Immigration in Popular Culture
The history of immigration to the United States is the history of the country itself, and the journey from beyond the sea is an element found in American folklore, appearing over and over again in everything from The Godfather to Gangs of New York to "The Song of Myself" to Neil Diamond's "America" to the animated feature An American Tail.
From the 1880s to the 1910s, vaudeville dominated the popular image of immigrants, with very popular caricature portrayals of ethnic groups. The specific features of these caricatures became widely accepted as accurate portrayals.
In The Melting Pot (1908), playwright Israel Zangwill (1864–1926) explored issues that dominated Progressive Era debates about immigration policies. Zangwill's theme of the positive benefits of the American melting pot resonated widely in popular culture and literary and academic circles in the 20th century; his cultural symbolism – in which he situated immigration issues – likewise informed American cultural imagining of immigrants for decades, as exemplified by Hollywood films. The popular culture's image of ethnic celebrities often includes stereotypes about immigrant groups. For example, Frank Sinatra's public image as a superstar contained important elements of the American Dream while simultaneously incorporating stereotypes about Italian Americans that were based in nativist and Progressive responses to immigration.
The process of assimilation was often a theme of popular culture. For example, "lace-curtain Irish" referred to middle-class Irish Americans desiring assimilation into mainstream society in counterpoint to an older, more raffish "shanty Irish". The occasional malapropisms and left-footed social blunders of these upward mobiles were gleefully lampooned in vaudeville, popular song, and the comic strips of the day such as "Bringing Up Father", starring Maggie and Jiggs, which ran in daily newspapers for 87 years (1913 to 2000). In recent years the popular culture has paid special attention to Mexican immigration and the 2004 motion picture Spanglish tells of a friendship of a Mexican housemaid (Paz Vega) and her boss played by Adam Sandler.
Read more about this topic: Immigration To The United States
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