According to Richard Dyer, movies tend to use whiteness to represent order, rigidity, and rationality compared to blackness. Using Dyer’s idea of whiteness, Henry can not be considered white because there is no sense of order or rationality in his life. His life is full of risks, chaos, murder, and betrayal. Rationality is the trait that is the farthest from the people Henry associates with, particularly Tommy. I was so surprised and shocked when Tommy shot Spider because he chose to stand up for himself. Tommy went around killing people for no actual reason. Dyer also expresses whiteness as the social norm in his essay, which supports the idea that Henry is not white. As gangsters, none of them follow the social norm. Their lives are about illegal activity and running from the cops. The norm is to follow the rules, and not break them. Henry expresses in the movie that he enjoys the special treatment he receives where he doesn’t have to wait in line at the bakery because people respect him. According to Henry, “we were treated like movies stars with muscles, we had it all just for the asking.”

One thing that stood out to me throughout the movie was that though Henry is a gangster, he is a little more sensitive than any of the others. As a young kid, Henry uses eight aprons to cover up the wound of a man. Paul remarks that he just wasted the aprons and needs to toughen up. Also, when Henry, Tommy, and Jimmy are digging up the body, Henry can’t take it and starts to throw up. Also, when Tommy shoots Spider, Henry runs to his side and is the first to help him and see if he’s okay. When Spider dies at the hands of Tommy, Henry rushes to side once again and announces that he’s dead. It seemed like Henry wasn’t into killing people so much as he loved the privileges that came with the lifestyle.

As much as Henry loves the life that he’s lived, he has to sacrifice it all and become a schnook. He has to leave the life that he’s loved and is forced to live like an average nobody-a schnook. At the very end of the movie, Henry is becoming white as he begins to follow the social norm and has to live an average life, as whiteness is defined by Dyer to be following the social norm.

If we regard white color as the goodness and black color as the evilness like many discourses present it, as Richard Dyer points out in his article White, I don’t think Henry (Ray Liotta) possesses the properties of whiteness because he has done many evil things. Grown up in a neighborhood that is filled with gangsters, Henry develops interests in joining them. He starts menaced behaviors since he is young. As he grows older, he engages in murder, drug deal, and has affairs with many women after his marriage. His illegal and immoral behaviors shape his blackness or evilness, not regarding to his color but his dark inside. Jail cannot even hinder him from engaging illegal trades and jail is like his vacation place. After he comes out of the jail, he has no guilt at all and starts his job again. He certainly does not become white even in the end of the film because it does not provide enough hints to convince me that he will eventually become a good citizen.

Henry’s neighborhood is not white either. I think it is this black neighborhood that makes Henry become villainous. He finds being gangster is so interesting and identifies himself with a goodfella. Moreover, his father looks like a psychopath and tends to use violence. The domestic violence also has unhealthy impact on him.

David Roediger, in his article Whiteness and Ethnicity in the History of “White Ethnics” in the United States, states that “Indeed at times of great identification with homeland and ethnicity, immigrants’ identification with whiteness was often minimal.”  Similarly, the members of Italian Mafia in Henry’s neighborhood do not identify themselves with whiteness. They stick with each other and make money together by illegal ways, acting against the white dominant government.

Thus, both Henry and his neighborhood are not white since they both challenge the legal system and identify with one another as Italians rather than the white who came earlier to America.

In White, Richard Dyer says, “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. I think the Goodfellas (1990) is not about white people, but rather about an Irish American among Italian American gangsters. Although most characters in the film have white skin, they seem to define themselves as Irish or Italian, or even gangsters, before “white.” Furthermore, in Whiteness and Ethnicity, Roediger says that Europeans became white by deciding they were white. I don’t think any of the European Americans in this film decided to “become white” because they still kept boundaries between Italians and non-Italians, for Henry and Jimmy couldn’t be a part of the family no matter how faithfully they served just because they weren’t Italian. Henry’s “Irish blood prevents him from truly belonging” and he remains an outsider despite his big involvement in the family.

Dyer also defines whiteness as a sense of order and rigidity, which the gangsters ignore and go against. Therefore, I believe no one in this film is white, although at the end, it seems that Henry has decided to “become white.” He is shown in a suburban home, as somebody who has to “wait around like everybody else” and “live like a schnook.” He can no longer live life in that ‘exciting’ and lawless way he did before, and by living like a “schnook,” I think he means that he has to live as a part of the norm, which is what living as a white person is, according to Dyer.

I thought a very interesting point that Paula Massood brought up in From the Mean Streets to the Gangs of New York was that New York was both utopian and dystopian—a place of family, tradition, and group identity that is also limiting and insular and where any form of border crossing is often life threatening. No matter how much time these people spent with each other and how many times they called each other “family,” if someone did something slightly unlikeable or out of line, that person was killed, or “whacked.” It was funny in a dark way that many of these men who trusted each other turned their backs on each other and killed them without blinking an eye. Even Henry, who was brought up to the position he was in by Pauly and Jimmy, ratted out on his friends in order to save himself. And it was ironic that the first thing Jimmy taught Henry was to “never rat on your friends and always keep [his] mouth shut.”

Hola, mis amigos! I would like to start off by saying that the film Goodfellas (1990) really did not appeal to me at all. I say this because usually movies with a lot of gruesome violence and heinous deeds, like Goodfellas, do not attract my attention much. I am more inclined toward adventurous and comedic films. Nevertheless, I definitely think that this film accurately displayed the brutal tactics of the Italian Mafia (you really do not want to mess with them… believe me). Moreover, I felt that the neighborhood Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) grew up in was without a doubt more white than he actually was. Henry attempts to achieve a prominent status as a formidable Mafioso, but simultaneously his ‘whiteness’ is detracted from him when he joins the Witness Protection Program in the near end of the film. When Henry is presented in the court and does not “rat out” his friends, we notice that he gains much respect. However, since Henry Hill is an Irish-Italian he can never genuinely “be made.”

In Whiteness, Richard Dyer expounds on the “invisible racial position.” Dyer feels that whites are not of a particular race when racially represented. “Whites are just the human race,” Dyer asserts and that “whites are a color against which people of other ethnicities are scrutinized.” I find this argument rather interesting because it can be compared to the notion that the color white reflects off all colors of light, while black absorbs all the colors.  Richard Dyer feels that whiteness is not just one particular race but many and this can be juxtaposed in a sense of how the color white is actually all the colors at once because it refracts all wavelengths of light (quite scientific, I know…). But how does Richard Dyer’s concept of whiteness relate to the film Goodfellas? Well, we see that Henry Hill endeavors to become respected in certain occasions, especially when he’s part of the Mafia. However, when Henry Hill is compelled to leave his gangster life in the end of the film and says that “I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook,” his white characteristics are revealed. In other words, when Henry affiliates himself with the Mafia he seems to be representing more than one race, but when he is living with his wife, Karen (Lorraine Bracco) and children, he lives an ordinary white life (seen also when he tries to support his family selling drugs while in prison).

I feel that Henry really is not white at all because he is so entrenched into the Mafia business of committing murders and illegally obtaining money that he represents many races at one given time. Only when he is forced to abandon his livelihood as a gangster is Henry actually white. But if Henry never left the gangster business he would always be considered part of a Mafia (his own social group) and not a white individual. The environment Henry lives in is definitely white because all the people around him, including Karen, his parents and brother, and some others live a normal life and work hard to earn a decent living (rather than through deceit and brutal force, as Henry and his companions do). Also, in one scene Karen observes all the other Italian women using excessive make-up to try to look pretty (but trust me they’re are not). Karen feels that the use of so much make-up gives a grotesque impression of these women and ruins their facial features. Basically, these stylish Italian women think that they can become someone they are not by just adorning their faces with make-up. This is important because we can relate this to Henry himself. Henry tries to become a “made-man” in the Italian Mafia but can never do so because he is part Irish. No matter what Henry does, he cannot change the fact that he is Irish. He cannot be someone he’s not.

I also thought that the voice overs of Henry and Karen in the film played a crucial role. Without the voice overs, I do not personally think that the film would be as effective as it was. I say this because the voice overs enable the viewer to read into the thoughts of the very characters of Henry and Karen in the film. The voice overs give the viewer a better sense of the personalities of Henry and Karen and helps to develop their characters to a larger extent. Sometimes the way an individual thinks can say a lot about them, too. Hence, the voice overs provided a chance for us to see how these characters felt about certain situations in the film. For instance, we learn that Karen has her doubts about the Mafia business,  but through her thoughts we see that Henry’s luxurious and glamorous lifestyle ‘arouse’ her and make her even more magnetized toward Henry. This is also a reason why Karen is unable to pull the trigger of the gun when she attempts to shoot Henry.

All in all, I feel that the notion of the Mafia was portrayed well throughout the movie, as seen via the violent murders, profanity, and nonsensical bantering. The fact that Henry was part Irish prevented him from being made. Even though Henry earned a reputable position in the Mafia, he was not a pure Italian. Also, Henry does not completely fit Dyer’s concept of being white because he’s part of the Mafia. He lacks rigidity of character and has that ruthless quality of a gangster that prevent him from meeting the requirements of Dyer’s idea of whiteness. Only in the end is he seen the ‘most white,’ but only out of compulsion. I also appreciated that Henry was the least violent of the Mafia members, especially when compared to the merciless and impetuous Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci). I’m not saying that Henry was still a good guy because he’s still a schnook to me.

Okay, I’ll admit it, I have a soft spot for the Goodfellas (1990). But who couldn’t? It’s the story of a devoted man who worked his way up the corporate ladder and became something close to a boss. Maybe I’m stretching reality just a bit but Goodfellas is still a great movie.

Do I think Henry is white? Yes, I do. Would Richard Dyer think Henry (Ray Liotta)  is white? No, absolutely not. If we’re speaking in terms of Dyer’s idea of whiteness, there is no possible way Henry could be considered white. He avoids that idea of the social norm of whiteness. He doesn’t embody nothing, he literally embodies everything that someone would consider “not white.” In the words of Dyer,  white is “order, rationality, rigidity, qualities brought out by the contrast with black disorder, irrationality, and looseness.” Do any of those definitions of white fit Henry? I honestly don’t think so. In fact, Henry, as well as all his friends and fellow gangsters, fit the definition of black. Tommy (Joe Pesci) is so irrational after a while, he just starts killing innocent people. Henry is so loose, he cheats on his wife with numerous women, even after she holds a gun to his head. I don’t even think Henry became white at the end of this film. Sure, he joined the witness protection program and became an “average nobody” but he can’t erase his past. What I think Henry is forced to do in the program is pretend to be white.

I don’t even think that Henry has a chance to become “white.” He just becomes progressively worse and worse as the film progresses. It’s as simple as that. Unfortunately, I don’t think Henry has any redeemable qualities. As to Henry’s neighborhood, I do think that it is white. It wasn’t like the entire neighborhood was in this huge mafia ring. Queens was sort of a normal neighborhood with the residents going along with their daily routines. Or as Henry considered them, “schnooks.”

Happy Pi Day Everybody!

This week we entered the world of the Mafia and the world of Scorsese. I was first introduced to Scorsese’s world last semester with Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy. I was expecting to see a lot of crazy shish kebab to go down in this film and Goodfellas didn’t disappoint.

According to Richard Dyer, whiteness is the norm and nothingness. And last I checked, being a gangster who steals and kills anything and anyone is not the norm…Although Henry and his Mafia family can put on the guise of whiteness (due to their skin color) they are not white. I think the film even discusses this idea of whiteness and reveals to us that they are not white. For instance, when Henry is describing the Mafia life he says how they don’t work at crummy jobs, commute on the train for little pay. What he just described is the norm, it’s being white. But what they do is a whole different story. There was another instance where Henry is being compared to an African American because he stole a man’s truck. Moreover, if they were really meant to be white I don’t think the director would have chosen to make their Italian culture part of the film.

But it all changed when Henry joined the witness protection program. He threw away his crazy lifestyle for the normal white lifestyle. The last scene of the film epitomizes this: Henry in a robe walking to get the paper and him saying, “I have to wait around like everyone else…I’m an average nobody, I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.” If that doesn’t scream out whiteness, I don’t know what does.

I saw the same power in this film’s voiceovers as I saw in the film noir voiceovers. I stand by my point that the environment and nature of the film demand the use of voiceover. I honestly, don’t think the film would be as good or powerful without the voiceover. We get to see what’s going on in Henry and Karen’s minds. Moreover we get to truly experience the Mafia and Henry’s thoughts on it as the film progresses. The film also made me think a lot about The Pawnbroker. Both these films address the notion of whiteness in film but also present an above the law, gangster and ghetto motif. Rodriguez would fit right in with the Mafia bosses like Pauly and Jimmy. It would actually be very interesting to see those two gangs fight.

Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) is not white. At least, he isn’t by the standards Richard Dyer sketches out in his essay on the topic of whiteness. Because, according to Dyer, whiteness is defined as the “norm,” the standard, and the commonplace – the thing against which all “otherness” is measured – and the life Hill seeks out and establishes for himself throughout the film is anything but these things.

The very first scene shows Hill driving in a car with his fellow wiseguys. Another mafioso just happens to be in the trunk of the car, thrashing about. Needless to say, it does not take long for Hill to pull the car over, get out, open the trunk, and silence the guy forever. Is this normal behavior? No, and it is only the beginning of the things Hill does that exemplify how far from the norm he deviates. Throughout the course of the film, he lies, he cheats, he steals, he deals drugs, and he exerts violence on people who don’t want to do as he tells them to.

His first attempt at something resembling “suburban” life (and thus, at a “normal” white life) – shortly after he is released from his first stint in prison – fails miserably because he goes about it the wrong way. The house he and his family moves into is funded by illicit activity, and though they are the ones who got him into trouble in the first place, he continues to keep ties with the wiseguys. At this point, he is still not white.

It is not until after his second imprisonment that things really begin to turn around. Hill reevaluates his life and makes the decision to provide a full confession – true, it is more out of fear than anything, but it is a step in the right direction. He rats on the other mafiosos – the embodiments of the strong ethnic identity Hill related to for so long – and enters the witness protection program. He becomes “an average nobody,” and while those he ratted on go to prison, Hill moves to the suburbs and lives “the rest of [his] life like a schnook.” He finally becomes white.

Certainly, when I think of Goodfellas (1990), I don’t think of white people. Sure, Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) is visibly white, yet at first thought, his identity does not strike me as “white.” According to Richard Dyer, whiteness is defined as the social norm; a conformist society dictated by what is standard, customary and accepted. Whiteness is an identity devoid of substance that is only defined through contradistinction with that which does not conform to its standards. Likewise, identity is defined through this discontinuity with the white standard, allowing for the genesis of countless ethnic identities.

Goodfellas, however, explores the concept of whiteness through a man-made construct—the mafia. Henry Hill, although not fully Italian, gradually builds his identity as a Mafioso through his association with James Conway (Robert DeNiro) and Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci). The mafia is associated with stealing, swindling and organized crime. The system they create directly opposes the norm, the established system and the core of whiteness. For example, Goodfellas portrays those in the mafia as proud and impressed with Henry when he refuses to talk to the judge after the police first catch him. Henry approaches white, however, when he is placed in the Witness Protection Program, essentially sequestered for his own well being by the United States government. Having turned over his friends, Henry gradually develops a void in his identity. Those around him, those that gave him his identity—the mafia, are gone, his only connection being to the U.S. government.

The movie likewise masks whiteness through a heavy Italian presence throughout the film. The New York City mafia, a critical component of the city’s vibrant history, is highly associated with the Italian image. In one of my favorite scenes, Henry is introduced to the majority of the mob through a long shot that captures the breaming personalities of the various Italian Mafiosos. By far, my favorite Italian character—Johnny Two-Times— is one of the examples the film presents of “white” figures that embody this counter-normative behavior and identity. Through adopting this Italian identity, Hill deviates from the norm and separates himself from whiteness.

Some little boys want to be athletes, some want to fly to the moon, some want to study dinosaurs.  If you asked Henry Hill what he wanted to be, he would tell you, “As far back as I could remember, I always wanted to be a gangster”.  Well, at least he fulfilled his boyhood dream.

I’ve seen Goodfellas a couple of times by now—it’s a favorite of both my 41 year-old and 17 year-old brothers.  Nothing brings the Jennings family together quite like a good gangster movie.  Maybe it’s because I’ve seen it several times before that I initially had a hard time with the prompt.  “What do you mean?  Of course Henry’s white!” I thought.  Then I had an epiphany while drying my hands in the Honors Hall bathroom earlier today.  Yes, Henry’s clearly white, but his sense of displacement also makes him not white at the same time!

One of the most pivotal scenes of the movie is when Tommy thinks he’s going to get made.  As Henry notes, he and Jimmy would never be able to get made because they were both half-Irish, half-Italian.  When you see names like Henry Hill and Jimmy Conway, you would initially think that they’re nowhere near Italian, let alone two of the most famous and feared gangsters in modern history.  Perhaps Henry wanted to repress his Irish blood because of his tumultuous relationship with his father.  I would say that Henry is “most white” when he is in the gang, because he feels an intense sense of belonging.  Karen maybe puts it best when she says that the gang’s strange relationship never felt strange because that was where they all came together and felt like they belonged.

Henry goes back to feeling displaced once he enters the Witness Protection Program.  Not only has he handed over the only people he’s ever called friends to the US government, his new neighbors have no idea that he was ever a feared gangster.  Maybe my favorite line in the whole movie is when Henry says bitterly, “Right after I got here I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce and I got egg noodles and ketchup.  I’m an average nobody.  I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.”  Being in the Mafia made Henry feel important and like he belonged—like he was special.  Giving up the lifestyle was an extreme wakeup call for the man who was used to getting everything he wanted.  Now nobody even bothers to get his pasta order right.

In term of other films we’ve watched this semester, I couldn’t help but compare the voiceovers in Goodfellas to the voiceovers we looked at last week in film noir.  There was a debate last week on whether they were necessary in film noir; in the case of Goodfellas, I don’t think the movie would be nearly as effective without them.  They put us directly into the minds of Henry and Karen as they reflect on their lives and clue us into their feelings both at the moment and in hindsight.  Plus they’re often accompanied by flashy Scorsese freeze-frames, and who doesn’t love a flashy Scorsese freeze-frame?  We also get some of the movie’s most famous quotes from the voiceovers, like the aforementioned egg noodles and ketchup discourse and when Henry chillingly says that “Your murderers come with smiles”.  And on a completely unrelated note, I had forgotten how disgusting they make Ray Liotta’s skin by the end of the movie.  Stay off the coke, kids.

Goodfellas (1990) at first glance seems to be a movie simply about life in the mafia in New York.  Upon further analysis however it becomes more a movie of identity and belonging.  Even though Henry can never really be one of them because he is part Irish, he identifies with the mafia lifestyle.  Throughout the movie, I think Henry makes a journey from being white, to becoming less white, to regaining some of that whiteness.  Once Henry becomes more involved in the mafia, he begins to deviate from the “norm” thus becoming less white.  The acts of the mafia are obviously not normal behaviors. They steal and kill without giving it any kind of second thought.  According to Richard Dyer, anything that is weird or different or deviant constitutes a shift from whiteness. When Henry goes under the witness protection program, he begins to gain back some of his whiteness because of the normal mundane lifestyle he is now forced to live, but his continued desire to identify with the mafia prevents this to fully occur. He will never be completely “white.”

There are specific instances in which I think that this deviation from whiteness becomes very obvious.  When Henry steals the truck from the driver who enters the diner to get something to eat, the reaction is, “A couple of niggers just stole my truck! Can you believe it?”  By the action of them stealing the truck, they became more black than white.  This is not typical behavior for anyone and causes them to move away from the “default” setting in film, which according to Richard Dyer is white.  They are only significant in a film because they exhibit traits that are supposedly not normal.  Another instance of this is when the police are searching the Hall’s home and Karen is sitting on the couch watching The Jazz Singer.  This is significant because the struggles between the Hills (and for that matter the rest of the circle in which he runs) and Jakie from The Jazz Singer are actually pretty similar crises of identity.  Jakie wears blackface to give a sort of physical manifestation to his desire to be more “black” and to reflect his actions that deviate from typical “whiteness” such as performing jazz music.  Henry probably can identify himself with this because his desire to be in the mafia parallels this situation.

The mafia is arguably an integral part of the history of New York City and its presence is important to the city’s identity.  Even television shows such as The Sopranos profligate this identification of New York City and the culture of the city with organized crime.  New Yorkers almost need to allow mafia activity to happen and never go away because there will always be some desire to identify with it. There will always be some kind of, even subconscious, need for there to be mafia presence in New York.