From Wiseguys to Wise Men: The Gangster and Italian American Masculinities

Seeking to understand the ever-changing meaning of how Italian-American men are portrayed, Gardaphé, director of the Italian-American studies program at SUNY–Stony Brook, deconstructs the evolution of the gangster figure in American literature, film and television. He starts with a brief accounting of how gangsters came to find power and the cultural limelight during Prohibition in the 1920s and the Great Depression in the 1930s. Then, in lively prose, Gardaphé exposes how The Godfather —both the book and the movie—romanticized the gangster while creating a template of behavior for the Italian-American male. When looking at the realism in the gangster films of Martin Scorsese, Gardaphé comments that Scorsese's gangsters are "men trapped forever in an immature stage." The popularity of Francis Ford Coppola's romanticism and Scorsese's realism left the door wide open for parodies of the gangster character as seen in such books as Giose Rimanelli's Bendetta in Guysterland , with its homosexual gangsters, and Louisa Ermelino's The Sisters Mallone , which depicts women embodying the trope gangster qualities as a means, according to Gardaphé, of showing the "folly of basing masculinity on traditional macho gangster behavior." Gardaphé's ability to use criticism based on scholarly topics as well as pop culture concepts elevates this book beyond the academic. (June)