gangsta chic in modern culture....?

Subject: gangsta chic in modern culture....?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 24 May 06 - 04:53 AM

Ellen Poulsen in her recent book about the women in the John Dillinger gang, Don't call us Molls, pointed out that Carol Lombard in the Oscar winning film, It happened One Night copied her 'look' from the news photos of Bonnie Parker in her one decent dress.

Then later I saw this programme about Bogart on the Biography Channel and one of the pundits was saying people watching his early films felt that watching Bogart, they felt that it actually was John Dillinger up there on the screen.

In more recent times there have been reggae star Jimmy Cliff posing as a gangster in The Harder They Come. Adam Ant as a highwayman, Michael Jackson as a Smooth Criminal.

is there a difference between now and then. Modern examples tend to be more camp, not taking in the the cruelty and the bullets - but what DO we take from these shadowy figures?

Subject: RE: gangsta chic in modern culture....?
From: keberoxu
Date: 13 Jun 19 - 03:15 PM

Well, to judge from some big stories in the news,
these figures never go away --
they just keep on coming back and shooting people.

Baseball luminary David Ortiz shot, not merely in the back, but THROUGH the back

Subject: RE: gangsta chic in modern culture....?
From: keberoxu
Date: 14 Jun 19 - 03:59 PM

And now that the fellow who fired the gun
is detained,
he is telling the investigators,
Mistaken Identity,
I shot this man by accident taking him for somebody else ...

Subject: RE: gangsta chic in modern culture....?
From: keberoxu
Date: 16 Jun 19 - 01:11 PM

The David Ortiz shooting investigation --
Ortiz sustained serious injury to vital organs from the single bullet,
but is out of intensive care --

is now exposing past criminal activity around this celebrity.

Operation Barbershop

Subject: RE: gangsta chic in modern culture....?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 17 Jun 19 - 11:31 AM

It was Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night.

Subject: RE: gangsta chic in modern culture....?
From: keberoxu
Date: 19 Jun 19 - 12:25 PM

Big Al, about the shadowy figures of your opening post:

what about all those traditional lyrics
about pirates, and highwaymen, and poachers, and so on ...
the fascination with outlaws,
is this not
an enduring paradox of civilization?

Subject: RE: gangsta chic in modern culture....?
From: Mossback
Date: 19 Jun 19 - 06:05 PM

There is nothing "chic" about gangsters - they're scum, as anyone with experience of the real item will readily admit.

"Fascination" with them is not a paradox - its a sign of ignorance or mental illness.

Subject: RE: gangsta chic in modern culture....?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 20 Jun 19 - 01:23 PM

Yet, Married to the Mob was a funny movie.

Subject: RE: gangsta chic in modern culture....?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 20 Jun 19 - 02:36 PM

Though I never watched it, the overwhelming success of HBO's The Sopranos shows at least an allegorical interest in organized crime.

Subject: RE: gangsta chic in modern culture....?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 21 Jun 19 - 10:56 AM

I always thought the character in Whisky in the jar was a sort of fantasy figure for the poor sods whose lives were led in abject poverty.

The outlaws got to travel, drink, have money to spend - dashing characters like Jesse James, whom John Dillinger idolised. Of course its a short and a merry life. that's the salespitch anyway.

I can remember when my wife wanted to weat long skirts like Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde.

Subject: RE: gangsta chic in modern culture....?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 Jun 19 - 11:22 AM

Here's how Bonnie Parker dressed.

Same dress, different angle.

Subject: RE: gangsta chic in modern culture....?
From: meself
Date: 21 Jun 19 - 01:45 PM

Now, I'm not a fashion aficionado, you will be surprised to learn - but that strikes me as an appealing, effective design - what could be kind a of a 'classic' look.

Subject: RE: gangsta chic in modern culture....?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 Jun 19 - 03:55 PM

This was the Hollywood take on Bonnie (modeled by Dunaway).

New York Magazine played with various movie looks and created this in 2014 for the Bonnie/Dunaway character.

Subject: RE: gangsta chic in modern culture....?
From: Mossback
Date: 21 Jun 19 - 04:10 PM

WAY COOL!

Now who WOULDN'T want to dress like and emulate a murdering psychopath with no redeeming qualities!

Pretty soon dressing like Trumpshit will be all the "chic" rage.

Subject: RE: gangsta chic in modern culture....?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 23 Jun 19 - 11:12 PM

I think the rest of us in harness cast envious eyes at the freedom, anarchy and exuberance of the outlaw life.

Isn't that a big part of the charisma of the rebel chic rockstars who avoid the toad work.


Toads by Philip Larkin
Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?

Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison —
Just for paying a few bills!
That’s out of proportion.

Lots of folk live on their wits:
Lecturers, lispers,
Losels, loblolly—men, louts—
They don’t end as paupers;

Lots of folk live up lanes
With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines—
they seem to like it.

Their nippers have got bare feet,
Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets —and yet
No one actually starves.

Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that’s the stuff
That dreams are made on:

For something sufficiently toad—like
Squats in me, too;
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
And cold as snow,

And will never allow me to blarney
My way of getting
The fame and the girl and the money
All at one sitting.

I don’t say, one bodies the other
One’s spiritual truth;
But I do say it’s hard to lose either,
When you have both.

Subject: RE: gangsta chic in modern culture....?
From: keberoxu
Date: 11 Jul 19 - 06:26 PM

And while David "Big Papi" Ortiz, formerly of the Red Sox,
goes through his third surgery since the shooting,
the list of people arrested gets
longer and longer.

Subject: RE: gangsta chic in modern culture....?
From: keberoxu
Date: 26 Jul 19 - 01:56 PM

Meanwhile, we have gangsters who 'rat' to the FBI
and die a hideous death at the hands of
other gangsters who hate informers.

The gangster in question here
was put on trial and found guilty in Boston,
and that fairly recently,
getting huge amounts of mass media attention.
Especially regarding an unfortunate young woman
who was amongst his murder victims.

Now the South Boston house
where her remains were first interred in the basement
has been put on the market,
for just under four million dollars.

Boston Globe: "The Haunty"