VIDEO: The Way They Lived

STUDY GUIDE:  Use this list of relevant episodes/scenes to guide you through the reading of SON 

CLICK LINK

YOUR LANGUAGE IS YOUR IDENTITY

Son of Italy raises crucial questions concerning native culture, host culture and becoming acculturated.

Early immigrants from Italy did not see themselves as immigrants. They thought they were going to work to a very far away place, make some money and return home. Their goal was always to return. The fear was that something would prevent them from returning.

They also did not have “a dream.” They were not pursuing success. They were running away from a nightmare, the nightmare of their daily lives.

Many of them found another nightmare when they arrived here, and on top of it, a sense of alienation, the absence of familiar places and familiar faces. They became heartbroken, depressed and despondent.

Pascal seems to be saying that being an immigrant was some kind of Purgatory, an intermediate state on the way to a new identity. If you passed the test, if you endured, if you slowly shed your native identity and went through a period of assimilation  -- the immigrant phase – you would become an American. It was the price you had to pay to make it.

And, if you wanted to survive and prosper, there was no other way but to become American: You cannot live in two places, in America in your daily life and in Italy in your heart and soul.

The switch of identity is represented by the switch of the linguistic code. Language is a fundamental dimension of identity.
Going from Italian to English means that his soul became different.

His artistic temperament and talents exist only in the English dimension and for an English-speaking audience. He learned how to talk to them because he became one of them.

Video Lecture  on L'Emigrante  (Does the critique of America rise to anti-Americanism?)

SCREENING:    L'emigrante (110 minutes - (streaming with IE and Firefox)

L'emigrante is a comedy with some serious reflections on American society, then and now.

USE THIS LINK

http://bcmedia.brooklyn.cuny.edu/modlang/fgc/INTERCULT.FILMS-SOUND/E.sottotitoli.wmv

In theory this should be BC streaming server, but in reality, it may be necessary to DOWNLOAD the file first then play it locally from your HD.

WARNING:  late evening JUNE 26 I will send you a quiz covering the material related to this lecture.

QUIZ DUE DATE JUNE 27.

(Only for those who actually turned in the quiz. All other abstain from answering)

In Assignment 6/18, Task 3 asked about the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum. 

Did you check the websites of these institutions, especially if had not heard about them?

WARNING:   I have already caught two cases of plagiarism by two classmates and I reported them to the Associate Provost. I am completely serious about this.

WRITING  Son of Italy.  You can't wing this assignment. You must plan ahead what you are going to write about.

1) Choose a couple of episodes that took place before and after the break-up of Pascal's gang. Most likely you chose them because they affected you deeply. What was the nature of your reaction? (Ex: sad, angry, stunned, sympathetic, cynic.). 
Separate paragraph: what does it say about you? Did you find out something new about yourself in your reactions?

2) FOR you personally: Was SON more valuable as historical document that taught you things you ignored; or was it more valuable as an emotional experience, for what it triggered in you? In other words, were you more taken by the story itself and all the details of those times, or by the pathos, the suffering, the struggle?
Mention specific episodes that are vivid in your memory.