Goodfellas Sociology

The film Goodfellas is a real story based on an American crime associated with the Italian Mafia. The narrator of the film, Henry Hill, tells the story of his uprising as a gangster and all the experiences that he went through along with Tommy DeVito, Jimmy Conway and many others. Goodfellas, otherwise known as “Wiseguys” tells the story of the many crimes the Italian Mafia had committed through the years. It starts with Henry Hill as a teen showing his obsession with the local gang in his neighborhood and the desire of him to be a gangster. Henry would work for the gangsters until he became one and started to partake in the criminal career which allowed him to live in a life of money and luxury. As Henry got older, he along with Tommy DeVito,

In an early scene we are able to see his failure to comply with social norms when he is sharing a story with his mob friends while they are dining and drinking, and when Henry tells him how funny he is, Tommy does not accept it as a form of a compliment but rather than an insult. Tommy acts out of the norm and gets upset for being told he is funny, and it gets worse when he is told to pay up the tab he had open in the bar, he reacts to all this by throwing a glass and breaking it on his face. Tommy shows he is not capable of having normal conversations with people without taking everything as an offense to himself, and precedes his reactions always in violations of the rights of others. He does not fear if people around him see him acting against the law and does not restrain himself from acts that can have him arrested. Impulsive and aggressive is his common way of behaving and we see him being aggressive not only with men, but with women too. He orders his girlfriend in a very jealous, threatening and aggressive manner to not speak to other men. Giving orders and having everything done his way is the only way to keep Tommy contemporarily

These assaults are usually initiated by a conversation that gets him irritable. The problem with these conversations is that Tommy takes them as insults and becomes easily provoked when in reality they are not intended to be taken out of context in a typical conversational norm. In the scene where Billy Bats was trying to humble Tommy, Billy comments about how Tommy use to shine shoes back in the day, this small comment became an attack to Tommy because he thought that Billy was saying too much in front of too many people for his comment to be considered just a joke. After the argument, Tommy comes from behind and attacks Billy with a brutal beating until he