–2 (January 2014): 172.
- 50.
According to Clarissa Clò, the film with its “distinctive Italian American identity and characterization in a specific geographical location, Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge, … is in equal measure the originator of myths and misconceptions” of the Italian American identity in the late 1970s and early 1980s. (Clarissa Clò, “Disco Fever: Italian and American Diasporic Journeys,” Italian American Review Vol. 8, No. 2 (Summer 2018): 119–142.
- 51.
Upon arrival at Vince’s family home in Queens, Will’s first remark, “I always thought Queens was just a place to bury bodies,” correlates the borough to the mob. Will’s assumption about Queens serves to establish jokes which associate the D’Angelos with organized crime. As the two men enter the kitchen, Will states, “Family kitchen. I bet there’s a lot of history here,” to which Vince responds, “That’s the spot my uncle got shot.” After an awkward moment, Vince points to another area of the room and explains, “That’s where I was standing when I accidentally shot my uncle.”
- 52.
Examples of psychological and physical violence toward women in the Italian American community include Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972), John Badham’s Saturday Night Fever (1977), Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990), and Tom Chase’s The Sopranos (1999–2007).
- 53.
Like the earlier correlation of the family’s possible ties to the mob, the grated cheese (an emblem of Italian and Italian American cuisine) underscores their cultural identity. The cliché induces the audience’s laughter and interrupts the awkward moment. The audience is distracted from the act of abuse through food-based comedy.
- 54.
George De Stefano, “Fuori per sempre: Gay and Lesbian Italian Americans Come Out,” The Routledge History of Italian Americans, eds. William J. Connell and Stanislao G. Pugliese (New York: Routledge, 2019), 569.
- 55.
Michael Bronski. “Positive Images and the Coming Out Film: The Art and Politics of Gay and Lesbian Cinema,” Cinéaste, Vol. 26, No. 1 (2000): 26.
- 56.
Michael Bronksi, “Positive Images,” 20.
- 57.
Brody, “Categorizing Coming Out: The Modern Televisual Mediation of Queer Youth Identification,” The University of Southern California Journal of Film and Television, Vol. 31, Issue 2 (Fall 2011): 35.
- 58.
D. Travers Scott. “‘Coming out of the closet’—Examining a Metaphor,” Annals of the International Communication Association, Vol. 42, No. 3 (2018): 151.
- 59.
Evan Brody, “Categorizing Coming Out,” 35.
- 60.
Joanne Winning, “Lesbian Modernism: Writing in and Beyond the Closet,” The Cambridge Companion to Gay and Lesbian Writing, ed. Hugh Stevens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 54.
- 61.
Larry Gross, Up from Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 83.
- 62.
Vicki L. Eaklor, “The Kids are All Right,” 153.
- 63.
Ibid., 166.
- 64.
Ibid., 158.
- 65.
According to authors Kathleen Battles and Wendy Hilton, the NBC sitcom “can be read as reinforcing heterosexism and, thus, can be seen as heteronormative” due to its constant reliance on the convention of feminizing Will (87, 90).
- 66.
Eaklor uses the term to better express “the underpinnings of male domination in gender enforcement” (15).
- 67.
Eaklor, “The Kids Are All Right,” 166.
- 68.
Ibid., 158.
- 69.
Brody, “Categorizing Coming Out,” 14.
- 70.
Sheri L. Manuel, “Becoming the Homovoyeur: Consuming Homosexual Representation in Queer as Folk,” Social Semiotics, Vol. 19, No. 3 (September 2009): 275.
- 71.
Manuel, “Becoming the Homovoyeur,” 276–277.
- 72.
Davies and Ilott, “Mocking the Weak,” 2.
- 73.
Davies and Ilott, “Mocking the Weak,” 6.
- 74.
Bakhtin, 6.
Works Cited
Baker, Aaron and Juliann Vitullo. “Screening the Italian-American Male.” In Masculinity: Bodies, Movies, Culture, ed. Peter Lehman, 213–226. New York: Routledge, 2001.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.
Baldo, Michela. “Familiarizing the Gay: Queering the Family Coming Out and Resilience in Mambo Italiano.” Journal of GLBT Family Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1–2 (January 2014): 168–187.
Battles, Kathleen and Wendy Hilton-Morrow. “Gay Characters in Conventional Spaces: Will and Grace and the Situation Comedy Genre.” Critical Studies in Media Communications, Vol. 19, No. 1 (March 2002): 87–105.
Brody, Evan. “Categorizing Coming Out: The Modern Televisual Mediation of Queer Youth Identification.” The University of Southern California Journal of Film and Television, Vol. 31, Issue 2 (Fall 2011): 35–44.
Cavallero, Jonathan J. and George Plasketes. “Gangsters, Fessos, Tricksters, and Sopranos: The Historical Roots of Italian American Stereotype Anxiety,” Journal of Popular Film and Television, 32:2 (2004): 50–73.
Davies, Helen, and Sarah Ilott. Comedy and the Politics of Representation: Mocking the Weak. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
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———. “Fuori per sempre: Gay and Lesbian Italian Americans Come Out,” 565–580. The Routledge History of Italian Americans. Edited by William J. Connell and Stanislao G. Pugliese. New York: Routledge, 2019.
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Galati, C.A. (2023). Queering the Guido or Guidoing the Queer? Performing Gender and Identity on Comedy Television. In: Heim, J., Anatrone, S. (eds) Spaghetti Sissies Queering Italian American Media. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10197-7_12
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