Unfinished Business
Screening the Italian Mafia in the New Millennium
Published on 23. August 2013
Book
Hardback
264 pages
978-1-4426-4748-0 (ISBN)
Description
Unfinished Business is the first book to examine Italian mafia cinema of the past decade. It provides insightful analyses of popular films that sensationalize violence, scapegoat women, or repress the homosexuality of male protagonists. Dana Renga examines these works through the lens of gender and trauma theory to show how the films engage with the process of mourning and healing mafia-related trauma in Italy. Unfinished Business argues that trauma that has yet to be worked through on the national level is displaced onto the characters in the films under consideration. In a mafia context, female characters are sacrificed and non-normative sexual identities are suppressed in order to solidify traditional modes of viewer identification and to assure narrative closure, all so that the image of the nation is left unblemished.
Reviews / Votes
'Renga's film choices are spot-on, and offer a wide variety of Mafia themed films from the new millennium... It is refreshing to find a scholar so conscious of film, gender, and gender theory. -- Ryan Calabretta-Sajder Italica vol 92:04:2015 'Unfinished Business is a thorough, well-researched, and well-executed study... Renga's insightful and scrupulous analyses will surely generate plenty of new debates in Mafia studies, as well as in film, cultural studies and number of other disciplines.' -- Lara Santoro Journal of Modern Italian Studies , February 2015 'There's no doubt that Renga's volume is essential reading for scholars of both Mafia films and Italian cinema more widely.' -- Pasquale Iannone University of Toronto Quarterly vol 84:03:2015More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Toronto
Canada
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 236 mm
Width: 159 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
520 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4426-4748-0 (9781442647480)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
08/2013
1st Edition
University of Toronto Press
€64.95
Available for download
Person
Dana Renga is an assistant professor in the Department of French and Italian at the Ohio State University, and editor of Mafia Movies: A Reader.
Content
Introduction: Gender, Trauma and Recent Italian Mafia Cinema Chapter 1: Oedipal Conflicts in Marco Tullio Giordana's I cento passi Chapter 2: Honor, Shame and Vendetta: Pasquale Scimeca's Placido Rizzotto Chapter 3: Mafia Woman in a Man's World: Roberta Torre's Angela Chapter 4: The Mafia Noir: Paolo Sorrentino's Le conseguenze dell'amore Chapter 5: Men of Honor, Man of Glass: Stefano Incerti's L'uomo di vetro Chapter 6: The Female Mob Boss: Edoardo Winspeare's Galantuomini Chapter 7: Melancholia and the Mob Weepie: Davide Barletti and Lorenzo Conte's Fine pena mai: paradiso perduto Chapter 8: Mourning Disavowed: Matteo Garrone's Gomorra Chapter 9: Recasting Rita Atria in Marco Amenta's La siciliana ribelle Chapter 10: Trauma Postponed: Claudio Cupellini's Una vita tranquilla Epilogue: Why Must Caesar Die? Works Cited