Godmothers: narrative portraits from the past of two distinct Camorra women

In recent years, we have seen a significant increase in television series productions featuring female leads, including bloodthirsty women who commit cruel crimes and order massacres. Given that traditional gender expectations see femininity associated to stereotypes such as care and caring for others, with emotion, passivity and vulnerability and, instead, violence and aggression as something intrinsic to the conceptualization of masculinity, the theoretical starting premise is that the narratives that portray violent women commit themselves to a problematic relationship with one of the pillars of male domination, that of violence. The aim of this study is to analyze two real women from the Camorra, Pupetta and Rosetta, represented in two films: The Challenge (La sfida) by Francesco Rosi (1958) and The Professor (Il camorrista) by Giuseppe Tornatore (1986) to investigate the nascent state of this troubled relationship.