Multiracial Communities

In the early days of their film making Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee both only seemed to focus on their own races in earlier films and never really portrayed other groups in their city. Since then their newer films like Spike Lee’s 1989 Do the Right Thing and Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York portray the city of New York as a multiracial town that doesn’t just have black and white roots.

Do the Right Thing is Lee’s greatest representation of a multiracial New York with the exception of 25th hour. In this 1989 movie that dealt with a racially diverse community we have several groups of people living together and sometimes doing it peacefully. It is set on a single street in Bed-Stuy, a neighborhood in Brooklyn which is starting to become more racially diverse rather then it being mainly populated by African-Americans. In this neighborhood we have several groups of people that include: Asians, Whites, Italians, Puerto Ricans, and Blacks. The Black population is the majority population of the city. The film has three scenes that portray its ethnically growing community and each one represents how Spike Lee transcended from his early all black films to now.

Early on in the film we have Bugging out a character that easily becomes seen as the stories trouble maker have a confrontation with a white resident of the neighborhood. Bugging out is walking on his way to wherever he goes to enjoy himself when a white man with a Larry bird jersey scuffs his brand new shoes. Bugging out goes insane and confronts the man at what appears to be his home and they exchange several words. In this small scuffle of words between the two men Bugging out questions why the man is in his neighborhood, why did he buy a house in his town, and why doesn’t he go back to where he came from. This scene I believe slowly allows to see that the neighborhood is changing we have a white man moving into a majority all black neighborhood. Lee positions the black group with Bugging out all on one side and the lone white man on another representing how in this neighborhood he is representing the minority group. The second scene that also shows how the neighborhood is changing is the scene with the three homeless black men that comment on the neighborhood. The three men sit there all day and pick apart what is going on in their little community and at one point in the film the three make a comment about the Asian market. One of the older gentlemen says that the Asians are fresh off the boat yet they all ready have a shop open and are starting to invade every corner. This scene here just like the pervious one described earlier just discusses one race and that one race is now moving into this black neighborhood. The three gentlemen being to discuss why it isn’t a black mans shop. The comment of why isn’t it a black mans shop is proof enough that the area is starting to lose what identity it once had and that is an identity of an all black community. Finally The once scene in the movie that gives you an idea of how the community is changing is probably the most famous scene from the movie and that is the rant scene. The rant scene or as many call it the racial rant scene is a small one to two minute rant involving all the different ethnic groups in the community and having them bash one another. The scene starts with Mookie discussing Italians, then Pino discussing Blacks, a Puerto Rican discussing Asians, a White man discussing Puerto Ricans and finally an Asian discussing the White man. This scene even though has races trashing one another is a great representation of how the community has changed. In Lee’s early films it was an all black film no other race to be scene, but as the times moved on the community changed an now all these people live with one another. The way it is filmed is sort of a timeline fashion starting with the Blacks who where in the neighborhood first, then the Italians who are right next door, the Puerto Ricans who started to enter then the last two races the Whites and Asians who both seem to just entering into the neighborhood. The rant truly best represents how the area changed from an all Black to now a multicultural community that houses more people and new tensions to go along with those people.

Spike Lee’s first two films that we viewed in class were both shot in the same area and yet only represented the black population. As time moved on so did Spike Lee’s vision and he soon along with the neighborhood changed his ways of represtning it. As more and more races began to move into this community he represented it in his 1989 film Do the Right Thing by perfectly showing how the community reacted to this new transition of culture and races. Spike Lee did it representing at the time of the film the present, while Martin Scorsese does it by taking us to the past and showing us how the area of Five Points was racially diverse after the Civil War in his historic epic Gangs of New York. .

Gangs of New York is a film set in the mid-19th century in the Five Points district of New York City and deals with a territorial war between the gangs of the so called native groups of the area and the recently arrived, predominantly Irish Catholic immigrants, The Natives are a mainly American born English and Dutch men/women and are led by William "Bill the Butcher" Cutting, a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant with an open hatred of recent immigrants. The leader of the immigrant Irish, the "Dead Rabbits," is Priest Vallon, who has a young son, Amsterdam. Cutting and Vallon meet with their respective gangs in a battle, horrific and bloody, concluding when Bill kills Priest Vallon. Amsterdam is a witness. Cutting declares the Dead Rabbits outlawed and orders Vallon's body buried with honor. Amsterdam is placed in an orphanage and later returns to the city as an adult seeking revenge against the man that killed his father. Scorsese film is a great depiction of a multiracial city one that is already past the stage of people arriving and into the stage of trying to assimilate into society.

Since the film takes place after the Civil War we know historically America was rebuilding its self and had many different types of immigrants arriving each day in New York looking for work in the new rebuilding America. The Asian population was one of these new races moving to America in search of a new life. In the film by Scorsese the Asians are not represented as a group in which the natives are complete hostile to, instead they seem to provide something for the natives that the other groups do not and that is entertainment. Midway through the movie the two characters that the story rotates around decide to go visit a certain Asian establish meant that provides traditional Asian dance and music entertainment along with drinking, gambling, and women. This scene represents how the Asians decided to assimilate themselves into the native society and that was by becoming as I saw it their entertainment slaves only used long enough to fulfill the entertainment needs of the natives. I came to this conclusion because halfway through the Asian music the Butcher interrupts and takes matters into his hands and the whole thing just becomes a place for natives only and they being to kick people out. This I saw as a way to show that the Asians of the community were common enough to have their own area of town and their own venues such as the theater type building, but were still not considered natives and could be easily pushed aside whenever the natives got bored of them. The second group of people that are joining the slowly multiracial growing city is the Irish. The Irish in this movie seem to be the main targets of the natives. The natives despise the “Dead Rabbits” a group of Irish threatening the native population of the city. A scene that the Irish are starting to become a part of the city is when Amsterdam is discussing with his Irish brethren that there are thousands of Irish arriving each day. This is not a very visual scene but Scorsese uses this informational scene as a way to portray the cities changing demographic from a majority of natives to a majority of Irish. With thousands of Irish arriving each day the city becomes more diverse then it already is thus slowly achieving its goal of becoming the city it is today as Scorsese shows it being in the end with the glimpse of a modern day New York.

Spike Lee and his film Do the Right Thing represents how a small neighborhood deals with a racial changing demographic. The community goes from being predominantly black to being White, Black, Puerto Rican, Asian, and Italian. The film deals with how these groups lived together and how they all reacted toward ones action. Scorsese takes a historical look on how Five Points a past life of modern New York was racially diverse. He represented how natives treated the groups of people that had already been settled there for years like the Asians who were common enough to have their own area of Five Points and the Irish who were coming into the city in such large masses that they were changing the whole demographic of the area. Both directors started out only representing their race and culture in their films and only discussing their problems, but as the times moved on so did their vision of the neighborhoods they were representing in their films. Soon their films didn’t just focus on blacks or Italians now they focused on every other race and the relations they had with one another living in a small community. The works of these two men isn’t completely accurate and doesn’t exactly represent the way things were, but their work does help in giving us a basic sight onto these multiracial communities.



Bibliography

Dyer, R (1997).The Matter of Whitness.
Verdicchio, P (1997).Its a Jungle in Here.

IMDb. Retrieved July 23, 2008, from Do the Right Thing(1989) Web site: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097216/
IMDb. Retrieved July 23, 2008, from Gangs of New York(2002) Web site: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0217505/

Generation Gaps

Generation gaps can be seen clearly in Scorsese’s and Lee’s early films such as Joe Bedstuys Barbershop and Mean Streets. Both directors come from a racially different background then the “average” white American, one is black and the other Italian. Scorsese is a third generation Italian whose people came from Italy around the years of 1870 to the mid 20th century. Lee is a second generation northern urban African American whose people migrated from the southern states to the northern states in the early and mid 20th century in order to esc ape racist laws such Jim Crow laws that made it hard for blacks to do much of anything. Both directors use their own personal experience as a member of a third or second generation class to give their stories and main characters a life of there own.
One of Martin Scorsese’s first films and one that truly represents the generation gap of third generation Italians from their second and first generation family members is Mean Streets a movie about a protagonist named Charlie who is a third generation Italian man working in the mafia with his assumable second generation uncle Giovanni. The film has a basic plot; Charlie is trying to move up the ranks of the mafia, but is held back due to his inability to disassociate himself of an immature friend named Johnny Boy. After learning of Scorsese”s life we can see right away that Charlie is a representation in some way of Scorsese, which is a clear sign that the directors up bringing influences how his character will behave and react to certain situations presented to him during the film. With Scorsese being a third generation Italian American his movie characters will face the same troubles he had with issues like trying to assimilate themselves into the “normal” way of life and trying to live his life the way hey see fit not the way tradition or family sees fit. One of the many examples found in Mean Streets of a generation gap is the conversation Giovanni and Charlie have about Teresa and her “situation”. Giovanni is discussing with Charlie and another man probably another gangster about how Teresa is going to her parents about wanting her own place and they don’t like the idea of her having her own place so they come to Giovanni for advice. Giovanni goes on telling the two that he doesn’t know what to do and for Charlie to keep on eye on the girl that he refers to as “sick” in the head. As Charlie then attempts to tell his uncle that she’s not sick in the head, but has a disease called Epilepsy, Giovanni reiterates that’s what he meant “sick” in the head. This small and seemingly unimportant scene in the movie truly portrays the generation gap between Charlie and his uncle. By his uncle not recognizing the disease Teresa has and just referring to it as being sick in the head shows his ignorance toward the issues of the day and not being educated on certain things as Charlie seems to be. That example portrays the way Charlie and his second generation uncle see things on a very different scale, but Charlie has several inner conflicts about what he does and if it’s the “right” thing to do. A prime example of this inner conflict Charlie has is when he sets up a date with the black dancer Diane at his friends bar. Charlie from the start of the film is attracted to the women and finds her appealing in many sexual ways. Midway through the movie he gets the courage to ask her out and they agree on getting Chinese food together. We see the Diane waiting for Charlie as his cab drives near the Chinese restaurant we see Charlie in it he tells the driver to keep going and not stop. Thus Charlie begins to contemplate what he is doing and beings to say things such as be cannot be seen in public with a black woman what will people say. He is torn between his desire to be with her and his upbringing by a second generation family. He decides to not meet her and head back for home, thus caving in to what the second generation group has taught him. Scorsese does a great job of portraying third generation life in Mean Streets from Charlie’s small talks with his uncle to his inner conflicts it is all rich with a confrontation of the traditional ways and the new “normal” way of living.
Lee’s generation gap is represented in his movies in a different way. He doesn’t take two different age groups and match them against each other and has them portray their differences. Instead Lee takes two people of the same generation the second generation African Americans, but adds a twist one is always a northerner urban raised person while the other one seems to come from somewhere in the south. The greatest example of this is in Joe Bed-Stuys Barbershop and the two characters in this confrontation are Zack the protagonist and his wife Ruth. Zack is a second generation urban raised man while Ruth is second generation and rises from the south. Early on in the movie Ruth and Zack argue about the barbershop that Zack has inherited due to an accident to its owner Joe. Ruth wants him to sell the shop so they can move to Georgia where she has a house, but Zack doesn’t want to sell he wants to succeed in this town. Ruth’s obvious southern up bringing forces her to desire a better life, while Zack’s urban heritage makes him only want to conquer his current life style and succeed in it. Throughout the rest of the film the two argue about what to do with the shop from selling it to starting to offer curls in hair, which Zack doesn’t agree to either. Both these attempts by Ruth and denials by Zack are perfect examples of how geography does play a role in the way two people interact with one another. You have the southerner wanting a better life and simpler times, while the man from the urban background wants to stay and beat the system with hard work and determination. Lee’s first film is one that portrays this issue of how even being the same generation can still cause two people to be different as long as there from two different parts of America.
Both directors are of the generation they try and represent in films and both do it in unique ways. Lee does it depending on geography while Scorsese represents how families begin to change due to this gap. Mean Streets portrayed the way families influence one another with Charlie afraid to be seen with a black woman, while Lee’s film represented how geography plays a huge role in the way two people see things by having Ruth and Zack argue over living arrangements in a “ghetto” like town. These issues that these characters went through in the movies represented the same issues Lee and Scorsese could have gone through when they tried to assimilate them selves into “normal” life or try and succeed finically in our capitalist life style. Looking back at both films one must agree that they are a perfect representation of how one views generation gaps and geographical differences.