Italian Mafia in the Media in the 1940s and 1950s

Italian Mafia in the Media in the 1940s and 1950s.

Today, the most common media images of Italians and Italian-Americans are arguably those images made popular by film and television. Most notable among these are images of the Italian mafia portrayed in films such as "The Godfather" and "Goodfellas" and television shows, particularly "The Sopranos." No one familiar with these particular media images would argue that the above-named works advocate that a criminal life is ultimately a rewarding one. However, as the literature reviewed in this paper will demonstrate, American media images of the Italian mafia have created a mythology of the Italian mafia with the intention of sensationalizing its criminal elements. This mythology began as an attempt to hide the fact that such criminal elements existed among native-born white Americans. But today it serves the wider purpose of allowing all Americans to participate in the imagined glamor of the mafia's criminality.

In a 2000 lecture, State University of New York Italian-American Studies professor Fred Gardaphe argued that the American media, including newspapers, television news and original programming, films and fiction, have turned the Italian gangster archetype into an American myth "almost as popular an archetype and myth as the cowboy" (Comeau, 2000). Vic Fortezza also agrees that how gangsters are perceived has a lot to do with film and media hero-worshiping of "the man with t

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to the way in which the media would shape images of Italian immigrants thereafter - was the way in which Costello testified. Sharp maintains that Costello's testimony was the high point of the hearings and she notes that news media around the country carried it live on radio and television. But Costello would only agree to testify if his face was not shown on television. Thus, the cameras focused instead on his "massive, calloused hands" as he testified in what Sharp calls a very "witty monologue." Thus, Sharp argues that thirty million Americans formed their first impressions of the Italian mafia from the mysteriousness of Costello's facelessness, the olive-colored skin of his hands, the ethnicity of his name, and his heavy Italian accent (Sharp). In fact, she argues that this combination of media sounds and images "calcified him as a stereotype of Mafioso" (Sharp). From that moment on, America would always associate organized crime with Italians. Sharp's interpretation of the affect of the Kefauver hearings on media images of Italian immigrants is echoed by numerous other researchers. In particular, she notes that media expert Dwight Smith also links the Kefauver hearings to an avalanche of television and print report

Category: Film - I