Gangster Films

I referenced Robert Warshow's essay, "The Gangster as Tragic Hero," a few times in the long life of this blog.  Until today, though, I couldn't remember the author or the title.

One of the comments on cinema from 2013 stands out to me now:

It may be the reason gangster 'films' are so pervasive on the new television are the two old reasons: that it as a genre permits a genuine tragedy, and that it permits a clear-eyed critique of the American system. But it may also be that the American system isn't as healthy as it used to be, and the critique is therefore more persuasive. At some point, the tragedy will fall away, and people will simply accept these gangsters as heroes, full stop.

Someone will write a follow-up essay to that soon, I suspect: "Trump as Gangster Hero." But it's already life on YouTube.







There's been an attempt to fit other, less plausible figures into the role too. But in a way I think it explains something about the President's ongoing invulnerability to charges of illegal behavior, racist behavior, hateful behavior, awful behavior. The gangster is against the system, and for a while now we've been rooting for that.

We've been rooting for it in the land of imagination because in the real world we can see that the system is fantastically corrupt, impossible to hold to account, and that all of its pious words are false. They don't believe in the rule of law -- witness sanctuary cities. They don't believe that there's one law for all, powerful and poor: witness the difference between the Comey investigation into Clinton's violation of classification laws, and the Mueller investigation of everyone Donald Trump ever knew. These dramatic moments fit within a context of our everyday lives, when we try to make things work with city hall or the state government.

This weekend the gangster President is feuding with two giants of the Congress, the Speaker of the House and Elijah Cummings, about the run-down conditions their American cities have assumed under the leadership of their party. No one is going to fix Baltimore, and San Francisco is covered over with feces and needles. No one is accountable, and if you try to make someone accountable, they are protected by overlapping fields of power and privilege. It is racist to criticize him, they say. It is sexist to criticize her. In terms of power they hold senior positions in high office. They are deeply rich from their long lives of public service, with all the power wealth brings. Also, the city governments would do anything they ask, because those cities are run fellow Democrats who are getting rich off public service too.

There is going to be a cost, of course, to celebrating gangsters instead of genuinely virtuous men. It's worth remembering, though, that many of the noblest names in history were all but gangsters: William the Conqueror and all his line of kings, for example. Alexander the Great once arrested a pirate and asked him how he dared to molest ships at sea. The pirate is alleged to have demanded, in return, "How dare you molest the whole world?"

Alexander was taught virtue by Aristotle himself, but the pirate hit him fairly and he knew it.