Study Questions: Week Eleven

Summing Up: Demythologizing American Popular Culture

The Gangs of New York (2002)

In The Gangs of New York, Scorsese goes back to the mid-Nineteenth Century and employs the conventions of the gangster film in order to make the connections between the gangster and the racial, ethnic, and political influences which was shaping American culture. In doing so, he comments on the more idealized conception as the "mixing pot" in which immigrants from many backgrounds arrived in the New World and created a common culture shaped by democratic ideas.

1. In the film's opening sequence, how does Scorsese use visual imagery, characters, and plot to dramatize the conflict between religious and the tendency to violence seen in his earlier films?

2. How does Amsterdam Vallon (Johnny Depp) represent the combination of Protestant Nativism and Catholic immigrants? Consider his background, education, and association with "Butcher" Bill (Daniel Day Lewis)? How does his name reflect that mingling of ethnic backgrounds?

3. When Amsterdam leaves the Hellgate school he finds the "country torn apart by civil strife". In what other ways does the film equate the battles of the gangs with the Civil War? Why?

4. The dress of the fighters and the battle between the Natives and the Irish has the look of a medieval war. How is the theme of the film reflected in this bloody scene?

5. Boss Tweed aids the Irish to secure political power while the Reformers wish to save their souls. Who actually does more for the immigrants? Why?

6. "Butcher" Bill believes that "civilization is crumbling," while Boss Tweed says Bill, in refusing to work with the Irish, has turned [his] "back on the future." What do the two mean in making these comments, and how do they reinforce the films central theme?

7. What is the film's attitude toward the draft (often called the "copperhead") riots. Is it sympathetic to the draft eligible rioters? Why? Why not?

8. Gangs is full of spectacular scenes, but the narrative structure often seems rather incoherent. Pick out a few of the spectacles, and note problems you see in the plot.

9. How do the historical characters (Boss Tweed, Horace Greely, P.T. Barnum) seem to represent the future? How is that future reflected in Jenny's (Cameron Diaz) decixion to heat West to California?

10. As the film ends Amsterdam says that every thing in his era has been forgoten, "like we wasn't there.: and the film ends with a series of overlapping dissolves that transform the New York into a twentieth-century city. What is the thematic significance of this ending?