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When the Barrow Gang was conducting its brutal robberies and murders, socialists found in their exploits an echo of their anti-capitalist cause. So it was small surprise that the release of Bonnie and Clyde in 1967 marked the New Hollywood wave in which anti-heroes exposing the facade of American life through acts of dysfunction were to become the new focus of movies.
“Our best movies have always made entertainment out of the anti-heroism of American life,” Pauline Kael, the infamous film critic, gushed in her essay on the gangster film.
The anti-heroes were meant to be the heroes because American life was not heroic, it was anti-heroic, and the mission of the culture was to indoctrinate Americans with that message.
American heroes were not police officers, but the anti-heroes who killed them.
90 years after Bonnie and Clyde went down in a hail of bullets on the watch of Frank Hamer, one of the toughest Texas Rangers ever bred, and a half-century after the counterculture was launched with an appealing cinematic rebranding of the two criminals, a mentally unstable rich kid turned assassin became the new public face of the post-election counterculture.
Luigi Mangione is no hero except to those to whom American life is essentially anti-heroic. Luigi’s admirers are the same socialists who cheered on Bonnie and Clyde for robbing shopkeepers. Bonnie, Clyde and Luigi “made entertainment out of the anti-heroism of American life” and murder is the ultimate form of entertainment for anti-capitalist agitprop.
The three are not heroes because they are virtuous, they are anti-heroes because their admirers see America as evil, a corrupt oppressive capitalist society, hiding behind a heroic myth that must be deconstructed through propaganda, activism and terrorist violence.
A year before filming Bonnie and Clyde, its star Warren Beatty began working on the movie that would eventually become Reds (then titled Comrades) glorifying the Communist Revolution. Reds, unlike Bonnie and Clyde, never became a hit even though it’s beloved by leftists. Americans were not ready to embrace Communists as romantic heroes (unless like Nelson Mandella or other Communist figures, their Communist allegiances are kept secret.).
And that leaves the anti-heroes who are not Communists, socialists or radicals, but unwittingly serve their larger aims of violently deconstructing the American narrative. They’re criminals or lunatics who become popular in the process of assailing some outpost of capitalism. Their actual politics matter much less than the politics that can be attributed or read into their actions.
The anti-hero’s only real requirement beyond that is capturing the attention of the public.
Bonnie, Clyde and Luigi were all adept at media savvy crimes. The two robbers and killers built their reputation through the newspapers, like less anonymous Jack the Rippers, even posing for their own pictures. Like the average mass shooter, Luigi Mangione had his own manifesto, but even long before there was any public manifesto, leftists had adopted him as a class warrior of their own cause. But what Bonnie, Clyde, Luigi and countless school shooters, and leftists, really have in common is a malignant narcissism that leads them to lash out at the world.
Their half-baked narratives, Bonnie’s poems or Luigi’s manifestos, are a lot less interesting than the eagerness of leftists looking for killers who share their politics. Manifestos or messages from killers are symptoms not causes. Bonnie and Clyde didn’t actually steal because they had to, but because they wanted to be famous. Luigi went to great trouble to disguise himself and carry out a professional killing only to slip and give away his identity because he wanted to be caught. Men who truly don’t want to be caught, don’t carry manifestos explaining why they did it.
Killers of this kind, whether they pretend to be terrorists, school shooters, mass shooters or criminals, are narcissists. What they want most is to make their mark on the world. They’re narcissists who fume at the lack of recognition. By spilling blood, they want to make sure that no one ever forgets them. People scour their diaries and writings for clues, but whatever their stated grievances, it all comes down to some variation of, “I am angry at the world.”
The stated ideologies, even when they exist, rarely matter. The ‘incel’ shooters like Elliot Rodges, the supposed victims of bullying like the original Columbine shooters, the transgender shooters like the Covenant School killer, never actually have anything else to really say.
They are malignant narcissists who want to break the world because they’re unhappy.
Other people to them are interchangeable pieces or, in the slang of modern always onliners, ‘NPCs’ who can be smashed or killed to make a point. An entire culture exists around gamifying mass killers down to treating their victims like game scores and turning them into memes.
And that same species of violent narcissism also lies at the raw ugly heart of leftist politics.
Before Bonnie and Clyde hit movie theaters, the first modern mass shootings emerged most decisively in the University of Texas tower shooting. A few months later, the first copycat mass shooting arrived with an attack at a cosmetology school. The media became the vector for creating the copycat killers through its obsessive coverage of these new anti-heroes: the frantic efforts to find social or genetic excuses for their crimes and save them from execution.
The serial killer, in reality fairly rare, became a national phenomenon because he expressed the leftist cultural narrative that American life was not heroic, but anti-heroic, and should be understood not through the best of us, but the absolute very worst of us. Serial killers and mass shooters became the ideal anti-heroes, madmen lashing out at the mad society that spawned them. Exploiting the rising interest in nihilistic criminals as a commentary on a nihilistic society, Bonnie and Clyde reimagined the classic criminal duo and made anti-heroes into the heroes.
From there it was a short hop to A Clockwork Orange and dramas that made nihilism its star.
But that was back when movies mattered. Social media made life into entertainment while movies became special effects cartoons for overgrown children. There is no need to make a movie about Luigi (though one is reportedly in the works anyway) because his story already played out on the news and in social media. Whatever the trial will reveal doesn’t matter.
The Left successfully made Bonnie and Clyde into a referendum on banks (even though banks were not at issue) and it similarly made Luigi Mangione into a referendum on health care. And underneath both is the “anti-heroic” narrative of American life as a struggle against capitalism.
Glamorizing Luigi is not only about defending his crime, but inciting copycats to kill some more.
Reeling from catastrophic election defeats and the abandonment of the working class, leftists see in Luigi an opportunity to reboot their movement around a counterculture of class terrorism.
Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway made cool and dashing anti-heroes. And the movie shamelessly glamorized the exploits of a gang of ruthless and unrepentant criminals. There was an intriguing irony about the popularity of Bonnie and Clyde. It was left-leaning factions of the counterculture that were most moved by the film. It became an occasional rallying cry for some young political radicals of the sixties who saw Bonnie and Clyde’s exploits as an attack on American capitalism. Bonnie and Clyde as Robin Hood-like figures is hinted at throughout the film, something that would have appealed to leftist activists.
Long-time Times film critic Bosley Crowther was fired because he sharply criticized the novel, explicit violence of the film. This marked the beginning of the radical takeover of the Times and culture generally. This film, The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy and many others, marked the collapse of American popular culture.. Their graphic violence and explicit sex were made possible by the abolition of the 1934 self-censorship studio Production Code, which had been drafted by the Catholic Legion of Decency. This proved a disaster for popular culture.
Bonnie and Clyde was a good movie, but ahistorical, and the actual reality was pretty awful. Excellent analysis Daniel.
Hollywood and the media (social and otherwise) have indeed played
their part in keeping anti-heroes like Bonnie & Clyde and Luigi Mangione
propped up. Meanwhile, Americans have been inundated on a daily basis
by such anti-heroes whose anti-capitalist cause is Climate Change. Such
people as Biden, Kamala, Obama, Pelosi and on and on – who while not
actual murderers – are against capitalism.
After all, climate change is caused by the polluting industrialists – by big
business and free enterprise – according to those prostrate with worry
about the environment, ecosystem and rising seas. Getting rid of oil and
coal and natural gas – and whatever else is supported by capitalism – is
what they live for. All for a cause that is a total crock.
People swallowing the anti-capitalist swill never ask what will replace it.
The answer can only be Big Brother via Globalism or Communism where
‘you will own nothing and be happy’. That is, THEIR version of happiness,
not your own which is presently still guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution
thanks to the election of Donald Trump.
anything they see as “good”, and know is good, and is held as good by others, they hate.
I read somewhere, that the Guatemalan NYC subway arson, had a note in possession. The note said something like ‘As long as I don’t bother anybody I do what I want.’ The Democrats should make that guy their resident poet.
Run Walz, and the perp as VP, in 2028. Joy and fire!
CROOKS is also a hero to The Enemy Within. Only hours after the assassination attempt, the shooter had many admirers wishing he had better aim, taken more shooting lessons, and statues built in his honor. They also hate guns, blame guns, and yet they were depressed that the punk missed with his and that the golf course attempt was “so so so close to saving our Democracy!”
During Covid, a UNM Music Professor put on his FB page: “Breaking News: Corona Virus attracted to Red Hats.” This means he wanted Trump, his family, and MAGAS, to get CV and to DIE! (I called the UNM President, Dean of Fine Arts, Music Chairman/his friend, and filed a police report to be sent to the Dean of Students and the DEI Czar, that’s an LOL, with: “What if he wrote: CV attracted to Gays, Blacks, and Muslims? He’d be fired immediately so what’s the difference since Trump supporters are his students and now they have to live in fear of intimidation and retaliation and have to hide in Closets like Gays used to do! Now it’s a Hostile Learning Environment.” The Prof got a $10,000 raise the next year. He did die of a sudden heart attack two years later.
NOW THE PROTESTERS are supporting terrorists and are even repeating what an Iranian Madman declared: “Wipe Israel off the map!” Theirs is “from the River to the Sea” and allowed to say it at Universities while intimidating JEWS with the DEI czars not taking action to protect Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion of students.
THEY ALSO LEGITIMIZED the killing of the healthcare CEO: “Him denying millions was also a form of violence.”
THE RISE OF PSYCHOTICS AND SUPPORTED BY THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY!
And the Bullet Ridden Car is a example of what would soon happen I do beleive it was a 1935 Ford
Walt Frazier, a standout point guard for the 1970s-era NY Knicks NBA team, was indelibly dubbed “Clyde” for his flashy dressing style that channeled the Warren Beatty character in the movie. Now, a type of sweater that Luigi Mangione wore at a court appearance was reportedly an internet sales sensation. Is history repeating or mocking itself?
The rebel has always been an appealing character in the American imagination. The man taking on the establishment is a hero that takes on many forms. Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith goes to Washington”, many of the roles played by Henry Fonda, Gary Cooper in “High Noon” and even “The Lone Ranger”.
What makes Bonnie and Clyde more problematic is that there is nothing redemptive about their challenge to the status quo. They are rebels without a cause or clue. I remember when it came out that I had a hard time identifying with the pair and having trouble liking the protagonists. I remember feeling a somewhat similar reluctance to identify with the Jason Robards character in “A Thousand Clowns”. Robards character Murray Burns was funny and appealing in his way but ultimately he was irresponsible and it was his brother who is in the long run the more noble of the two siblings.
What is shocking about Luigi Mangioni is that he is not a fictitious character. He is a real life actor. It is appalling that so many young people approve of what he did. But most appalling is that the justification of his assassination has become so acceptable in our political discourse that it can be openly expressed without fear of social consequences.
And that song “Stagolee” which seems to be about nothing more than this guy’s notoriety for his murderous pettiness and cruelty after betting and losing his hat in a card game. It might not be as outwardly political of a story but it still has that disturbing quality where there is this uncertainty between what seems to be a kind of anti-hero and what should otherwise just be a regular villian not worthy of a story unto himself.
Remember Neil Young’s Down by the River?
Proverbs 8: 36 tells us all who hate the LORD love death.
Odd, I remember my Republican grandmother (and she has been died since 1978) speaking quite positive about John Dillinger the bank robber. I thought, then, odd as she also regularly expressed the thought that Prohibition was an truly great thing that hadn’t been given time enough to make a moral people. Today’s right sadness over the CEO’s shooting made me remember this, and you know – that love of money IS the root of all evil. (And that there IS a lot of love of money among the crowd so ‘right’ about – well – everything. Even those second and third sacred marriages – without the benefit of a death certificate for the last – sacred marriage.)
This rightist movement is more honest about itself than it could ever know. It’s the golden calf – and whatever else is wanted now.
“Dillinger” was another movie in that genre.
driven to the. point of insanity by the medical system is more accurate than psychopath. carlson has an interview with Brigham Buhler who describes in excruciating detail the 10 month medical ordeal of extreme pain caused by a spinal injury he sustained during which UHC did everything in their arsenal to deny him the necessary surgery only to have it botched by a surgeon he did not wish to use as his choice was out of network. Meanwhile senior executives have yearly salaries in the millions in double digits and this thompson SOB had just cashed. out for 30 in stock sales based on alleged insider trading. There is NO JUSTIFICATION for reimbursement packages to be in this range for what should be an exchange business. the podcast tells a horrifying story of the mechanism engaged in to generate excessive profits for its participants. please keep in mind this thompson jerk was hired for his expertise in algorithms to deny care. These people are all immoral and unethical business practices and should be fired.
But not murdered! Do you not agree?
If there is no God, everything is permitted.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal. And it all comes from lying – lying to others and to yourself.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
“The Brothers Karamazov”. Book by Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1879 – 1880.
Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Crime and Punishment”. Book by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Part VI, Chapter 4, p. 471), 1866.
The most offensive is not their lying – one can always forgive lying – lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth – what is offensive is that they lie and worship their own lying.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
In the early 1970s, SDS radicals at MIT were touting the North Korean dictator, who clearly ruled an unDemocratic Society..
If Mangione were a schlub, they wouldn’t be drooling over him.
I understand Bonny Parker was a a bit of a Poet herself
When Bonnie and Clyde was released, I was an impressionable and stupid teenager. They seemed so cool and romantic; I saw it about 8 times and the last time, left before the ambush scene so I didn’t have to see them die.
Thank the Lord, that influence didn’t bear evil fruit in my life and I grew up. After reading several books and seeing documentaries, I now have a polar opposite opinion about the murdering thugs. The Highwaymen, with Kevin Costner and Woody Harrellson tells a much different story; it’s well done and has high production values.
If Warren Beattie said the sun was shining at noon, I’d go out and look for myself before believing him.
Gonna watch “The Highwaymen,” this weekend. It’s been on my list but I’ve been on a comedy binge. Didn’t care for “Bonnie and Clyde,” but this looks like it’s going to be from the Rangers’ perspective.
As for the left’s reaction, I’m reminded of bernadine dohrn’s sick reaction to the manson murders.
Communists feel they are one murder away from Utopia.
King WesternMan