Ciekawe i dość kontrowersyjne spojrzenie. Na prawdę autor to dobrze poukładał i no cóż, zgadzam się z nim.
Zdziwiła mnie scena jak kładli się do tego samego łóżka, ale wtedy nawet nie przypuszczałem. Dzięki za artykuł :3

A o co tak pokrótce chodzi w tej interpretacji, bo link wygasł...

Chodziło w niej o to, że dwaj główni bohaterowie za bardzo się lubili, dlatego w jednej scenie budzą się w tym samym łóżku.

Link wygasl ? Szkoda...mogla byc super interpretacja. Moja tez byla super...Lezeli w jednym lozku bo Charlie mial jedno lozko w domu...poza tym nie przypominam sobie by razem sie budzili...Jak Charlie lezal to Johny szperal w lodowce..jak Johny sie polozyl to Charlie wstal i patrzyl przez okno, a w kolejnej scenie uprawial sex z kobieta. Jak ja lubie nadinterpretacje szacownych krytykow :-)

Mean Streets Discussion Paper

Watching Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets (1973), a specific theme kept creeping through the story line. The Charlie and Johnny Boy characters had a bond that was not understood by any other characters in the film. Every character in the film wants Charlie to let Johnny Boy get what he had coming to him. Johnny Boy is a dead beat with debts owed all over town, and Charlie is the well-liked nephew of a prominent Mafioso figure showing the lack of similarity between the two characters. During the course of the film, we see the progression of these two characters together. This is a relationship that seems to have more lurking in the background than is seen on the surface. I would argue that Mean Streets displays queer themes between Charlie and Johnny Boy that are the motivation of the plot line.

Charlie and Johnny Boy fit the stereotypical hyper-masculine Italian Mafioso characters. They have friends that are loan sharks, shake people down for money, and they are related to Mafioso figures, but they have more issues than are being displayed in a surface reading. Both characters are admittedly bad in the eyes of the church. Charlie begins the movie explaining that he will not or cannot use the traditional Roman Catholic means of purging sins. We are not told exactly why Charlie does not go through the act of confession, other than the penance will be generic. Instead, Charlie uses the flames of a candle to purge his sins. I believe that Charlie chooses his own penance of self-mortification because he cannot bring his true sins and downfalls to a priest.

I believe Charlie and his friend Johnny Boy are symbolic homosexual lovers, which would mean that Charlie would risk being shunned by his religious organization if he came forward with his sin of homosexual lust. Homosexuality is considered a sin in the eyes of the church, and Charlie has internalized this belief, which causes him to believe that his relationship is a sin. Charlie believes that he is going to go to hell, and that there are two kinds of pain in hell. There is pain you can touch with your hand, and the kind you feel with your heart, which is worse than the first. Charlie is reflecting on the pain in his heart being worse, and the pain in his heart is love.

When we are introduced to Johnny Boy, he has two girls with him. Charlie has an internal dialogue about Johnny Boy being his penance. Charlie looks at Johnny as his reason to have to pay penance. Charlie demands that Johnny Boy leave the girls to have a private discussion together. Johnny Boy complies with Charlie’s request by leaving the two girls. Charlie and Johnny Boy go into the back room of the bar/club that they are at, and Charlie demands that Johnny Boy makes good on his debts. Johnny Boy tells Charlie that he is depressed, and the two characters have a lover’s quarrel about money. It is from this point on that we see a strange element to the relationship between the two characters. Charlie has a vested interest in keeping Johnny Boy out of trouble. Charlie is protecting his love interest. As the film moves from this point, we see Charlie continually sheltering Johnny Boy from harm whether it is from the police, loan sharks, or himself.

Throughout the film, Charlie protecting Johnny Boy is a reoccurring motif, which is a full-time job throughout the film. Charlie begins to slack at his job of collecting money for his uncle because he is protecting Johnny Boy. In the scene after the bathroom killing, the guys are making a getaway in the back in a car when two homosexual men get in the back seat with Charlie and Johnny Boy. Charlie and Johnny Boy tell them to be quiet; not to get out of the car, but only to be quiet. When the homosexuals are kicked out of the car, Charlie and Johnny Boy also get out of the car, which is a parallel between the characters and what they stand for. We have never seen these other two gay men before, but they get in the back seat with Johnny Boy and Charlie. I think this is code for the relationship that Charlie and Johnny Boy share.

In the next scene, Charlie and Johnny Boy are both in Charlie’s apartment. They are in their underwear and laying in bed looking for food. This scene is reminiscent of a post-coital love scene. Johnny Boy wants to leave the apartment together, but Charlie insists that it will scare people if they go out. Both Charlie and Johnny Boy exchange banter about being tucked into bed and Johnny Boy calls Charlie “sweetie.” It is at this point that we see Charlie looking across to another window. He is looking at a girls undressing while sitting in the room with Johnny Boy.

Teresa is the woman that we see Charlie together with in the film. Teresa is Johnny Boy’s cousin, but there is a strange merging between the scene with Charlie and Johnny Boy in bed, and a sex scene with Charlie and Teresa. During this merging scene, we hear Charlie talking about a dream where he is broken sexually and ejaculating blood. Teresa is a smaller woman who lacks very pronounced curves in the hips and very small breasts. Teresa’s body type is quite similar to a man’s physique. Charlie is displacing his real feelings and relationship with Johnny Boy by dating Teresa. Charlie makes it explicitly clear to Teresa that Johnny Boy cannot find out about their relationship. For the remainder of the film, we see Charlie trying to hide his relationship with Teresa.

Charlie does attempt to get involved with the African-American dancer that he sees in the club. In his groups of Italian tough guys, dating an African-American would be highly frowned upon by his peers, but Charlie chances being seen with the girl because it would be less dangerous than being seen as a homosexual by the group. Charlie is torn about being seen with any of the people he is associated with besides men. Charlie does not want anyone to know about Teresa or the dancer. He only seems to want to be publically seen surrounded by men.

In the scene with Johnny Boy on the roof, he is shooting a gun. The only person that can go to the roof and stop him is Charlie. When Charlie arrives on the roof top, Johnny Boy lights a stick of dynamite and throws it off the roof. This is a metaphor for the dangerous explosive secret that the two men share together. The next scene is in the graveyard, and Johnny wants to have Charlie’s uncle fix all the problems the two men have. Charlie refuses to have his uncle intervene because Charlie knows that this will out the homosexual relationship he has with Johnny Boy.

The most significant scene in the movie is when Johnny Boy is in sitting outside the window and sees that Teresa and Charlie have some sort of relationship. Johnny Boy goes into a jealous rage and Charlie starts to slap Johnny Boy. Charlie slapping, not punching or hitting, connotes that there is a certain passion between the two. The slapping also indicates a less than heterosexual masculine response to another man. It is stereotypical for a homosexual man to be “limp wristed,” and Charlie says he has a bad arm, which may indicate a weak or limp wrist. The slapping continues into the next scene. Charlie and Johnny Boy reconcile and attempt to get out of the city. When Charlie calls Teresa, he refuses to tell her the situation. Charlie is still trying to keep his relationship with Johnny Boy a secret. The final scene of the movie includes Johnny Boy, Charlie, and Teresa all being hurt in a car wreck. This is a metaphor for the all three people being emotionally distraught after the secret relationship is revealed to Teresa.

In conclusion, there is a substantial queer undertone to this movie. Charlie and Johnny Boy have a relationship with so much passion that it consumes them both. With the homophobia that is present in their peers, neither one can really come to accept what this relationship means. Charlie is so torn between his religious beliefs and his sins that he comes apart. Charlie’s continual self mortification shows that he has found his own penance for sins he cannot confess to a priest.

Scorsese zrobił film zainspirowany wydarzeniami i rzeczywistością w której dorastał, a relacja między Johnnym a Charlim odnosi się do więzi ojca reżysera i jego brata ( wujka Scorsese), zeby dobrze zrozumieć film należałoby trochę juz w tym siedziec i poznać mentalność Włochów z południa to ułatwi zrozumienie zależności i więzi między bohaterami , poczytać trochę na temat mafii, obejrzeć parę filmów, o tej tematyce. Bez odpowiedniego przygotowania odradzam oglądanie. Ja uważam, że film jest b. dobry, ruchy kamery, aktorstwo i klimat.