$80 ELIZABETH HARDWICK ‘The Reverend Abernathy spoke of a plate of salad shared with 1 King at the Lorraine Motel, creating a grief-laden scenery of he Last Supper. How odd it was afer all, his exalted Black Lib gration, played outa the holy table and at Gethsemane, ‘n the Garden,’ as the hymns have it. A moment in history, es instance filled with symbolism and the aura of Christian memory. Perhaps what was celebrated in Atlante was an end, not a be- ginning—the waning of the stow, sweet dream of Salvation, through Christ, for the Negro masses ROBERT WARSHOW ee The Gangster as Tragic Hero Anica, as «social and political organization, is committed toa cheerful view of life. It could not be otherwise. The sense of ‘agedy is a luxury of atistoceatic societies, where the fate of the individual is not conceived of as having a ditect and legit- ‘inate political importance, being determined by a fixed and supra-political—that is, non-controversial—moral order or fate. Modern equalitarian socicties, however, whether democratic or ‘authoritarian in their political forms, always base themselves on the claim that they are making life happier; the avowed function ofthe modern state, at least in its ultimate terms, is not only t0 ‘equlate social relations, but also co determine the quality and the Possibilities of human life in general. Happiness thus becomes the chief political issue—in a sense, the only political issue—-and for that reason it can never be treated as an issue at all, If an American or a Russian is uabappy, it implies a certain reproba. ticn of his society, and therefore, by a logic of which we can 7 ill recognize the necessity, it becomes an obligation of citizen shp to be cheerful; if che authorities find it necessary, the citizen | ty even be compelled to make a public display of his cheerful. | #8 on important occasions, just as he may be conscripted into | be army in time of war. 1 Newilly, this civic responsibility rests most strongly upon | organs of mass cultuce, The individual citizen may still be | vermicted his private unhappiness so long as it does not take on Poitical significance, the extent of this tolesance being deter. | mined by how large an area of private life the society ean accom _Redate, But every production of mass culture is @ public act and pmet conform with accepted notions of the public good. Nobody seriously questions the principle that it is the function uf ass culture to maintain public morale, and certainly nobody [it the mass audience objects to having his morale maintained, At etst ROBERT WARSHOW ‘when the aormal condition of the citizen is a state of toring, euphoria spreads over our cate lke the bro sale of an idiot. In terms of attimdes towards life, there is ve Uae difsence between 2 “happy” move lke Gaed Nez, which ignores death and suring, anda ad! movie lke A Tre Gy in Brook, which uses death and suffering as incidents in the service of a higher optimism, Bor, hatter exivencss as soure of consolation da means of pressure for mantining ‘positive’ socal aides, hi imism is fundamentally satisfying to no one, not those who would be most disoriented withowt its support, ved within de area of mas eulture hee always eis cures of opposition, secking to express by whatever means are available Ton that senee of desperation and inevitable failure which opt rism itself helps to create. Most often, this opposition is con- fined to rudimentary of semiliterate forms: in mob politics and journalism, for example, of ia certain kinds of religious enthes ham, When it does enter the Geld of art, it is likely 10 be disguised or attenuated: in an unspecific form of expression like jane in the basiealy harmless nihilism of che Marx Brothers, i the continually reasserted stain of hopelessness tha often seems to be the seal meaning ofthe soap opera. The gangster im is semarkable in that i ils the need for disguise (though nt sufieny to avo arousing uneasiness) without requting ty serious distortion. From its beginnings, it has been a ee and astonishingly complete presentation of the modern sens ee one exampl Toki charces, te anges ln spy one ex of the movies” constant tendeney to create fied drome Uiut ean be sepeated indefinitely with a reas Epectation follows another 28 om tation of profit. One gangster film follows anv musi! or one Wester fllows another. But the iy at necessarily opposed to the requirements of ax. There have beet tery succtsfal types of att in the past which developed sich eifc and decaled conventions as almost 9 make individsal Champles ofthe type intetchangeable. This i tue, for example of Elizabethan revenge tragedy and Restoration comedy. For such a ype to be succsfl meas that is eonventony Save imposed themselves upon the gene consciouse ad become the accepted vehicles of a particular set of aticudes ands ROBERT WARSHOW 583 2atticnlar aesthetic effect, One goes to any individual example f the type with very definite expectations, and originality is to be welcomed only in the degree that ie intensifies the expected perience without fundamentally altering it. Moreover, the xcationship between the conventions which go to make up such ‘ type and the real experience of its audience or the real frets of whatever situation it pretends to describe is of only secondary ‘portance and does not determine its aesthetic force. leis only ‘nan ultimate sense that the type appeals to its aucience’s expert ance of reality; much more immediately, it appeals to previous ‘experience of the type itself: it creates its own field of reference, Thus the importance of the gangster film, and the nature and | imensity of its emotional and aesthetic impact, cannot be neasured in tetms of the place of the gangster himself or the inportance of the problem of crime in American life. Those European movie-goers who think there is a gangster on every comer in New York are certainly deceived, but defenders of the esitive side of American culture ate equally deceived if they think ic relevant to point out that most Americans have nevec Sen. gangster. What matters is that che experience of the gang- Sit as am experience of art is universal to Americans. There is tlnost nothing we understand better or react to more readily or wth quicker intelligence. The Westemn film, though it seems fever to diminish in populatity, is for most of us no more than th: folklore of the past, familiar and understandable only because ithas been repeated so often. The gangster film comes much ‘kset. In ways that we do not easily or willingly define, the Sangster speaks for us, expressing that part of the American irche which rejects the qualities and the demands of modern which rejects “Americaasiaan” itsele The gangster is the man of the city, with the city’s language tnd knowledge, with its queet and dishonest skills and its tor, | ‘be daring, catrying his life in his hands like a placard, like a ‘ht For everyone else, there is atleast the theoretical possibility of snother world—in that happier American culeure which the | itgster denies, the city does not really exist; it is only a more j Souded and more brightly lit country—but for the gangster thee is only the city; he must inhabit it in order to personify it: fotthe real city, but that dangerous and sed city of the imagin ‘ior which is so much more important, which is the mociern584. ROBURT WARSHOW are real gangsters—is wor! the gangstes—though there g i say roduces only criminals; the imagin: rode the guagnter he is what we want tobe and wht We ae Mit we ico the crowd without background or advantages only those ambiguous skills which the ret Of us—the Fea people of che rel city--can only pretend to ave, the gangster is reptised to make his way, to make his life and impose it on hs choice or the choice fs beady been rade for iy does’ matter which: we ae aot permed co ask whether some point he could have chosen to be something else than w i f rational enterprise, .¢ gangster’s activity is actually a form of rie, inane ‘airy definite goals and various aa for set ing them. Buc this rationality is usually no moze than a vague back bundy ne know, pts tat he gangster sal gu or ht Be opertes a sues aces ofen we ate at given even tht such infomation, So his aevity becomes a nd of pure nal he hase people Crenly out response ote gang film is most consistently and most universally a resp mse 8 sadism; we gain the double satisfaction of Peres ict ‘ously in the gangster’s sadism and then seeing it tamed agains angster himself : ali or ey another level the quai of iscsonl tai ad the Guat of ronal enerpse Hecome one Since we do ot see the rational and routine aspects of the sings rs beet the practice of brutality—the gpalcy of wnnied eximinal comes the wualy vf his carcce, At the sarne ; an conscious that the whole meaning of this es ee for success: the typical gangster film presents a steady upiwar progress followed by a very precipitate fall. Thus brutality itself becot Zh to success and the content of suc: ecomes at once the means cess-—a success that is defined in its most general terms, not imited iplishment or specific gaia, but simply as the ualimite. sersblty of agresson,(n the same way, film presentations of Easinessmen tend to make ie appear that they achieve thei ue ces and alking on the telephone and holding conferences ani thatseecem i allng on the telephone an holding conferees) urlawfal. In the deeper la ROBERT WARSHOW 585 From this point of view, the initial contact between the film and its audience is an agreed conception of human life: that man 5s being with the possibilities of success or failure. This prin ciple, too, belongs to the city; one must emerge from the crowd or else one is nothing. On that basis the necessity of the action is cstablished, and it progresses by inalterable paths to the point where the gangster lies dead and the principle has heen modified: there is really only one possibility—fulure, The final meaning of the city is anonymity and death. Tn the opening scene of Scarface, we ate shown a successful man we know be is sucessful hecause he has just given a party 2% ‘opulent proportions and because he is called Big Louis. Through some monstrous lack of caution, he permits himself to 28 alone for a few moments. We understand from this immedi. cly that he is about to be killed. No convention of the gangster film is more strongly established thaa this: it is dangerous to be ilone, And yet the very conditions of success make it impossible tot to be alone, for success is always the establishment of an id. Midual pre-eminence that must be imposed on others, in whom it ‘mtomatically arouses hatred; the successful man is an outlaw. “The gangster’s whole life is an effort to assert himself a5 an indi, fidual, to draw himself out of the crowd, and he always dies ecu be is an individual; the final bullet thrusts him back, fakes him, afterall, «failure. “Mother of God,’ says the dying Tittle Caesar, ‘is this the end of Rico?’—speaking of himself tlus in the third person because what has been brought low is at the undifferentiated man, but the individual with a name, tte gangster, the success; even to himself he is a creature of the imagination, (T. S. Eliot has pointed ont that a mamber of Suukespeare’s tragic heroes have this trick of looking at them. ‘aves dramatically; thei true identity, the thing that is destroyed ‘when they die, is something outside themselyes—not x man, but astyle of life, a kind of meaning.) ‘At bottom, the gangster is doomed because he is under the clligation to succeed, not because the means he employs are vets of the modern consciousness, all ineans are unlawful, every attempt to succeed is an act of {euresion, leaving one alone and guilty and defenseless among faemies: one is panisted for success. This is out intolerable dilemma: chat failure is a kind of death and success is evil and