italian-studies: Scholarly discussions in any field of Italian studies
Caro Filippo
on the same note you might be interested in this website:
http://www.wog.com.au/. Although not specifically Italian it illustrates
quite well the kind of reappropriation and mimicry of derogatory terms
John describes.
ciao
Ilaria
John Kinder wrote:
> italian-studies: Scholarly discussions in any field of Italian studies
>
> Dear Filippo
>
> The words "wop" and "wog" have long been used in Australia, as well
> as North America, to insult Italians (and many other countries as
> well). The words have, however, undergone a semantic evolution in
> recent times, at least according to dictionaries. The most
> authorative Australian dictionary of English is the Macquarie
> Dictionary. It has always labelled the word "wog" as 'colloquial' and
> 'derogatory', but its most recent edition (2001) adds the following:
> "This is one of a small group of words which when used within a
> community have no derogatory overtones, but when used by outsiders
> often have such connotations".
>
> This information was uncovered for me last year by a student who
> wrote a dissertation on the film "The Wog Boy", a comedy released in
> Australia in 2000 and more successful at the box office than
> Crocodile Dundee. The film tells of a young Greek man in Sydney who
> reacts to being put down as a "wog" by taking on all the
> stereotypical traits of the "wog" in exaggerated fashion - clothing,
> hairdo, love of cars, way of walking, attitude to women, etc etc. My
> student chose this as her dissertation topic because, as a
> second-generation Italian-Australian, she hated the film but was even
> more shocked to discover that her 12-year-old son belonged to a group
> of boys at school who called themselves "wog boys" and dressed and
> acted accordingly.
>
> It is a complex issue, to be sure, and Massimiliano Chiamenti's
> comment about minorities taking possession of insults and reversing
> their semantic force is certainly part of this. Another interesting
> idea that emerged from my student's interviews with her son and his
> friends is the possibility that the film might actually be presenting
> an alternative way of being Australian (i.e. it has little to do with
> being Italian, or Greek, as such). The young people who model their
> public persona on the film's hero apparently reject the bland,
> ideologically constructed myth of Australian-ness impersonated by,
> among others,Crocodile Dundee, and find in the anti-hero of the "Wog
> Boy" a model of multiple identity with whom they can engage
> creatively as they go about the process of constructing their own
> identites as young Australians "of Italian origin" (to use a
> traditional phrase).
>
> Auguri
>
> John Kinder
> --
> ****************************************************
> Associate Professor John J Kinder
> Department of European Languages and Studies
> University of Western Australia
> PERTH WA 6009
> AUSTRALIA
> Tel: (08) 9380-2192 Fax: 1182
> http://www.arts.uwa.edu.au/Italian
>
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