Crime Culture

Hey, Travelers. Hope this stage of your educational journey is reaching a smooth finish.  If not, remember: breathe. Light always shines from even the darkest of tunnels and caverns. You’ll reach it.  Just have faith.

            As promised, I am reporting on the spring 2013 edition of Dr. Peter Kuryla’s St. Valentine’s Day Massacre academic lecture convocation. Sorry for the delay; I almost forgot and almost banished it to the depths of my mind. But now, it’s back, and you’re getting the opportunity to read the words of Matt Craft, MML, HI.

            Sadly, Dr. Kuryla didn’t deliver this awesome convo on the 84^th anniversary of this titular event. He delivered this convo on the day after instead. But if it’s all the same to you, it’s all the same to me. Now, let’s start   talking about the convo and its topic.

            The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre is a tale of horrific and mythic violence:  on February 14, 1929, infamous mobster Al Capone orchestrated a masterful stroke of theater, murder, and militarism. Under the guise of law enforcement, Capone’s goons descended onto an inside gang and achieved complete slaughter but failed to eliminate Capone’s rival Bugs Moran.[1]

            If this murder was so villainous, then why are we 21^st-century Americans so fascinated with it? Dr. Kuryla unpacked our fascination and offered some explanations for its existence…

            Dr. Kuryla asserted that our fascination today stems mostly from film and other entertainment media. Nevertheless, Hollywood did not dream the gentleman criminal out of nothing; they crafted their fiction around a contemporaneous reality. This contemporaneous reality around which the gangster world of movies and stories emerged was the Prohibition and anti-Prohibition movements. The 1840s’ alcohol-saturated America consisted of immigrant populations – Italians, Poles, Jews, and Germans – who included alcoholic beverages in their familial and cultural rituals. The average alcohol consumption per American at that time was seven gallons a year, more than it is today.

A reaction to all this drinkin’ was bound to come, and Victorian morality helped spur that; the Anti-Saloon League was formed in 1893 and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in 1896. Cartoons and news articles reflected the intertwining of the American identity with the stance on alcohol production and use: the Hun, an invasion of brewers, was taking Lady Liberty. These cartoons and printed bulletins preached that drinking destroyed families, wasted grain, and was un-American.  Beneath all that Prohibition talk lay a desire to tame the numerous immigrants who patronized saloons and for whom drunkenness was a recurring problem.

Zealous preachers joined the cause and attacked particular immigrant groups. Billy Sunday,[2] for example, claimed that Hell was stamped with the words “Made in Germany.”  The various gangster organizations benefitted from Prohibition as it gave them a cause and an underground business on which to thrive.  Italian immigrant Johnny Torrio developed the Chicago criminal empire, and his protégé Al Capone inherited the empire and enlarged it. Ironically, Capone possessed a dual, often-contradictory image: he was both a celebrity and a criminal. In fact, he made the March 24, 1930 cover of Time magazine a little over 83 years ago, on which he looked respectable and middle-class.

The anti-Prohibition movement to legalize alcohol consumption and sales was actually the anti-gangster, anti-organized crime cause. I surmise that the members of this movement had many goals. But their main goal was to turn back the clock to pre-Prohibition America, and the destruction of the mob was an added bonus.

Gangster films, many of them now considered classics, reflected the organized crime culture of the Prohibition years and depicted various levels of assimilated aliens into Americans as consumers, businessmen, and gentlemen. One fascination for many people with The Godfather epic is a family’s assimilation into American culture from its Sicilian origins. Likewise, the 1983 remake of Scarface tells the story of Tony Montana who arrived in America in 1980 as part of the Mariel boatlift[3] —very recent to the film—and we watch Montana’s Americanization through “gangsterhood.”[4] And don’t forget The Sopranos! A completely assimilated Italian clan who parodies the older stereotype of an Italian-American immigrant family as they discuss “the mob” over moo-shoo pork from the local Chinese take-out eatery: an ultimate melting-pot scene! LOL!

Other films Dr. Kuryla excerpted in his presentation included: the black and white, original 1932 Scarface, complete with a gangster’s flirtatious dame and his own gaudy ring as a sign of prosperity (crime pays—for a while LOL!); Public Enemy, with Jean Harlow and James Cagney in which there’s a great scene of the stylish gangster with a huge car, a consumer flaunting his excess to attract an alluring woman, a “gun moll,”[5] to complete his persona; and Little Caesar, with criminal kingpin Edward G. Robinson and his handsome young protégé in a homoerotic film where Dr. Kuryla pointed out that consumption and power blur the boundaries of gender roles. Take note of the style of dress, hair, and adornments such as cars and jewelry that exemplify the 1920s and 1930s for us now, but the gangster films offer us more than that: they offer us a glance of the American business model lurking behind the shadows of impassionate violence. The crime lords, both real and Hollywood, appeared organized, rational, efficient, and utterly removed from anything “dirty.” As we observe in the 1972 classic, The Godfather, loyalty and structure prevail in the corporate hierarchy. Minions obeyed orders and received rewards.

Missing from these criminal empires is any burden of Protestant middle-class morality. There is no ethical limit, no effort to live moderately or lawfully. In fact, these “Napoleons of Crime”[6] twisted and used the law for their own guiltless gain. And in my opinion, the ultimate kingpin residing in our historical and mythic consciousness is Capone whose criminal monopoly continued until 1931. The countless murders he orchestrated did not lead to his defeat, but rather “tax evasion”[7] did, as depicted in 1987-stastic The Untouchables starring Kevin Costner as Eliot Ness[8] and Robert De Niro as Capone. Dr. Kuryla didn’t feature The Untouchables in his presentation, possibly because he considers it a bad movie with Costner in it. LOL! Or simply, he didn’t have time since the room was packed and therefore he is cut this convo short. Regardless, this ’87 film recounts some pivotal events in the history of crime and law enforcement. A more recent film that Dr. Kuryla also didn’t feature is 2009’s Public Enemies narrating the story of infamous crook John Dillinger and determined FBI agent Melvin Purvis. This 21^st-century telling of 20^th-century events stars Johnny Depp as Dillinger and Christian Bale as Purvis. Yeah! Batman and John Connor![9] Who’s better to portray a G-man[10] than Batman, the world’s greatest dark-winged detective, and John Connor, protector of mankind! Yeah!

Despite cutting this convo short and not featuring more recent films, I thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Kuryla’s presentation.  It was both informative and intriguing, a combo hard for some subjects to achieve. But not Dr. Kuryla. He delivered. As always.

Thanks for reading, Travelers. Peace!

MML, HI

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[1] George “Bugs” Moran was an old rival of Al Capone and watched helplessly as Capone’s minions slew his best goons during the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. “This Day in History: George ‘Bugs’ Moran Is Arrested,” History.com, A&E Networks LLC, 2013, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/george-bugs-moran-is-arrested.

[2] William Ashley “Billy” Sunday was a baseball player who turned to Christian ministry. “Billy Sunday Remembered,” Billy Sunday Online, 2009, http://billysunday.org/.

[3] On April 20, 1980, Cuban emigrants, with Fidel Castro’s permission, left Cuba from Mariel ports and came to America in response to “housing and job shortages” in their native country. “This Day in History: Castro Announces Mariel Boatlift,” history.com, A&E Networks LLC, 2013, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/castro-announces-mariel-boatlift.

[4] Gangsterhood is a term that Dr. Kuryla used in his presentation.

[5] Occasionally shortened to just moll, gun moll is an early-twentieth-century slang term referring to a woman accompanying a male criminal or “a female criminal.” “Gun Moll,” Dictionary.com LLC, 2013, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gun%20moll.

[6] A reference to Sir Arthur Conman Doyle’s famous detective, Sherlock Holmes. In the 1893 installment originally intended as the last, “The Final Problem,” Holmes describes nemesis Professor James Moriarty as the “Napoleon of Crime.”

[7] “This Day in History: Capone Goes to Prison,” History.com, A&E Networks, LLC, 2013, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/capone-goes-to-prison.

[8] A Chicago native of Norwegian parents, Eliot Ness was the leader of government agents dubbed the “Untouchables” who ultimately caught Capone. “Eliot Ness,” Map of People, 2013, http://www.mapofpeople.com/eliot-ness-726962/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=CPC&utm_term=eliot-ness&utm_content=eliot-ness&utm_campaign=people-1-16.

[9] Son of Sarah Connor, John Connor is the leader of the post-apocalyptic human resistance in the Terminator franchise, and Christian Bale plays a 30s-year-old John Connor in the 2009 installment Terminator: Salvation.

[10] Short for government man, G-man is a term generally applied to FBI agents and coined by gangster “Machine Gun Kelly.” The story goes like this: the FBI was raiding his hideout and caught him shaving; he turned and said, “Don’t shoot, G-man.”