Tales of Loss, Betrayal, and Regain: Irishness and Ethnic Identity in Contemporary Irish-Themed American Gangster Films

Abstract

In this chapter, Dibeltulo looks at how recent Irish-themed American gangster films, such as State of Grace (Phil Joanou, 1990), Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese, 2002), and The Departed (Martin Scorsese, 2006), explore the tensions inherent to the double identity—Irish and American—of their protagonists. She illustrates how these films reveal the conflictual dynamics of the hyphenated self by focusing on the themes of loss, betrayal, and regain in relation to ethnic identity. Dibeltulo argues that the films in question share a common trait: they stage a return of the protagonist to the ethnic community/identity, which he had previously betrayed in favour of Americanization. Drawing on theories of ethnicity (Gans in Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2: 1–20, 1979; Sollors in Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture, Oxford University Press, New York and London, 1986; Alba in Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White America. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT and London, 1990; Waters in Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1990), Dibeltulo examines the function of ethnicity for later-generation Irish-Americans. Furthermore, Dibeltulo’s chapter investigates the connotations of Irishness in contemporary American culture, at a time when the strong urge for ethnic identification clashes with the disappearance of the social texture of ethnic groups and the increasingly symbolic nature of ethnicity.