A few years ago, a student tried to change my mind about gangster movies.
“They’re all about family–and loyalty!”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t go into the business my family wanted me to. I was a screw up and a disappointment in their eyes. But they didn’t kill me. In a gangster movie, if you don’t do what the patriarch wants, you get killed.”
Gangster movies are about power. Toxic masculinity and violence are celebrated. For people like my student, watching the films probably enables a fantasy about having that kind of power, inspiring that kind of fear.
Today, in my quest to watch all the Oscar nominees, I’m watching The Irishman. Like most movies of its ilk, it’s well done. But it’s reminiscent of all the other gangster movies. It’s the same actors in slightly different makeup.
And I’m wondering, if these movies were about African Americans instead of Italians, would white people still manage to see them as positive representations of families?
Or would people see these as the tragic stories of violence and abuse that they are?
