Week 1: Film and Reality
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Film and Reality:
Myth, Stereotype, and Media in the Social Construction of "Gangsters"


Edward G. Robinson as Rico
 

Introduction

For our first topic we have chosen one of the classic criminal types that appear in Hollywood film, the "gangster." From Thomas Edison's Great Train Robbery in 1903, through the classic gangster films of the 1930s (Public Enemy, Little Caesar, Scarface), to the Godfather films (1, 2) of the 1970s, and finally the 1980s and 1990s black, Hispanic, and Russian mafia films we see criminal conspiracies directed by charismatic leaders. Despite the shift from rural to urban forms of gangsterism and the shifting ethnic identity of crime syndicates; we often as audience viewers end up siding with the villains, hoping they will not get caught, all the while knowing they will in all likelihood be made to pay for their sins in the end. Why is this so?

Where does this image of the gangster come from? Why as a "monster" type are we both attracted and repulsed by his (or less often her) screen presence? Do real gangsters behave like their screen counterparts? Is separating fact from fiction possible? Why do the film stereotypes persist even when they are debunked?

These are the kinds of questions we will be attempting to answer in this course. As a starting point, rather than a simplistic bifurcation of fact from fiction, we begin with what would be considered a more hybrid approach. We refer to this approach as "gothic criminology."

The ongoing fascination with evil, as simultaneously repellant and irresistibly attractive, both in the Hollywood film and criminological case studies, points to the emergence of “gothic criminology,” with its focus on themes such as the banality of evil, blood lust, compulsion, godlike vengeance, and power and domination.  Rather than assuming that film is a medium that tells us little about the reality of criminological phenomena, gothic criminology as envisaged here, recognizes the complementarity of academic and aesthetic accounts of deviant behavior.  Film, as we shall see, is a fundamental part of the process of constructing societal myths of evil (see Siegfried Kracauer on the rise of Nazi ideology in pre-Hitler German film in From Caligari to Hitler or Peter Biskind on the creation of the dominant corporate liberal American ideology in his analysis of 1950s films in Seeing is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the 1950s), reifying those myths and their accompanying stereotypes, and, at its best, assists in the process of deconstructing myth.  The latter can be through comedy (Woody Allen's (1969) Take the Money and Run exposed the stereotypes that had come to populate American crime and prison movies) or through new insight into changing social or psychological conditions (Training Day (2001) reveals a post-Rampart LAPD; In the Bedroom (2001) offers a unique psychological glimpse into the impact of a son's murder).

The Reel and Real Worlds

Some social scientists assert that film and other forms of mass media communication play a very important role in the "social construction of reality." This phrase, coined by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman in their book with the same title, presumes that ultimately reality is unknowable except as a mediated phenomenon. In the Sociology of the Absurd, Stanford Lyman and Marvin Scott asserted that reality is "absurd" in the sense that it is unfathomable. However, Lyman and Scott also recognized that to accept reality as absurd ran counter to most people's common sense understanding of the world in which they live. Most people (except for the insane and some existential philosophers) assume that "reality" is indeed knowable.

But, how do we know? Obviously, some of the knowledge of reality we possess is based on experience. Some even go so far as to claim that experience is the only basis for understanding reality clearly. I have witnessed this in classes when students who work in the criminal justice system caution others about presuming they know something about policing, the courts, or corrections when they have never been a police or corrections officer. Unfortunately, most people will never have the opportunity to be police officers or even to take part in ride-along programs or jail tours. However, every citizen in this society has an opinion about police and prisons; and their thoughts form part of their understanding of reality. People in everyday life claim to know about many things they have never experienced themselves. While few have ever been to Antarctica, most could describe it.

A course I've previously taught on Crime and Media dealt extensively with the role of the media in creating beliefs about crime and criminal justice. What makes this course unique is the focus on film in the process of myth construction and acceptance.

Nevertheless, to understand the role of film in isolation from other societal forces in incomplete. The emergence of the rural gangster as a film stereotype and his/her replacement by an urban counterpart requires a sociological, social historical approach.

The Outlaw Tradition in American Mythology

Prior to the creation of the cinema, American society had developed an outlaw myth. In Lyman and Scott's The Drama of Social Reality the American Western outlaw myth of the late 19th Century is discussed. Drawn primarily from newspaper accounts, pulp fiction, live wild west shows, and retelling of stories by citizens the Western outlaw emerged with the following features:

• Robin Hood-like stealing from the rich (banks) and giving to the poor.

• Robbers started their careers at a young age, often driven by personal events or circumstances.

• Outlaws are not caught by the efforts of effective law enforcement, but by treacherous acts of colleagues or a woman.

• Despite proof of their demise, the outlaw tale often included escapes and sightings of the criminals through old age.

Jesse James killed by "associate" Bob Ford

Eric Hobsbawm, the Marxist social historian, would refer to these tales as ones of "social banditry."  While he viewed bandits as proto-revolutionaries involved in class struggle, "bandits were always prone to slipping into the criminal underworld, preying on the poor as much as championing them. In some cases, like the Mafiosi in Sicily and the Italian immigrant ghettos of the US, they could become a (shady) part of the bourgeoisie."

Rural Bandits of the 1930s: Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde and Beyond

By the 1930s several new mass media innovations had redefined the way Americans related to larger social worlds. These included the massive expansion the use of photography (particularly in mass copied photo journalism), the radio (news and audio dramas), and film (both features and shorts such as newsreels). In the 1930s, with America in the midst of its worst ever depression and the Midwest suffering from the extended drought that produced the Dust Bowl effect, Americans were captivated by a new breed of gangster, the fast traveling, small town bank robber, willing to kill rather than be captured.  The prototype for this kind of gangster was John Dillinger ( timeline of his career). Others included Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, Machine Gun Kelly, Alvin Karpis, and Ma Barker and her four sons. The number of movies made over the years featuring these criminals' names in the film title are 10, 5, 2, 2, 1, and 1 respectively (IMDB). Many other Hollywood films have been based on these real life criminals as character models.

The gangster myth was created from its component parts. Newspapers reported regularly on their exploits, including government efforts to stop them. Botched government attempts to stop the robbers were reported without trying to cover up the failures.

For other Dillinger newspaper stories visit Johnnie Dillinger Website

Newsreels were an important way that Americans received their news. It was the only moving picture visual record of the era. The March of Crime and The Vanishing Gangster were newsreel series. (For sample Dillinger era newsreels see: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dillinger/sfeature/sf_newsreels.html )

Pulp magazines remained popular during the 1930s as the photo from 1935 NYC indicates:

Photo from Pulp.net

While the staple of these stories were crime fighters, often loners with super detective skills, gangsters were also good story copy.

The Urban Gangster Film

While the rural gangster received an inordinate amount of media attention, the predominate Hollywood gangster film depicted an urban phenomenon. Rooted in the sociological perspective of urban ecology made famous by the University of Chicago, these were social problem films.

The Public Enemy (1931) is one of the earliest and best of the gangster films - the second one from Warner Bros. in the thirties. Director William Wellman's pre-code, box-office smash was released at approximately the same time as another classical gangster film - Little Caesar (1930) that starred Edward G. Robinson as a petty thief whose criminal ambitions led to his inevitable downfall.

The Public Enemy is even tougher, more violent and realistic (released before the censorship codes were strictly enforced), although most of the violence is again off-screen. The lead character is portrayed as a sexually magnetic, cocky, completely amoral, emotionally brutal, ruthless, and terribly lethal individual. However, the protagonist (a cold-blooded, tough-as-nails racketeer and "public enemy") begins his life, not as a hardened criminal, but as a young mischievous boy whose early environment clearly contributes to the evolving development of his life of adult crime and his inevitable gruesome death. Unlike other films, this one examined the social forces and roots of crime in a serious way.

Other key films of this era included Little Caesar and Scarface; the latter starred Paul Muni (later in I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang) in a not so veiled life history of Chicago gangland boss Al Capone. The history of Prohibition era urban gangsterism has been told many times and in many ways (as historical fact, as pulp entertainment, as law enforcement triumph, and as Hollywood myth).

Gangsters were providing services that the great majority of the population desired, but the government had decided should not be legal. Joseph Gusfield in Moral Crusade interpreted Prohibition as an effort by Anglo-Saxon Protestants opposed to alcohol to control the behavior of non-Protestant eastern and southern European immigrants who used it regularly. As gangsters mostly were violent against other mobsters as part of territorial disputes, the citizenry was ambivalent about government efforts to rid society of the mob. Police and political corruption were also well known by the public.

End of an Era

Things changed, however, for the film gangster with the coming of the G-man pictures in the mid 1930's. The appearance of these films was the result of several factors:

1) The Hays Code was established in 1934. The Hays Code was instituted and adopted by Hollywood itself as a means of self-censorship ( just like the current G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17 movie ratings system). Gangster violence in films (plus some steamy sex scenes in other movies) had led to charges (by religious groups and others) that the Hollywood film industry was taking the country to "hell" and destroying the moral fiber of the nation. The Hays Code included statements concerning what attitude movies must take toward criminality. "Crime must not pay" and, therefore, every criminal had to die or be caught by the end of the film.
 

2) The rise to prominence of the FBI in the same era was reflected by Hollywood. By 1934 (10 years into J. Edgar Hoover's long reign as chief director), the FBI had received national recognition for its role in apprehending a number of bootleggers and racketeers. Hoover personally took an interest in Hollywood, and in reshaping film stereotypes of law enforcement. He was directly involved in the making of the first film of this genre, G Men (1935). The film included documentary style scenes of FBI training and investigative methods. G Men genre films used all the same cinematic clichés developed in the earlier gangster epics (guns, car chases, German expressionistic film technique, etc.) but now put them to use fighting crime rather than participating in it. Many of the very same actors who had played gangsters (Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney) now played cops.

Return of the Gangster

As the 1960s and early 1970s were a time of social unrest and widespread distrust of government, it is not surprising that gangster films made a major comeback. The Civil Rights Movement, Anti-Viet Nam War Movement, Feminist Movement, and Watergate all moved the country toward an anti-establishment position. Once freed from the Hays Code it is not surprising that Hollywood again pushed the censors with increasing violence and sex in movies. Key films from this era include Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Dillinger (1973), an early Martin Scorcese film Mean Streets (1973), The Sting (1973), and the Godfather films (1, 2) of the 1970s.

These films re-invented the gangster genre, elevating the classic Hollywood gangster film to a higher level by portraying the gangster figure as a tragic hero. With the disappearance of the Production Code, retribution for the gangster's crimes was not an automatic requirement.

The Godfather is an insightful sociological study of violence, power, honor and obligation, corruption, justice and crime in America. Part I of The Godfather Trilogy centers on the Corleone crime "family" in the boroughs of New York City in the mid 1940s, dominated at first by aging godfather/patriarch "Don" Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando in a tremendous, award-winning acting portrayal that revived his career). A turn-of-the-century Silician immigrant, he is the head of one of the five Italian-American "families" that operates a crime syndicate. The 'honorable' crime "family," working outside the system due to exclusion by social prejudice, serves as a metaphor for the way business (the pursuit of the American dream) is conducted in capitalistic, profit-making corporations and governmental circles.

As the film clearly indicates the only difference between the mafia and legitimate business is that organized crime is marketing illegal goods and services (that the citizenry wants), while legitimate society (business, politics, the criminal justice system) may be just as corrupt.

Unlike the gangster films of the 1930s in which the ethnic aspects of the mob are often muted, the Godfather saga ushers in an era of organized crime films, that continues to the present day, in which ethnicity is very much linked to gangsterism.  In some movies the "other" is depicted as ethnic in order to have a heavy the audience will want to despise, such as in the Mel Gibson Lethal Weapon films. Russian and Eastern Europeans are the new mafia of choice. In more serious films such as Little Odessa (1994), about the Ukrainian enclave in Brooklyn, NY, ethnicity and the problems of adjusting to life in America are covered.

Ethnicity and the Gangster Tradition

Gangster films since the 1970s have focused on black mafia (Black Caesar (1973)) and black urban youth in gangs, starting with  Boyz N the Hood in 1991. The 1983 remake of Scarface by Brian DePalma focused on Cuban and South American mobsters, Once Upon a Time in America (1984) and Lansky (1999) covered the history of Jewish gangsters,  Goodfellas (1990) offered us a semi-documentary account of Henry Hill's participation in Italian organized crime (also covered in Donnie Brasco (1997)), while Year of the Dragon (1985) featured the Chinese mafia in NYC. Shangai Triad (1995) shows that city dominated by gangster clans during the 1920s. They copy Chicago gangster dress and are just as ruthless as Al Capone.  British gangsterism is the focus of  The Krays (1990), twin brothers who dominated the 1960s East End of London. 

Week 1 Class Participation Assignment (use discussion forum one for your answer)

What types of crime and criminal justice movies do you currently watch? What types of primetime crime dramas do you watch? Do you surf the Internet for crime Web pages? Do you play computer or Internet crime-related video games?

Besides these media sources what other sources of knowledge do you have about crime and justice? (1) read newspapers or watch TV news (2) college courses in criminology or related areas (3) scholarly books and articles you have read (4) personal experience (avoid details) (5) conversation with others.

Due by class time (9AM) next Monday.