Essay on The Boondock Saints’ Positive Deviance

The two major themes in this movie is friendship and greed, and the two themes often come in conflict with each other. The mafia is made up of a very select few individuals, who are together all the time and don't affiliate with outsiders. This makes them grow strong bonds and develop friendships with each other. According to Jimmy Conway, the two most important things to remember is "to never rat on your friends,

Deviance is an unavoidable part of human nature, and as such, is a fascinating and essential social phenomenon to study. The film Easy A explores how a high school student turns to deviance in order to benefit in popularity and financially. A number of sociological theories are recognisable in this film. It demonstrates clearly the motivations behind how primary deviance leads to secondary deviance. The text raises the theories of

“Deviance in sociological context describes actions or behaviors that violate cultural norms including formally-enacted rules (e.g., crime) as well as informal violations of social norms.”

These members were the ones who did the dirty work but despite that the Mafia had about 3000-4000 members. Also they had associates who were at the bottom where they weren’t full members. They started of making money by selling illegal rum and other alcohol during the prohibition in the early 1930’s. Soon after that the prohibition was repealed in 1933. The Mafia quickly extended its area of illegal crimes to gambling,drug trafficking, kickback and protection shakedowns, and even prostitution. They enjoyed a time of dominance where they set up casinos, hijacked trucks, and had members on almost every street in New York City. Soon the government cracked down on gambling and broke into casinos and destroyed over 1000 slot machines belonging to the Mafia. Also they found Lucky Luciano guilty of many illegal crimes after prostitutes testified against him in court. In 1936 Luciano was arrested and sentenced to 35 years in prison. His underboss Genovese was given authority but he fled to Italy. This led to a time of decline of the Mafia in the late

The faction focuses on knowledge rather than intelligence. Human ignorance is the fault of society and that by eliminating ignorance and darkness from our minds will better the society (Blogger). We can see this with the Gambino crime family. How they rose to power they were often overshadowed from the other crime families that it took them till 1967 to change in their favour. The death of the powerful Gaetano ‘Tommy’ Lucchese and they actually organized his funeral and handpicked their successor. Also it could be assumed that they put out the hit on the other powerful crime family the Colombo, when Joe Colombo (Gallo) was shot in 1971 but only died in 1977 because he was trying to get on better relations with the black gangs it was getting too close to comfort for the other dons in New York but it has yet to be proven that the Gambino’s put the hit (StudioPress). Then on January 26, 1962 that Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano dies and that Carlo Gambino was the only don to show up to his funeral and therefore becoming the most powerful family in New York. As in the the books the Erudites always are known for their stealth and liked to do things in secret just to rise in power. That is what happened with the Gambino’s they always had a low profile until they rose to the most powerful were they on the FBI’s watchlist that they were facing kidnappings and death in their own family. Since Carlo is the last of the remaining generation crime bosses he was under pressure. He had to test loyalty, and better to do that was to reconstruct his power rankings. First to come was to add another underboss other than the established Neil Dellacroce he put his brother in law Paul Castellano because of his knowledge of being a businessman and therefore being in charge of the white collar crimes. Once Gambino died in 1976 it was Castellano who rose as don and not Dellacroce who was in the family for a longer time and was

In the movie the killing started out with just Connor and Murphy, but their best friend Rocco begged to be apart of the Boston action. From the beginning, Paul Smeckler was trying to figure out who was committing all the murders in Boston. Until he found Rocco’s finger at a crime scene, and had come to a conclusion that he knew who the Saints were. Confused as to why they were committing these crimes, Smeckler went to a church and talked to a priest, where he realized that the saints were only killing to make the city pure. Always able to circumvent every crime, the three of them (Rocco, Connor, and Murphy) were handcuffed to chairs, where one of Guiseppe Yakavetta’s (the man they have been after the whole movie) workers shot and killed Rocco. Connor and Murphy were filled with rage and anger, but it was necessary to have a proper goodbye. Joining in on the family prayer an unfamiliar face popped in the room who ended up to be their father Il Duce; who joins the both of them in killing Guiseppe in the courtroom at the end of the movie.

“ They rely on a viewer's preconceived idea of how a particular person or ethnic group should act and merely fulfill these expectations. External signs and cues are used to indicate and suggest the veneer of culture. Dress, eating habits, and language accents are exaggerated…” Even though the directors of the movie did not directly refer to Italian Americans, the way they portrayed the characters based on their language, clothes, food and etc. indirectly told the audience that the characters were of Italian background. By seeing this occur in every movie and show, the public got accustomed to seeing Italian Americans as the mafia and failed to recognize that the mafia was only a small percentage of Italian Americans and the rest were just like ordinary people trying to make a better life.

We may not see this group but the mafia was big back in the day. The mafia was the leading group in criminal activity in the 1960’s(Darity). The mafia was a group that would make tons and tons of money off of drugs, robberies and murders. They would sometimes pay off cops to look the other way and if they didn’t get what they wanted they would use their firearms. With stronger and more enforced laws, many lives could have been saved.

     Exactly what is the Mafia? Mafia, more specifically the Italian-American Mafia, is a group of criminals organized into "families," and operating primarily in North America. Also known as La Cosa Nostra, at one time there were 26 families in the United States - roughly one for each major city. The Mafia composed of bosses of numerous families, mostly New York, was the overseeing authority for all of the other La Cosa Nostra families. New York City is the place of origin for organized crime in the United States. Currently, there are five families in the New York City outfit of the La Cosa Nostra. The five families are, the Gambinos, Genovese, Colombo,

‘social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labelling them as outsiders. From this point of vie, deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of the rules and sanctions to an ‘offender’. The deviant is one to whom the label has successfully been applied, deviant behaviour is behaviour that people so label. (Becker 1963, pg 9)

When talking about a true American crime story, one can start and end the discussion with one of the most powerful and influential true stories ever told: GoodFellas. Based on the incredible true story, the film follows the rise and fall of Lucchese crime family associates Henry Hill and his friends throughout the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 1980s. Originally written as the non-fiction novel “Wise Guys” by Nicholas Pileggi, the story takes you deep into the world of arguably the most notorious crime posse America has ever known: the Italian Mafia. It is viewed by scores of critics and moviegoers alike as one of the greatest crime/drama movies ever filmed – so needless to say, with such a

The Gambino crime family was considered to be the fiercest Italian Mafia ever. Carlo Gambino was determined to become the Boss of Bosses. It did not take long for Gambino to accomplish his lifelong dream. His determination was proven when his former bosses, if he was asked to kill than he would do it without hesitation. This was just the beginning of his control in the Mafia.

Carlo Gambino, the man who is the family namesake, never served a day of jailtime in his life. He liked to keep low key, but many things are attributed to this family. Murder Inc., an infamous group of talented, for-hire hitmen, was started by Albert Anastasia, member of the Gambino family. While this was well publicized and talked about, perhaps the most publicized and talked about Mafia happening recently was the John Gotti case. John Gotti, Don of the Gambino family, was “ratted out” but one of his underlings, Sammy “The Bull” Gravano. Sammy, in return for this favor to the police, served only five years in jail for twenty murders. However, this offense, breaking the “Omerta” is one of the worst possible things any member of the Mafia could ever do. As Michael Corleone says to his wife Kay, “Don’t ask me about my business, Kay.” (Godfather) Everyone in the Mafia must learn many, many rules and live by all of them. Of most importance is Omerta, as stated before, but many guidelines are set for way of life as well. Members cannot show signs of weaknesses. Crying and wearing glasses are two such things. Also, women are looked upon as inferior and a couple that is unable to produce sons is frowned upon. Since power is very influential in how this business is run, members must know their place because “someone always wants more, that’s how wars start.” (Anonymous) Making reference to the movie “The Godfather” is

"Social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitute deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labelling them as outsiders-deviance is not a quality of the act of a person commits, but rather a consequences of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an 'offender' The deviant is one to whom that label has successfully been applied. Deviant behaviour is behaviour that people so label."

Imagine living in a world where crime ruled. A world where gangsters were more powerful than politicians, owned the police, and ran the city in whatever way they felt. They robbed whom they wanted and killed when they didn't get their way. Now stop imagining and realize that this happened here in the United States of America in the 1920's. It was run by an organization made up mainly of Italians called the Mafia.