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gordonzola(I haven’t had much time to write so the night described is from a couple of weeks ago.)
The week that the war started I made a bad movie choice. My friend Southbay* and I are good movie companions because we both have pink sparkly wallets and enjoy seeing movies like "8 Mile" that our pretentious friends are too good to see. We had a movie date scheduled way in advance, but current events intervened and we decided to go to the anti-war demo instead.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t find the anti-war demo. There we were on Market and Powell a little after 5 PM and almost no one was there. Sure, there were the requisite hippies with drums, the sectarian paper sellers, the t-shirt guy selling "No War on Iraq" and "We Support our Troops" shirts, but only about 10 other people milling about. There weren’t even any more than a couple of cops. No sign of Officer Powder. Something was wrong here.**
Of course, my new wingnut nemesis, Anti-Semite Sam*** was there. He attracts photographers and somehow he kept walking around so that we’d be in the same general area. Local folks will probably understand**** that the last thing I need, as a legal officer of my workplace, is to get photographed with an avowed anti-Semite, so Southbay and I wandered away from the not-really-a-crowd.
After another 15 minutes of people (not us) making pathetic attempts to chant, we said fuck it. Back to plan A. Let’s go see a movie. Checking the times and an actual newspaper, we determined that the only movie we both were interested in seeing, and that was playing soon, was Gangs of New York.
OK. In retrospect, it might be easy to say, "You know, it’s not a good idea to see an extremely violent movie less than a week after war starts". For some reason, that wasn’t clear to us at the time.
The opening scene was extremely bloody. Fountains of blood. Flying teeth. Gushing blood. Lots of thwacking of hard, sharp objects on bone and flesh. Bloodsicles in the snow. I kept flashing back on the pictures of dead Iraqis I’d seen earlier in the day and I’ll admit, it was upsetting in a way that I don’t usually feel at the movies.
Having said that, I enjoyed most of the movie. I mean, it’s a typical revenge story/costume drama, but it tells the history of a time in America that is relatively not discussed very often. I though Daniel Day Lewis was really good as the Butcher. It shows the Irish in their non-assimilated period, which is always worth looking at.
There is one part, however, that totally cops out. While Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day Lewis are preparing their showdown, the NY draft riots begin. Because they are isolated and preparing for battle, they get left out of the lynchings and anti-Black violence that historically-speaking, both would have supported and/or participated in. To further absolve the main characters, who we are supposed to like to varying degrees, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Irish gang even has a Black member, presented matter-of-factly and without drama. Or historical context.
While the Irish might not have been accepted as equals to the ruling class at the time, does anyone really argue that their interactions with Black people in the 1860s were uncomplicated? I would say that there were undoubtedly exceptions and incidents of cooperation and/or involvement by some Irish-Americans in the abolitionist movement, but in a movie telling an "untold story", the Black gang member (who gets lynched by other poor, probably-Irish, ghetto dwellers) seems to be able to join the Dead Rabbits simply because he chooses to.
This is a relatively minor part of the movie, but it makes to story less intelligible. If some poor Irish so easily accept Black people into their social organizations, why is much of the rest of the Black population of Manhattan being attacked, lynched, burned out of their homes and fleeing for their safety? While, truth be told, I didn’t really expect the suffering of Black people to be more than an ornament and plot device for "Gangs of New York", I think it even trivializes the position of the Irish. True, it does show Irish immigrants getting fresh off of boats and being sent, instead of the rich, to die in a war for their new country which promises them nothing but squalor. That they take their anger out on those even further down the political food chain is foreshadowed and seen as an inevitable consequence of political moves made beyond their control.
Leonardo has the Great Man thing going so somehow he is above racism. The rest of the Irish have Mob Mentality so they are racist. White people (We) can identify with the Great Man, of course, and tsk tsk about the Mob, even if we understand the bigger powers in play. All I’m saying is, picture a movie where the sympathetic, heartthrob hero, who we’ve learned to love, participates in his community’s racist violence at the climax of a 3 hour movie. Would that be seen as perpetuating racism? Or as a truer picture of how rooted racism is in American history?
Or how about showing Irish Americans who took a principled abolitionist position? Leonardo’s position is a "colorblind" one hard to differentiate from popular present day conceptions of how to view race. That is: not to see it at all. True, there are always anachronisms in these types of movies, but I would argue that this one is there to make race issues stay firmly in the past.
Believe it or not, I actually did enjoyed the movie. Longtime readers should know by now that I dwell on the negative. It makes me happy.
*I need an LJ nickname for her because I have mentioned her a few times. I hope she likes this one.
**As it turns out, contrary to traditional Left culture, the march left promptly at 5 PM. We had missed it.
***![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
whythingsburn does a good job describing him here, so I don’t have to.
****Sorry, I am not going to explain it if you don’t. Don’t hate me.
The week that the war started I made a bad movie choice. My friend Southbay* and I are good movie companions because we both have pink sparkly wallets and enjoy seeing movies like "8 Mile" that our pretentious friends are too good to see. We had a movie date scheduled way in advance, but current events intervened and we decided to go to the anti-war demo instead.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t find the anti-war demo. There we were on Market and Powell a little after 5 PM and almost no one was there. Sure, there were the requisite hippies with drums, the sectarian paper sellers, the t-shirt guy selling "No War on Iraq" and "We Support our Troops" shirts, but only about 10 other people milling about. There weren’t even any more than a couple of cops. No sign of Officer Powder. Something was wrong here.**
Of course, my new wingnut nemesis, Anti-Semite Sam*** was there. He attracts photographers and somehow he kept walking around so that we’d be in the same general area. Local folks will probably understand**** that the last thing I need, as a legal officer of my workplace, is to get photographed with an avowed anti-Semite, so Southbay and I wandered away from the not-really-a-crowd.
After another 15 minutes of people (not us) making pathetic attempts to chant, we said fuck it. Back to plan A. Let’s go see a movie. Checking the times and an actual newspaper, we determined that the only movie we both were interested in seeing, and that was playing soon, was Gangs of New York.
OK. In retrospect, it might be easy to say, "You know, it’s not a good idea to see an extremely violent movie less than a week after war starts". For some reason, that wasn’t clear to us at the time.
The opening scene was extremely bloody. Fountains of blood. Flying teeth. Gushing blood. Lots of thwacking of hard, sharp objects on bone and flesh. Bloodsicles in the snow. I kept flashing back on the pictures of dead Iraqis I’d seen earlier in the day and I’ll admit, it was upsetting in a way that I don’t usually feel at the movies.
Having said that, I enjoyed most of the movie. I mean, it’s a typical revenge story/costume drama, but it tells the history of a time in America that is relatively not discussed very often. I though Daniel Day Lewis was really good as the Butcher. It shows the Irish in their non-assimilated period, which is always worth looking at.
There is one part, however, that totally cops out. While Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day Lewis are preparing their showdown, the NY draft riots begin. Because they are isolated and preparing for battle, they get left out of the lynchings and anti-Black violence that historically-speaking, both would have supported and/or participated in. To further absolve the main characters, who we are supposed to like to varying degrees, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Irish gang even has a Black member, presented matter-of-factly and without drama. Or historical context.
While the Irish might not have been accepted as equals to the ruling class at the time, does anyone really argue that their interactions with Black people in the 1860s were uncomplicated? I would say that there were undoubtedly exceptions and incidents of cooperation and/or involvement by some Irish-Americans in the abolitionist movement, but in a movie telling an "untold story", the Black gang member (who gets lynched by other poor, probably-Irish, ghetto dwellers) seems to be able to join the Dead Rabbits simply because he chooses to.
This is a relatively minor part of the movie, but it makes to story less intelligible. If some poor Irish so easily accept Black people into their social organizations, why is much of the rest of the Black population of Manhattan being attacked, lynched, burned out of their homes and fleeing for their safety? While, truth be told, I didn’t really expect the suffering of Black people to be more than an ornament and plot device for "Gangs of New York", I think it even trivializes the position of the Irish. True, it does show Irish immigrants getting fresh off of boats and being sent, instead of the rich, to die in a war for their new country which promises them nothing but squalor. That they take their anger out on those even further down the political food chain is foreshadowed and seen as an inevitable consequence of political moves made beyond their control.
Leonardo has the Great Man thing going so somehow he is above racism. The rest of the Irish have Mob Mentality so they are racist. White people (We) can identify with the Great Man, of course, and tsk tsk about the Mob, even if we understand the bigger powers in play. All I’m saying is, picture a movie where the sympathetic, heartthrob hero, who we’ve learned to love, participates in his community’s racist violence at the climax of a 3 hour movie. Would that be seen as perpetuating racism? Or as a truer picture of how rooted racism is in American history?
Or how about showing Irish Americans who took a principled abolitionist position? Leonardo’s position is a "colorblind" one hard to differentiate from popular present day conceptions of how to view race. That is: not to see it at all. True, there are always anachronisms in these types of movies, but I would argue that this one is there to make race issues stay firmly in the past.
Believe it or not, I actually did enjoyed the movie. Longtime readers should know by now that I dwell on the negative. It makes me happy.
*I need an LJ nickname for her because I have mentioned her a few times. I hope she likes this one.
**As it turns out, contrary to traditional Left culture, the march left promptly at 5 PM. We had missed it.
***
whythingsburn does a good job describing him here, so I don’t have to.****Sorry, I am not going to explain it if you don’t. Don’t hate me.
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no subject
Date: 2003-04-05 12:37 pm (UTC)Really, GoNY's concerns can be most easily understood by examining Scorcese's recurring preoccupations, preoccupations that sometimes make good films but mostly make horrible ones.
To wit, my lj review of the movie from December, here.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-05 10:05 pm (UTC)I think that once may have been true. However, I think now we do it out of habit and sport.
As for your review, consider me shocked and awed. I probably wouldn't have bothered writing mine if I had read that first. I missed the time-travel theme completely.
movies like 8 Mile
Date: 2003-04-05 12:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-04-06 12:49 pm (UTC)...but The Many-Headed Hydra speaks directly to the multiracial, transcultural resistance to globalization that has been forgotten. I went to Gangs of New York hoping to see a critical moment in the battle to establish the slavery-justifying color line and define Irish immigrants as "white" (previously Irish people had been considered "black" and were sold by the thousands as slaves in the Caribbean). Instead I saw the same old Hollywood "tragically dead sidekick of color" that angers me in so many other films.
Ugh.
So anyway, definitely read the Hydra...and then the portrayal of the anti-draft riots and subesequent lynchings in Gangs of New York will be upsetting for entirely different reasons than the ones you've just described!
no subject
Date: 2003-04-07 02:27 pm (UTC)The funny thing is that I just bought that book. It's remaindered and cheap right now! However, I promised to lend it to my early American history grad student friend. but yeah, it looked great.
Re:
Date: 2003-04-08 02:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-04-06 09:31 pm (UTC)Y'know, I have this feeling that I did see such a movie and I'm going to try my bestest to remember what it was, okay? Because I feel like it really worked, was really brilliant.
(BTW, I was so disappointed that your first footnote wasn't in reference to MC Powder. Are you making it a habit of mentioning him now in every post? Beware: hip irony comes back to haunt us in the form of massified materialism; don't be the one who starts MC Powder's career as a cult hero making bucks off re-issues of that blasted CD.)
no subject
Date: 2003-04-07 03:17 pm (UTC)don't be the one who starts MC Powder's career as a cult hero making bucks off re-issues of that blasted CD.
I could have said Officer Cohen, but he is at almost every demo. And you've heard it. That CD has camp value only.
no subject
Yeah, I noticed that. Seemed like an obvious attempt to get Pretty Boy off the hook. Sure, the hero is a violent thug, but at least he isn't (actively) participating in a lynch mob! Why, some of his dead best friends are black!
Um, yeah.
Still: the film had a lot of eye candy. Sometimes eye candy really goes a long way.
It's funny you would mention "the fountains of blood and flying teeth." The film wasn't nearly as bloody as I expected it to be. I was expecting to be totally sick to my stomach. I think the worst of it was fuzzed-over in all the blurry slow mo... amazing what you can do with 10 gallons of red food coloring and a strobe effect.
If you're willing to overlook the fact that this long disjointed sprawling mess of film is being held together by the threads of a typical Hollywood revenge fantasy worthy of Inigo Montoya, or that Cameron Diaz's performance makes even "Fetus Face" look good, 'Gangs is definitely worth seeing. Not a GOOD movie, by any stretch of the imagination, but then again, neither was Star Wars.
As much as I enjoyed the spectacle of rabidly nationalistic non-assimilated white people behaving like total animals... er... What was the question? "Race Traitor"? -God, what a horrible magazine! Don't ever let Noel Ignatiev see Gangs of New York. The poor guy would probably wet his pants.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-07 03:12 pm (UTC)wasn't he listed as creative consultant?
just kidding. but how can you criticize "Race Traitor"? Are you saying you don't believe that I can will away hundreds of years of imperialism, systematic oppression, race-based laws, and rigged capitalism by simply refusing to be white anymore? You make it sound like race issues are complicated and difficult.