To me, The Warriors really captured an essence of gang societies in New York in the 60s. When I had thought about gangs in New York, my mind would immediately jump to West Side Story, but this movie proved to be much more serious, while maintaining some of the aspects seen in West Side Story, like the unwavering loyalty. The thing that surprised me the most was the allegiance gangs had to their colors, or uniforms. It seemed to me that the Warriors could’ve just taken off their vests and gotten home safely; instead they risked their lives, (and some of them actually gave their lives) to continue to wear their colors as they traveled. The notions of parlay and safe traveling through specific areas is so foreign to me outside the context of pirates and ancient societies. The allusion to the Ancient Greeks in the beginning of the movie helps me contextualize it, but also makes me wonder if that aspect was over-dramatized for the sake of the film. I’d like to do more research into the gangs to see if that’s how they truly acted when going through each other’s territories.
March 13, 2017
The Warriors
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Jerome Krase
March 22, 2017 — 12:05 pm
As you wrote “The allusion to the Ancient Greeks in the beginning of the movie helps me contextualize it, but also makes me wonder if that aspect was over-dramatized for the sake of the film. I’d like to do more research into the gangs to see if that’s how they truly acted when going through each other’s territories.” Over-dramatization, could also be said of Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York” as well as Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” as it is their style. As a start on learning about gangs of the period, read Lewis Yablonsky’s 1962 book “The Violent Gang. (He was the sociologist in the William Buckley video we watched about The Beats influence on The Hippies). His work also demonstrated that youth gangs emulate the military. Remember the youth of the 1960s grew up in a period of almost continuous large scale warfare (WWII, Korean, Vietnamese).