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Comments on Mob Movies
By Professor Emeritous James C. MancusoEditor of The Mail column, The New Yorker Magazine
Having just completed a reading of an article entitled "Is this the end of Rico?" I put down my April 2nd, 2001, copy of The New Yorker, and turn on my computer to register my comments.
The article, written by a David Remnick, begins: "Ever since the early 30s.... It has been an article of local faith that the greater metropolitan area is controlled by the Five Families. There are, as it happens, five and a half - the half being the DeCavalcantes of Union County... New Jersey."
That opening nicely sets the tone of this seven-page article. There are beliefs that are taken as local faith, but Remnick KNOWS that faith and fantasy are not equivalent. Yet, despite his professed ability to sort out faith from fantasy, Remnick does little to help his reader to maintain a separation. Any reader who takes the trouble to read this article will have a difficult time sorting faith from fantasy throughout the article.
The article, basically, uses as is take off point commentary about the fantasy television show, The Sopranos, and a discussion of that show with its notorious creator, David Chase. One might conclude that the object of the article is to affirm the tentative hypothesis that the "Mafia genre" has run its course and that Chase's television series will be followed by the last rites for that genre.
I read this article with the hope that somewhere in the article Mr. Remnick would show some sensitivity regarding the reactions of many Italian-Americans to the exploitation of their cultural heritage as represented in the kinds of "entertainment" that the media producers have consistently presented to our fellow citizens.
My hope, of course, was unfulfilled. The article does not give one single mention of the ways in which many individual Italian-Americans and Italian-American organizations have objected to this kind of entertainment. Instead, the article continuously weaves in elements of Italian-American culture as the writer strings together his text. And, that text constantly weaves back and forth between fantasy and what the writer would have us take to be fact. As I read the article, I needed to stop, over and over again, in order to decide whether the author was talking about movie representations or whether he was presenting material that could be verified by carefully sifting through of solid evidence. When he writes about the life situation of Simone Rizzo DeCavalcante, he offers quotes from wiretaps that had been made when the FBI had planted bugs into DeCavalcante's office. When he writes about the representation of a "mob boss," as represented through David Chase's fantasy life, one needs to back off in order to decide whether Remnick is offering a parody of DeCavalcante or whether he was quoting from Chase's scripts.
The following passage illustrates Remnick's casual weaving between fact and fantasy. Remnick tells us to that the life of gangsters has become quite complicated because of modern technology and because the stiff reactions to drug trafficking has made it difficult to avoid harsh sentences for those who are implicated in that trade. He then offers us this set of observations, "Also, as Tony soprano demonstrates, the Mafia life is highly stressful, what with all the beatings and search warrants. Many elders would get out if they could ("I don't want it. The whole [expletive] life" - {Material in quotes is from Chase's script}), and many of them do what they can to make sure that their kids go straight." Thus, Remnick draws on Chase's fantasy to affirm his hypothesis that "Mafia life is highly stressful."
Remnick's technique is neatly demonstrated in a passage in which he tries to undo what he believes to be the myth of loyalty and commitment among "mob guys." He tells of having had the opportunity to "write about a Mob assassin who was in the witness-protection program." We are led to conclude, that in this only instance in which he reports of actually having spoken to a "real" Mob guy, he was speaking to someone who apparently was an African American. In short, after filling this long article with direct and indirect allusions to a Italian-American life, the only quoted material about mob life given directly by a mobster comes from someone who, we are led to assume, does not share an Italian-American background!!!
What Remnick fails to analyze also deserves considertion. He quotes Chase: "Television is crap, and I don't watch it.... I only watched it as a kid." Remnick tells us that Chase perceived himself as having failed to achieve his goal of writing scripts that would be made into "little dark enigmatic pictures." He had written nine feature scripts, none of which have been produced. When he came up with his idea for The Sopranos, Fox and the three old-line networks turned down the idea.
Remnick could have helped readers to understand the source of Chase's fantasy creations by having asked him, "What motivated you to put together the Soprano scripts? If you are convinced that 'television is crap,' why would you have contributed to augmenting that crap?"
The answers to another important question becomes blurred by Remnick's failure to maintain a distinction between faith and fantasy. What is the source of Chase's material? Remnick says, "David Chase grew up on Mob movies, and even with a considerable awareness of Mob reality." He then affirms the first clause of that sentence, "He watched The Untouchables' on Thursday nights and 'The Public Enemy' on Million Dollar Movie." The second part of the sentence is weakly affirmed by the claim that "In school he knew the son of a mobster, and he read transporting crime stories in the now defunct Newark Evening News about the Boiardo family, a Genovese crew working in Essex County."
One can note with considerable interest that the following material is, perhaps gratuitously, interjected between the accounting of Chase watching Mob movies and the accounting of other sources of Chase's insights into mob activity: "His family, which changed its name from DeCesare to Chase, was middle class. His father had a hardware store, and his mother worked for the telephone company." Thus, as he tries to offer some understanding of Chase's source of insights into Mob activity, Remnick reminds us that Chase actually shares an Italian-American background. Can we assume that Remnick hopes to tell us that Chase, like Scorcese, Talese, DeNiro, Pacino, etc., etc., can tell us about Mob activity; because, after all, they (being Italian-American) grew up surrounded by mobsters???
How loud must we make our complaints before the editors of prominent publications stop printing these kinds of articles? Why does a magazine like The New Yorker publish articles like this one, rather than articles that astutely represent the point of view of people who object to the Mob movie genre?
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