Ethnic Humor Going, Going, Gone?
When is it okay to laugh at someone’s ethnic background? In today’s politically correct and socially enlightened world, the answer is never. There was a time, however, when a generation of people of ethnic backgrounds laughed the loudest at ethnic humor. As an Italian American I grew up in the 1940s and ‘50s, a time when an avalanche of humorous Italian American portrayals permeated the media.
I also remember that my Italian American family enjoyed many of these impersonations and would laugh right along with them. But Italians weren’t the only ethnic group to be spotlighted for comedy, there were others as well. Leading the NBC radio lineup from 1929-1934 was a show called, The Goldberg’s, a weekly comedy about immigrant Molly Goldberg and her Jewish American family etching a life out for themselves in the big apple.
In 1949 CBS featured The Amos ‘n Andy show a weekly story about two black men and their friends kingfish, Calhoon, and Sapphire. Another was detective Charlie Chan, the Chinese detective and his number one son were featured on ABC’s line up from 1945 to 1947. For my Italian American family the radio show we most wanted to hear, back then, was one called, “Life with Luigi”. The show featured an immigrant Italian named Luigi Bosco, portrayed by J. Carol Naish.
Each week Luigi wrote letters to his beloved mama back in Italy telling her of his life in the New World. The show ran on CBS radio from 1948 to 1953. Luigi, who spoke broken English, owned an antique shop and was working hard to obtain his American citizenship. Luigi, his wife Rosa and daughter, Rosalie, were a caricature of the Italian immigrant, and yet I can recall how my family and I rocked with laughter as we listened to Luigi and his family speaking in broken English.
Was the show really all that funny? Or was it that we, as first and second generation Italians, felt reassured at hearing an Italian family on the radio, speaking in accents we recognized in our own grandparents? Did laughing along with the show and the funny Italians make us feel more accepted? I believe that it did.
At that time the only TV and radio shows we had to compare ourselves to featured Robert Young in the weekly hit series, “Father Knows Best”, the blonde Eve Arden in “Our Miss Brooks,” sandy haired Richard Denning and Pamela Briton, starring in Mr. and Mrs. North, William Bendix in “The life of Riley” and Penny Singleton’s Blondie. Not much for an Italian kid to identify with. Perhaps it was that indefinable difference between us and them that made Italian kids of the 1940s need a program such as “Life with Luigi” to give us some identification of our own.
There was an unspoken difference between us and them, one that we Italian American kids always felt and were always aware of. We were Italians, they were Americans. Of course we were Americans too, born in this country and so were our parents before us, but our grandparents spoke with a heavy accent and held on tightly to Old World ways… and to some extent so did we.
Media’s TV and radio families shopped at the A&P while our mom’s and grandmas purchased their vegetables from the vegetable man who came by once a day in his old beat up truck with the funny awning. And many, including Grandpa, kept their own chicken coup in the back yard for their poultry supply. On Thanksgiving holidays the media showed American families sitting down to dine on a huge turkey. When Christmas Eve came around the American family dined on ham or turkey.
The Italian American family feasted on these foods as well, but we also had antipasto, lasagna, focaccia, ricotta pie, meatballs, salad, garlic toast and wine. There are few things in this world that instantly connect people to each other and form a bond like laughter. It’s a universal feeling that requires no interpretation.
I think that’s why my family, especially my grandparents, listened and laughed each week to ‘Life with Luigi”. The important thing was we were laughing with Luigi and his family not at them. The humor helped us forget for a time our every day problems and gave us some superiority over our common woes and calamities. I remember how we laughed at the Marx brothers, especially Chico, with his funny Italian accent. Chico’s familiar accent was, to us, a replica of our own nonna and papa’s accent that also spoke broken English.
We loved “Luigi” and his radio family for the same reason, because of the similarities. He too had a large family just as we did. And just like Nonna and Nonno he spoke with a heavy Italian accent. And just like Nonna and Papa he was working hard to attain his American citizenship. But, later, as time passed and we Italian American’s established ourselves in the professional and business world, ethnic humor became less funny, turning to sarcasm, and a montage of put downs and poor taste ethnic jokes. And suddenly what we once laughed at had now evolved into derogatory ethnic smears.
I’ll never forget the first time I heard one of those “put-down” jokes. I was 17 years old, and someone at school came up to me and asked, “How many Pallbearers does it take to bury an Italian?” I said, “Nine, of course”. The girl snickered and said, “No, no, silly. It only takes two. They bury them in garbage cans”! My grandfather had just passed away that week, and at that moment all I could think of was all the years of hard work and tenacious dedication he had put into his life and family and the love and respect we felt for him.
The pain of that tasteless, so called “joke” has remained with me all these years. Yes, I am American, but I still feel a strong sense of my Italian heritage. Call it culture, call it roots… I’m not sure what it is, but it’s a part of me and of who I am. Things have changed a lot since my immigrant grandparents came here during the great migration. Their hard work and the goals they achieved were honorable and enduring. And now that they are gone, it is with a certain reverence and respect that I revere their memories and hard work.
So when I see, or hear, a derogatory ethnic image or joke, I can’t help but perceive it as a put down of my grandparents and their courageous generation. Today’s TV situation comedy’s still feature ethnic families, but the main focus is no longer on their ethnicity. Shows like Bill Cosby’s “The Huxtables” was a break through comedy because the story was about a successful pediatrician and how he related to his family, not a “black” doctor and how he related to his “black” family. The same is true of “Everybody Loves Raymond.” TV viewers know from subtle inference that the Barone family is of Italian descent, but rarely is the family‘s ethnic background the core of the humor.
The difference between “us” and “them” isn’t so easily defined anymore and I guess that’s good. My grandparent’s generation were Italian/Italians, my parents were Italian/Americans and I’m an American and proud of it, just as my grandparents would want me to be. Grandma used to say, “There’s a time for everything and everything in its time”.
If she were here, she would also say that the time has come for a new and improved image of the Italian American. A time to put away those derogatory characters, ominous gangland mobsters and poor taste ethnic jokes and to file them in the past where they now belong.
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