Radio Days is a movie that accurately represents the effect the radio had to people. The radio is portrayed as a wondrous invention. Throughout practically every frame of the movie Radio Days, radios were either used or mentioned The radio represented a gateway to knowing each of the character’s inner thoughts. The radio shows that they listened to represent their dreams. Joe’s mom listened to a breakfast show, which was given by a rich couple living in a beautiful apartment in Manhattan, whereas she is living with her relative’s house in Far Rockaway washing dirty dishes. Joe’s aunt watches romantic music for she wishes to find her true love and get married. Joe wished to be a hero, which was first shown by his addiction to a superhero radio show. It was also show later on in the movie when he and his buddies went to look for German planes. Besides showing the audience the family’s dreams it also provides an accurate history of the early 1940’s. I laughed when I saw Joe’s aunt’s date leave her stranded in a car with no gas in the middle of a foggy night. The reason I laughed was because I remember learning that during that time, there was this radio show that played music and then interfered it with breaking news that was fake (such as aliens coming down to Earth). People actually believed it and were in a state of panic. Also, the radio portrayed how that industry worked at that time. People would go in recording booths (dressed in nice clothes) and read their lines, one right after the other. And just like actors today, radio voices were famous and thus had to maintain their popularity and reputation (such as that breakfast couple mentioned before, they couldn’t file for a divorce even though they cheted on each other). Also what these people did was said on the radio allowing the people of the lower class to imagine the life of someone who are famous. For Joe’s family, the radio provided a bridge to American society. The radio also brought a country together. This was shown when there were shots of multiple families placed back to back to show the sadness and worry everyone had as they were listening to the news of the fire crew trying to rescue a girl that fell to the bottom of a well.
The main similarity between Goodfellas and Radio Days was the presence of a family sitting around a table. A big Italian dinner or an anniversary were shot with the families sitting together and enjoying their time. In addition, in both families (Joe’s and Henry’s), the man and wife stayed together. Karen even pointed a gun to Henry after finding out that he cheated on her but they ended up staying together for two and a half decades. However, throughout the rest of movies, only Radio Days showed a real family. It shoed family members advising each other, encouraging each other and working as a family unit. In Goodfellas, the mafia family gatherings always had, to some extent, an air of tension. This is because they knew that anyone in that room could murder them. Another similarity is that the mixing of ethnicities was not really allowed. In Goodfellas, Henry and Jimmy couldn’t become Made because they had Irish blood. In Radio Days, a woman witnessed a white woman and an African American man kissing. As a consequence to seeing that, she got a stroke, being frozen in place.
