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Music Notes #1096744 added September 5, 2025 at 8:25pm
Restrictions: None
Espresso Macchiato...
Prompt 5:
Espresso Macchiato, by Tommy Cash, from Eurovision
Today's prompt from Petra is a song, which I chose not to listen to nor to attempt to read the lyrics. For starters, the video she embedded is unavailable in the US, and when I googled the phrase she gave us, I was presented with a detailed Wikipedia page  . Judging by the song's description, it isn't anything I would care to hear, but it does provide me with plenty to write about.
I've instinctively never tolerated stereotypes. I learned all the reasons why they're bad from an early age, reading stern warnings in my textbooks to not make jokes about one's “Italian temper” or “ginger hair” or anything else of that nature. My mom is Italian, which means she's had to put up with all manner of stereotyping over the course of her life. I've gotten by with less of it because I'm more Anglo, being half Irish…
We moved from the relatively metropolitan atmosphere of Florida to a small town in Tennessee when I was little, and oh boy, was it a culture shock. The locals didn't know what to make of us. In many ways, it was classic William Faulkner – a “crooked little town,” as a fellow outsider and nextdoor neighbor called it. One time, Mom was talking to the bus driver and shared her Italian background. He then repeatedly insisted, “oh, you're here because the Witness Protection Program sent you! You're in hiding because of the Mafia.” Sheesh. Even a neighbor lady from Chile, another outsider, leaned in close to Mom and asked her repeatedly “so what's the real reason you moved here?” Honestly, we could have asked her the same.
With this kind of upbringing, having to deal with a backwards, intolerant and insular community, I have a good amount of sympathy for the people criticizing this nonsensical song. An Estonian making jokes about Italians? Come on, how would he like it if someone wrote a song utilizing a bunch of Estonian stereotypes, written in a mashup of pidgin languages? He wouldn't be calling it playful and fun. Espresso Macchiato seems like an attention seeking cheap trick, attempting to go viral by sheer idiocy.
I do appreciate a little fun, certainly, and in fact I was just thinking not long ago about how touchy Italians can be with how others see their culture. Recently, there was a kerfuffle when a British news site reinterpreted an Italian dish by adding an ingredient. Italians were quite upset and insisted it could no longer be called the original name if it wasn't the same dish. All I could think of was that it didn't sound like a very appetizing recipe in the first place 
I've learned a few terms from this: Macaronic, broccolino, Italian brainrot, Dolmio, and the existence of a casino called Wigan and a 1982 Danish movie perspective on the US called 66 Scenes from America. None of it is anything I'm particularly interested in, except perhaps to marvel at how strange worldly culture is. I'm fascinated by the ways countries view each other, and it's somewhat amusing to stand back and see two European countries getting uptight when others around the globe may not know where to find either one of them on the map.
Words: 540. |
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