Gangster chic is hot, thanks to Mafia movies like GoodFellas, so wide lapels are here again. Mafia movies may seem like an odd choice for reading along the lesbian continuum because of their self-absorption in the representation of masculinity. Movies in this genre have few women characters, but these women, when they appear, are clearly bad girls. Mafia women fail miserably in their fulfillment of the standards of hegemonic femininity. Instead of standing in binary opposition to their men, these women appear to mirror male characteristics. Within hegemonic logic, this marks the women as biologically inferior to real women.
But if one attributes agency as the motive for their fall from the hegemonic, then mafia women signify the perfect starting point. There are two films in particular within the genre, John Huston's Prizzi's Honor (1985) and John Cassavetes' Gloria (1980), which can be read as revealing the invisible of patriarchal cinematic discourse. These films are an ideal site for a lesbian to begin seeking escape from hegemonic femininity. (Ryan, 1979)
The last decade of the twentieth century was not a happy one for the Mafia. During the nineties both the United States and Italy made remarkable strides in curbing organized crime, imprisoning gangsters and dismantling their business interests. Though it would be premature to declare either the Italian or the American Mafia dead, both have been wounded, the latter perhaps mortally. But if the Mafia is a shadow of its former self, you'd hardly know it from pop culture. In fact, media images of La Cosa Nostra seem to be proliferating in direct proportion to the decline of organized crime. Not since Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather reinvented the gangster genre in the early seventies have there been so many wiseguys on screen. The past year brought the films Analyze........
