[In honor of the
150th anniversary of Butch
Cassidy’s birth, in this week’s series I’ll AmericanStudy histories and
images of some of our more famous—or infamous—outlaws.]
Three telling stages
in the strange evolution of our pop culture obsession with the mob.
1)
The 70s: I’ve written
before in this space (almost exactly five years ago!) about The Godfather, both the Puzo novel and
the Coppola films. Although as I argue there the novel is significantly more
pulpy than the films, both would have to be described as epics, and more
exactly as works that treat the world of organized crime as both a serious
subject in its own right and a reflection of broader and deeper American issues
(immigration, the American Dream, politics, the rise and fall of cities, and
more). In the same era, Martin Scorcese’s first feature film, Mean Streets (1973),
used the mafia to tell a very similar story, one that (like Coppola’s films)
does not downplay the mob’s more criminal and seedy sides yet at the same time (also
like them) depicts this as an American story and community worth serious
attention and reflection. (And, at least per
one prominent book, as a vehicle for understanding Italian American experiences
and identities.)
2)
The 90s: The 90s kicked off with another
Scorcese film, Goodfellas (1990),
that used the mafia in similarly epic and symbolic ways. It ended with the first
season of HBO’s The Sopranos (1999-2007), a hugely influential work that did
the same on the small screen. Yet if both of these texts illustrate
continuities in our pop culture engagements with the mob, I would point to
another 1999 work as an indication that our narratives were nonetheless evolving.
The film Analyze This (1999)
seems to echo both Goodfellas (since
it likewise stars Robert de Niro as a mob boss) and The Sopranos (since it’s about the relationship between that mob
boss and his therapist). But that therapist is played by Billy Crystal, and the
therapy, like the mafia and everything else in the film, is played for laughs. Mob
comedies were actually a trend in the late 90s, including Jane Austen’s
Mafia! (1998) and Corky Romano (2001)
among others, reflecting a significant new possibility in the uses of mafia
stories in our pop culture.
3)
Today: It’s certainly possible for humorous
works to engage thoughtfully with complicated issues, and I don’t want to
suggest that those comic films were necessarily a step down from the more epic
texts (although Jane Austen’s Mafia!,
yeah, step down). But here in the second decade of the 21st century,
our most famous pop culture engagement with the mafia is unquestionably, frustratingly
vapid and awful: the vh1 reality
show Mob Wives, which is currently
airing episodes in its 6th and final season. Of course Mob Wives represents a direct response
to the “real
housewives” reality shows that have become one of the genre’s and our
culture’s most dominant trends, and has to be contextualized and analyzed
through that lens. But at the same time, the show embodies a cultural use of
the mafia that is as mundane as Coppola’s and Scorcese’s was epic—and while
there’s certainly something to be said for refusing to glorify organized crime,
there’s also a great deal to be said against Mob Wives, and where our pop culture obsession with the mob has
taken us.
Special post
this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other outlaws you’d analyze?
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