Women, as Victims of Men, in Martin Scorses Films

Women, as Victims of Men, in Martin Scorsese Films

My thesis for this paper is that director Martin Scorsese generally views women as victims of men. To illustrate this thesis, I will examine two of his well known films, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas.

Raging Bull is not a film about boxing but about a man who is extremely jealous and suffers from sexual insecurity. For Jake LaMotta (Robert DeNiro), what happens during a fight is controlled not by tactics but by his fears and drives. The punishment he receives in the boxing ring serves as confession, penance, and atonement for his sins.

For Scorsese, the life of LaMotta was an illustration of a theme present in many of his works, the inability of his characters to trust and relate with women. The emotion that drives the LaMotta character is not boxing, but a jealous obsession with his wife, Vickie, and a fear of sexual intimacy. From the time he first sees her, as a girl of 15, LaMotta is fascinated by the cool, distant blond goddess, who seems much older than her age, and in many shots seems taller and even stronger than the boxer.

Although there is no direct evidence in the film that Vickie has ever cheated on LaMotta, she is a woman who at 15 was already on friendly terms with mobsters, who knows “the score”. On her first