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Thread ID: 4102 | Posts: 18 | Started: 2002-12-19
2002-12-19 21:07 | User Profile
Ganging Up On America
By James Fulford
?America was born in the streets? is the tagline of the new Martin Scorsese film ?Gangs of New York.? [trailer]
You thought America was born at Plymouth Rock? Wrong! Hollywood has decreed that America wasn?t really born until the era of mass immigration.
The Scorsese film is based on Herbert Asbury?s 1928 book, Gangs of New York. It conflates Asbury?s chapter on ?The Killing of Bill the Butcher? (Bill Poole, killed by one of Irish immigrant gangster?s William Morrissey?s gunmen in 1855 - the killer was acquitted by a Tammany judge) with the later Civil War-era Draft Riots.
The book is worth reading, because you?re not going to get an accurate picture from the movie.
Daniel Day-Lewis, a London-born Anglo-Irishman [i.e. Protestant] who is Irish identified and has often played Irish Catholics on screen, is Poole, the American-born villain, described as a ?nativist.? Leonardo di Caprio, an American of Italian and German descent reprises his role as an immigrant Irishman from the hit movie Titanic, in which a providential iceberg prevented him from actually landing in New York.
Karen Butler?s UPI interview with Day-Lewis sets the tone. She intones
?During the mid-1800s, hundreds of new Irish immigrants flooded the nearby docks daily in search of the American dream. What greeted them, however, was more boiling cauldron than melting pot. The Irish were largely shunned, particularly by the anti-immigrant "Native Americans," and viewed as outsiders who stole American land and jobs.?
Martin Scorsese says he?s had an obsession with making this story, which he?s been working on for 25 years. As Kim Masters wrote in Esquire:
?Getting Gangs of New York on the screen has turned into one of Scorsese's more painful and protracted obsessions. This story of so-called native Americans, actually the descendants of mostly Dutch and English settlers, and their resistance in the mid-1800s to the arrival of a great tide of Irish immigrants has fascinated him for years.?
?Harvey, Marty, and a jar full of ears,? Esquire, July 2002
?So-called native Americans?! That?s g-o-o-d! But in fact the ?so-called native Americans? were indeed natives of the United States of America. The Irish immigrants were natives of Ireland, where rioting was considered an ?agreeable recreation.?
The Draft Riots were a revolt by the immigrant Irish against Civil War conscription. The Irish, who were competing with native-born free black Americans for New York jobs, committed striking atrocities against them. Asked by American Enterprise magazine whether New York really had an ?Irish problem,? Daniel Patrick Moynihan replied:
?Of course. There was a flood of immigrants from Ireland. Probably a third of them did not speak English. They couldn?t do anything but laboring work, pick and shovel.
?The draft riots were the worst violence in the city ever. Burning a Negro orphanage! Mostly Irish instigated.?
Were native-born New Yorkers justified in being suspicious of the Irish immigrants who were taking over City Hall - making New York a byword for corrupt government even before they committed all these murders and tried to set the city on fire?
Yes - they were.
Of course, the chances of Liam Neeson, the ?obsessed? Scorsese, or Daniel Day-Lewis sympathizing with the ?native Americans? is quite low.
The probability of Leonardo di Caprio portraying an actual Irish Draft Rioter - lynching, looting, burning a Colored Orphan Asylum, killing a National Guard Colonel by slow torture - is even lower.
Day-Lewis was asked by UPI?s Karen Butler (who apparently knows nothing about the different varieties of ?Irishman?) if it bothered him to play the American villain who ?murders an Irish hero (Neeson) and oppresses his Catholic followers, the Dead Rabbits??
Day-Lewis said no - it was all "in the spirit of diversity."
I?d call this the frankest statement of the meaning of ?diversity? yet.
If you want to email or print out, format by clicking on this permanent URL: [url=http://www.vdare.com/fulford/gangs.htm]http://www.vdare.com/fulford/gangs.htm[/url]
2002-12-19 21:27 | User Profile
I have ancestors on both sides of the 1800s nativist/Irish divide, and was hoping for an even-handed portrayal (back when they finished filiming 2 years ago!).
Sad, but not suprised. They've chosen up good/bad guys, and not bravely. And the (capital letters) Moral Lesson will be hammered home with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
Or so it sounds.
This is why I think I end up watching so many Hong Kong movies over Hollywood. Those guys don't want to make me a better person (on a blueprint drawn up in the Weimar Republic), they aim to entertain.
2002-12-20 06:59 | User Profile
Once again, Hollywitz is using the Irish influx to "teach" the historically ignorant lemmings that their American ancestors were nothing but xenophobic yahoos who persecuted innocent immigrants who were just Looking For A Better Life. They pick the Irish because they're one of the Whitest groups who came, and therefore one of the most viscerally sympathetic. And of course, Scorsese refuses to acknowledge that the natives had any legitimate beefs or interests. The tone is obvious in all the commercials.
The Big Message is loud & clear: Don't be like Bill the Butcher and his nativist thugs - welcome the Mexicans, the Haitians & the Somalians with open gates, open arms and open legs.
By the way: I wonder why we've never seen a movie dealing with jewsmedia-induced hatred against German-Americans during the World Wars. "Liberty sandwich", anyone?
2002-12-20 14:50 | User Profile
Being part-Irish, I can tell you that I have no interest in watching a film like this, and as for other Hollywood films that capitalize on the Irish, they don't speak for me one bit.
It really puzzles me why everyone seems to think the Irish only set foot and established in New York, or the Northeast for that matter. They settled just about everywhere throughout the country, yet there seems to be this sort of halycon romanticism about the Irish New Yorkers/Northeasterners that really grates on me.
2002-12-20 15:24 | User Profile
Originally posted by Robbie@Dec 20 2002, 10:50 ** It really puzzles me why everyone seems to think the Irish only set foot and established in New York, or the Northeast for that matter. They settled just about everywhere throughout the country, yet there seems to be this sort of halycon romanticism about the Irish New Yorkers/Northeasterners that really grates on me. **
Exactly. Appalachian Scotch-Irish opened up the passage to the west; the merchant class used their presence in the mountains to break the Indian logjam blocking expansion from the Tidewater. This took nail-tough people, not street fighting backstabbers.
Scotch-Irish mountain folk are the finest people one can meet, and will readily give the shirt off their back to someone in need. But if they met up with some of these Scorcese gang types, it wouldn't have been pretty. It took King's Mountain to finish off what the supposedly ferocious Northeasterners had started in the Revolution; I'd put any of the Overmountain men up against ten Di Caprio's, or Day-Lewis's for that matter.
[url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4441-2002Dec17.html]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2002Dec17.html[/url] [url=http://www.rootsweb.com/~vawise2/sketches/HSpubl64.html]http://www.rootsweb.com/~vawise2/sketches/...s/HSpubl64.html[/url]
2002-12-20 15:34 | User Profile
NBF:
One of the few mainstream Hollywood films to point out the anti-German hysteria of World War I was East of Eden--where James Dean's character helps protect a German shopkeeper from a Wilsonite mob.
Can't think of any similarly mainstream films dealing with WWII--except for post-1970 PC movies dealing with the Jap internment. ;)
2002-12-20 16:51 | User Profile
I'll wait till I see the movie to render judgment. Scorsese is among the LEAST politically-correct moviemakers out there (he's lucky in that less pressure is applied on him to toe that line). It's my understanding that the Daniel Day-Lewis functions as the dominating character of the movie and is a typical Scorsese-movie monster-hero a la Jake la Motta.
Besides, I don't understand the nature of the wrath here. The movie is historically accurate. New York, particularly the Five Points/Bowery region, was the single worst hellhole slum in American history. The gangs, political intrigues & mutual emnities were real. Yes, Virginia there was indeed a Draft Riot.
As a WN I believe there can be no white solidarity without a honest coming-to-terms with a thousand years of fratricide; white against white. Pretending it didn't happen is pointless, assigning eternal moral judgments to the actions of men who lived centuries before us is more so, but facing it and understanding we no longer have the luxury of intramural grudge matches is key. And I hasten to add that a no-holds-barred recreation of the Draft Riots hardly props up the propasphere but perhaps provides a more meaningful assault on the Lincoln Cult than a fistful of Lew Rockwell columns.
2002-12-20 18:00 | User Profile
Yeah, I agree with you about Scorcese and the draft riots.
I can understand the Irish not wanting to fight a war to free the negroes. Especially when negroes themselves were getting a free pass. Question - How many darkies marched up the heights at Fredericksburg to certain death? Answer - Zilcho.
But you can bet boatloads of Irish did.
I gotta say here that the film does depict Dicaprio torching a negro orphanage during the unpleasantness. Oh, well, anything to get the blacks in the theatre off their cell phones, Scorcese probably figured.
I haven't read a good review yet on this film. I do know that after Titanic I hoped to never see another Dicaprio film.
I can't understand this guy's appeal. He looks like he should be on the cover of a 1977 Tiger Beat under the heading "Girls, is he the next Shaun Cassidy?".
Who except someone with a serious death wish would go into a street fight with Leonardo as their leader? Especially when the rival gang is led by a guy named "Bill the Butcher"?
What's that famous line that came out of an incompetent British officer's performance rating?
"His men would follow him anywhere. But only out of curiosity".
2002-12-20 18:27 | User Profile
Originally posted by il ragno@Dec 20 2002, 12:51 ** Pretending it didn't happen is pointless, assigning eternal moral judgments to the actions of men who lived centuries before us is more so, but facing it and understanding we no longer have the luxury of intramural grudge matches is key. And I hasten to add that a no-holds-barred recreation of the Draft Riots hardly props up the propasphere but perhaps provides a more meaningful assault on the Lincoln Cult than a fistful of Lew Rockwell columns. **
Great points.
Deal with the disease and not just the symptoms, in other words. Still, much of the class hatred directed towards Southrons and especially Appalachian mountain folk is emanating from white elites. I'm not sure they can be swayed, reeducated or recruited. Unless some major polarizing event occurs, such as a pointless media lynching of a major political figure over racial issues.
That'll do it for sure.
2002-12-20 19:47 | User Profile
I haven't seen the movie, but according to the [url=http://www.nypost.com/movies/51790.htm]New York Post[/url] review, Scorcese takes one big, fat liberty with the facts of the Draft Riots.
**the film turns Cutting's nativists into the most virulent racists and Amsterdam's Irish-Catholic immigrants into brotherhood-of-man types.
The narration flat-out lies that it was a generic multi-ethnic mob that took to the streets in July 1863: In real life, it was the Irish who descended on the city's black quarters - setting afire homes and churches and killing and torturing all the African-Americans they could find.**
It wasn't the Irish at all, you see: it was those dirty bigoted Nativists! I'll still see the movie, but damned if this doesn't put a damper on my enthusiasm.
And Weisbrot - You're 100% right about the importance of the Scots-Irish of the Southern Highlands, but keep in mind they were different ethnically, culturally, linguistically and in matters of faith from the "Famine Irish" of the 1840's. The Scots-Irish - or "Ulster Scots" - immigrated from Northern England and Lowland Scotland to Northern Ireland in the early 1600's. Starting about a century later, they began moving in numbers to America. The were generally Presbyterian, English (or Scots-English) speaking heirs of the Scots Borders. The Irish who came in the 40's were Catholic, Gaelic peasantry. THEY are what people think of when they think of "Irish-Americans." Which makes sense, since the Scots-Irish typically were in Ireland for less than half the period they've been in America. David Hackett Fischer, in his invaluable [url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195069056/qid=1040413504/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-1859647-6453536?v=glance&s=books]Albion's Seed,[/url] prefers to call them "North British" rather than "Irish" or "Scots-Irish."
2002-12-20 20:23 | User Profile
Originally posted by Hereward@Dec 20 2002, 15:47 **
You're 100% right about the importance of the Scots-Irish of the Southern Highlands, but keep in mind they were different ethnically, culturally, linguistically and in matters of faith from the "Famine Irish" of the 1840's. The Scots-Irish - or "Ulster Scots" - immigrated from Northern England and Lowland Scotland to Northern Ireland in the early 1600's. Starting about a century later, they began moving in numbers to America. The were generally Presbyterian, English (or Scots-English) speaking heirs of the Scots Borders. The Irish who came in the 40's were Catholic, Gaelic peasantry. THEY are what people think of when they think of "Irish-Americans." Which makes sense, since the Scots-Irish typically were in Ireland for less than half the period they've been in America. David Hackett Fischer, in his invaluable [url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195069056/qid=1040413504/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-1859647-6453536?v=glance&s=books]Albion's Seed,[/url] prefers to call them "North British" rather than "Irish" or "Scots-Irish." **
Very true- Scotch-Irish were settlers long before the huge influx of Irish in the mid-1800's. But few people in the South are aware of the difference, or at least have forgotten. Probably it's a result of the relatively small exposure to Irish Catholics, or it could be a result of living in denatured cities like Atlanta or Charlotte.
I've found that especially people from the West and Midwest are ignorant of this, and tend to lump in Appalachian hill folks with the Irish immigrants of the 1800's. Probably sounds unlikely to Irish people from Pennsylvania on up, but in my personal observations this tends to hold true.
2002-12-21 04:25 | User Profile
Originally posted by weisbrot@Dec 20 2002, 18:27 ** ... much of the class hatred directed towards Southrons and especially Appalachian mountain folk is emanating from white elites. I'm not sure they can be swayed, reeducated or recruited... **
White elites are hopeless. On the issue of Appalachians and much else. Kipling had the right idea: Bring up the guns and shoot!.
2002-12-21 05:25 | User Profile
Scotch-Irish are still one of the largest extent ethnic groups in the country. But they are unknown even to themselves outside the south. There are no Scotch-Irish restaurents, for instance, and no parades to flaunt their pride. Indeed few Americans know who the Scotch-Irish are. Perhaps they are the first ethnic group to go down the memory chute in America. Lets hope there will be others of a different kind.
2002-12-21 09:59 | User Profile
Originally posted by Current93@Dec 20 2002, 21:27 ** Are there no Irish-American actors? **
Well, there's Mickey Rourke, but from what I've seen of him lately he seems to have trouble putting together a coherent sentence. I don't know if it was the blows to the head in his late boxing career or the whiskey.
2002-12-21 16:11 | User Profile
Originally posted by solutrian@Dec 21 2002, 01:25 Scotch-Irish are still one of the largest extent ethnic groups in the country. But they are unknown even to themselves outside the south. There are no Scotch-Irish restaurents, for instance, and no parades to flaunt their pride. Indeed few Americans know who the Scotch-Irish are. Perhaps they are the first ethnic group to go down the memory chute in America. Lets hope there will be others of a different kind.
[url=http://www.vahighlandsfestival.org/]http://www.vahighlandsfestival.org/[/url]
Some folks still remember. This is a great festival- and where else will you find such positive events as this-?
Spy Execution & Confederate Wedding Featured During Civil War Re-enactment
The Eighth Virginia Cavalry, Company A, Inc. ("Smyth Dragoons"), a local group of Civil War re-enactors, will conduct an encampment in authentic period attire at Abingdon's historic Fields-Penn 1860 House Museum Friday and Saturday, Aug. 9-10.
Established two years ago, the group conducts encampments for area schools and heritage festivals, and participates in battle re-enactments. During the Highlands Festival, members of the group will be available from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. to answer questions about the unit, weapons, uniforms and local history. Scheduled events feature the execution of a Federal spy at 11 a.m., a Confederate wedding at 4 p.m., and authentic salt making throughout the day.
2002-12-26 08:25 | User Profile
Originally posted by il ragno@Dec 20 2002, 10:51 **Besides, I don't understand the nature of the wrath here. The movie is historically accurate. New York, particularly the Five Points/Bowery region, was the single worst hellhole slum in American history. The gangs, political intrigues & mutual emnities were real. Yes, Virginia there was indeed a Draft Riot.
**
To Il Ragno:
I agree with you about not understanding the wrath here.I've seen the movie and it is excellent. There is no getting around the real clash that occurred in N.Y. during that period.What is most telling about it is what eventually unites the whites,namely the real Butcher,Lincoln, and his war to free the 'slaves'.
To me,as a white nationalist,I found the movie hit the mark.For those silly candy asses who speak of assimilation as not inconsistent with 'multi-culturalism',this movie throws a haymaker punch.Assimilation between whites from different cultures,yet the same DNA pot, was a matter forged in violent struggle. How much more violent and unsuccessful is it to assimilate those not from the same DNA pot and no common ancestry? Additionally,the movie's 'straight no chaser' approach to Social Darwinism will get our 'holy roller' and 'do-gooders' apoplectic. And,yes,this movie provides a more meaningful assault on the Lincoln cult than a fistful of Lew Rockwell columns.
2003-01-06 03:55 | User Profile
Scorseseââ¬â¢s ââ¬ÅGangs:ââ¬Â A Circus Train Wreck
[See also Ganging Up On America by James Fulford; Bowen Smithââ¬â¢s letter on Irish-American rioters and immigration reformers; a dissenting view from Erik Meyer.]
By Steve Sailer
By churning out countless Westerns in the mid-20th Century, Hollywood helped validate the idea that America was made by settlers, especially the cowboys of the Great Plains.
Around 1970, however, some brilliant young Italian-American directors and actors such as Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Al Pacino, and Robert De Niro asserted a new vision of American history. America, they implied, was made not by settlers, but by Catholic and Jewish immigrants, especially the gangsters of the big cities.
Gangster movies had long been popular for the same reasons as cowboy movies: both mobsters and frontiersmen live in a Hobbesian state of nature, beyond the reaches of the law. Their life is thus full of interest.
But the notion that 20th Century urban gangsters were central to American identity probably never occurred to anybody before "The Godfather" films. Obviously, America had been around for a long, long time before Lucky Luciano got off the boat from Sicily. Indeed, historian David Hackett Fischer's great book Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America shows how much of American culture was transplanted intact from Britain in the 17th Century. Much of what's distinctive about the American character today was already visible to de Tocqueville 170 years ago ââ¬â before mass immigration began.
Scorsese, maker of Mean Streets and Casino, seems to have been bothered by this objection. So, he has spent over 30 years and more than $100 million to film the 1928 book "Gangs of New Yorkââ¬Â to give his mobcentric theory of America some credibility by pushing it back to the mid-19th Century.
The film's slogan: "America Was Born In The Streets." To Scorsese, who grew up in New York Cityââ¬â¢s Little Italy, the most important event of 1863 was not the Battle of Gettysburg, but the New York Draft Riots.
Dubious. But Gangs of New York still might be worth seeing if it was Scorsese at his best - as visceral as Raging Bull or as turbocharged as Goodfellas. Sadly, it's not close. Judged shot by shot, Gangs isn't badly made, but it never ignites as Scorsese's best movies did. Compared to the awe-inspiring work Peter Jackson has done bringing the even larger-scale Lord of the Rings trilogy to the screen, the 60-year-old Scorsese looks past his prime.
To call Gangs a train wreck of a movie doesn't do justice to its lurid excess. It's like watching the crash of a vintage Barnum & Bailey circus train, complete with Daniel Day-Lewis as the ringmaster, dressed appropriately in striped tailcoat, black boots, and black hat.
Indeed, at the climax, an immigrant mob burns down P.T. Barnum's museum and a terrified elephant escapes.
Gangs' 1846 prologue establishes that credibility is not Scorsese's highest priority. The movie was filmed on a humongous "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" post-apocalyptic-looking set, half catacombs and half landlocked "Waterworld." Scorsese stages a grotesquely violent and implausible street fight among hundreds of Irish immigrants and Day-Lewis' Nativists. They mill about for ten minutes, hacking each other to death for with meat cleavers and axes. In reality, according to historians John Keegan and Victor Davis Hanson, even with shields, armor, military training, and martial discipline, armies during the edged weapons era found it hard to keep soldiers, much less street thugs, from fleeing immediately.
Eventually, Day-Lewis kills the head immigrant (played by Liam Neeson) and takes control of the Five Points slum. Sixteen years later, Neeson's son (Leonardo DiCaprio) returns to kill avenge his father.
Gangs isnââ¬â¢t really the politically-correct fable about evil Nativists and victimized immigrants that most reviewers have made it appear. To achieve that, Scorsese would have had to stop the movie before the Civil War. The director, in fact, ultimately seems bored with the boyish DiCaprio as the cute Irish hero and infatuated with the volcanic Day-Lewis as the brutal Nativist bad guy Bill the Butcher. This is hardly surprising. As he showed in "Raging Bull," in Scorsese's testosterone-addled worldview, a willingness to fight is the highest virtue.
Buried deep inside Gangs is the raw material for a great American tragedy about the Irish immigrant experience in New York from 1846 to 1863. There's a cruel historical irony in the tale of the immigrants who poured into Manhattan after the Irish potato famine of the 1840s. They did not get a warm welcome from native-born Americans, who resented their driving down wages. Nor did Americans want to live near the Irish immigrants, among whom cholera, tuberculosis, alcoholism, and brawling were prevalent, as detailed in Thomas Sowell's Ethnic America. Those too poor or too lower class to simply move away from the immigrants, for example as Day-Lewis's Bill the Butcher, fought them in the streets.
When the Civil War came, many Irish and other immigrants in New York refused to fight for the Union that had given them refuge. (And, to be fair, many Iris did fight bravely). The Gettysburg victory made it likely that the North would eventually win and free the slaves - a prospect that the immigrants did not relish. When the hated draft call-up began a few days later, many of the city's immigrants were primed for an anti-black pogrom that would scare the anticipated hordes of freedmen from coming to New York.
An article in the Oct. 1951 Journal of Negro History recounted:
The New York draft riots of July 1863 had their origin largely in a fear of black labor competition, which possessed the city's Irish unskilled workers. Upon emancipation, they believed, great numbers of Negroes would cross the Mason-Dixon line, underbid them in the Northern labor market and deprive them of jobs. ââ¬Â¦ The New York draft disturbances remain the bloodiest race riots of American history. Police figures on deaths among the white rioters ranged from 1,200 to 1,500, and it is impossible to know how many bodies of Negro victims of the lynch mobs were borne away by the waters on either side of Manhattan Island. Significantly, the Negro population of the metropolis dropped 20% between 1860 and 1865, declining from 12,472 to 9,945.
It's a grim story, but one that needs telling in this era when American history is increasingly being rewritten into an ethnic pageant of bad guys (WASPs) versus good guys (whoever was on the other side).
In reality, there are no permanent good guys or bad guys. There are only enduring patterns of cause and effect. A pervasive one is the Law of Supply and Demand, which has consistently made mass immigration bad for American blacks.
Ultimately, Scorsese waffles. He ends up with neither a realistic tragedy, nor a crowd-pleasing potboiler about multicultural good guys beating up evil bad guys.
He shows just enough of the immigrant pogrom against blacks to undermine simple faith in his putative heroes - but not enough to leave a lasting impression of the true ironies of history.
[Steve Sailer is founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute. His website www.iSteve.com features site-exclusive commentaries.]
If you want to email or print out, format by clicking on this permanent URL: [url=http://www.vdare.com/sailer/gangs.htm]http://www.vdare.com/sailer/gangs.htm[/url]
Related thread:
Gangs of New York [url=http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php?act=ST&f=10&t=5175]http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php...=ST&f=10&t=5175[/url]
2003-01-06 05:17 | User Profile
*Faust:
Great letter from a VDARE reader below. I do not know who Erik Meyer is, but his letter is far more interesting than any review I've read so far.
I might even see the movie!* :lol:
Is ââ¬ÅGangsââ¬Â Crypto-Nativist?
[url=http://www.vdare.com/letters/tl_010503.htm]http://www.vdare.com/letters/tl_010503.htm[/url]
From: Erik Meyer
ââ¬ÅEveryday there are more of us coming, streaming off the shipsââ¬Â¦ I hear fifteen thousand Irish a week into New York alone, and weââ¬â¢re afraid of the Natives? Put all of us together, and weââ¬â¢re not a gang, weââ¬â¢re an army. All our people need is one spark to wake them up.ââ¬Â
-- Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio).
Martin Scorseseââ¬â¢s Gangs of New York is a masterpiece of subversion - a story within a story that achieves through subtlety, perspective and multiple layers of meaning what a frontal assault could never have accomplished: a brutal depiction of America being invaded and ultimately overwhelmed by the ââ¬Åforeign hordesââ¬Â streaming out of Ireland and Europe in the mid-nineteenth century.
Gangs of New York does not ââ¬Åcelebrateââ¬Â the ââ¬Ådiversityââ¬Â mass immigration brought to America. It depicts an America pushed to catastrophic collapse, inundated by alien masses, starving, grasping, tearing the old order down and setting it on fire. The immigrants live in filth, degeneracy, and vice, practicing every form of thievery and skullduggery imaginable upon each other and everyone else. The Native Chief, Bill the Butcher, takes his tribute from it all, because ââ¬Åthatââ¬â¢s the way you fight the rising tide.ââ¬Â
It is a world of open warfare between gangs of foreigners pouring into this country and natives who refuse to give way, groups irreconcilably locked in a death struggle. ââ¬ÅYour father was trying to carve a piece of this country out for his tribeââ¬Â¦. And Iââ¬â¢m not sure, if he had lived a little longer, if he wouldnââ¬â¢t have wanted more.ââ¬Â - Walter "Monk" McGinn (Brendan Gleeson) to
Amsterdam. These are not people fighting for peace and tolerance. And though they were fleeing the consequences of conquest and colonization in their own land (ââ¬Åa war that has lasted a thousand yearsââ¬Â ââ¬Åagainst a people who thought they could take by right what could only be brought about by the annihilation of a raceââ¬Â - Monk) they are not disinclined to ââ¬Åtake by right,ââ¬Â to conquer and colonize, the land of another.
The film opens with a battle between the ââ¬ÅDead Rabbits,ââ¬Â a coalition of Irish gangs championed by Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson) and the ââ¬ÅNative Americans,ââ¬Â led by William ââ¬ÅBill the Butcherââ¬Â Cutting (Daniel Day Lewis) to determine, in the words of Cutting, ââ¬Åby the ancient laws of combat, once and for all, who holds sway in the Five Points, us natives, born here proper, or the foreign hordes.ââ¬Â
The gangs have at each other gloriously in a battle that culminates with the Priest falling in single combat to Bill the Butcher while the Priestââ¬â¢s young son Amsterdam looks on. The resulting story chronicles Amsterdamââ¬â¢s attempts to exact ââ¬Åvengeanceââ¬Â for this killing, ultimately leading to a resurrection of the vanquished, outlawed ââ¬ÅDead Rabbitsââ¬Â in struggle with the Natives, against a backdrop of massive political corruption, social pathology, and tyranny, with New York being blown up and burned down during the Draft Riots of 1863.
The characterizations are complex, and the performances magnificent. Daniel Day Lewis walks like a Titan from a fallen age. Leonardo DiCaprio brilliantly plays a character as repellent as he is contemptible, speaking to the movieââ¬â¢s power and uniqueness ââ¬â Scorsese and DiCaprio have created a protagonist compelling in his utter lack of redeeming qualities.
Amsterdamââ¬â¢s drive to avenge his father - the central plot of the film - is gradually exposed as hopelessly simplistic and ultimately ignoble.
During the course of Amsterdamââ¬â¢s attempts to ingratiate himself with Bill, we learn that, while Amsterdam has only vague memories of his father culled from dreams and distant youth, the man who venerates Priest Vallon and what he stood for is - Bill the Butcher. Bill keeps a picture of the Priest in a place of honor above his mantle and speaks of him as a great man who shared his principles, the ââ¬Åonly man I ever killed worth remembering.ââ¬Â
Amsterdamââ¬â¢s desire for vengeance against Bill the Butcher is ultimately as base as it is preposterous. His father was killed in open combat, not murdered, by an adversary against whom fate, faith, land and blood had irreconcilably opposed him. Murder would have demanded vengeance, combat on the field of battle does not - though it may justify a challenge.
But Amsterdam does not choose that path until shamed at Billââ¬â¢s hands by his own cupidity. Amsterdam strikes while Bill is celebrating his victory at the Battle of the Five Points, honoring, not just his fallen comrades, but the leader of their enemies. Amsterdam tries to assassinate Bill with a throwing knife. Bill knocks the knife away, wounds Amsterdam, and yells to the crowd, ââ¬ÅIââ¬â¢d like to introduce you to Priest Vallonââ¬â¢s sonââ¬Â¦ He has dishonored a noble name. I took him under my wing, as my own, and this is how he repays me. He tries to kill me, not like a man, but like a sneak thief.ââ¬Â
Amsterdamââ¬â¢s scurrilous conduct contrasts sharply with the code of honor respected by Bill the Butcher. This gives rise to the (possibly radical) interpretation that Scorsese has inverted his story - that the protagonist is NOT the hero. It is the antagonist, grim and brutal as he must be, who emerges from the screen as the only man of true integrity, in a debased, treacherous, cowardly world.
Looking at the film more broadly, it is about blood and soil, not government. Bill the Butcher and his Natives see themselves fighting for America, not the government of the United States, upon which they heap scorn and view as engaging in its own war of conquest against Americans: ââ¬ÅWe should have run a better man against Lincoln when we had the chanceââ¬Â - Bill, immediately before throwing his knife into Lincolnââ¬â¢s forehead on a poster.) Later in the film, Bill, and his men chant ââ¬ÅDown with the Union,ââ¬Â and hurl refuse at an actor playing Lincoln during a rendition of ââ¬ÅUncle Tomââ¬â¢s Cabin.ââ¬Â
Nobody is fighting for ââ¬Ådemocracyââ¬Â either, which is presented as a fraud manipulated by those in power to enrich themselves and their supporters. Boss Tweed and the Tammany machine welcome the Irish as an unending stream of votes and cheap labor. With the help of the Irish the Tammany machine steals an election against Billââ¬â¢s Nativist candidates, gleefully pulling people off the streets, forcing them to vote Tammany until they have ââ¬Åwonââ¬Â by thousands more votes than there are voters.
Gangs of New York climaxes with the draft riots, in which we see all of the ââ¬ÅIrish, Germans, and Poles,ââ¬Â who throughout the movie had been pressed or manipulated into the Union Army, forming the immigrant army DiCaprio darkly foretold earlier in the film and rising up in a rampage of fire and chaos.
They kill all the blacks they can find, then head uptown to attack the old families, looting and wasting like Sherman marching to the Hudson. The film, a chronicle of loss expressed through horrific violence, lingers on two oil paintings, an early American aristocrat, and the fair, young daughter of one of the original families, as they ignite, then burn into ash and cinder.
When the Federal government orders its troops to fire on the crowds and its ships to shell the city, Native and Irish alike interrupt their fight in horror at what is happening to the other.
It is hard not to concur with Bill the Butcher - that, indeed, ââ¬ÅCivilization is crumbling.ââ¬Â
January 05, 2003