January 21, 2004

Dear Mr. Spielberg:

We are the National Coalition Against Racial, Religious and Ethnic Stereotyping (CARRES), a coalition of ethnic organizations representing Americans of many faiths, races and ethnic heritages.

CARRES was formed by the Columbus Citizens Foundation, the National Italian American Foundation, the Order Sons of Italy in America and UNICO National, the nation's leading Italian American organizations.

We write to express our concern about your new children's film, Shark Tale, to be released in October 2004. Its title calls to mind your first animated film, An American Tail, a delightful and inspiring children's movie that presents Fievel Mousekevitz and his family as courageous Russian immigrants of Jewish heritage who struggle to survive and prosper in America.

Unfortunately, the resemblance between these two films ends with their titles. According to your Web site, Shark Tale is "a gangster comedy" that features sharks as mafia characters, who belong to the Five Families, a large syndicate, which includes killer whales, hammerheads and Frankie, a white shark, who is "a natural born killer." All have Italian last names.

It disturbs us that your movie presents characters of Italian heritage, who live outside the law. Hollywood has promoted this unflattering stereotype since Little Caesar in 1931. Since then, the American movie industry has produced nearly 1,100 films featuring Italian or Italian American characters. Of these 73% portray them as criminals, boors, bigots or buffoons.

Such portrayals are in stark contrast to current U.S. Census Bureau statistics that reveal Italian Americans are above the national average in education, income and occupation. Full 66 percent of Italian Americans hold positions as doctors, lawyers, teachers, executives and other professionals.

It therefore deeply troubles us that Shark Tale will carry the inaccurate and harmful gangster stereotype of Italian Americans to yet another impressionable generation of children, including Italian American youngsters.

It is also ironic that you plan to release this film on October 1, the first day of National Italian American Heritage Month, celebrated each October all over the United States.

We therefore ask you to recast the gangsters in Shark Tale by changing their last names to ones that do not call to mind a specific ethnic group.

We also request that you remove all elements in the script that would identify them as Italian and delete any terms such as "fuhgettaboutit," "capeesh" and the like that are strongly identified with the popular but stereotypical image of Italian Americans.

By doing so, the characters in Shark Tale become generic "bad guys" instead of characters that reinforce the stereotype of Italian Americans as violent gangsters.

We write directly to you, Mr. Spielberg, because you have a well-earned reputation as a man who seeks to advance racial, ethnic and religious harmony and sensitivity. We ask you to put yourself in our place. Would you want millions of movie audiences to see people of Jewish heritage presented the way Italian Americans are portrayed in Shark Tale? And, perhaps more importantly, would you want your children to see such a portrayal?

We understand that you honored your grandfather by naming Fievel, the hero of An American Tail after him. We ask you to show a similar regard for the feelings of our nation's estimated 26 million Italian Americans who, like you, are descended from hard-working and honest immigrants.

We hope that you will be as sensitive to Italian American concerns as we understand the Disney Studio was when it edited portions of "Aladdin" that stereotyped Arabs in response to requests from the Arab American community.

We look forward to hearing from you with the news that DreamWorks will meet with CARRES representatives and take the necessary steps to right this wrong.

Yours truly,

The National Coalition Against Racial, Religious and Ethnic Stereotyping [CARRES]