Posted on 09/03/2021 6:34:34 AM PDT by Albion Wilde
I’m guessing you never watched The Sopranos, or never watched more than a couple of episodes, if that.
It was a brilliant show that really changed the nature of TV shows.
And the late James Gandolfini, who by all accounts was one of the nicest, modest and most generous people in all of show biz, did a magnificent job playing a very complicated character.
The scripts were brilliantly written, and the creator of the show was a freaking genius.
You should binge watch the series sometime.
That’s almost as good as Sen. Pat Geary’s speech.
=running away=
How could you possibly have meant this comment for me? Please point out why you think I did not study into The Sopranos, based on what we've discussed here.
The demographics of Italian-American organized crime versus all the other ethnic organized crime are what they are; and the Italians cornered the market throughout the 20th century in a certain type of highly networked, operatically violent, schizopathic crime—affectionate family men who love a good plate of food, go to mass, are shrewd in running legit businesses to cover their crimes—but who cherish compulsive vices and commit casual atrocities on the side.
Jewish crime is more cerebral and intellectual; and there have always been fewer Jews in the U.S. than Italians, so those are reasons why their stereotypical crimes of creative financing, tax evasion, and money laundering just don't pack enough punchy cinematic appeal. As you noted, the movie business thrives on sensationalism.
Our FRiend above seems determined to play the victim because his Italian group is trashed; yet the English-descended outlaw Westerns and the Irish gangs and crooked cop movies (such as the dirty cop in The Godfather) have certainly gone before the Italian gangster movies, following in the same chronological order as the waves of immigration to the U.S.
Italian immigrants arrived en masse in conjunction with the rise of electricity and mass communications, which helped them become, as Bill O'Reilly's recent book says, an alternate government—powerful in every state, with international ties as well. Before telegraphs, telephones and television, their enormous clout wouldn't have been possible. The sheer number of Italian gangster movies the freeper above complains about are a testament to their transgressive success and also to the corruption of our English/Scots/Irish establishment that enabled and abetted the higher reaches of their corruption.
If the complainant doesn't like Italians portrayed as gangsters, wait a couple of years. TV is full of noble muslims right now, soon to be followed by noble latinx illegals along with the noble post-George Floyd black geniuses and paragons of moral virtue; so it's only a matter of time until we have noble Afghan refugees and nobly oppressed Chinese students rejected from the Ivy League—but eventually, Hollywood will make gangster movies about all these ethnicities. Italian crimnals are so last century.
You should run away, because discrimination is real, and Italians most certainly have taken their share of discrimination, and movies most certainly have emphasized their group's criminal element. But unlike the freeper above who wants to picket a movie that further deepens the plot of one of the most intelligent, complex, subtle and nuanced series of ensemble theater productions of the past century that was written by an Italian-American (instead of focusing on agitation like the smearing and cancelling of Christopher Columbus, for instance), I say he's nuts.
I was just making a gentle poke.
I hope so. But this is very much Dickie Moltisanti’s story and young Tone is a supporting character.
Aaahhh...... there we have it. A message is delivered from the TV to those at home on their couches.
Unremembered or perhaps unknown is the fact that William Shakespeare was a playwright. We must wonder what he could have accomplished with tens of one hour weekly episodes
The biggest thing he’s forgotten is that 99% of the people complaining about how demographic groups are represented aren’t in those groups. They’re liberal busy body WASPs being offended “on behalf” of those poor unfortunates. Oh sure, there’s always some ADL from the group, but most don’t care. Look at all the surveys of Native Americans about the sports team names, they give a crap, but those WASPs sure are upset about it. And it’s really the same with all these.
It is true things evolve. Most of the OC being depicted in modern times is Russians or Armenians. Part of that is because reality evolves. Italian OC isn’t that big anymore. Other groups have over taken them, they’ve lost their luster and power.
OK, then! :-)
Very true, discostu. You might enjoy Bill O'Reilly's latest Kiling book, Killing the Mob, described in post 14 above.
With regard to God_luvs_America's discontent, I looked up the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) list of Top 100 Gangster Movies. Even given that the Italian-American mob was pre-eminently visible in the U.S. in the last century, only 14 of IMDB's top 100 are specifically or primarily about the Italian-American mob. One additional film is about Italy's mob in Naples, Italy. All the rest are an array of Irish-American, African-American, Asian, Hispanic, and assorted other crime organizations.
The Top 100 list didn't even include multiple award-winning films about about non-mafia organized crime, such as Spotlight, about the coverup of child rape by the Archdiocese of Boston; Traffic, about Hispanic drug activities; two versions of The Ladykillers about gambling in the rural South; numerous Ocean's films about cash or jewel heists, including one with a female cast; older acclaimed heist flicks like Topkapi, two versions of The Thomas Crown Affair; and many, many more covering the full spectrum of OC by a wide range of ethnicities.
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