[PEN-L:33455] Re: RE: Re: Re: The ideological implications of Scorcese's lat...

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 12/27/02 11:30:52 PM Pacific Standard Time, sawicky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

> I saw it tonight.  It's an incredible movie.
>
> ...
>
> Some of the comments by reviewers and LP's
> friend reflect disapproval for failure to
> find the good guy/bad guy fault line in the
> movie.  But there is no such fault line.
> Everybody has some good and some bad, even
> 'Bill the Butcher.'
>
> The print reviewers evidently failed to see
> the raging critique -- via a style of reportage
> without any didacticism -- of U.S. society
> being born.  The city government is corrupt
> to the core. The Civil War is a charnal house
> for the working class that the wealthy are able
> to forego. Civil society is one big underground
> economy ruled by criminals.
>
> I expect some on the left will be distressed
> at the point where the good guys -- the Irish --
> start lynching African-Americans.  The working
> class without Marx, Lenin, or any kind of social
> democratic or labor leadership is a scary thing,
> but the film's core is about just that -- the
> working class in motion (not necessarily forward
> motion).  The workers in the film work elsewhere.
> They are really paupers with jobs.  The work
> shown in the film is the work of crime and
> politics (intimately intertwined here).  Nevertheless,
> the story reeks of populist themes.  People are
> oppressed most for failure of the government to
> protect them from each other, and for lack of
> any sort of democratic participation.




I also just saw "Gangs of New York," and Bill the Butchers words, "the Irish come here and work for 5 cents, the blacks for 10 cents and the whites for a quarter," to be enlightening and to shed light on the impact of the Civil War and the overthrow of Reconstruction on social relations in American history. 

"Gangs" impressed me as a story of the tragedy of men and women being forcefully torn from the land, separated from their means of production, fleeing European reaction and hurl forth into society as proletariat. 

"You can always pay one half of the poor to kill the other half" is instructive and highlight the role of wealth and privilege in our society. 

The wife and I enjoyed the movie.


Melvin P.