'Shark Tale' Hit With Bias Accusations

Tonight at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, Hollywood stars will be attending the premiere of Dream-Works' "Shark Tale." This film, produced by Steven Spielberg, is being accused by Italian-American groups of reinforcing negative stereotypes of Italians as menacing outlaws. The film opens Friday to wide audiences.

The president of the Columbus Citizens Foundation, Lawrence Auriana, saw the film in Toronto last week and said Mr. Spielberg, who has gone on record against bias and stereotyping, risks being viewed as a hypocrite for violating his own moral code.

In an interview with The New York Sun's Eric Wolff, Mr. Auriana said: "Spielberg has allowed DreamWorks to create the first children's film in the last 25 years, if not longer, that promotes bias."

I've never met Mr. Auriana and I don't know how familiar he is with Mr. Spielberg's body of work, but it's not the first time the filmmaker has been accused of anti-Italian bias. "Goonies," which was written and produced by Mr. Spielberg, is a live-action children's adventure film set somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. The heroic characters have names like Devereaux, Walsh, Cohen, and Wang, but the murderous family of villains is named Fratelli. One also has to wonder why it was necessary for having a line about "dead guineas" in Mr. Spielberg's masterpiece "Saving Private Ryan." It was totally unnecessary.

In "Shark Tale," the mob family has Italian names, but according to a DreamWorks spokesman, Andy Spahn, those characters come out positive by the end of the film. Besides, he said, Mr. Spielberg had nothing personally to do with the film.

Many non-Italians consider anti-defamation protests like this one and the continuing one against Mafiathemed programs like "The Sopranos" to be exercises in hypersensitivity. "Shark Tale" is just a kids' movie, they say. Kids aren't going to notice any similarity to real Italians.

Since I'm not Italian, I can't relate to the emotional heat that's being generated by the film, but I've been suspicious for some time of what Hollywood is turning out as children's fare. Increasingly, I've noticed that the adult themes in children's entertainment are less about sheer entertainment than about an attempt to inculcate certain social values in a very vulnerable, unsuspecting audience.

Once upon a time, fairy tales and nursery rhymes were imaginary flights of fancy involving creatures that do not exist in reality. Dragons, ogres, and giants were the villains of the tales. These creatures of fantasy served as a moral device in teaching lessons about good against evil.

But in recent years, Hollywood has created villains with traits that it does not approve of in real life. Quick! Name a film depicting an honest Republican.

Likewise, political correctness has seeped into children's entertainment, so that at a very early age children are groomed to be members of PETA and the Sierra Club. As a mother and grandmother, I'm very familiar with the world of children's entertainment, and I've noticed that subtle messages are included in many of these films, both animated and otherwise, that are designed to influence a child's mind on certain issues.

For instance, the otherwise delightful film "Babe" did not lessen my taste for bacon and other pork products, but assigning human traits to animals is a favorite tactic of animal rights activists. Animated films such as "Fern Gully" and "Pocahontas" carry environmental messages. The animated "Spirit," which is a film viewed from a horse's perspective, depicts the enemy as the white American cavalry officers and the hero an Indian brave - oops, I mean Native American.

Television programming for toddlers is predominately multicultural. "Sesame Street" rarely has a white individual on the show, unless it's a guest star or someone with a disability. Why, I wonder, is "Dora the Explorer" teaching kids to speak Spanish when she should be on Spanish programs teaching kids to speak English?

Feminism, gay families, environmentalism, animal rights, and, above all, tolerance for these values are being encouraged in vehicles targeting children. Am I wrong when I suggest that teaching social values belongs in the hand of parents, not with the entertainment industry?

As for the allegations that "Shark Tale" establishes negative stereotypes: Of course it does! But this is Hollywood, which is and always has been about making money. If "The Sopranos" is hot and movies like "The Godfather" and "Goodfellas" made money, "Shark Tale" will probably do the same, because ultimately it is the tasteless public that tolerates the bigotry and feeds the stereotyping kitty.

How else can anyone possibly explain "Growing Up Gotti"?