ABSTRACT
Harvey Keitel's career can be considered in terms of—or under the shadow of—the careers of Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro. Scorsese's films can be read according to how they construct white ethnic male subjectivities, as Stanley Aronowitz argues: the heroic figures of the Italian immigration are those who beat up people or kill them. Aronowitz goes on to compare Scorsese's heroes to a sadistic killer played by Richard Widmark, and then remarks that in counterpoint to Widmark's character, Scorsese's people enjoy their families, friends, and lovers, which, in the context of mob life, serve to blur the distinction between private and public. Aronowitz also stresses the continuity in Scorsese's films between the public and the private, such that the mobsters or boxers are also "family men." The problem with Scorsese's work in general is that the audience believes it all so thoroughly that the vertiginous effect continues.
