Singing
Soprano, While Dissin' the Bass:
America's White Thug
Love & Ethnically Acceptable Violence
by BAR contributing editor Dr. Edward
Rhymes
"Many people, White and Black, continue to treat
gangsta rap (and Black culture as well) as if it were not informed and shaped
by the dominant culture's values."
As the popular HBO series The Sopranos came to a close; and the show's stars made the rounds
of talk & late-night shows, I found myself perplexed by America's
fascination with this program. Then again, why should I be? This is just
another example of America's propensity to embrace the glorification of
violence and criminal activity in entertainment when those pulling the triggers
and those doing the killing are white - A&E, which airs Sopranos reruns, just unveiled a
commercial promoting the show and it shows a tractor exploding after the driver
turns the key, a woman in an convenience store removing a bag of ice from a
freezer and revealing the face of a murder victim and two kids beating a
bicycle with baseball bats. This is accepted, ignored or celebrated. And so the
decolorization of white violence in entertainment is achieved.
"America has a propensity to embrace the glorification of
violence and criminal activity in entertainment when those pulling the triggers
and those doing the killing are white."
In that same vein, not too long ago AMC
(American Movie Classics) was promoting a Godfather
movie marathon and the promo consisted of scenes from the Godfather trilogy with gangsta rap playing in the background. Maybe
they were just trying to reach a more contemporary audience, but whether
knowingly or unknowingly AMC made a critical cultural & historical
connection - a connection made by far too few people in this country. Many
people, White and Black, continue to treat gangsta rap (and Black culture as
well) as if it were not informed and shaped by the dominant culture's values.
Even a great deal of my white liberal & progressive brothers and sisters,
seem to believe that Blacks in America hail from a different planet than they
do - a planet that hasn't been touched by this society's long-standing history
of glorifying violence and celebrating gangsterism. Indeed, most Whites believe
that only Blacks have influenced Blacks and the diseases that are contracted
from the defects in American culture have played no significant role in
impairing or impacting the Black folk of this nation.
The
Beginnings of White Thug Love
It can be argued that the beginnings of the
deracialization of white violence in America began in the colonies when the
Native Americans were portrayed as savages for acts that Whites were equally
guilty of or acts of aggression that
would have been deemed self defense had the "aggressors" not been
Native-American. However, I want to focus on the American romanticization of
the white outlaw and gangster in popular culture and film.
One of the most powerful examples of this "whitewashing"
of history and criminal activity is found in the legend of Jesse James. The story of Jesse James remains one of
America's most cherished myths - and one of its most erroneous. Jesse James, so
the legend goes, was a Western outlaw, though, in fact, he never went west; was
America's own Robin Hood, though he robbed from the poor as well as the rich,
and kept it all for himself; and a gunfighter whose victims, in reality, were
almost always unarmed.
"Jesse James was America's own Robin Hood, though he
robbed from the poor as well as the rich."
Less heroic than brutal, James was in fact a
product, from first to last, of the American Civil War; a Confederate partisan
of expansive ambition, unbending politics and surprising cunning, who gladly
helped invent his own valiant legend. A member of a vicious band of Missouri
guerrillas during the war, James sought redemption afterwards. But as the PBS American Experience
production revealed, year by year, he rode further from it, redeeming instead
the great and glorious memory of the Old South. In a life steeped in prolific
violence and bloodshed, he met what was perhaps the most fitting end; like so
many of his own victims, James himself was an unarmed man, shot in the back.
Nevertheless we see his image romanticized time and again through various films
(the most popular being the 1939 version starring Tyrone Power) and historical
retellings. He is sensitively portrayed as the reluctant outlaw; the
Confederate idealist who was pushed into a life of crime - in this description
we see the interconnectedness of the media, popular culture and public
perception in creating and buttressing America's time-honored folktales. This
is repeated in the tales of Doc Holliday, Billy the Kid, Butch Cassidy &
the Sundance Kid and so on.
The
American Gangster in Early American Cinema
Of course Al Capone, by the end of the 1920s,
was the quintessential symbol of American gangsterism. Capone was accepted as a
force in American life that government was powerless to control; his mercurial
rise to power in Chicago's underworld made him not only feared and hugely
wealthy but a substantial political influence and an example of how a gangster
could make a business asset of his reputation - a popularity and perceived
charisma that is imitated in every popular gangster film. Other figures such as
Bonnie & Clyde, the Barkers and Pretty Boy Floyd have all been sanitized
and romanticized as well; giving them Robin Hood-like status in popular
culture.
The mythologized gangster can only be understood in
relation to the wider society, whether he is cast as a villain whose actions
confirm the need for law and order or as an outlaw hero admired for the
toughness and energy with which he defies the system - the "outlaw hero"
perspective has to also be understood in its racial context as well. Let's face
it, Blacks who were hounded by even harsher social realities than White
ethnics, never were or would be cast as "outlaw heroes" in the early days of
film. The gangster films of the early 1930s use the rebellious figure of the
criminal and the hierarchical structure of the criminal organization both to
challenge and to make irony of capitalism and the business ethic. Having made a
career of illegality, the gangster functions as the dark double of
"respectable" society, undermining its claims to legitimacy and parodying the
American drive to succeed; underworld activities image the injustices and
vicissitudes of American economic life, with its illusions of upward mobility,
its preoccupation with image-building and its hierarchy of exploiters and
exploited.
"Blacks who were hounded by even harsher social realities
than White ethnics, never were or would be cast as ‘outlaw heroes' in the early
days of film."
Many types of criminal, from the urban white
ethnic gangster to the poor white farm boy who drifted into crime, acquire, in
the Depression, cross-class and cross ethnic appeal (the best discussion of
which is in Jonathan Munby's Public Enemies, Public Heroes). Both types
become symbols of a rebellion impossible for ordinary law-abiding citizens to
enact. The heroic rebel image was reinforced by the Hollywood versions of the
myth, featuring performances of great dynamism and energy.
Movie gangsters such as Cagney and Edward G. Robinson
were heroes of dynamic gesture, strutting, snarling and posturing, possessing a
blatant, anarchic appeal. Standing outside the law in a period when Depression
America was cynical about all sources of moral authority, they possessed an
awe-inspiring grandeur, even in death. At the same time, however, they were a
reflection of legitimate society. The criminal big-shot, viewed in the
distorting mirror of the satirist, is a parody of the American dream of
success, ironizing the business ethic by the illegality of his methods as well
as by his ultimate defeat; the inevitable fall of the big-time gangster creates
a sense of entrapment in an economically determined reality. He is the victim
of a society in which everyone is corrupt.
Warner Bros. was considered the gangster studio par
excellence, and the "Big Three" of Warners' gangster cycle, all actors who
established and defined their careers in this genre, included:
1.
Edward G. Robinson
2.
James Cagney
3.
Humphrey Bogart
Others who were early gangster stars included
Paul Muni and George Raft. Three classic gangster films (among the first of the
talkies) marked the genre's popular acceptance and started the wave of gangster
films in the 1930s in the sound era. The lead role in each film (a
gangster/criminal or bootleg racketeer of the Prohibition Era) was glorified
but each one ultimately met his demise in the final scenes of these films, due
to censors' demands that they receive moral retribution for their crimes. The
first two films in the cycle were released almost simultaneously by Warner
Bros.:
(1) Mervyn LeRoy's Little Caesar (1930) starred Edward G. Robinson as
a gritty, coarse and ruthless, petty Chicago killer named Caesar Enrico (or
"Rico") Bandello (a flimsy disguise for a characterization of Al
Capone), who experienced a rise to prominence and then a rapid downfall;
Robinson was the first great gangster star
(2) William Wellman's The Public Enemy (1931) starred James Cagney (in his
first film) as a cocky, fast-talking, nasty, and brutal criminal/bootlegger
named Tom Powers - most memorable in a vicious scene at the breakfast table
where the scowling gangster assaults his moll girlfriend (Mae Clarke) by
pressing a half grapefruit into her face. (Both are still in their pajamas,
indicating that they spent the night together.) The finale included the
door-to-door delivery of Cagney's mummy-wrapped corpse to his mother's house -
the bandaged body falls through the front door.
(3) Howard Hawks' raw Scarface: The Shame of a Nation
(1932), a Howard Hughes'
produced film from UA starred Paul Muni as
a power-mad, vicious, immature and beastly hood in Prohibition-Era Chicago (the
characterization of Tony Camonte was loosely based on the brutal, murderous
racketeer Al Capone). Other stars were George Raft (as his coin-flipping
emotion-less, right-hand killer).
"The
disturbing portrayal of irresponsible and anti-social behavior by the gangsters
almost encouraged its attractiveness."
The ultra-violent, landmark film in the depiction of Italian-American immigrant
gangsters included twenty-eight deaths, and the first use of a machine gun by a
gangster. It was brought to the attention of the Hays Code for its
unsympathetic portrayal of criminals, and there was an ensuing struggle over
its release and content. The disturbing portrayal of irresponsible and anti-social
behavior by the gangsters almost encouraged its attractiveness. (In tribute
over fifty years later, Brian de Palma remade the film with Al Pacino in the
title role of Scarface (1983)).
Eventually, two of the most successful gangland
"Mafia" films ever made appeared in the 1970s with Francis Ford Coppola's
direction of Mario Puzo's best-selling novel, The Godfather (1972), and The
Godfather, Part II (1974).
Both were epic sagas of a violent, treacherous, and tightly-knit crime family
superstructure from Sicily that had settled in New York and had become as
powerful as government and big business. Returning war veteran/son Michael
Corleone (Al Pacino) had to loyally follow in his father's criminal path,
without questioning its legitimacy.
Both contained a number of brutal death scenes,
including Sonny Corleone's (James Caan) flurry-of-bullets death at a toll booth
in the first. Part II was the first sequel ever to win the Academy Award
for Best Picture. The third and final (this episode received far less critical
acclaim than the previous two) installment in the trilogy was The
Godfather, Part III (1990).
Director Martin Scorsese also explored the theme
of family ties being torn apart by unpredictable violence. His intense films
regularly starred actor Robert De Niro. Scorsese's "crime trilogy" included two
mob pictures in the 1990s. The first film in the trilogy was Mean
Streets (1973)
- the one that established Scorsese's reputation. It was about the lives of
aspiring, small-time crooks in the Little Italy section of New York.
"Even though these glorified thugs flouted the law at
every turn and committed despicable acts of violence, they were still cast as
charismatic and strangely sympathetic figures."
The other two films were GoodFellas (1990) - adapted from Wiseguy,
which followed thirty years in the lethally-violent criminal careers of rising
mobsters and was based on the life of actual ex-mobster Henry Hill. And
Scorsese's Casino (1995)
examined a Mafia criminal dynasty making its presence known in a brutal
takeover of 1960s-70s Las Vegas.
Although many of the gangsters in these films
met with death and destruction, this did not prevent America's love affair with
them - the glorification of the white ethnic gangster in cinema became an
American guilty pleasure. Indeed, the vast majority of these films are
considered classic. Even though these glorified thugs flouted the law at every
turn and committed despicable acts of violence, they were still cast as
charismatic and strangely sympathetic figures. The audience and the
American public somehow found itself subconsciously; as well as consciously,
pulling for them.
Fade
To Black
The late 60's and early 70's brought the Black
variation on some of the themes contained in the earlier gangster films. These
gangster melodramas, with elements of social protest, were dominated by a
single (male or female) charismatic personality. The genre contained stories of
the pimp or pusher at a crisis point, caught between the needs of his people
(Black Nationalism) and the pressure to sellout from "The Man." Standout
examples are Superfly, played by Ron O'Neal; and The Mack. Cotton
Comes to Harlem (1970) and Sweet Sweetback (1971) have been
credited with kicking off the genre - Sweet Sweetback's Badaaass Song
was fierce and uncompromising and deemed inaccessible to whites. Peebles went
ahead and produced it anyway, financing it largely himself. Unable to show the
film in many cinemas, he persuaded a few black cinemas in Detroit, San
Francisco and New York to show it.
The response was incredible. Black people in
droves went to see what was, essentially, the tale of a promiscuous black
antihero as he made his way towards Mexico to evade the white police. Peebles
wrote his own score and enlisted the assistance of the newly-formed group
called Earth, Wind and Fire who happened to be friends with one of his
production crew. Black Caesar (1973),
starring Fred Williamson, was modeled on 1931's Little Caesar and needed only slight color tweaking to attract a
new (and predominantly Black) audience. Blaxploitation films have been criticized for glorifying criminal behavior
and perpetuating negative stereotypes, but the genre seldom gets credit for
addressing issues and concerns relevant to the overlooked urban/inner-city
demographic.
"Black-sploitation
films received castigation and criticism that the ‘classic' films which
portrayed whites as the gangsters, criminals and thugs rarely received."
In the 1990s several Black directors explored issues of urban justice
through stories of children growing up in urban America. Films such as Boyz N the Hood brought vivid images of disenfranchised and
violent neighborhoods and the obstacles involved in growing up in these
neighborhoods. These films questioned whether the criminal justice system works
in neighborhoods isolated from both the creation and the protections of the
legal system, and where the rules of the criminal justice system sometimes
collide with the rules of the neighborhood justice system. In this same time
period, Hollywood released many more films directed by
Blacks, films such as Ernest Dickerson's Juice (starring Tupac Shakur and Omar Epps), Allen and Albert Hughes Menace
II Society, and Spike Lee's Clockers.
Though some of these
flicks have enjoyed cult status, they received castigation and criticism that
the "classic" films which portrayed whites as the gangsters, criminals and
thugs rarely received - John Singleton's Boyz-N-The
Hood stands out (and mostly alone) in receiving critical acclaim while
portraying inner-city violence.
The Scarface Generation
Perhaps no film has
made more of an impression on what would later become gangsta rap than the 1983
film Scarface - the name Scarface, and its many variations, can be found in
scores of songs and albums (as well in artist and group names). It stars Al
Pacino as Tony Montana, a Cuban-immigrant who shoots and kills his way to the
"top" to become the head of a powerful and brutal drug empire. It also, in my
opinion, far-and-away one of the most explosive and bloody films in the history
of the gangster-film genre. Four short years later, LA-based rapper Ice T
emerged with his album Rhyme Pays
(1987) which depicted hardcore street-life. In 1988 N.W.A.'s (Niggaz With
Attitude) underground album Straight Outta Compton firmly established
gangsta rap within the American music scene. Its keynote track F*** Tha Police was considered so
shocking that radio stations and MTV refused to play it. Nonetheless, the album
went platinum.
"The reliance
on crime in the lyrics of gangsta rap fuels much of the controversy surrounding
the musical style."
N.W.A. and gangsta
rap's popularity was compounded with the release of their second album EFIL4ZAGGIN
in 1991, which debuted at number two in the Billboard chart with neither
a single nor a video and became the first rap album to reach number one. Snoop
Doggy Dogg then became the first rapper to go straight to number one with his
album Doggystyle (1993). The reliance on crime in the lyrics of gangsta
rap fuels much of the controversy surrounding the musical style. And while it
has been criticized for glorifying the negativity of the streets, gangsta rap's
defenders claim that the rappers are simply reporting what really goes on in
their neighborhoods. In other words they are telling a story through their
specific cultural and experiential lens - this is not an endorsement of gangsta
rap, but rather an attempt to properly contextualize the genre.
Conclusion
Granted, the high
profile scandals and tragedies that have accompanied some of the biggest names
in rap and gangsta rap adds fuel to the charges of it being too violent--- such
as the trials of Sean "P Diddy" Combs and Snoop Dogg and the murders of Tupac
Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. (Biggie Smalls). Nevertheless, I remember
gangsta rap in its infancy (before any of the aforementioned incidents took
place) and condemnations of its ultra-violent lyrics and persona were being
voiced even then. Hypocritically, the bloody Genovese and Colombo crime family
wars were taking place in New York in the early 70's (when the first two Godfather movies were released) and a
correlation between that reality and The
Godfather was not made. Neither was any strong assertion made concerning
Brian DePalma's Scarface glorifying and promoting the actual cocaine-financed
mafia that was on the rise in the 80's.
In American popular
culture and in the consciousness of the American public, real and media white
violence and crime is deracialized. For example, when the tragedy occurred at
Virginia Tech there was a flurry of questions about how it would impact
people's views of Korean Americans. Was that question asked in regard to whites
when Timothy McVeigh bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City? What about
Columbine? Or Ronald Gene Simmons? For every Cho there are 10-15 Bundys, Gacys,
Specks and Dahmers, and yet there is no condemnation of white culture or a
feared backlash against whites because of the actions of a notorious few. The
same cannot be said of Black folk and other people of color. Our problems and
concerns are usually treated as some sort of racialized pathology, whereas
white indiscretions and transgressions are viewed as the innocuous and
colorless "societal" or "social" ill - detached and divorced from whiteness. On
a related note, Salon.com's headline story, about the Sopranos, for Saturday June 9, 2007 was titled: "Our Favorite
Murderer."
"For every Cho
there are 10-15 Bundys, Gacys, Specks and Dahmers, and yet there is no
condemnation of white culture."
Don't get me wrong,
I'm not a prude. Although, as a principle, I am against a great deal (if not
most) of the violent messages that is being transmitted through some films and
music, that does not prevent me from gleaning powerful ideas, concepts and
perspectives from those same films and forms of music (The Godfather, N.W.A, Scarface
and [pre-Barbershop] Ice Cube included). The sexism and carnage, that I
am opposed to, that is displayed in The
Godfather, does not blind me to depth of the characters and the complexity
of the plot. Likewise, the misogyny and violence, that I abhor, that is present
in the earlier songs of gangsta rap (I cannot embrace anything or anyone in the
current field), does not negate the fact that those artists did bring to the
forefront many issues and concerns of the Black community - such as racial
profiling, poverty, gang life and police brutality. 
So what is the point that I am trying to make
here? I suppose that it is this: that if the problem or concern is violence in
entertainment, then make the condemnation of it across the racial and ethnic
board - no matter how sympathetic, charismatic or heroic they make the Michael
and Vito Corleones, the Tony Montanas or the Tony Sopranos. Because, if the
eradication of violence in entertainment begins and ends with Black faces and
voices, then it is a strategy that is bound to fail. Or, if one believes that
proper perspective and context must be used in critiquing these popular mafia
films and series, that's fine. However, don't fail to apply that same drive for
context and perspective when judging the music and messages that flow from a
Black outlook. And finally, don't divorce that critique from the long history
of white ethnic violence in American cinema and popular culture that preceded
and helped to influence that same outlook.
Educator and writer Dr.
Edward Rhymes can be contacted at [email protected].
Challenges to Zionism in the late 1960s and 1970s sparked an effort to redefine antisemitism focused on defending Israel while attacking the political Left. This resulted in the IHRA definition and…
The detention facility appears to be the one that was previously targeted by the US-backed Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.
As the Dominican Republic escalates its brutal crackdown on Haitian migrants and Dominicans of Haitian descent, Red Malunga condemns the racist policies fueling systemic violence and human rights…
For two decades, draconian 1996 immigration laws have torn families apart—jailing long-term residents over minor offenses, fast-tracking deportations of asylum seekers, and fueling the cruel machine…
Trump’s brutality is just the latest flare-up of a bipartisan imperial evil—one that funds genocide in Gaza, war in Ukraine, and repression at home while both parties serve the same billionaire class…
