Italian-American service organization UNICO is protesting Take Two's upcoming video game Mafia II for "directly, blatantly, and unfairly discriminating and demeaning one group to the exclusion of all others." Organization president Andre' DiMino demanded that the game's release be halted and cleansed of all references to Italians or Italian-Americans.DiMino is currently undergoing an anti-discrimination push that fell much more toughly on MTV's Jersey Shore TV show and its portrayal of Italian-Americans as reinforcing a negative stereotype. MTV has actually responded to the complaints, to the point of making the second season contain less specific mention of Italian heritage or the word "guido."
Mafia II is set in a fictional city called Empire Bay between 1945 and 1957, based on a number of American cities but presumably most reliant upon New York. While there have been many organized crime rings that were not Italian in the United States, post-war New York was undeniably dominated by Italian-American organized crime, not Russian or Irish or anything else. Removing the Italian-American culture from a game told about post-war New York organized crime would be downright ahistorical.
Not to mention, "Mafia" is a very Italian word which has only come to describe organized crime in general since the dominance of Italian organized criminals in the early to mid-twentieth century. Famous Italian general Giuseppe Garibaldi himself coined the term "mafiosi," which through a convoluted etymology later came to describe these criminals. The Yakuza series of video games obviously involves Japanese organized crime, without controversy.
Take Two responded, basically saying the game is based on a thoroughly-covered culture of movies, TV shows, and novels about Italian-American organized crime, and that Take Two balances free expression and social responsibility just fine, thank you very much.
[via Kotaku]
