Screening Italians - Identity, Memory and Sexuality in Migrant Italian Film and Culture
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1 Screening Italians - Identity, Memory and Sexuality in Migrant Italian Film and Culture Goldsmiths College, University of London PhD Art History, 2004 Margherita Sprio 2 Screening Italians - Identity, Memory and Sexuality in Migrant Italian Film and Culture Thesis Abstract Film has played a significant role in shaping the British-Italian community's sense of identity in the context of post war Italian immigration into Britain. This thesis explores how (Southern Italian) cultural identity has been mediated by both historical and contemporary factors and the ways in which this identity has been shaped by the process of immigration. Nostalgia and myth have helped to shift notions of the self within the immigrant community; at the same time they have also acted as tools through which the notion of homeland and belonging could be experienced. How can cultural history be understood in relation to memory and how could this duality be negotiated in terms of understanding the construction of (Italian) cultural identity? The importance of both collective and individual memory has been made visible through ethnographic research that has involved a series of interviews with members of the Italian immigrant communities located both within London and the Home Counties of Britain. Drawing on a series of film readings, together with an historical and theoretical overview of the construction of Italianicity, there has also been an examination of the specific impact that popular film melodramas had on what was to become the British-Italian immigrant community. These films (from the 1950s in Italy) enabled the transmission of a particular version of sexual identity that is still prevalent today in American mainstream film. These ideas have been further investigated in relation to converging authenticities of experience and how this convergence has influenced second generation Italians. An analysis of the distorted forms of continuity, in terms of how home and place are perceived, informs the more theoretical aspects of the overall project. By considering the influence of film in relation to cultural difference, this research should contribute to current debates about cultural translation. 3 Screening Italians - Identity, Memory and Sexuality in Migrant Italian Film and Culture CONTENTS Towards an Ethnography of Film P 4-15 PART ONE From Film to Culture Cultures of Migration P 16-43 Frank Capra and Anthony Minghella - Comparative Links P 44-63 Through Masculinity, Family and Community PART TWO From Culture to Film Cultural Identity and Assimilation P 64-103 Memories and Movies P 104-126 Conclusion P 127-133 Appendix A- Oral Interviews P 134-136 Appendix B- Translation of Oral Interviews P 137-141 Filmography P 142-143 Bibliography P 144-169 4 Migrant Italian Film Culture Screening Italians - Identity, Memory and Sexuality in and Towards an Ethnography of Film Sicilian the This thesis aims to provide a cultural history of the diasporic Southern Italian and communitiesof Counties Londonduring the latter mid 1950s and their experiences of arrival and survival in Britain's Home and from Italy Sicily part of the twentieth century. Mass immigration to the South of England the South of and in particular happenedbetween 1952 and 1960'. With this mass immigration, came the transported cinematic diffused experience and memory of home and belonging. The experiences and the role of cinematic consumptionduring this period of the early 1950s in Britain is in turn continuously transformed through the for has involved process of assimilation by the migrants and their children. The research this thesis a variety lived of methodologiesand consists of an interchange between both academicresearch and my own experience is difficult as a daughter of Italian (Sicilian) immigrants to Britain. The emotional connection to any research to assess conclusively,but it is necessary to name it here becauseall research implies some connection with the identity of the researcher. This thesis is in part a historiography of an immigrant experience and an be learnt from exploration of how this experience can be understood. In turn, it is also questioning what can this journey (as it has been understood by a second generation Italian) and from the first person oral accounts that are used throughout. The focus of the research is in the importance that cultural expression diasporic (and the cinematic experience in particular) can have in helping to construct a sense of national and hoped identity. In this respect, in a similar vein to Kuhn's most recent work on 1930s British audiences,it is between film that the research contributes to a rethinking of theories and models of the relationship texts and spectators 3. formation. The The research directly focuses on cultural migration as an experience of identity approach comes out of a desire to create a historical pathway that allows the subjects to articulate their own sense of into themselves and their understanding of which cultural markers influenced their sense of evolving a national formation in subject. With this is mind, this thesis sets out to consider cultural experience and identity and In his Mexican particular, the role and lasting impact of film spectatorship within this construction. study of Masculinities, Robert McKee Irwin argues that all immigrant groups bring with them notions of their national literature from late 1950s identity that are then made apparent through cultural expression. Irwin cites the immigrant families to and 1960s as the chosen cultural form through which the struggles of sons of into American understand their heritage and assert their Mexicanness and to assimilate society are acted 1 Assimilation. This aspect of the research is full developed in the fourth chapter, Cultural Identity and literature Colpi data from the Italian 2 For the statistical aspect of the research I have consulted published such as and some both Aragona, Consulate in Britain. The most useful sources were the Municipal Offices and the small Aragona Museum in helped Sicily. These research trips were conducted between 1998-2000. Additionally, the oral interviews also to provide an (first hand lists overview of dates of entry into Britain, as well as making it possible to complete account) surveys of actual of how names of the existing members of the Italian community in Buckinghamshire and many were arriving at any given year between 1952-1960. Press, 2002), 3 Kuhn, Annette. Dreaming of Fred and Ginger, Cinema and Cultural Memory (New York, New York University P237 . 4Irwin McKee, Robert. Mexican Masculinities(Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2003) 5 out5. In this case, members from the diasporic group themselves have produced narrative forms which utilise direct records from their experiences6. As this example shows, the role that cultural memory plays in the lives of diasporic communitiesis multi-faceted and neither linear or continuous in a chronologicalsense. What is madeapparent from the contents of the oral interviews that were undertaken for this thesis is that there is no possible single assessmentfor this role. Cultural memory functions in complexand contradictory ways - it is an aim of this thesis to make visible someof these complexities and contradictions. The ethnographic aspect of the research has included oral interviews of different generational members of various Italian communities in Britain, as well as first person narration, through my own experience as a second generation Italian. It is this aspect of the thesis that resulted in addressing the issues raised by the memories recalled in the oral interviews. At the start of the research process, the centrality of this body of knowledge could not have been pre-determined. Some of the accounts of the lived experience formulated here are difficult to release and make public to the world. In this regard, the editorial decisions forced some narratives to be privileged above others. The time span involved between conducting, collating, translating and transcribing the oral interviews necessitated a clear structure to the questions being asked. The level and range of analytical questioning involved in considerations implicit to the subject matter of this thesis has meant that even during the relatively short period of time since commencing this research, other previously unconsidered questions have formed themselves. As will become evident during the course of this thesis, the fluidity of the never-ending narrative points which help to shape cultural identity continuously shift across time and space. With this in mind, one's thinking about the influences which help to determine aspects of cultural formation continuously changes. Ultimately, it is this aspect of the subject matter of this thesis that makes completion of such a piece of work, in itself never ending, and hence impossible to achieve in a concrete sense. Perhaps all thinking must be seen in the light of constant rethinking. It is this underlying mythological framework of continuous reconsideration, which has resulted in this constantly evolving narrative coming into fruition at all. The historical research collated here is also made up of a diversity of sources and the range of sources have sometimes led outside of the traditional confines of the academic library. The invisibility of my community and hence my lived reality, which shrouded my own experience growing up in Britain, is one of the significant factors that determined the shape that this thesis took. This has led to having to broaden the terms of the research. It has proved invaluable to analyse a wide range of visual artefacts, all of which have contributed to this thesis in a complex variety of ways. Historically, fictionalised memoirs have made an important contribution to our knowledge of cultural history as experience is used as a filtered translation for a particular cultural space'. For the purpose of this thesis, my own childhood diaries were a useful reminder of 5Ibid, P216 6 Irwin sites Jose' Antonio Villarreal's Pocho, 1959, John Rechys City of Night, 1963 and America Paredess George Washington Gomez, written in 1940 and published in 1990) as examples.