Immigration and Pop Culture

Immigration and Pop Culture

In reading the Introduction to Immigration and Pop Culture, I could not help but to reflect on the article Jewish Gangster Masquerade. The chapter describes the gangster flicks of the 1930s and how they depicted Italian and Jewish Gangs and that the films were popular for many during the era of the Great Depression. Other films made during this era were made for escapist reasons, but that these films were marketed particularly because of their realism. Whose reality were they really depicting? In one sense, it allow some to feel a certain affinitiy or pride at being portrayed as tough, intimidating. For others, it attributed negative stereotypes as gangsters were also portrayed as menaces to society.
As I was reading the article, I could not stop reflecting on my own and my friends’ experiences with the gangster films of today. I grew up in a predominately Latino community that included African Americans, Asians. It was considered vital that you have seen Scarface (with Al Pacino) and the Godfather, and that many of the males in my neigborhood wanted to emulate the power that Michale Corleone(?) had in the movie. In fact, for many of my friends that I still have in the neighborhood, Scarface is their all-time favorite movie. I began to think that that the appeal of these types of movies was not the violence depicted, but that because the power the gangs had. The gangs really did not have to relinquish their ethnic identity, but in fact portrayed them as being proud of it.
Although the goal of the real life gangsters was to attain a type of acceptance and respect into society, whether it be their own or the mass society of the city in which they lived, for my classmates, it was the power and intimidation that they gravitated to most, to have people answer to you, not the other way around.