[PEN-L:33460] RE: Re: The ideological implications of Scorcese's latest film

["Max B. Sawicky" <sawicky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The point about state violence is well-taken.  I did
gloss over it.  It is overwhelming and indiscriminate,
as far as ordinary people go.

But its use is not limited to protecting the wealthy.  It
is also to establish order.  The mob violence reflects
oppression but it has no consciously constructive content;
it does signal to the authorities that more consideration of
the poor is warranted.  Establishing order does have a
positive side, both narrowly in preventing further
street violence and broadly, by allowing the city to
get back to business as usual.  In this sense, the city
being saved from the mob is consistent with the more general
idea of this rough beast American history inexorably
unfolding.  That's the patriotic theme -- the great cost
in creating a great nation.  I would say the progressive
implication is that an appreciation of that cost is a
rebuke to jingoism and the assortment of ideological
superficialities that delude much of the public.

I agree Johnny Depp might have been better in the lead,
tho he might be too old by now.

mbs



. . . The state restores law and order, not to rescue the black victims of
lynching, but to protect the properties of elite New Yorkers
(including such liberal elite New Yorkers as Horace Greeley) whose
houses and offices were under attack by working-class crowds.