and yeah, i think scorcese would agree on your monsters take but i dont think you should simply accept it (there's this fetid pj orourke smell in it). this is the dude that helped birth the "ive always wanted to be a gangster" 90s take on the genre ("the world is corrupt, i didnt start it, lets just admit power is attractive"), that sort of brutal naked "it is how it is, i'm just saying it", a pseudo-cynical atitude that vocalizes what capitalism can't afford to explicitly state. we're monsters only, that's it, we agree boss (even forrest gump goes against the grain in comparison - no patrick bateman wishes to imagine himself as a sweet brutalized retard).
(scorcese even shows himself as a rich fucker cameron diaz steals from - it implies a certain brutal self-interest, that sort of 00s "no bullshit" pseudo-honesty, accepting class conflict readings to then just "cynically" say "yeah it's class war, we're all just out for ourselves, fuck you got mine, we're all savages, it's brutal power, and it's unescapable").
a prostitute from Asbury's hometown of Farmington, Missouri. The prostitute took her Protestant customers to the Catholic cemetery to conduct business, and took her Catholic customers to the Protestant cemetery; some in Farmington considered this woman beyond redemption.
The_Schliski posted:
that line "thank god... i die a true american" has always stuck out like a sore FREAKIN thumb and i do not like it nor do i like the whole "lets breathe in growing aggression until we kinda hobble at each other walking on our knees and you stab me to death" part of that scene either. i watch that movie a lot though, flaws are o.k.
wtf, why not?
AmericanNazbro posted:
wtf, why not?
that final line stinks of contrivance, of something the filmmaker wanted someone to say and she or he did not bother to make it sound like something the character would have said; a pure case of "tell" rather than "show"
same with the final murder, it's like they both just switched gears and it was quite clear it was because that's how the script was written
great movies and even great stories never have that happen unless they have set themselves up that way
compare to don corleone's death, which is 100% symbolic and yet at the same time chekovian in its utter banality. bill the butcher's slaughter lacked naturalism, which would be fine, except that the rest of the film was all about fecundity, life and stench. none of which tolerate a pat ending or anything as deliberate as, say, shakespeare
The irish were just the original class of labor undercutting class, first irish, then blacks, then irish and chinese, then southern europeans, then mexicans. With plenty of legacy trawling with each previous group.
The majority of americans were anti slavery, the south was a banana republic filled with whites who came from long lines of fighty people, those scots irish that the english crown used as their weaponized population, to send wherever a mass of people needed brutalizing. Nationalism got the best of them and they died by the thousand to defend a really scenic but horrible oligarchy. then one of them killed lincoln so reconstruction was never really fully implemented and it remains a shitty place to-day
Big cities have always been, at least in part, dirty scary places. Imported populations undercutting wages always lead to strife. The irish were sent from the docks to the recruiting station to fight in a war that had nothing to do with them, and were so good at it that it only increased the practice. It's no wonder that you see stuff like the Irish brigades and individual soldiers switching to the Mexican side in the mexican american war.
Poor old Mexico had so much promise, but there was too much money to be made to leave them alone.
In conclusion: gangs of new york is a better portrait of a mixed popuation city in an early industrializing state than of USA as whole. Although it's true that the United States' population's core set of values was always a really brutal protestant thing, as easily adapted for imperialist stuff as its predecessor in England'ssss's wassss. But there's no reason that rage can't be used to create a better world, like harnessing a rampaging bull to pull a plow. I think that's what a lot of late gilded age Eugene V Debs socialism was fueled by, that angry drive toward fairness
I'm having a hard time keeping my eyes open , so I'm sorry if this is as disjointed as it seems to be
Myfanwy posted:
I think its a mistake to call Scorcese's vision of civil war era New York as a microcosm of USA. For over 100 years America did have a feel of Jeffersonian agrarian paradise.
The murder rates of rural counties in the Southern Colonies outstripped those of modern-day New York City; these rates do not include the murders of slaves at the hands of whites. I learned this from All God's Children: The Boskett Family and the American Tradition of Violence which is a pretty good book which people should read!
Willie Boskett is the reason that children can be tried as adults in USA courts
shennong posted:
its also worth noting that the southern agrarian model differed profoundly from the northern one and that the civil war was in large part about resolving conflicting agroecological models and their relation to urban centers and nutrient flows imo
Of course that's your contention. You're a first year grad student. You just got finished reading some Marxian historian, Pete Garrison probably, you’re gonna be convinced of that until next month when you get to James Lemon, then you’re gonna be talkin’ about how the economies of Virginia and Pennsylvania were entrepreneurial and capitalist way back in 1740. That's gonna last until next year, you’re gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talkin’ about you know, the Pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization.
shennong posted:
i have no idea what you're talking about dude
good post hunting
shennong posted:i generally dont pay attention to anything marxists have to say about agriculture, but if they object to the blanket characterisation of early american agroecology as a "jeffersonian agrarian paradise" they have a point
The_Schliski posted:Myfanwy posted:
I think its a mistake to call Scorcese's vision of civil war era New York as a microcosm of USA. For over 100 years America did have a feel of Jeffersonian agrarian paradise.The murder rates of rural counties in the Southern Colonies outstripped those of modern-day New York City; these rates do not include the murders of slaves at the hands of whites. I learned this from All God's Children: The Boskett Family and the American Tradition of Violence which is a pretty good book which people should read!
Willie Boskett is the reason that children can be tried as adults in USA courts
Oooh sorry, I didn't mean the slave south stuff, I meant free men working land they owned and living easy, loving free. The cotton gin southern slave economy was really hideous and they had to wring every drop of productivity out of the land and their super expensive slaves. So the super fertile missippi delta produced lots of slave owning millionaires. I wouldn't call that a paradise
The_Schliski posted:
that final line stinks of contrivance, of something the filmmaker wanted someone to say and she or he did not bother to make it sound like something the character would have said; a pure case of "tell" rather than "show"
same with the final murder, it's like they both just switched gears and it was quite clear it was because that's how the script was written
great movies and even great stories never have that happen unless they have set themselves up that way
fwiw those were the last words of the historical Bill the Butcher except he died after being shot in the back in a bar fight and not in an epic struggle with a former teen heart throb; a true american death as it were
discipline posted:
Several times we cheer on the characters for doing the most noble deed, that is, messing with and ripping off rich folk, and boo loudly when the boardroom of socialites reminds everyone that "you can always pay one half of the poor to kill the other half."
here is a new detail for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Gould#Late_career