Few stuff about "Carmella"

[anny84]

1. Why the producers put Carmella on the series for just two episodes? I think production was trying to put a new character in the series.
2. Why is the character italian (even if name is spelled wrong: "Carmela" name has just one l). Hard to believe; italian black boys/girls were too much rare in the 80s and not so "integrated" with italian people. Sons of military officers, even if born in Italy (I never heard of) rarely live in italian environments with italian people, they usually had their life in the NATO's headquarters.
3. Hard to believe Carmella is really an high-school girl (16-17 years?). She really seems older.

Maybe (2) and (3) was caused by a bad translation in italian episode dubbings?

Bye bye
Anny

[ThomasE]

Originally Posted by anny84

1. Why the producers put Carmella on the series for just two episodes? I think production was trying to put a new character in the series.
2. Why is the character italian (even if name is spelled wrong: "Carmela" name has just one l). Hard to believe; italian black boys/girls were too much rare in the 80s and not so "integrated" with italian people. Sons of military officers, even if born in Italy (I never heard of) rarely live in italian environments with italian people, they usually had their life in the NATO's headquarters.
3. Hard to believe Carmella is really an high-school girl (16-17 years?). She really seems older.

Maybe (2) and (3) was caused by a bad translation in italian episode dubbings?

Bye bye
Anny

Yup. When I saw your topic, I was wondering if some of these issues were going to brought up. I know that you are under this assumption that Carmela is in high school during her time on the show, but it is not the case... SHE IS IN JUNIOR HIGH! LOL. Besides, she did not seem that much older to me.

I was wondering about the intergration in the 80's myself. When I got the chance to watch this episode again on BET I said "cool". I guess things were not I thought they were. I am questoining my opinion now that I read your comment. I had a friend in college (who is afro amer)that went to visit italy about two years ago with his band and he talked about some of the prejudice that he encounter from an older italian woman while there. With that being said, I was questioning how accurate the writing was for Diff'rent Strokes in regards to that episode.

[anny84]

We're still not so used to integration in Italy. It's not really a trouble involving whites with blacks. Since from the second 90s' half, a lot of people from poor countries around us (from romania, polish, ukraine, russia, senegal, china) come often in our country as clandestine and are not so able to integrate with us (not all of them, of course). In last time I'm starting to see more integration but it's a slow process.

I think italians are not bigot/racist. Well, I can say I'm definitely not a bigot/racist, maybe just happy to have a country where all, italians or guests, respect rules. But a true integration is difficult to achieve: having just few years are not enough to talk about it.

Coming back to DS, maybe italian translations is not so accurate sometimes, especially in the TV shows. But maybe I was wrong to understand the meaning in this case: in the first episode Carmela simply said she goes to "school" (i'm translating italian back to english). No reference to "junior" or "high" maybe because we have another way to split schools. If she goes to junior high school, I guess she's 12-13 , the Arnold's age in season 7. I was wrong since I thought she was 16-17, since she could be interested to have a date with Willis.

Also, I thought she was older, also because the italian voice used for dubbing Carmela was that one used in the past for dubbing... Mrs. Garrett! Hard to think a 13-year old girl could have same voice than an over-40.

But... everything is possible.

Anny