White gangster movies being appreciated as Shakespearean tragedies unappreciation thread

[KravenMorehead™]

Realest shyt i never wrote. I've been thinkin the same thing.

 

[Kill Dat Noize]

and again none of these movies are glorifying anything. none of these guys get away at the end, none of them get the girl. this isn't james bond. by the end of the movie these guys are either dead or in an extremely pitiful state.

 

[Roman Brady]

i don't have an agenda bro, just answering your question. you said you don't know why they continue to make movies where they "glorify" white criminals and not black ones so i cited a movie where they "glorified" a black one instead.

however you wanna run with that is on you.

was American gangster really a gangster film? Cuz Russell Crowe got just as much if not more burn than denzel. And lucas's exploits were hardly covered...

 

[Kill Dat Noize]

was American gangster really a gangster film? Cuz Russell Crowe got just as much if not more burn than denzel. And lucas's exploits we're hardly covered...

i could make a stronger case that it is than it isn't.

 

[Roman Brady]

and again none of these movies are glorifying anything. none of these guys get away at the end, none of them get the girl. this isn't james bond. by the end of the movie these guys are either dead or in an extremely pitiful state.

what's the way their stories end got to do with a large chunk of these movies being taken up by the point of their life where they are flossing in riches and killing (or partaking in drugs) with an air of invincibility?

 

[Kill Dat Noize]

what's the way their stories end got to do with a large chunk of these movies being taken up by the point of their life where they are flossing in riches and killing (or partaking in drugs) with an air of invincibility?

 

[Roman Brady]

I don't remember another kill of any significance you cant really say that about any "gangster movie" out there can you? I don't remember a body count or excessive drug usage or selling (we just knew how he got it and sold it) it's because of these aspects people dont really rate AG like that. Wrong movie to cite

 

[Kill Dat Noize]

I don't remember another kill of any significance you cant really say that about any "gangster movie" out there can you? I don't remember a body count or excessive drug usage or selling (we just knew how he got it and sold it) it's because of these aspects people dont really rate AG like that. Wrong movie to cite

the hoops u jumpin through right now in order to make the case that this wasn't a gangster movie

 

[Kill Dat Noize]

was paid in full a gangster movie?

got mekhi phif looklin like clint eastwood n shyt.

 

[Roman Brady]

was paid in full a gangster movie?

got mekhi phif looklin like clint eastwood n shyt.

never seen it, you still ain't answered any of my questions I see

 

[Juney]

It always fascinated me how White Gangstas/Mafia is romanticized by America

...but when the Mastermind Crook Is US, WE're deemed as LowLife Scumbags

But, that's the AmeriKKKa I know

Gangsters of all races are romanticized by everyone in America. It's just that not everyone can relate to gangsters from other groups. For example Jewish gangsters don't get much love around here.

So why is it that white mob movies can escape this cultural criticism and not us?

Good point. I think that part of that goes back to the media narrative. We're constantly hearing that poverty and discrimination is the source of gang violence and there's no other real examination of other contributing factors. I completely agree with you on questioning why mob movies don't get criticized and scrutinized the way gangsta rap/trap music and black gangster movies have been. Why isn't the mafia, "the commission" scrutinized more? The culture in the Italian-American community? Unfortunately you have a lot of white people comparing mafia members to black street gangs and justifying the former by saying "at least they don't shoot up their own neighborhoods," "they have honor...". Bullshyt. These dudes are scumbags that stab each other in the back and jump through hoops to concoct nickle and dime schemes of which much of the profits get shot up to the boss.

As to the difference between white and black "gangster" films, I don't see a huge difference in the critical/intellectual responses. I think black culture is blamed for glorifying gangsters in music, but I haven't seen that argument in film...mostly because the disconnect between reality and fantasy is more concrete. Maybe I'm missing these criticisms though. For whatever it matters, I am white.

I've heard the tired excuses gangsta rappers made arguing that nobody thinks Al Pacino or Arnold Schwarzenegger are gangsters or killers. The difference is that those actors don't claim outside the film that they're really doing that. How many times have you heard rappers saying they aren't actors, this is their real life?

That said though, film has a HUGE influence on the populace. Scarface, The Godfather, Goodfellas, all those films glorify the same thing that rappers from Snoop to Young Thug portray. Television and film are passive experiences that can heavily influence you, so it's crazy that all these movies and television shows glorifying drug dealers and mobsters don't really catch heat the way rap music and ,to a lesser extent, video games have.

These cats are never glorified. Making a great movie doesn't mean you're glorifying anyone in the movie

Yeah they are. In real life these dudes are ugly, balding out of shape dudes but in the films they're usually portrayed by attractive looking people. Second, all their violent and criminal behavior is portrayed in an excessively stylized fashion. Just look at how popular Scarface's "Say hello to my little friend" line is, and his subsequent massacring of those south american hitmen. There merely action scenes where the criminal anti-hero dispatches the worse bad guys in a flashy fashion. In real life the murders don't occur like action scenes, they aren't flashy, and they usually involve murdering people who are just as bad as themselves or possibly less.
Scarface is shown to have scruples. " I told you know women, no kids." In real life, most of these criminals have none. The mafia doesn't shy from killing women, nor does the mexican cartels.



I think Goodfellas was a pretty decent at showing how scandalous the mafia life is. The best was American Me though. That shyt was super depressing. None of the gangsters looked cool, in fact they were portrayed as being homosexuals or being victims of homosexual rapists, and they're only goal it seemed was finding ways to smuggle dope into prison via anuses and toilets.

Or I'm a black man who looks at the films and realizes the films rarely glorify these cats. Do we as society glorify gangsters? Yes. Always have. Even in real life we have. But these movies, like black mass or goodfellas or even the godfather do not make these people out to be Angels or good people for that fact. Even if we look at American gangster, frank Lucas' reasons for getting into the the heroin game were much more understandable and justifiable than Henry hill's reasons for "being a gangster" or whitey bulger's

Henry Hill looks like a scumbag in the movie. But The Godfather is about a good kid who wanted to stay out of the mafia but was "forced to" in order to protect his father and his family.
Donnie Brasco features a charismatic Lefty who's so endearing that the undercover FBI agent wants to give him confiscated money in order to help him leave the life. In real life Lefty was using Donnie like a prostitute and Joe Pistone was not risking his case to help any of those people.

Rarely do you get something like Ready to Die which, while at times does glorify the lifestyle with songs like big poppa or one more chance, for the most part, BIG is decrying the shyt he's doing and the shyt he's done and says he's a piece of shyt and deserves to go to hell and he talks about the stress and paranoia and heartache that comes with living that lifestyle.

That's a good song but when you put it to a beat like that, and when you're a commercial rapper it ends up romanticizing the shyt. Look at the way 50 Cent turned a bullet proof vest and made fearing for your life fashionable. Plus, Biggie saying that shyt is like shedding crocadile tears because he says some really foul shyt on his next album.

and again none of these movies are glorifying anything. none of these guys get away at the end, none of them get the girl. this isn't james bond. by the end of the movie these guys are either dead or in an extremely pitiful state.

You can look at it like that, but much of those films can easily be interpreted otherwise. Scarface got killed, not because he was a murderous drug kingpin, but because he began getting high on his own supply, listened to Manny's connect recommend despite not trusting guineas, and finally murdering his best friend while he was coked out of his mind.
Michael Corleone ended up alone, not because he was a mafia don, not because he killed people, but because he was too cold, unlike his father, to the point that he alienated everyone around him.
Kane fukked up because he stomped out the wrong dude. Notice the much more reckless O-Dogg survives the film. Ending was pretty powerful though but it's hard to send a strong message when the soundtrack is featuring rappers who promote gang violence.
You can also look at the martyr aspect of some of these portrayals. Their deaths are romanticized the same way the good guys go out. Look at Rorschach in Watchmen, he lives a shytty life and is murdered but he's one of the so-called good guys. DiCaprio's character in The Departed lives a shytty life and gets shot in the head but he's the good honest cop.

 

[sayyestothis]

was paid in full a gangster movie?

got mekhi phif looklin like clint eastwood n shyt.

Lmao @ "From the director of Drumline"

 

[Kill Dat Noize]

You can look at it like that, but much of those films can easily be interpreted otherwise. Scarface got killed, not because he was a murderous drug kingpin, but because he began getting high on his own supply, listened to Manny's connect recommend despite not trusting guineas, and finally murdering his best friend while he was coked out of his mind.
Michael Corleone ended up alone, not because he was a mafia don, not because he killed people, but because he was too cold, unlike his father, to the point that he alienated everyone around him.
Kane fukked up because he stomped out the wrong dude. Notice the much more reckless O-Dogg survives the film. Ending was pretty powerful though but it's hard to send a strong message when the soundtrack is featuring rappers who promote gang violence.
You can also look at the martyr aspect of some of these portrayals. Their deaths are romanticized the same way the good guys go out. Look at Rorschach in Watchmen, he lives a shytty life and is murdered but he's one of the so-called good guys. DiCaprio's character in The Departed lives a shytty life and gets shot in the head but he's the good honest cop.

dicaprio died but in the end evil was still punished.

tony montana, michael corleone, caine... all those guys ended up the way they did because of the life they chose. if michael leaves the family circle to go off and marry kay, he doesn't end up alone. if tony stays in that restaurant washing dishes and works his way up the ladder, he doesn't end up dead. if caine didn't stomp out the wrong dude, he would have stomped out someone else who would have ended up being the wrong dude. you can only avoid the landmines for so long when you live that lifestyle. none of these guys ever get away scot-free. eventually it catches up with all of them.

it's not even just the main characters. even the supporting characters get theirs. goodfellas, scarface, godfather, whatever movie you wanna name... in the end mostly EVERYONE is either dead, in jail, or worse.