The Postmodern Spectacle of the Gangster

Abstract

The beginning of the 1990s saw an upsurge in the production of gangster films after a slightly intermittent period of production in the 1980s with 1990 itself seeing the release of the Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing, Scorsese’s Goodfellas, Ferrara’s King of New York, and Coppola’s final installment of The Godfather trilogy. These films express the diversity of the genre as it has developed in recent years and include the postmodern retro style of Miller’s Crossing and its recapitulation of gangster thematics through their simulation, the return to the foot-soldier in Goodfellas, the return of the big shot formula in King of New York and the reiteration of the Epic scope displayed by the gangster genre in The Godfather Part III. Subsequent years have seen further recapitulation and variation of gangster thematics in, for example, the ‘gangsta’ film (New Jack City, Boyz n the Hood, Menace II Society and South Central) which demonstrates both self-conscious referentiality in its re-visiting of blaxploitation and black gangster films of the 1970s, while also offering political engagement by placing African-American gangs in the realities of their social and cultural landscape.