At the surface, Goodfellas (1990) is a tale of the mob activities in the latter part of 20th century New York. Though the movie does not seem to express much about the notion of whiteness, it in fact immensely deals with this subtle concept. As Richard Dyer puts it, “white power secures its dominance…in mainstream film… by seeming not to be anything in particular.” This is particularly true for Goodfellas where a majority of characters are seen as white. However this idea, as equally subtle as it may seem, is false. “Brief Encounter is not about white people, it is about English middle-class people; The Godfather is not about white people, it is about Italian-American people; but The Color Purple is about black people, before it is about poor, southern US people.” Likewise, Goodfellas is not about white people, but about the Italian-Americans and Irish-Americans.
So why is there such an emphasized distinction as shown by Dyer? Of course the classification of Irish-Americans and whites is almost non-existent in the movie until the non-diegetic narration of Henry at 1:45:44. At first, it doesn’t matter if you’re Italian, Irish, or light skinned because the common distinction is that this certain group of people can be labeled white. However, the second the movie is introduced with the inability of Henry and Jimmy to be made due to their Irish blood, the classification is there. Thus, Henry is not white according to Dyer’s work for two main reasons. The first is that anything non-white can be thought of “departures from the norm.” The norm in Goodfellas is being a full on Italian-American, not Irish-American. Secondly, according to Dyer, “in the realm of categories, black is always marked as a colour…whereas white is not anything really, not an identity, not a particularizing quality.” Thus if one was able to distinguish himself, or categorize himself from the label of being white, it provides a different identity for that person and that is exactly what Henry does at 1:45:44. He says, “Jimmy and me could never be made because we had Irish blood. It didn’t matter my mother was Sicilian. To become a member of a crew you must be 100% Italian so they can trace your relatives to the old country.” Up until this point, we identified Henry as white, but with his own distinction we can see that he definitely does not become white in the course of the film.
However, because a majority of the characters are Italian-Americans, we take this to be the social norm. This is what becomes accepted throughout the movie because of the typical Italian lifestyle – the kissing on cheeks, the mafia, the spaghetti, and the common names Paul, Pete and Marie. Therefore, I consider the Italian-American neighborhood white, not only because of the social norm as defined by the movie, but because no Italian-American makes the effort to distinguish himself as an Italian-American. At no point in the movie does a clear-cut Italian say he’s Italian and not something else. Due to this, Dyer’s definition of white is certainly applicable and the neighborhood can be defined as white with the exception of Jimmy and Henry.
Regardless of the composition of the neighborhood, we do see that Hill grows up in an environment much like Delores Hayden’s project of helping to preserve the memory of vernacular space. Hayden argues that “place memory encapsulates the human ability to connect with both the built and natural environments that are entwined in the cultural landscape.” This claim is more than evident in Goodfellas. When Hayden refers to the ‘built and natural environments,’ the placement of Henry immediately comes to mind. Ever since Henry was little he wanted to be in the ‘gang’ environment; it was almost a natural calling for him. It just wasn’t some part time job as he puts it, but a full time one; something that he was a part of. Once the film progresses, we see that the environment around him is built to his liking; he has fulfilled his childhood dream of being a gangster. His sense of belonging at the cab stand with the local gangsters is achieved by his position as running errands for the gangsters. Though a low-ranking job, Henry worked his way up, developing connections and ultimately earning his title as a Goodfella.
