On Monday night, MTV will crack the proverbial champagne bottle over “Made in Staten Island,” a new series following a handful of young adults from the New York borough. The reality TV show follows the gritty struggle of the featured characters as they try to break away from family connections with organized crime. The show’s trailer hints at a true-life “Sopranos” vibe.
But that portrayal is not sitting well with everyone.
Last week, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted out his complaints about the program.
“Anyone who has spent any time on Staten Island knows MTV is peddling stereotypes in a shameless ratings grab,” the Democratic mayor tweeted Jan. 6.
The mayor is not alone. A Change.org petition launched last month asking MTV to cancel the show due to the way Staten Island is depicted. The petition accuses the show of pushing a “portrayal of Staten Island as a cesspool of gangsters, meatheads and low lives.”
” It is built on the premise that kids from Staten Island all grow up surrounded by the mafia in their lives,” the petition states. “This is far from the truth.”
As of early Monday morning, the petition had racked up more than 7,700 signatures online. The petition is aiming to collect 10,000 names.
This is not the first time the network has drawn critical fire for its reality TV programming. Nearly 10 years ago, just down the Eastern Seaboard from Staten Island, MTV set one of its most popular franchises — “Jersey Shore.”
But the shots, hair gel and casual-sex lifestyle celebrated in the program rubbed many New Jersey residents wrong.
“The program certainly depicts the Jersey Shore as a culturally vapid place and doesn’t make it appealing to anyone outside the demographic (MTV) is showing,” Daniel Cappello, the then-executive director of the Jersey Shore Convention & Visitors Bureau, told ABC News in 2009.
Italian Americans were also upset with how the network portrayed the 20-something self-professed “guidos” and “guidettes” who became megastars thanks to the show.
“We find this program alarming in that it attempts to make a direct connection between ‘guido culture’ and Italian-American identity,” Joseph Del Raso, then-president of the National Italian American Foundation, told ABC. ” ‘Guido’ is widely viewed as a pejorative term and reinforces negative stereotypes.”
“Made in Staten Island” — shot in a dramatic black-and-white footage — does have some Mafia bona fides. According to SILive.com, the program is being produced by Karen Gravano. A star of VH1’s “Mob Wives,” Gravano is the daughter of Salvatore Gravano, the former mob hit man nicknamed “Sammy the Bull” whose testimony helped put away John Gotti and 36 other members of New York’s organized crime families.
