20 Film Matters Spring 2013

Feature 04
Martin Scorseses
Raging Bull, Italian
American Masculinity,
and the American
Dream
By Christina Marie Newland
/
KEYWORDS: American cinema, boxing genre, Freudianism,
homoeroticism, masculinity, Martin Scorsese, Raging Bull
MARTIN SCORSESE S RAGING
BULL (1980), written by Mardik Martin and
Paul Schrader, is the semi-biographical story
of the rise and fall of the Bronx Bull
middleweight boxing champion Jake La
Motta. La Motta (Robert De Niro) grew up
in the slums of New Yorks Italian American
neighborhoods to become champion, only
to lose his belt to Sugar Ray Robinson. His
violent behavior in domestic life caused
him to divorce two wives, the latter Vickie
La Motta (Cathy Moriarty), and eventually
fracture his relationship with his brother, Joey
(Joe Pesci). It is within this simple narrative,
framed at the beginning and the end by a
bloated, older La Mottas refections in a
dressing-room mirror, that Scorsese addresses
issues of masculine identities and violence
as they relate to La Mottas version of the
American dream success story.
I will seek to highlight Scorseses interest
in the masculine identity crisis at the heart
of American society through his depiction
of La Motta the furthest extension of
dominant Catholic Italian American
masculinity as a tortured, animalistic brute
who may be repressing his homosexuality.
I discuss the differences between emotional reactions
to literature and flm, and argue against the notion
that the intensifcation of emotions is commonly
connected to the verisimilitude of representation.
ABOVE An image from Raging Bull (1980)
His sexual relationship with Vickie also seems to be defned in parallel to his
boxing career; the two pursuits mirror each other, signifying the domestic violence
of their home life, but also Jakes desire to punish himself.
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Feature 04
21 Film Matters Spring 2013
Martin Scorseses Raging Bull, Italian American Masculinity, and the American Dream
Scorsese himself has been quoted as
saying, One sure thing was that it wouldnt
be a flm about boxing. We didnt know a
thing about it and it didnt interest us at
all! (Grindon 22). To begin with, Jakes
maddening ambition runs a current through
the flm, pushing the narrative (as well as his
erratic behavior) forward. La Motta shares
this trait with Henry Hill, Travis Bickle
and Rupert Pupkin, as well as many others
of Scorseses male characters: obsessive
individuals ambitious pursuits often seem to
end destructively and Raging Bull itself can be
seen as a story of how the American dream
of success can turn sour (Stefanic 147).
To understand Scorseses interrogation
of the American success story, we must
understand his curious attitude toward
boxing, and the legacy of the boxing
subgenre from the days of classical
Hollywood. He certainly borrows from
the tradition of flms such as Somebody Up
There Likes Me (Wise, 1956) and Body and
Soul (Rossen, 1947), but frequently Raging
Bulls only resemblance to them is the crisp
black-and-white the images are flmed in.
Not only does it eschew the rags-to-riches
narrative pattern of genre, Scorseses style
of shooting the fghting bouts differs each
time, the ring growing larger or smaller
depending on how well La Motta is faring.
In a strangely poetic but brutal stylization,
the fghters move in balletic warfare, sweat
and blood fying from the mens brows.
There are extreme close-ups, unusual
point of view shots, fashing camera bulbs
and an Eisenstein-esque cutting style. The
soundtrack, when not mixing the sound
of animals fghting, often found silence
profoundly useful, and frequently broke
into this silence with startling force. This
formal experimentation is reminiscent of
European art flm, residing in a genre and
characterization which is very specifcally of
the American tradition. One of Scorseses
quieter infuences, thematically speaking,
belongs to this tradition: Buster Keatons
1926 boxing comedy, Battling Butler. Scorsese
is quoted as having said, The only person
who had the right attitude about boxing in
the movies for me is Buster Keaton (qtd. in
Christie and Thompson 80). Kevin Hayes
offers some insight on the topic:
[T]he manager cannot watch the fght
without mimicking the punches of the
boxers he sees ... depicting such violence
among the spectators, Keaton anticipated
the violence among the spectators in the
frst fght sequence of Raging Bull. Both
Keaton and Scorsese recognise the boxing
115); a microcosm for the brutality of modern
society. The ring serves as both penance and
justifcation for La Mottas wild behavior; an
arena where he can both primitively perform
his gender and satisfy his inarticulate desire for
self-punishment. Jakes violent, jealous rage
outside of the ring can only be purged inside
of it, and as his impulses grow uglier, his so-
called success story does too.
Though ambiguous, there seems to be
a socio-economic catalyst to La Mottas
failure; Scorsese offers an evaluation of
his own ethnic group, which he views both
sympathetically and critically (Casillo xvii),
specifcally in their particular failures in
achieving the American dream. The boxing
ring itself can be seen as allegorical, or an
allegory for whatever you do in life (Friedman
ABOVE An image from Raging Bull (1980)
BELOW An image from Raging Bull (1980)
In consideration of the treatment of women in
Raging Bull, its apparent homosexual undertones,
and its frequent parallelism of violence and sex, it can
be said that Scorsese works to undermine traditional
masculinity, highlighting an identity crisis at the heart
of his subculture, and more broadly, at the heart of
American society.
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22 Film Matters Spring 2013
Feature 04 Christina Marie Newland
ring as a microcosm revealing the violence
endemic to modern society. (Hayes 10)
In Raging Bull, the worst violence is frequently
outside the ring, in Jakes domestic life. The
boxing crowds and matches are violent, but
the Mafa-infltrated Bronx neighborhood
Jake comes from suggests that violence is also
a way of life: Jake asking Joey to punch him
in the face; Joeys vicious beating of Salvy
(Frank Vincent) for being seen with Vickie;
and Jakes continuous violence towards
Vickie herself, culminating in a punch that
knocks her out. There are many other
instances of violence: Joeys threats at the
dinner table that he will poke his sons eyes
out if he doesnt behave, swiftly followed
by Jake storming in and beating Joey up
over an imagined affair. Even when no one
is being pummeled in the ring or knocked
out in their own kitchen, brutality is always
close to the surface. In the frst domestic
scene of the flm, Joey upturns a table after
a disagreement with his frst wife over the
cooking of a steak. A neighbor downstairs
shouts, Whats going on up there, you
animals?! and Jake threatens to eat his
dog, another relation to the animality of his
character and the blood sport he engages in.
Violence against women is another part of
the world Scorsese (and Keaton, too) depict.
La Mottas psychopathic sexual jealousy over
Vickie portrayed through his overwhelming
desire to control her sexuality leads him to
bully, threaten and slap her throughout the
flm. Vickie is presented by Scorsese as an
old-Hollywood style blonde siren, but one
who is completely under Jakes thumb.
Dysfunctional male/female relationships
are dealt with in many (if not most) of
Scorseses flms, but never so explicitly
as in Raging Bull. The directors female
protagonists tend to be secondary followers
to the men, but as Cashmore argues,
Scorsese is depicting periods and places and
his effort is to refect faithfully how people
thought, felt, and behaved in a way consistent
with cultural demands (Cashmore 249).
Working-class Italian American perspectives
on feminine roles were very strictly
defned at the time; Scorseses portrayal
of Vickie, combined with his tendency to
only depict her through Jakes subjective
viewpoint, diminishes her role enough to
create a portrait of a regressive society. We
sympathize with Vickie over Jake in spite of
her distance from the audience.
The social, cultural and religious milieu
of Raging Bull has much to answer for in its
sexual politics, though many of Jake and
Joeys shared attitudes can rightly be summed
up with a psychoanalytical term known as the
Madonna-whore complex. Robert Casillo,
whose book focuses on the twin aspects of
Catholicism and Italian ethnicity in Scorseses
work, recognizes this. Simply described,
the Madonna-whore complex refers to a
tendency in certain men to distinguish women
completely based on the dichotomy of either
pure, marriageable women or whores, those
only good for casual encounters. As a result,
they become unable to love or marry women
they have sexual encounters with, believing
the woman to have crossed over into the
whore category. Jakes sexual jealousy can
be accounted for by this; now that he has had
sex with Vickie, he believes that her sexuality is
uncontrollable and this makes her potentially
available to other men. This paranoia drives
him far enough to accuse his own brother
of having an affair with her. Scorsese also
deals with these issues in one of his early
flm, Whos That Knocking at My Door? (1967).
Joey and Jakes attitudes do not merely exist
in a vacuum, but are symptomatic of their
cultures attitudes: Joey shares a perverse
Italian-American machismo with Jake. Similar
in personality but less extreme than his
brother, Joey La Motta emphasizes that their
behaviour is a product of a widespread ethos,
not simply the malaise of a crazy boxer
(Grindon 30).
Catholic symbolism is also rife in Raging
Bull. Crucifxes and religious paintings fll the
apartments and houses of the flm, and Jake
appears to adhere to a masochistic conception
of Catholicism (Casillo 234) throughout.
He both lashes out and suffers from intense
guilt because of his behavior: he asks Joey to
hit him for no apparent reason; he takes such
severe punishment in the ring with Sugar
Ray Robinson (when he loses his belt) that he
appears to be welcoming it; and he beats his
fsts raw when he is imprisoned later in the flm.
His sexual relationship with Vickie also seems
to be defned in parallel to his boxing career;
the two pursuits mirror each other, signifying
the domestic violence of their home life, but
also Jakes desire to punish himself. Celibacy,
too, is considered a part of the Catholic
tradition of self-denial, or mortifcation of the
fesh to cleanse oneself of sins:
[Jake] douses his genitals with ice water to
interrupt foreplay with Vickie because he
does not want sex to weaken his fghting
power [and] soaks his bruised hand in ice
water suggesting a parallel between his
physical embrace of Vickie and his assault
on his ring opponent. (Grindon 24)
ABOVE The ring is large and in clear view to show that Jake
(De Niro) has the upper hand in this fght)
Far from the nostalgia of suburban high school
flms, with their happy housewives and consummate
family men, Raging Bull is concerned with the
frst-generation children of ethnic immigrants still
living in urban slums and frmly working-class. The
characters have all the initiative and ambition to
succeed, but none of the resources.
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Feature 04
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Martin Scorseses Raging Bull, Italian American Masculinity, and the American Dream
Film Matters Spring 2013
approach: Jakes homosexual feelings cause
him to displace his anger onto Janiro.
Wood, basing his argument in part on
Joyce Carol Oates book, On Boxing (2006),
and also on a Freudian understanding of
repressed constitutional bisexuality, says that
Jakes sexual jealousy over Joey and mob boss
Tommy Como (Nicholas Colasanto) (both of
whom send him into violent attacks on Vickie)
is a refection of his own desire for these men.
Tommy Como is an elderly father fgure
and Joey is his actual brother sexual desire,
of course, begins in the family, based on
the Freudian model (Wood 231). The flm
is, therefore, dedicated to the disastrous
consequences (Wood 231) of homosexual
repression. Wood states that in his analysis
of Scorseses flms, he will not limit himself
to a specifc social milieu, something which
many critics, particularly Robert Casillo,
seek to do. Casillo locates Scorsese not
in relation to a Freudian conception of
society and sexuality, but in relation to a
specifcally New York-based, Catholic, Italian
American background. To disregard this
background seems, both to Casillo and to me,
disingenuous. Wood points out that Scorsese
himself told me in a conversation that,
though he was not aware of it while making
the flm, he now saw that Raging Bull has a
homosexual subtext (Wood 220).
I would certainly argue that a homosexual
subtext is present in Raging Bull, a subtext
possibly somewhat independent of its
creators, but that Wood seems to push a
political agenda through his reading of the
flm, installing a critique of homophobia
where there does not appear to be one.
His argument that the central theme
of the flm is constitutional bisexuality
and that Jake is in love with his brother
seems to me to be utterly missing the mark.
However, Jakes unexplained, inarticulate
rage and sexual jealousy, paired with the
flms consistent references to anal sex and
homosexuality amount to at the very
least a conficted, guilty sexuality. As Joyce
Carol Oates observes, boxing can be a
fundamentally erotic sport, sometimes linked
to homophobia. (Simplistically explained,
it uses ritualized violence between two
men, primarily watched by men, to invert
feelings of lust and shame.) Along with the
psychological inclination towards violence in
men who are anxious about their masculinity,
it seems likely that Jake La Motta is, indeed,
a repressed homosexual, masochistically
punishing himself in the ring in a
subconscious expression of Catholic guilt.
Critic Pam Cook is of the opinion that the
ambiguity of the flms characterization and
ending opens the way to a regressive reading;
documentation of the casual slanging
matches that occur between brothers and
friends from the neighborhoods Scorsese
grew up in, which is certainly possible.
However, the ongoing preoccupation with
denigrating homosexuality does seem to
register subconsciously as a way to articulate
masculine anxieties, and perhaps even to
repress feelings of homoerotic or homosexual
lust. When La Motta fghts Tony Janiro,
it is repeatedly mentioned that the young
boxer is good-looking. When Vickie says it,
Jake is practically incandescent with jealous
rage and paranoia, continually asking her
what she means by it. He makes a joke that
he doesnt know whether to fuck him or
fght him. When Jake does fght Janiro,
he intentionally batters him to the point
of disfgurement; there is a cut to Vickies
horrifed face as she twigs that her casual
comment was the cause of this violence.
On the surface level, this could be read as
Jakes violent paranoia over his wife, but
Robin Wood asserts a more psychoanalytical
As is implied by the link between sex and
violent blood sport, all is not well in Raging
Bulls world of gender relations. More so than
an uncomfortable relationship with women,
Scorseses men struggle with themselves, with
their cultural backgrounds, their religious
guilt and the need to live lives predicated on
macho violence. The masculinity crisis which
leads to misdirected violence and sexual
confusion is not only a burden to women,
but extends toward other men as well. The
best way to insult a man in La Mottas
traditionally masculine world is to call him
a homosexual. Raging Bull is full of insults
regarding homosexuality, almost to the point
of excess. Jakes frst wife screams that Jake
and Joey are a pair of fags, and when Jake
asks Joey to hit him, he apparently doesnt
know the answer to his brothers question,
Whatre you trying to prove? and can only
answer by provoking through an attack on
his hetero-masculinity: You throw a punch
like you take it up the ass (Peterson 75).
This sort of talk can be dismissed as
ABOVE One of many Catholic symbols in Jakes
(De Niro) home
ABOVE Jake (De Niro) goes into a jealous rage when
he fnds out Vickie (Moriarty) went out with other men
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24 Film Matters Spring 2013
Feature 04 Christina Marie Newland
Scorsese is not critiquing masculinity, but
validating it. Because Scorsese and his
screenwriters (Schrader and Martin) fail
to moralize for Jake, or dwell on Vickies
treatment in order to create overwhelming
sympathy, the refusal to moralistically guide
the viewer translates badly for some critics:
[Jake] has the misfortune to be caught up
in the American Dream which offered
success and insisted on the innate
inferiority of the Italian immigrants .
Jakes violence and animal energy are the
source of both his drive for success and his
resistance to exploitation, and as such they
are validated. (Cook 45)
Whilst I would agree with Cooks assertions
about Scorseses placement of Jake as an
underprivileged member of his ethnic
group attempting to achieve the American
dream, I think her argument that Jakes
behavior is validated because of this struggle
is faulty. Jake is quite simply a beast whose
underdeveloped humanity scars everyone
he touches (Grindon 34). Cook references
his violence and animal energy, and
although La Motta is a shell of his former self
by the end of the flm, evoking a pitiable sort
of redemption, the flm certainly does not
validate its protagonist he is far too brutish
and irredeemable for that. Scorsese does not
allow us, in the flms concluding moments, to
feel anything other than a sort of dutiful pity
at Jakes self-parody. As he recites Brandos
I coulda been a contender speech from
On the Waterfront (Kazan, 1954) in the mirror,
we realize the quandary: when he says, It
was you, Charlie , is he thinking about his
brother, i.e. still putting the blame on Joey?
Or, because he is looking into the mirror, is
he fnally taking responsibility for his life?
(Grindon 28). In either way of approaching
the answer, La Motta is presented as a beast
throughout much of the flm, and in its latter
parts, as a shadow of his former self.
In consideration of the treatment
of women in Raging Bull, its apparent
homosexual undertones, and its frequent
parallelism of violence and sex, it can be said
that Scorsese works to undermine traditional
masculinity, highlighting an identity crisis at
the heart of his subculture, and more broadly,
at the heart of American society. This crisis
leads to an inability to achieve the so-called
American dream La Motta loses his wife
and access to his children, his boxing career
and his reputation. Although Scorsese does
not allude to any specifc reason for this
crisis, it seems implied that patriarchal or
archaic value systems impede individuals
from fulfllment. La Mottas pain and isolation
result from his sexual uncertainty, ultimately
causing him to self-destruct. La Mottas
violence is acceptable in the form of his
pugilism, and it is also an acceptable manner
in which he can act out his aggression and
need for punishment. As one critic suggests,
the boxing ring offers a simplistic alternative
to the sexual confusion of the real world:
As in the bullfght or the boxing ring,
victory can be of a simplicity, purity, and
splendor never achieved outside the limited
perimeter of the arena. .... [The arena]
offered a stage on which might be reenacted
a lost set of sorely lamented values. (Barton
14)
Thus, La Motta uses the ring as an antidote
to his anxieties around masculinity, and to
prove himself a winner and a warrior in
terms of the ring, since he cannot seem
to do so outside of it. The contrast is
nicely summed up as such: La Motta was
champion of the world, but hes one of the
worlds champion losers (Scott 137).
The impression that grows from this is that
the dream is unattainable for some Americans
not merely because of their socio-economic
status, but because of the religious, cultural
and sexual handicaps which this status incurs
upon them. La Motta is not portrayed as a
victim of his circumstances; there is clearly
something psychologically amiss, something
enigmatic and unexplained in his character.
Regardless, the commonplace violence in
his community, paired with pressures to
conform to gender expectations (and indeed
the infuence of the Mafa), must infuence
the outcome of his pursuit of success. Joeys
similarities to Jake certainly point toward
the wider infuence of their society on their
personalities and habits. Jake is an unstable,
violent individual, bordering on psychotic at
times, and so is clearly not a typical product of
his environment. Scorsese goes a long way in
avoiding the traditional explanations for bad
behavior; there is no suggestion of poverty or
an abusive childhood. The ambiguity which
he creates in avoiding these explanations is
nonetheless undermined by Italian American
infuences seeping into Jakes portrayal: Jake
and Joey are both very clearly from the
neighborhood, and their way of speaking,
attitudes toward women, involvement with
the Mafa and Catholic references continually
suggest this is integral to their identities. As
a result, though Jake is never excused for his
repellent behavior because of it, he is certainly
anchored to his background, and it does not
seem to equip him for American success.
The flms release date is 1980, poised
on the brink of a decade obsessed with
cinematic (and otherwise) nostalgia for the
1950s. If Goodfellas (Scorsese, 1990) can be
called a nostalgic flm, then Raging Bull can
be seen as an anti-nostalgic flm in that it
seems determined to truthfully show the
darkest corners of the 1950s version of the
American dream. Far from the nostalgia
of suburban high school flms, with their
happy housewives and consummate family
men, Raging Bull is concerned with the frst-
generation children of ethnic immigrants still
living in urban slums and frmly working-
class. The characters have all the initiative
and ambition to succeed, but none of the
resources. What we are left with is a pre-
American dream 1940s and 1950s an
alternate, grittier version; the striving but not
the succeeding. Where Goodfellas provides us
a vision of the American dream at its most
lurid, ugly excesses, Raging Bull provides us
a vision of the dream as unattainable;
scuppered from the start, the false promises
ABOVE Jake (De Niro) just seconds before getting
brutally beaten by Sugar Ray Robinson (Johnny Barnes)
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Feature 04
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Martin Scorseses Raging Bull, Italian American Masculinity, and the American Dream
Film Matters Spring 2013
and pitfalls which are just as dangerous as the
success it may provide.
/END/
Works Cited
Barton, Carlin. The Scandal of the Arena.
Representations 27 (1989): 136. Print.
/
Battling Butler. Dir. Buster Keaton. Perf. Buster
Keaton, Sally ONeil, Walter James. Metro-
Goldywn-Mayer, 1926. Film.
/
Cashmore, Ellis. Martin Scorseses America.
Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009. Print.
/
Casillo, Robert. Gangster Priest: The Italian American
Cinema of Martin Scorsese. Toronto, Canada:
University of Toronto Press, 2006. Print.
/
Christie, Ian, and David Thompson, eds. Scorsese on
Scorsese. New York, NY: Faber & Faber, 2003. Print.
/
Cook, Pam. Masculinity in Crisis? Screen 23.34
(1982): 3946. Print.
/
Friedman, Lawrence. The Cinema of Martin Scorsese.
London: Roundhouse, 1997. Print.
/
Grindon, Leger. Art & Genre in Raging Bull.
Martin Scorseses Raging Bull. Ed. Kevin J. Hayes.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
1940. Print.
/
Hayes, Kevin J., ed. Martin Scorseses Raging Bull.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Print.
/
Oates, Joyce C. On Boxing. London: HarperCollins,
2006. Print.
/
Peterson, Michael. Raging Bull and The Idea of
Performance. Martin Scorseses Raging Bull. Ed.
Kevin J. Hayes. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2005. 6991. Print.
/
Raging Bull. Dir. Martin Scorsese. Perf. Robert De Niro,
Joe Pesci, Cathy Moriarty. United Artists, 1980. Film
/
Scott, Jay. Raging Bull: No Punches Pulled. Martin
Scorseses Raging Bull. Ed. Kevin J. Hayes. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005. 35137. Print.
/
Stefanic, Vern. Raging Bull is a Gritty, Brutal
Masterpiece. Martin Scorseses Raging Bull. Ed.
Kevin J. Hayes. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2005. 14547. Print.
/
Wood, Robin. Hollywood: From Vietnam to Reagan...
And Beyond. New York, NY: Columbia University
Press, 2003. Print
/
Author Biography
Christina Marie Newland recently
graduated from Nottingham Trent
University with a frst-class honors BA in
flm and television. She plans to pursue a
Masters degree in flm studies to further
her research skills and interests in 1970s
New Hollywood, classical genre studies
and Italian national cinema, particularly
the work of Luchino Visconti.
Mentor Biography
Gary Needham is senior lecturer in flm
and television studies at Nottingham
Trent University, UK. His research covers
American flm and television, popular
European cinema and occasionally
East-Asian cinemas. He is the author
of a book on Brokeback Mountain
(Edinburgh University Press, 2010), from
the American Indies series he also co-
edits, and has co-edited Asian Cinemas:
A Reader and Guide (Edinburgh
University Press, 2006) and Queer TV:
Histories, Theories, Politics (Routledge,
2009). He has just completed (with
Glyn Davis) a book on the flms of Andy
Warhol called Warhol in Ten Takes (British
Film Institute, 2013) and is continuing his
research on Warhols flmmaking through
a focus on Edie Sedgwicks role in the
flms and at the Factory.
Department Overview
The Film and Television Department at
Nottingham Trent University provides a
wide range of modules for varying areas
of interests, with a particular emphasis
on European cinema in depth, along with
building an understanding of innovative
new concepts and theories in the age of
digital media and global corporations.

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