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John Travolta is about to receive some unwelcome attention from power brokers within the Italian-American community. The Italic Institute of America, which campaigns against what it calls anti-Italian bias in popular culture, says that Gotti: In the Shadow of My Father – will perpetuate negative racial stereotypes.
The institute cites it as the latest example of Hollywood bias against Italian-Americans, who, it believes, are pigeonholed by the media as buffoons, bigots, bimbos and organised criminals. Its research shows that 69 per cent of Italian characters in major movies are portrayed in a negative light.
"Though an infinitesimally minuscule, 0.00782 per cent of Italo-Americans are affiliated with organised crime (as per FBI statistics), Tinseltown has created, perpetuated and reinforced a long-standing infrastructure of anti-Italian intolerance," says the institute's chairman, Rosario Iaconis. "In choosing to portray John Gotti, a two-bit thug with delusions of mediocrity, John Travolta is... slouching toward a goonish Gomorrah."
<span style="font-weight: bold">The institute believes that Italian-Americans should be treated with similar sensitivity to that shown to Jewish, African and Native Americans. In recent decades, all three of those groups have successfully lobbied against bigoted portrayals of their culture in the popular media.</span>
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/...ck-6283808.html
The institute cites it as the latest example of Hollywood bias against Italian-Americans, who, it believes, are pigeonholed by the media as buffoons, bigots, bimbos and organised criminals. Its research shows that 69 per cent of Italian characters in major movies are portrayed in a negative light.
"Though an infinitesimally minuscule, 0.00782 per cent of Italo-Americans are affiliated with organised crime (as per FBI statistics), Tinseltown has created, perpetuated and reinforced a long-standing infrastructure of anti-Italian intolerance," says the institute's chairman, Rosario Iaconis. "In choosing to portray John Gotti, a two-bit thug with delusions of mediocrity, John Travolta is... slouching toward a goonish Gomorrah."
<span style="font-weight: bold">The institute believes that Italian-Americans should be treated with similar sensitivity to that shown to Jewish, African and Native Americans. In recent decades, all three of those groups have successfully lobbied against bigoted portrayals of their culture in the popular media.</span>
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/...ck-6283808.html
to no avail, show must still go on.
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