At 2:33 AM -0500 12/28/02, Max B. Sawicky wrote:
It is certainly possible that viewers interpret the film in this way. Boss Tweed can control the city without making his hands dirty, dispensing patronage in return for first the Nativist gang's and then the Irish gang's use of extralegal violence to marshal votes for him (Tweed switches from the Nativist to the Irish gang, as more and more Irish immigrants arrive in New York). Bill "the Butcher" Cutting, the leader of the Nativist gang, sardonically suggests that either "Tammany boys" do their own "muscle work" or Tweed get cops to do it; Tweed replies, "Oh Jesus, no. The appearance of law must be upheld, especially while it's being broken."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.
Extralegal violence of individual revenge (Amsterdam Vallon's avenging his father by killing Bill), ethnic strife (deadly competition between Nativist and Irish gangs), and racist assault (working-class whites' lynching of blacks) is literally and symbolically overshadowed by overwhelming legal violence of state power. Union troops shoot into crowds of rioters, and gunboats bombard the city, indiscriminately killing all -- Nativist or Irish -- in the way. Ashes and debris of bombardment create a visual symbol: the bodies of Amsterdam and Bill locked in final combat are covered by them, and their visions are blocked by them.
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.
At 2:33 AM -0500 12/28/02, Max B. Sawicky wrote:
The final voice-over narration by Amsterdam goes against the above interpretation to some degree, though. He speaks of how the city was "saved" from the "mob." Only if Leonard DiCaprio delivered the words "saved" and the "mob" in a tone of irony could the final narration be squared with the meaning of the preceding sequence of the riot and its suppression. Alas, DiCaprio's delivery is flat. That may be, however, the actor's limitation, not the director's.the story reeks of populist themes
At 2:33 AM -0500 12/28/02, Max B. Sawicky wrote:
DeCaprio is mostly inert.
Scorsese should have cast Jonny Depp instead.
At 2:33 AM -0500 12/28/02, Max B. Sawicky wrote:
Well said.I'd say the best thing about the movie from the standpoint of how it would strike a politically untutored person is that it raises a million questions.
--
Yoshie
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* Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html>
* Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/>
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>
