The story of the Italian American experience after World War Two has been one of paradox, the move towards assimilation with the mainstream, and dealing with the feeling of regret of the younger generations of having lost many of the visible markers of Italian American identity. As Italian-Americans have become further removed from the world of their immigrant progenitors, a nostalgia for Italian ethnic markers has increased, and this in turn has created rising identification with the Mafioso and the mobster as symbolic of the culture. This transformation is startling. In Italian neighborhoods, the criminal elements was something to be despised.
[...] This association between being Italian and having a propensity for criminal behavior, grew stronger as Italian American left their neighborhoods and had to deal with a mainstream American that expected them, if not to have ties to criminal organizations, then at least to be When Nick Shay describes his killing of George the Waiter, his sometime friend and mentor, he turns to his “gangster voice,” as a way to emphasize the act and affirm his connection to his past. He tells Donna, a woman he is having an affair with and who has trouble understanding his past, udder words I took him off da calendar” (300). [...]
[...] Italian American history becomes reduced to the story of Vito Corleone immigrating to America and finding wealth, in The Godfather II. Depictions of the Mafia have become a conduit for Italian and Italian slang to be expressed in the mainstream culture. The paradox of religion and violence in everyday life is depicted in its fullest in gangster films such as Scorsese's Mean Streets, and in the climactic baptismal massacre of The Godfather. Even food has become wedded to mob life, as if crime is something ingested. [...]
[...] The gangster is usually the one who is rooted the most in the neighborhood, and crime is what brings people together like any other festival. In Don DeLillo's Underworld, when Nick Shay kills George the Waiter, he is arrested and the neighborhood gathers because they do not want to be absent from the event and want a personal memory of seeing Nick taken away. The gangster, the one responsible for reining in and controlling criminal activity becomes a figure of authority, and the most knowledge person about the community's business. [...]
[...] It was his next novel The Godfather, about a crime family, which made him well known and rich. In his preface to The Fortunate Pilgrim, Puzo concedes that it was hard for the public to relate to this novel, even though he believed in it. He turned to writing about crime because it was what the general public knew about the Italian American experience and would buy. But his success in making Don Corleone an iconic figure would come from molding the character of his mother, with his [...]
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