It started innocently enough, but it escalated into a debate on The Godfather.
A friend and I were enjoying a leisurely ride in my car listening to Sirius Radio when the 1959 song Sea of Love came on. I quickly related it to the movie by the same name starring Al Pacino, which was a respectable thriller. My friend clearly likes Pacino and we exchanged critiques of his movies: Scarface, Scent of a Woman, Dog Day Afternoon, and eventually The Godfather. I didn’t want it to go there but, sure enough, my friend thought the gangster series great and asked my opinion. Suddenly, thirty-five years of pro-Godfather rationalizations were tossed at me: “it’s art,” “it’s about ‘American’ criminals,” “but, ya gotta admit,” “people know the difference,” and so on. My friend is not Italic, and he quickly realized that I was wasn’t the average Italian American. Unfortunately, we are now friends with borders.
This month marks the 50th anniversary of The Godfather, and the media is setting the mood. The movie will be returning to theaters in limited showings on February 25th with plenty of nostalgia and accolades dished out by newsmen and talk show hosts. The usual endless Mafia-movie loop on cable will no doubt intensify so America can be properly saturated with goombah culture. We can all enjoy the Corleone Family as it undermines democracy, without a hint of political incorrectness. Nor is there any cultural appropriation here: the author, the filmmaker, and 90% of the cast were all Italian Americans.
Seems like every month is an anniversary celebration of fictional Italian gangsters. Despite all the whacking, these goombah characters rise from the grave more often than Dracula. One day, it’s The Sopranos prequel, next day it’s a Goodfellas reunion, then a new mob family reality show, then the resurrection of Godfather III as the “Coda”. There must be an audience for this crap, and plenty of sponsors. Maybe the Italian American community should get royalties. That would put an end to it!
Last week I watched Truth & Lies: The Last Gangster on Disney-owned ABC, during prime time no less. There were old clips of a young Diane Sawyer interviewing mass murderer Sammy “The Bull” Gravano. (Hey Diane, the 1990s called, they want Sammy back!) But, the Cosa Nostra never gets old. Sammy has his own podcast these days.
We were once assured that changing times and new generations would make the Mob fade away. Instead, Don Corleone guaranteed it immortality. And like the horny old prophet Abraham, the Don is still “moist,” fathering offspring like MTV’s reality series Families of the Mafia, now in its second season. National Geographic will debut its Inside the [Italian] American Mob this Wednesday.
Once in a while I catch a break finding an old Jewish gangster movie like Murder, Inc (1960), starring Peter Falk, on the Movie Channel. I even found the new-but-already-buried 2021 film Lansky with Harvey Keitel. Jewish gangsters were clearly among the Founding Fathers of organized crime – Meyer Lansky was too modest. Somehow movies about them either disappear or are sanitized. Witness Bugsy, whose suave Benjamin Siegel (Warren Beatty) hardly reflects his yiddish Williamburg, Brooklyn origins. He didn’t just learn to mix egg-creams in the old neighborhood.
Another Lansky, starring Richard Dreyfuss, was made for HBO in 1999 but try to find it On Demand now. How about The Enforcer (1951) with Humphrey Bogart targeting Murder Inc? The movie trailer claims this mostly Jewish mob eradicated 2,000 victims. Or Lepke (1975) starring Tony Curtis as Murder Inc’s Louis “Lepke” Buchalter? Or The Purple Gang (1959) with Barry Sullivan about the Jewish brutes Al Capone purportedly hired to commit the St. Valentine’s Massacre? Good luck finding these movies.
However, if you want the skinny on Italian American gangsters – real and fake – as well as their families, secret ceremonies, customs, lingo, dietary habits, or nicknames, just check out your local cable guide any day of the week. But for Jewish gangsters, you better buy the book Tough Jews by Rich Cohen (1998) with details that never made the movies. Scorsese’s “Irish” gangster movie The Irishman (2019), has more Italians and Italian stereotypes in it than Irish ones. The title is a red herring.
I suppose if Scorsese or Coppola ever made a movie about the murderous Chinese American gang wars that plagued the country for seventy years into the 1920s, it would star Joe Pesci with Cantonese subtitles. “Leave the gun, take the egg roll!” -JLM
I happen to buy some old videos on sale and finally looked at a couple of them, one was labeled a comedy, called Liberty Heights, …it turned out to be a not so comic look at a Jewish Numbers mobster in Baltimore. The not so funny movie’s bottom line was the Jewish mobster and his family, was portrayed as a victim of anti Semitism et al, and he was a courageous entrepreneur just making a living for his family. It was a bittersweet movie with conflicts between Jewish and African American gangs and the White power structure in Baltimore. Would Italian Americans get the same treatment, was my first reaction….but I go back to the thought, all these mob movies have more to do with mainstream America and its myths and stereotypes than how ethnic communities live on a daily basis. My pet peeve is 4 or 5 generations of part-Italian Americans being experts on gangsters….that I just don’t get. The resiliency of these themes defies rational logic, unless you get into the symbolism of them, and how it cushions the sins of the concept of mainstream society. That theme should not be part of the assimilation process, and a little more daylight should be focused on that part of the scenario…..but it does not sell well…so there u go…..
I could not agree more than to say and know that the negative systemic indoctrination as to Italian Americans on TV and all other media is simply amazing. It just does not end and is replayed nightly on so many varied TV stations. How could we ever stop it!
What is so disheartening is that with all the good that is done by I-A’s and the levels of achievement they have attained in our society – NO other group ethnically or racially has sustained such! One wonders “Do I-A’s matter in this great country that we built in so many ways?!”
Many people failed to understand that the stereotypes do not result just in jokes or loss of opportunities.
In the last few years, the Italian press has covered two cases of Italians (from Italy) sentenced in the U.S. The cases were not related to organized-crime. In both cases, Italian men stereotypes were brought up by the investigators and prosecutors. I am sure it happens to Italian-Americans as well.
During an extra-judicial civil proceeding in the U.S., I was asked by a mediator if I was Sicilian (the Italian region where I am from was completely irrelevant). I know where she was going with that question.