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Title: Gangsta-Capital Author: Burn Shit Date: February 18, 2012 Language: en Topics: capitalism Source: Retrieved on 1st June 2021 from https://kpbsfs.wordpress.com/2012/02/18/gangsta-capital/
Whenever we watch MTV Cribs, we’re treated to a flaunting of extravagant
wealth and hyper-tacky Hollywood opulence. Proud millionaires take us on
strolls through their palatial dwellings, showing us the bed, ‘where the
magic happens’, regaling us with name-drop tales of pool parties, award
ceremonies and the obligatory thanks to God, family and fans for their
wealth and success. This is often coupled with some horseshit about how
their sickening hyper-affluence is all the more appreciated and deserved
after, ‘a rough start’, ‘a difficult upbringing’ or ‘being from where
I’m from’, followed by delicately-shrouded self-congradulatory praise
for their own upward social mobility, seeing themselves – as they do –
as the quintessence of the self-made man and the American Dream.
After a walk through the corridor (with some ADHD
speed-up/slow-mo/two-second-cut camera effects and Jay-Z’s ‘Big Pimpin’
added in post-production) we’re taken to admire the DVD collection and
the home cinema. Favourite film? Always Scarface. Always Scarface.
Sometimes there’s even a stage-managed gathering of friends and
revelers, joyously sharing in the fruits of the popular entertainment
industry. This is aspirational television at its best.
We invariably get a little speech about why that OG, Tony Montana, is
held in such high esteem by any self-styled Beverly Hills gangsta/Cribs
host: How they have four copies of the special collectors edition DVD
and a framed poster that reads, ‘Every Dog Has Its Day’. Now here’s the
kind of man they can relate to; a man who’ll do all it takes to,
‘provide for his family’, ‘make that paper’, ‘get to the top’ etc. etc.
etc. Isn’t it a curious choice of No. 1 film for a multimillionaire
rapper? A film about the American Dream turned American Nightmare? About
turbo-capitalist accumulation taken to its logical, violent conclusion?
Our MTV anchor seems to miss the point entirely, seeing Scarface as an
endorsement and glamorisation of a ‘money by any means’ mentality, a
‘Get rich or die trying’ aphorism of high-end drug-dealers and the
cut-throat, dog-eat-dog individualism of the sociopathic narcissist that
is Scarface. Accumulation of money, accumulation of status, accumulation
of reputation, accumulation for the sake of accumulation. This is
capitalism in its purest form. The apex of free-market economics. But
somewhere the intended meaning of Scarface has been lost; the narrative
of capitalism reaching a barbaric crescendo, and the old A-list
pseudo-leftist, Oliver Stone must feel a slight disappointment that his
script has gained so much kudos with aspiring Mafiosi and wannabe thugs.
The gangster, as a captain of the black market, makes a living in a
parallel economy. Illicit trade, drugs, prostitution, racketeering,
extortion, theft; he owes his fortune to an underworld that works
outside the confines of ‘legitimate business practices’, but mimics the
rules and structures of licensed corporatism with its own rigid
hierarchies, territorial disputes, ruthless competition and the golden
rule of supply and demand. Product and service. Buy for one dollar, sell
for two. Extract value, appropriate surplus, expand territory. It’s the
same game with the same rules, but with different merchandise and the
possibility of a more aggressive service. The Hollywood gangster
character isn’t dealing in metaphors or similes. What the films show is
the actual essence of capitalism and the actual embodiment of the
American Dream distortion, rather than just an anomaly, or a symptom of
the failure of the system, that is the system in all its glory.
We counterintuitively admire the Gangster. Their Hollywood portrayals
are charismatic and seductive. We gawp at the Corleones, Tony Soprano
and Scarface. We like them because they’ve taken capitalism for its
word. They’ve taken the abstract myth of the American Dream for reality
and followed it through to it’s obvious conclusion… This is what you’ve
taught us, now this is what we’ll do... Remember Milton Friedman, The
Godfather of the neo-liberal project, said that when it came to
narcotics, we should let ‘the invisible hand’ work its magic? Their
bosses have all the material wealth of CEOs but without the delusions of
legitimacy, or the pious assurances that their existence is both
necessary and desirable for ‘job creation’, ‘satisfying a demand’,
‘finding a niche’ or ‘stimulating growth’. No pretension with the
gangster. No justifications, no explanations – just profit. They embody
capitalist aspiration, ambition and the entrepreneurial spirit in its
rawest, most brutal form. They are the American Dream. And this is what
all good Gangster films are about; they all improvise around the same
scale, draw from the same theme – this is capitalism, this is the
American Dream fallacy. How heavy-handed and frequent were The Wire’s
brilliant parallels between drug gangs, government bureaucracies and
‘legitimate business’?
There’s no point engaging in any debates that differentiate between good
businesses and bad businesses. Why draw an arbitrary line between the
so-called ‘black market’ and the legitimate (white?!) one because we
know it’s all the same filthy operation. All markets are ‘black’, and we
reject the dichotomy and the Establishment’s sanctimonious nomenclature.
The politician, the businessman, the police and the priest fight a war
on drugs and a war on crime while they share tables with corporate
executives at charity fundraisers, scratching each others backs and
working the crowds. There’s no need to persuade that the whole system is
rigged against us. Society is a racket. Capitalism is gangland warfare:
Competing mobsters battling for the spoils of a 200-year mob-war.
We all love it when Al’s Michael cooly tells Pat Geary that they’re,
‘both part of the same hypocrisy, Senator.’
To be robbed with the sword by the gangster or to be robbed with the pen
by the grinning regional manager? The latter character – the man
offering us an honest days’ wage-labour, some state-sanctioned thievery
and humiliation on a mass scale – pompously tells us it’s for our own
good and that we should be thankful, grateful and glad. He cakes himself
in respectability, bathing and believing in his own shit with the
government as his bodyguard.
This isn’t a vindication of the Mafia. This is just a futile
vilification of organised crime, that is, just another denunciation of
capital in all its twisted forms, from we who hold Steve Jobs, Bill
Gates, Al Capone and John Gotti in the same low regard.