Gangster Movies, Jersey Boys, Gagsta Rappers, and Casinos
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
To stretch the point – the gangsta rapper dies young or survives and parlays his fame into a career as a multifaceted entrepreneur. Crack dealing as prototype for making it into the business world, or dropping right on through the bottom. Rap as a representation and rehearsal for dealing with the urban world of class.
The western may have once played out our Desperado/Sheriff inner life and foreign policy. But the gangster movie unfolds inside a context that has a top, a middle, and a bottom, with opportunities for advancement and threats of ruin, requiring some energy and moral ambiguity. One might say the gangster movie takes the always popular American story of transformative personal violence and places it inside an industrialized, urbanized hierarchy.
