Goodfellas. I watched it for the first time this week (surprisingly,) and it was brutal. All the blood, cursing, and general meanness was a drastic change from the mostly dramatic, non-violent films we have watched during this semester. Using several different film styles, Martin Scorsese brought the life of a mafioso on screen. I felt that the film went way beyond the typical, cliche mafia portrayals that the media presents.
Richard Dyer’s article “White” defined a new identity for whiteness. He calls whiteness “not an identity, not a particularising quality, because it is everything – white is no colour because it is all colours.” It is the status quo, the way things are, an order. If this was chemistry, there would be no entropy with whiteness. Dyer referenced several films that showed whiteness as “order, rationality, qualities brought out by the contract with black disorder, irrationality and looseness.”
Strictly from Dyer’s definition, Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), is not white. The life he aspires to, and the life he eventually lives, goes directly against Dyer’s definition of white. The life of a mafia member is chaotic, violent, and rough. There is a strong racial identity as Italian-Americans as well. In my opinion, this way of living identifies better with Dyer’s definition of blackness. Although the mafia structure is heavily ordered, their activities go against societal standards, thus creating blackness. The pointless killing and violence further adds to the stray from whiteness that Dyer defined.
However, toward the end of the film, I feel that Henry Hill is forced to become white. Being moved into the Witness Protection Program, working an actual job, and moving away from the gangster life forced him to become ordered. He was average. Hill went from living a life of a gangster and drug junkie in New York, to the secluded, clean life in Seattle as the end titles showed.
The neighborhood that Hill lives in is not white either. The New York City neighborhood, predominantly Italian-American lacks the order and “lack of identity.” The people identify as a certain race, they do not identify as “nothing.” The members of the mafia and neighborhood made the issue of Henry being Irish-American into an important aspect of his identity and place. After watching this movie, I feel that the city itself does not identify as white either, because of the melting pot of cultures and the inevitable questioning of cultures. “Whiteness” in Dyer’s definition, is more suited toward the suburbs.
When comparing Goodfellas to other films from this semester, the premises are similar. Just the methods of how each main character achieved their goals were different. Like Geromio in Christ in Concrete, Henry works his way up to the forefront and top of the mafia. But both of their lives came crashing down. The film noir aspects used by Scorsese created an eeriness in the film, and the frequent cutting to different scenes further enhanced the crazy, chaotic, wild life of a mafia man.
