Friday, April 2, 2010

ITALIAN VALUES vs AMERICAN VALUES IN “OUR ITALIAN HUSBAND”


By: Pratama Yoga Nugroho*

In analyzing a movie to find certain facts about certain entities, one has to be very careful in determining whether some facts have correlation with the given entities or even do not have anything to do at all with them. Specifically speaking, in differing American values from Italian values based on the movie ‘Our Italian Husband”, we have to recognize first what American and Italian values are. If we do so by analyzing the acts of certain characters in the movie, then we have to be careful in differentiate whether a character performs an action due to his or her personal trait as an individual or due to his or her culture as a part of a cultural group. This way will enable us to avoid hasty generalization, one thing that we really have to avoid in perceiving people from different culture.

However, if we are allowed to draw a conclusion about what people of certain culture do or how they do something based on what certain characters in the movie do in the belief that the characters in the movie represent people of certain culture in general, then that is what this paper going to do. Here we will analyze Italian values based on what character Maria does and American values from what character Charlene does then we will compare the two of them to find the differences.

Throughout the movie, the writer finds two major differences between Maria, representing Italian women, and Charlene, representing American women. These two major differences that really differentiate them one another are: attitude toward the members of the family and loyalty.

As the movie begins, we witness that Maria has remarkable dedication to her family. This is shown by her hard effort to earn money by making and selling shoes. She also demonstrates lovely, caring attitudes toward her children. In the other hand, Charlene is more of a spoiled woman that reluctantly works to help Vincenzo. Her attitude toward her daughter, Bibi, is not that of Maria. Often times we see her shout at Bibi, something that Maria never does to her children even in a very harsh situation.

The other difference is their loyalty. In the beginning of the movie, we see that Don Pepino tries to seduce Maria and even proposes to marry her. He seems to try to get her by all means such as isolating Maria from contact with Vincenzo by taking away all Vincenzo’s letters to Maria, promising to cancel all Maria’s debt to him, and even putting a wedding ring to Maria’s wedding finger. However, Maria resists all those forms of seduction and prefers to be loyal to Vincenzo by rejecting Don Peipno’s offers, throwing away the ring to the sea, and keeping on saying, “I have a husband.”

In the other hand, Charlene shows a different attitude. In the first parts of the movie, she seems to be possessive of Vincenzo. However, in the last parts of the movie, we see that she increasingly gets closer to Raul/ Ralph. Then there are two scenes that really prove Charlene’s closeness with Raul. First is when Maria is making a call, we see that Charlene and Raul kiss one another. The second one is when both of them together. Considering the fact that the movie does not tell us Charlene’s divorce with Vincenzo, it is clear that Charlene has performed an act of cheating while she is still Vincenzo’s wife. Thus, it is clear that Charlene’s loyalty to her husband, Vincenzo, is not as strong as Maria’s.

*: Pratama Yoga Nugroho, a student of English Department, Faculty of Humanities, Diponegoro University, Semarang

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