An Offer We Can't Refuse

The Mafia in the Mind of America

Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Cultural Studies, Popular Culture
Cover of the book An Offer We Can't Refuse by George De Stefano, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Author: George De Stefano ISBN: 9781429927628
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Publication: January 23, 2007
Imprint: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Language: English
Author: George De Stefano
ISBN: 9781429927628
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication: January 23, 2007
Imprint: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Language: English

A provocative and entertaining look at the mafia, the media, and the (un)making of Italian Americans.

As evidenced in countless films, novels, and television portrayals, the Mafia has maintained an enduring hold on the American cultural imagination--even as it continues to wrongly color our real-life perception of Italian Americans. In An Offer We Can't Refuse, George De Stefano takes a close look at the origins and prevalence of the Mafia mythos in America. Beginning with a consideration of Italian emigration in the early twentieth century and the fear and prejudice--among both Americans and Italians--that informed our earliest conception of what was at the time the largest immigrant group to enter the United States, De Stefano explores how these impressions laid the groundwork for the images so familiar to us today and uses them to illuminate and explore the variety and allure of Mafia stories--from Coppola's romanticized paeans to Scorsese's bloody realism to the bourgeois world of David Chase's Sopranos--while discussing the cultural richness often contained in these works. At the same time, he addresses the lingering power of the goodfella cliché and the lamentable extent to which it is embedded in our consciousness, making it all but impossible to green-light a project about the Italian American experience not set in gangland.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

A provocative and entertaining look at the mafia, the media, and the (un)making of Italian Americans.

As evidenced in countless films, novels, and television portrayals, the Mafia has maintained an enduring hold on the American cultural imagination--even as it continues to wrongly color our real-life perception of Italian Americans. In An Offer We Can't Refuse, George De Stefano takes a close look at the origins and prevalence of the Mafia mythos in America. Beginning with a consideration of Italian emigration in the early twentieth century and the fear and prejudice--among both Americans and Italians--that informed our earliest conception of what was at the time the largest immigrant group to enter the United States, De Stefano explores how these impressions laid the groundwork for the images so familiar to us today and uses them to illuminate and explore the variety and allure of Mafia stories--from Coppola's romanticized paeans to Scorsese's bloody realism to the bourgeois world of David Chase's Sopranos--while discussing the cultural richness often contained in these works. At the same time, he addresses the lingering power of the goodfella cliché and the lamentable extent to which it is embedded in our consciousness, making it all but impossible to green-light a project about the Italian American experience not set in gangland.

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