What could pineapple pizza possibly have to do with raising children in Italy, you wonder?

Do you find these jokes funny?

If yes, why?

Is it because:

1. It’s true, pineapples on pizza are just wrong.
2. They’re ridiculously exaggerated.
3. It’s funny how Italians are so arrogant about their pizza.

These jokes work on so many levels because for some reason or another, a lot of people will find them funny. Here’s my problem with this kind of humour.

Amongst many in Italy, this joke is considered funny because of point 1.

According to them, pineapple on pizza is just wrong. They will laugh with a snide sense of pride. Only they understand what real pizza is. Forget localisation of cuisine, forget fusion cuisine, forget acceptance of anything other than tradition. The Italian way, is the only way.

Do you know pizza topped with fries and frankfurters is quite commonplace on a pizzeria menu in Italy?  Or that pizzerias pop up with their own specialities like savoury pizza with pear…. All quite acceptable by those who shun the pizza with pineapple.

I get it. Pizza is traditionally an Italian dish. So, of course the purists want to stake claim on the word “pizza” and on anything that might resemble one. But let’s make an example. Japanese food has been changed and adapted for the Western market. Do you know how many ingredients don’t go in traditional Japanese sushi? So why aren’t there aren’t prevailing jokes about that?

Because there’s a healthy acceptance of evolution, fusion and basically the concept of ‘each to their own.’

Being a foreigner in Italy, who is quite impartial to Hawaiian pizza, when I am shown a joke along these lines from someone who knows completely well that more or less the rest of the world, bar Italy, accepts pineapple as a valid pizza topping, this is what I want to send back:

Are memes like this funny to your typical Italian?

Italians eat horse meat. What if we were to laugh about it in a mocking way. Inferring that this was disgusting, unacceptable, just wrong on all levels?

Sure, there was the Tesco scandal… (which made it possible for me to find these memes at all), but that uproar was because people felt cheated. So the memes didn’t arrive at the point of saying “and all horse meat eaters are wrong/should be deported/are disgusting/don’t understand food.” And I’m not about to go and make one just to prove a point about something I don’t agree with.

That’s what I really don’t like about these jokes about pineapple pizza. They propagate a culture of pride in complete non-acceptance of anything other than Italian tradition.

Which for me is a backward and fixed mindset enforcing message. I’m not trying to raise my child to think like this! Especially in this age of ultra globalisation. The fact that these messages are shared in a humorous manner, makes it all the more acceptable to continue to be this way, without giving it a second thought.  

So this is what pineapple pizza has to do with raising children in Italy.

Before you say “calm the fuck down, Amy. It’s just a joke,” I know. It’s just a joke. And it works because it strikes a chord with so many people. I’m not saying jokes create this culture, they more reflect a culture. But I think that humour also helps push a message along, making it acceptable until it becomes mainstream. Until that mentality becomes mainstream. In this case, the mentality being “our traditional ways are superior, and I’m proud of my non-acceptance of anything else.” And I hate that. I hate anything to do with an individual’s unearned sense of ‘superiority.’

I’m raising a biracial child in Italy. This is something I wish for her to be aware of when she sees a stupid pizza joke, or when her aunt scrunches up her nose at the mention of pineapple on pizza, or even when she laughs at something of this nature – I just want her to stop and ask herself why.  

Before I finish this post, I want to point out that this shit is everywhere. Implicit messages that ‘teach’ a society how to think. That shape our children. A lack of awareness of this is really dangerous because what’s left is just acceptance that this is the ‘norm’. This isn’t the same thing? Yes, actually it is. Things like racism don’t happen overnight. We don’t need to be offended by every little thing. But we must be at least conscious of these messages as parents raising children to truly be world citizens. But let’s leave that for a different post.

Til next time! Thank you for reading!