Yasmin told me, “The scene where Tony slaps his sister because she wants to fuck boys speaks volumes. And that’s still happening.”įor Yasmin, the film highlights Gina Montana’s story, who is told to enjoy her newfound “freedom” as long as it fits Tony’s shapeshifting view of the world. The only ones they meet are their brother's friends who they end up dating and getting married to. “A lot of Muslim girls don’t go out and meet boys. “The Romeo and Juliet situation between Tony’s sister and his best friend, happens in our community every couple of months,” she said. Yasmin told me that although her brothers had successful careers in construction and law, they too struggled to overcome the deep-seated religious hangups that complicate the rights of women in migrant communities. “It taught us lessons about my relationships with my brothers and dad before we experienced it.” “ Scarface meant the world to me because it showed us the culture clash that exists between men and women in migrant families,” she explained. When we met she was wearing a red Supreme t shirt with the Scarface silhouette printed on it. So I spoke to Yasmin, a 24-year-old fashion student whose parents moved to Australia from Lebanon. So far I'd captured some very masculine reactions to the film, but I wanted a female take on its influence too. We going to start acting like it because everyone's acting like we're. “But whether you like it or not, when people are always watching you, and in the media they’re saying you’re the bad guy…all the bad guys are Muslim. “I wasn’t even drunk or fighting!” he said. Like I was a zoo animal that was going to turn!”Īt this point I could see Moey begin to fire up. Everyone was watching me like I was about to commit a crime. "You know when I came to Melbourne, I went to Chapel street on a Friday night and they looked at me like that, I swear. “My favourite scene was in the restaurant when Tony says, ‘You don’t have the guts to be who you want to be," Moey told me, sitting at his table. Last year, police raided his house to find a kilo of methamphetamine, and unsurprisingly he's also the biggest Scarface fan I know. He'd been imprisoned for three years for a string of drug-related offences. We met outside his local milk bar in Meadow Heights, before following his Harley Davidson V-rod back to his three-storey suburban home. One such friend was Moey, a Syrian migrant who has been in Australia for less than five years. And I know this for sure, because I went and interviewed some of my friends about it. And all of them were brutally gunned down in the Melbourne underworld wars-a tragic example of art imitating life and life imitating art.įor some migrants, the rags-to-riches thesis of the film inspired brazen crime and gave them a thirst for do-or-die capitalism. Among them were such household names as underworld hitmen Andrew Benji Veniamin, Dino Dibra, Paul Kallipolitis and “The Black Prince of Lygon Street,” Alphonse Gangitano. Tony Montana was the poster boy for a generation of migrant crooks in Australia. Tony Montana was like a devil on our shoulders, and at school we used to ask ourselves, what would Scarface do? The results were usually far from dreamy. When Tony addressed a crowd of rich diners in a restaurant, he declared, “You don’t have the guts to be who you want to be.” We found our self-destructive courage in this same misguided bravado. We all had dreams of making it like Tony, because he achieved the American dream with something we thought we all had: balls. My world revolved around the story of a Cuban migrant who strutted around Miami beach in a white suit and Carrera aviators, driving a Cadillac with Elvira in the leopard-print passenger seat. Throughout my youth I didn’t know anything about the real Scarface, Al Capone, and after seeing Al Pacino’s performance in the film, I certainly didn’t give a shit.
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