In writing about their cultural experience, members of the Italian-American community often regret the way they are stereotypically linked with organized crime in the American imagination. And it is Francis Ford Coppola's immensely popular Godfather trilogy that is perceived as being most influential in securing this criminal image. Although some Italian Americans are deeply offended by the association, others, like Frank Stella, for example, seem to take a distance from it. Stella observes that the brutal image of the Mafia is also a marketable and glamorous one. Criti-cally speaking, however, the insight that the representation of crime is attractive is not new, nor is the fact that it has made for centuries of popular entertainment.