AMC Networks has given Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas a content warning over “language and/or cultural stereotypes.”
The advisory was added to the beginning of the 1990 film, which occasionally plays on AMC’s television channel as well as their streaming service, AMC+. The full message reads: “This film includes language and/or cultural stereotypes that are inconsistent with today’s standards of inclusion and tolerance and may offend some viewers.”
AMC added the content warning to Goodfellas in 2020, as well as to several other films — but now, some folks are shocked to discover the message four years later. “In 2020, we began adding advisories in front of certain films that include racial or cultural references that some viewers might find offensive,” an AMC representative told the New York Post after the advisory recently went viral.
While AMC is certainly correct in its assessment of foul language in the 1990 classic, “the cultural stereotypes” named in the content warning likely refer to the film’s portrayal of Italian-American and Irish-American mobsters as well as the normalized misogyny of the time period.
Michael Franzese, an actual mobster, told the New York Post that the content warning was a little funny: “We don’t need anyone protecting mob guys. It’s crazy,” said Franzese.
One person who will no double agree with Franzese? Dame Judi Dench, who railed against trigger warnings in a recent interview. “I can see why they exist, and it is preparing people, I suppose, but if you’re that sensitive, don’t go to the theater, because you could be very shocked,” Dench said. “Where is the surprise of seeing and understanding it in your own way? Why go to the theatre if you’re going to be warned about things that are in the play?”
Revisit our 30th anniversary roundup of Goodfellas quotes that you probably still say all the time.
