国民公敌

（这段文字本来是上课前要交的小反思，写着写着发现偏理论了，而且还挺有意思，就放到这里来了。文字非正式，没时间翻译，也没准确地给引用。后面私心放了《麦克白》里的一长段独白，本来可以概括的，但是写得真是太好了。）

One technical strategy I notice in gangster films is the tendency to depict violence off-screen and represents it solely through sound. Examples of this would be Tom’s father whipping him, Tom and Matt’s revenge on Putty, their killing of the horse for revenge, and Tom’s final revenge on the other gang. Besides having the viewers conjure up the violence themselves (their imaginations are believed to render the scenes more violent than visual depictions can achieve), this strategy also mystifies the gangster. Consequently, viewers are attracted to this genre because its protagonists are always a myth, whose anarchic value most of us don’t hold and whose underworld life is revealed only at a superficial level. I have an intuition that the mystification of the protagonist may also lead to the idolization of them. That is, through our imaginations, we tend to make up the myth in a good way (eg. aesthetic but not sickening violence, cold and determined gangster but not common people or vulgar criminals).

Another thing I want to note is that scholars tend to describe the gangster in gangster film as a “tragic figure.” More into the theory, I am curious about what “tragedy” is. A similarity I notice in Shakespeare's Macbeth and Wellman’s The Public Enemy is the final compromised, passive emotion both Macbeth and Tom Power have. By comparing the two works, my current thought is that

1. our sense of “tragic” and “tragedy” might lie under the realization of the meaningless of life
2. The protagonists are tragic by fate, which is associated with inability and inevitability.

-------------------Here is my longer explanation for tragedy-----------------

When Macbeth lost his men’s trust, heard that his wife just died, and knew that the real king (Malcolm) is approaching, he says:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

This attitude also appears when Tom lies on the ward’s bed, giving affirmative answers to his family’s wishes but is obviously absent-minded. It seems that after his revenge, he doesn't care about anything for the rest of his life, no hope, no family, no friends.

Therefore, I think our sense of “tragic” and “tragedy” might lie under the realization of the meaningless of life. Both protagonists are tragic figures for they get what they want but then only to realize its vagueness and meaninglessness. It’s tragic for an energetic, untamable person to realize that what he had actively pursued is meaningless and maybe his life itself as well.

Another factor that contributes to tragedy is fate. Macbeth is about the eternal fate people (individually in his time or collectively in history) can never break. The analysis of the gangster film also points out the gangsters’ inability to switch courses even though the gangsters know their decision is unacceptable in society (see pp88 Hollywood Genres). The analysis also emphasizes that gangsters’ death is resulted from their inevitable failure to adhere to their own doctrine (eg. “code of anarchic ruthlessness”, self-sufficiency) because he is a human bonded to his family, friends, and culture （same book). These human inability and inevitability are the “fate.” Therefore, it seems that protagonists are tragic by their fate.

Btw, it's nice to add here at the end that Nietzsche thinks life is tragic, and art (especially tragedy) is a way to save us from the meaninglessness of life.