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CounterPunch
January
11, 2003
Scorcese's Gangs
of New York:
A Whitewash of Epic Proportions
By LEE SUSTAR
The events of the first week of July 1863--from
the Civil War Battle of Gettysburg to the New York City draft
riots just days later--are among the most decisive days in U.S.
history.
This explosive combination of slavery,
war, racism, immigration and class should be the ideal subject
for an epic film, and director Martin Scorsese should have the
talent and experience to pull it off.
Unfortunately, Scorsese's ultra-hyped
Gangs of New York is a failure. Worse, it reinforces reactionary
myths about the Civil War and even revives terrible racist stereotypes
from the dustbin of Hollywood history.
Leaving aside the movie's many historical
distortions, the plot is an utterly predictable revenge tale
in which a young Irish Catholic named Amsterdam (played by Titanic
star Leonardo DiCaprio) is determined to bring down the murderer
of his father, Priest Vallon (played by Liam Neeson).
For all its spectacle and technical prowess,
the film is two-dimensional, with even important characters left
undeveloped. Cameron Diaz, who plays Amsterdam's love interest
Jenny Everdeane, suddenly morphs from a hard-edged pickpocket
and prostitute into a self-sacrificing defender of her fellow
Irish Catholics.
The only character who makes this film
watchable is the murderer--Bill "The Butcher" Cutting,
gang leader of the Protestant "native Americans" who
terrorizes Irish Catholic immigrants into submission as they
pour into New York City's old Five Points neighborhood.
Brilliantly played by Daniel Day-Lewis,
Bill the Butcher captures the essence of the immigrant-bashing,
racist, America-First politics that you can still hear today
in a Trent Lott speech. Bill spits vicious insults at the Irish,
Catholics and Blacks--anyone who doesn't fit his ideal Protestant
America. Yet like immigrant-bashers throughout U.S. history,
Bill doesn't let his hatred for Irish Catholics get in the way
of making money off their backs.
Bill's closest collaborator is the head
of the Democratic Party machine, William "Boss" Tweed
(played by Jim Broadbent in the only other standout performance).
Tweed shares Bill the Butcher's contempt for the Irish--only
he sees political advantage in herding them off the boat and
into the voting booth.
Unfortunately, these performances are
overwhelmed by the sheer bloat of the 165-minute film. And the
film's historical insights are lost in what is at best confusion
and at worst an apology for racism.
The film accurately portrays the mass
attacks on government offices and mansions, as workers and the
poor showed their outrage at the fact that the wealthy could
purchase exemption from the draft. Yet the systematic lynching
of Blacks during the riot is seen as a tragic sideshow--even
though of the 110 people who died in the riot, the vast majority
were African Americans.
Nor is there anything to suggest the
fact that powerful New York Democratic businessmen supported
the South and stirred up popular hatred of Blacks--but that 25,000
New Yorkers volunteered to fight for the North anyway.
This omissions might have been tolerable
had Black characters been added to the film--former slaves or
abolitionists, for example--who could have highlighted the contradictions
of a race riot breaking out in a Northern city amid the Civil
War. But African Americans in Gangs of New York have few lines
and barely register as characters.
Little better is Scorsese's stereotypical
portrayal of the Chinese as silent, inscrutable Orientals. (There
were only a handful of Chinese in 1860s New York, but Scorsese
depicts a large community).
Overall, the film comes dangerously close
to endorsing the argument made by some of its characters--that
Irish Catholics, and whites generally, were being drafted to
fight and die in a war in which they had no stake.
For a more accurate--as well as more
entertaining and inspiring--film about the Civil War era, rent
a copy of Glory, the powerful 1989 movie about Black troops in
the Union Army. And for a portrayal of the bitter experiences
of Irish immigrant workers in the late 1800s, get the 1970 film
The Molly Maguires on video. Those interested in the history
behind the events in Gangs of New York can pick up Iver Bernstein's
book, The New York City Draft Riots.
Of course, a popular Hollywood film can't
be expected to be historically accurate. The problem is that
the movie focuses on historical detail while mostly ignoring
the forces that shaped that history. And for its pretensions
to be an epic, Gangs of New York just doesn't make it as entertainment,
either.
Lee Sustar
writes for the Socialist
Worker. He can be reached at: lsustar@ameritech.net
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