Spaghetti ragu is ready: clichéd representations of Italian American women in US commercials

Although national identities are not a clear-cut and a once-and-for-all affair, in the world of the media, clichéd portrayals have led to the construal of ‘Imagined Communities’ (Anderson 1983, 2006). Gerbner’s cultivation theory (1993, 2002) illustrates how media are responsible for shaping or ‘cultivating’ viewers’ conceptions of social reality, which are filtered through the viewers’ status, area of residence, and racial predisposition. By acting as a pervasive sixth sense, visual media often construct and broadcast unbalanced stereotyped portrayals which viewers absorb a-critically. In advertising stereotyping can be conveniently exploited as an effective way of simplifying and diffusing complex notions: peoples’ way of thinking is more easily influenced by representing clichéd traits. Conventional representations may increase emotional identification, contributing to the creation of cultural boundaries between Us and Others, i.e. insiders and outsiders of one’s specific national community. In our case, Americans of Italian heritage are frequently represented through old-fashioned behavioural models. Regardless of a complex, ever-developing reality, in US commercials these cultural etiquettes and fossilized metaphors are perpetuated, often construing derogatory local meanings that can alter audience attitudes towards minorities, such as Italian American women. Our research hypothesis was that such frozen and anachronistic portrayals do not represent their multifaceted contemporary identities and, by and large, are no longer perceived as realistic. The present study investigated both in an evaluative semantic framework (Hunston &Thompson 2000) and in genderized discourse perspective (Martin & White 2005; Bednarek & Martin 2010; Fleitz 2010) the representation of traditional Italian American female role-model in US advertising as compared to the real societal gender groups. Resources from Critical Discourse Analysis (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 2010) were also utilized – in particular multimodal analysis tools helped us to investigate how semiotic elements are re-mediated through inter/intra-textual references. Our investigation takes a dual approach. Firstly, through the examination of 40 selected TV commercials we aimed to show how nation-based stereotypes are re-fashioned in the process of re-semiotization (quoting, paraphrasing, genre-mixing/hybridization), which is a successful practice in advertising. Secondly, we administered a two-fold questionnaire (Zammuner 1988, 2003) to a sample of 50 American Italian and 50 Italian college educated women (age range 22-37) focussing on the recognition/perception and evaluation of these stereotypes. Our data highlight the audience awareness of the predictable identity of ‘advertised’ communities. In 1980s-1990s US TV commercials, Italian American women are depicted either as caring mothers and good cooks, or overweight grandmothers wearing aprons. Deli-food fixation is typically displayed in the setting of welcoming kitchens, the sense of family appears to be ethnocentric/clannish, and humorous/grotesque effects are frequently included. In late 1990s-2010 US TV commercials, the evolution and foregrounding of novel stereotypes is apparent. Italian female participants have perceived the more ‘traditional’ TV commercials as both clichéd and capturing, but they were not as conscious as the US participants of the rise of new stereotypes, and they evaluated family traditions and caring-mother-role positively. US female participants found the traditional TV commercials stereotypical and captivating at the same time, with an emphasis on national heritage; they emphasized the rise of new stereotypes and, by and large, enjoyed the TV commercials more than their Italian counterparts. Our research hypothesis was substantially confirmed. Advertisers have re-voiced/mimicked fictional old-worlds thanks to the potential of semiosis for mobility across boundaries and practices, thus shaping a meta-fictional setting, where the womanly stereotype is re-enforced with ethnic stereotype – the ‘Italian’ woman as hypostasis of the ‘Caring mother’ and ‘Homemaker’. On the whole, the participants’ responses highlighted a consistent shift of attitude in women’s self-representation especially so far as traditional/anachronistic roles are concerned.