Gangs of New York
Aug. 7th, 2003 04:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pantryslutSpoilers ahoy.
So I watched Gangs of New York last night on DVD. I really intended to watch only half of the movie and finish it off tonight, but instead ended up staying up until 4 in the morning to finish the whole thing. Which is a good sign.
It's got big flaws, for sure, but it's also hugely ambitious, and I appreciated that.
But there's one thing that really caught my attention: the ending.
Now, first of all, it is really cool that the whole, huge, extra-long movie sets itself up for this climactic battle between the Irish gangs and the nativist gangs -- and then takes a completely different turn *as they are standing in the square facing each other.* That takes filmmaking balls, man. Good for Scorcese.
But what does he replace it with? The outbreak of the draft riots, of course. Which is fine. Better than fine. Yes, he sets up a lovely Old NY/New NY dichotomy, with the ethnic rivalries being swept away by something so much bigger.
What bigger? How bigger?
Um, do the phrases "class struggle" and "historical inevitability" come to mind?
The ethnic conflict is subsumed into a class conflict -- the poor are rioting against the draft because it is unfair to them (the rich can pay a fee to be excused). They go and trash the ritzy houses uptown.
This is a profoundly Marxist ending, folks. And yet I've heard no-one uttering a peep about it.
(I should note here, perhaps, that describing it as Marxist means neither good nor bad things from my corner. This is a neutral critical observation.)
It explains, too (but does not excuse) Scorcese's distortion and/or simplification of the actual politics of the time period -- which are immensely complex and fascinating, by the way. But it's important to note, I think, that the Irish as a political body were virulently pro-Democrat, anti-Lincoln, and anti-Civil-War (and thus anti-draft) *because they were pro-slavery.* They thought that if the slaves were freed, they'd lose their already-menial jobs to black people. You don't see a lot of this in Gangs of New York. The one "gang member" you see who is black, is with the Irish gangs. He dies, of course. Scorcese does not gloss over the fact that the draft riots themselves took a racial turn, with lynchings and the burning of the Colored Orphanage. But he does imply -- wrongly -- that the Nativists and Know-Nothings were more strongly anti-black than the Irish Democrats. And that's just not true.
He's looking at the politics of the time through a particular lens, one that I think a lot of non-historians share, but one that turns out to be false. He expects -- again, in a Marxist sort of way -- that the Irish, Chinese, and other immigrant groups will find solidarity with each other, and with black people, because they are in a similar class situation. But it didn't work that way. And the end of the movie says "well, it didn't work that way until this (potentially radicalizing) moment in history." Well, it didn't work that way *after* that moment in history, either. Sorry.
Anyway, I just wanted to note with glee the Marxist ending of Gangs of New York. Such was the purpose of this entry. It makes me smile, even if I think it's inaccurate. Because it takes even more balls to do than to undercut the traditional gangs-facing-off story climax that the movie builds up to. It's a double risk, and a double coup.
So I watched Gangs of New York last night on DVD. I really intended to watch only half of the movie and finish it off tonight, but instead ended up staying up until 4 in the morning to finish the whole thing. Which is a good sign.
It's got big flaws, for sure, but it's also hugely ambitious, and I appreciated that.
But there's one thing that really caught my attention: the ending.
Now, first of all, it is really cool that the whole, huge, extra-long movie sets itself up for this climactic battle between the Irish gangs and the nativist gangs -- and then takes a completely different turn *as they are standing in the square facing each other.* That takes filmmaking balls, man. Good for Scorcese.
But what does he replace it with? The outbreak of the draft riots, of course. Which is fine. Better than fine. Yes, he sets up a lovely Old NY/New NY dichotomy, with the ethnic rivalries being swept away by something so much bigger.
What bigger? How bigger?
Um, do the phrases "class struggle" and "historical inevitability" come to mind?
The ethnic conflict is subsumed into a class conflict -- the poor are rioting against the draft because it is unfair to them (the rich can pay a fee to be excused). They go and trash the ritzy houses uptown.
This is a profoundly Marxist ending, folks. And yet I've heard no-one uttering a peep about it.
(I should note here, perhaps, that describing it as Marxist means neither good nor bad things from my corner. This is a neutral critical observation.)
It explains, too (but does not excuse) Scorcese's distortion and/or simplification of the actual politics of the time period -- which are immensely complex and fascinating, by the way. But it's important to note, I think, that the Irish as a political body were virulently pro-Democrat, anti-Lincoln, and anti-Civil-War (and thus anti-draft) *because they were pro-slavery.* They thought that if the slaves were freed, they'd lose their already-menial jobs to black people. You don't see a lot of this in Gangs of New York. The one "gang member" you see who is black, is with the Irish gangs. He dies, of course. Scorcese does not gloss over the fact that the draft riots themselves took a racial turn, with lynchings and the burning of the Colored Orphanage. But he does imply -- wrongly -- that the Nativists and Know-Nothings were more strongly anti-black than the Irish Democrats. And that's just not true.
He's looking at the politics of the time through a particular lens, one that I think a lot of non-historians share, but one that turns out to be false. He expects -- again, in a Marxist sort of way -- that the Irish, Chinese, and other immigrant groups will find solidarity with each other, and with black people, because they are in a similar class situation. But it didn't work that way. And the end of the movie says "well, it didn't work that way until this (potentially radicalizing) moment in history." Well, it didn't work that way *after* that moment in history, either. Sorry.
Anyway, I just wanted to note with glee the Marxist ending of Gangs of New York. Such was the purpose of this entry. It makes me smile, even if I think it's inaccurate. Because it takes even more balls to do than to undercut the traditional gangs-facing-off story climax that the movie builds up to. It's a double risk, and a double coup.
