The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Why Is This Damaging Italian Stereotype Still “Okay” in 2023?

Despite the phenomenon of so-called woke culture coming for everything under the sun with regard to accusations of being offensive, the one glaring ethnicity that remains a free-for-all in terms of still somehow remaining up for grabs for mockery in the mainstream is Italians. Nothing has made that more apparent in 2023 than not only the release of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, but its raging success at the box office (and at a time when box office success is decidedly few and far between). Because, it’s true, no one seems to view Italians as worthy of adequate representation, least of all in the U.S., where the long-standing tropes pertaining to Italian culture have typically stemmed from bastardized Italian-American culture. Tropes that, of course, persist because they are so easily commodifiable. This is why entities like the Olive Garden and the Mob Museum—both of which are grotesque in their representations of Italians—exist and are able to thrive without anyone apparently getting offended enough to say, “This is a shameful reduction of my culture.”

Arriving into the American lexicon after the mob stereotype was proliferated by The Godfather trilogy in the 70s and after the advent of the Olive Garden in 1982 (started in, where else, Florida), Super Mario Bros. was released in 1985 as a platform game for the Nintendo Entertainment System. But, of course, from the start, Super Mario Bros. was never concerned about “accuracy” or “cultural sensitivity” or “fair representation.” And all because Mario’s creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, “arbitrarily” saw fit to make him “Italian” because of the pipes that were going to be involved in the landscape, therefore “plumbing” seemed like a natural fit to be incorporated into the video game. Per Miyamoto, “…with Mario Bros. we had a setting of course that was underground, so I just decided Mario is a plumber. Let’s put him in New York and he can be Italian. There was really no other deep thought other than that.” And so, thanks to Miyamoto’s so-called lack of “deep thought,” Italians as a culture have continued to pay the price for decades, with a reductive stereotype that just won’t fucking die. Worse still, the “It’s-a me, Mario!” delivered in that garish, false Italian accent is being disseminated anew to a subsequent generation of children who will now think that this is a perfectly acceptable “rendering” of Italians and those with Italian heritage as they parrot the phrase freely.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie, written by Matthew Fogel and directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, wastes no time in getting right to the offensive meat of it all, with Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) appearing in a commercial for their new plumbing business and laying on thick the caricaturized version of an Italian accent. We’re talking as thick as nasty, American-sanctioned “ragù” (think: the Prego brand). The van shown in the commercial reads “Super Mario Bros. Plomería.” Emphasis on plomería, which is a fucking Spanish word. If they wanted to be “Italian” about it, they could have at least used the correct word, piombatura (and don’t try to say Spanish was used for the sake of the Dominicans or the Puerto Ricans living in Brooklyn). Alas, mélanging Spanish words with Italian ones is among the most minimal offenses delivered like so many blows to the head throughout the movie.

After seeing the commercial on TV together at the Punch-Out Pizzeria, Mario asks his brother in a “normal” voice, “What are the accents? Is it too much?” the original Jumpman version of Mario appears next to them while playing a Donkey Kong-esque arcade game to insist, “Too much? It’s a-perfect!” The voice of this man, Giuseppe, is portrayed by none other than Charles Martinet, the long-time voice of Mario. And, in case one needed the obvious confirmation, Martinet is far from Italian, born in California with French descent. Of course, it’s no secret that the French are among the many who relish mocking Italians with a parodied accent and overzealous love of pizza (see: the highly offensive coronavirus-era sketch on Groland), so maybe that’s part of Martinet’s inherent animosity toward the character. For why else would he not only suggest doing the voice in that pitch (apart from claiming children would be too scared of a “deep-voiced” “Italian”) and false cliché, but also chime in that Mario should dream of pasta whenever a player leaves him alone (Sims-style). In Super Mario 64, this would translate into Mario murmuring between snores, “Ahhh spaghetti, ahhh ravioli, ahhh mamma mia.” Because, again, all Italians appear to be to Americans are jolly, lobotomized pizza and pasta fiends. So what else would he possibly have to say in one of his first opportunities for video game dialogue?

Another person who weighs in on the brothers’ caricaturized commercial is their former boss, Spike (Sebastian Maniscalco), who happens to be sitting in the pizzeria as well, and takes the chance to mimic them by saying, “Yeah, it’s a-me!” when they confront him. Wearing a trucker hat that says “Wrecking Crew” (a nod to the 1985 video game of the same name, in which Foreman Spike is Mario and Luigi’s opponent) on it, Spike proceeds to make fun of them with as much delight as any person getting off on perpetuating an Italian stereotype. Spike ends their interaction with the assurance, “You’re a joke, and you always will be.” Well, he has that right…when taking into account that Mario continuing to be a “viable” representation of an Italian-American will ostensibly persevere. Because this franchise money is just too good to be bothered with or by any “moral objections” to such increasingly antiquated, out-of-touch, belittling portrayals. We’re talking Blackface-level shit. A “controversial” comparison for many, to be sure, however, one fails to see the difference between slapping Italians with a dumb plumber stereotype, “bequeathing” them with stocky, hirsute bodies and huge noses and hideous accents versus, say, making a Black person into “the help” speaking with a “yes massa” voice in either sambo or mammy stereotype form. The fact that companies like Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben’s and Mrs. Butterworth’s all replaced their racist “mascots” in the wake of the BLM movement that flared up after George Floyd was murdered is yet another testament to how caricatures of races that were invented in the past are no longer allowed to endure in the present. Except, of course, in the case of Mario and Luigi.

In terms of “Oppression Olympics” (to borrow a term from Ginny and Georgia), no one would argue that Black and Asian people haven’t had it the worst of any race. And yet, Italians, white or not (but still not the “right” kind of white), are not without their own history of oppression and being viewed as “lesser than” by the “pure” white race. From the 1891 New Orleans lynchings to the Sacco and Vanzetti case to “all” Italian-Americans being branded as “labor agitators” amid certain anarchist and socialist movements in the U.S., there is a long history of anti-Italian sentiment. One that seems, ultimately, to extend to reducing a culture so rich to something as derogatory as Mario and Luigi. And though Italians, better than most, can take a “joke,” there’s a difference between “poking fun” “in good taste” and being an outright asshole about perpetuating damaging stereotypes (as one Italian put it on The Gamer, “This vague pseudo-Italian identity is something I’m not happy about, because if it’s just a joke then it’s time to rein it in”). While Italians themselves tend to take teasing in stride (perhaps so that they, in turn, can keep dishing it out), there should be a limit, at this point, to how much “It’s-a me” bullshit someone can take. Even if that person is “merely” a descendant of the Italy-born.

Perhaps as a way to protect from the accusation of “racism,” both The Super Mario Bros. Movie and 1993’s live-action Super Mario Bros. play up the element of Mario and Luigi being “Brooklyn Italians”—an entirely different animal from Italian Italians. In the latest version, Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” is cued as the duo rushes to make it to their first official plumbing job. The constant mention and backdrop of Brooklyn is, however, one-upped by Super Mario Bros, wherein mobster types like Anthony Scapelli (Gianni Russo, a quintessential New York Italian exploiting his heritage for pay) are part of the “natural milieu” of being a Brooklyn Italian for Mario and Luigi (inexplicably played by Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo). This includes eating spaghetti with meatballs (with the sauce not even mixed in atop the white pasta) as accordion music plays in the background. A scene that goes on during Luigi’s date with Daisy (Samantha Mathis), a double with Mario and his own girl, Daniella (Dana Kaminski). But at least Super Mario Bros. doesn’t try to show any scenes of Mario and Luigi with an affronting Italian stereotype of a family as well. Unlike The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which grafts the core plotline (re: an interdimensional glitch) of the 1993 version, written by Parker Bennett, Terry Runté and Ed Solomonm, and co-directed by husband-and-wife team Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel. Just as it is in Super Mario Bros., The Super Mario Bros. Movie also finds Mario and Luigi transported to an alternate realm (the Mushroom Kingdom for Mario and the Dark Lands for Luigi) via a sewer system beneath Brooklyn. In the original, this happens just before Daisy (the Princess Peach stand-in) is warned by Scapelli, “I know a lotta girls who been goin’ missin’ in Brooklyn lately.” In other words, a mafioso threat that indicates she can be “erased,” just as anyone else has who’s dared to get in the way of his construction plans. Because, yes, of course Scapelli is “in construction.” A long-standing “career front” for mafiosi of the Eastern Seaboard.

When Luigi and Mario follow her into the alternate realm that’s been brewing ever since a meteorite hit Brooklyn sixty-five million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs, Luigi is sure to tell Mario, in Dorothy fashion, “I gotta feelin’ we’re not in Brooklyn no more.” And, whilst watching The Super Mario Bros. Movie, one might say, “We’re not in 2023 no more.” Surely we can’t be, if woke culture had gone the whole nine yards and spared Italians of any further denigration from a video game that wields characters called goombas (among the weakest enemies in any Mario fight). A direct reference to the pejorative word “goombah” that Americans would use to refer to Italian immigrants and their supposed inherent association with organized crime. And yet, one should note that, per American Minority Relations, “the rate of criminal convictions among Italian immigrants was less than that among American-born whites” in the mid-twentieth century—this being the height of mafia fear. Nonetheless, the stereotype prevailed, and became profitable to many people. Particularly increasingly diluted generations of bona fide Italians who had transformed into something entirely different: a New York Italian (or, worse still, a New Jersey one). And the name of that game was: capitalize, capitalize, capitalize. No matter how self-exploiting it was. This being why Little Italy is some Disneyfied presentation of “Italian culture” complete with red-and-white checked tablecloths, Chianti bottle décor and nothing but plates of pasta doused in the grossest, saltiest sauces imaginable. Surely, no self-respecting person can truly believe this is “authentic,” and yet, they go for “the ambience” regardless.

In contrast to this breed of Italian (i.e., the Italian-American that has further perpetuated the false, negative stereotypes of actual Italians), those who hail from the boot take pride in their culture, one that is rich with so many other things beyond what Americans in particular cling to as the “complete” (read: two-dimensional) formation of their national identity. Included in that is Super Mario Bros., which the Japanese can be thanked for (and defenders of Mario’s existence constantly like to throw out that he’s “technically Japanese,” so it’s fine). But if it weren’t for the Americans glomming onto this brother duo so enthusiastically, Super Mario Bros. might never have been successful enough to become such a pervasive reminder that this is the Italian version of a sambo. To emphasize that analogy, imagine if you will a “superhero” Black person portrayed as a housekeeper who eats nothing but watermelon and fried chicken and speaks with a drawl. How is this divergent from depicting an Italian as a “superhero” plumber who relishes eating only pizza and pasta and wielding an accent with an “a” said between every word? It’s fucking foul and should no longer be tolerated. In fact, not since House of Gucci has there been such a pop cultural affront to Italians. To this end, it has to be said that the group doing the most damage to “the brand” is, ironically, Italian-Americans (which Lady Gaga is certain to remind she is whenever possible). But it’s the American part that gets the better of them every time, wanting to be “enterprising” about the culture rather than portray it with something like grace and realism.

Time and time again, it might be asked, who is the stereotype “really” hurting if Italians “of all stripes” can keep cashing in on it by pandering to the caricature people apparently want to see? Some could say there’s no harm in Super Mario Bros. if the Italians themselves don’t complain and that “fellow Europeans” make fun of each other all the time. But it’s simply not true. For one thing, Italians are parodied more than most “sects” of Europeans and, for another, Italians likely don’t complain because Super Mario, to them, is viewed as a strictly American piece of ephemera (despite being Japanese-created). What’s more, such content as this is usually viewed in a dubbed format, which means Italians often don’t get to hear the full effect of how bad they’re being made to sound. A “sound,” as it were, that keeps contributing to how Mario and Luigi remain a “benchmark” to Americans for how all Italians ought to be “categorized.” No matter how “woke” Americans think they’ve gotten.