WHATEVER happened to omertà? For decades, Mafioso from Joseph Valachi (“The Valachi Papers”) to Henry Hill (“Wise Guys” and “Goodfellas”) to Salvatore Gravano (“Underboss”) have violated the traditional code of silence, looking to cash in on their criminal pasts with potentially lucrative careers as newly minted truth-tellers.
Now, women are getting a piece of the action. The VH1 reality-TV show “Mob Wives,” currently in its second season, follows six Staten Island single mothers, most of whom have either husbands or fathers serving time, as they offer up a tantalizing glimpse into the lives of what is euphemistically called “the lifestyle.” The show takes the core elements that made the “Real Housewives” series on Bravo a cultural phenomenon (warring cliques, alcohol-fueled lunches and camera-ready catfights) and combines them with actual Mafia set pieces of men getting caught up in sweeps, men spending much of their married lives in prison, men with girlfriends on the side.
“The fact that these women agreed to appear in any form at all shows it is a new era,” said Howard Abadinsky, the author of “Organized Crime” and a professor at St. John’s University. “To have wives or daughters of organized crime figures appear at all is rather extraordinary, a breakdown in the idea of a secret society.”
The show is the brainchild of its producer, Jennifer Graziano, a daughter of Anthony Graziano, a reputed member of the Bonanno family, one of five Mafia clans in New York City. A music industry veteran, Ms. Graziano sold VH1 on a voyeuristic mob show and the cast on her vision of showing the truth of the women’s lives in a way that wouldn’t transgress into betrayal. “I broke it to everyone like, ‘This isn’t about the men,’ ” she recalled in a recent phone interview. “It’s really how the lifestyle itself affects the ladies. And when men go to jail and leave their families behind, what the woman needs to do to support themselves and pick up the pieces.”
The concept persuaded her sister, Renee Graziano, the ex-wife of the reputed mobster Hector Pagan Jr., to sign on. She was soon followed by some longtime friends. Together they make up a consciousness-raising sisterhood of Louis Vuitton-toting Betty Friedans exposing the Mafia Mystique — except for when they are shouting about going to war with one another and throwing punches in a bar.
“The young girls who think it is cool to date a bad boy may look at what I’ve been through and learn from my mistakes,” said Drita D’avanzo, the soon-to-be ex-wife of an imprisoned bank robber.
The biggest get, Karen Gravano, the daughter of the serial murderer and government informer Salvatore Gravano, also known as Sammy the Bull, said that she initially declined before signing on to Ms. Graziano’s empowerment pitch. “She said that it would be all the women’s history and how they moved past it,” Ms. Gravano recalled. “I did want to shed light on what the families go through and how you overcome different things.”
Not coincidentally, Ms. Gravano recently published an autobiography, “Mob Daughter,” which is given a number of plugs in the series, and she is introducing a skin-care line. She is a working girl, she said, adding, “I’m not a Mafia Princess.”
FILMED on an atmospherically gray day at the Staten Island waterfront near the ferry terminal, with the Manhattan skyline seen across the water, the opening of a “Mob Wives” segment shows the cast sheathed in layers of chain necklaces, oversize earrings and multicolored furs, strutting purposefully in four-inch heels or over-the-thigh boots, their eyes narrowed, jaws determinedly set, as if going into battle.
No comments:
Post a Comment