Prior to the emergence of the gangster, crime was portrayed as the activity of a deranged individual, who performed his deed singlehandedly in dark and dreary urban ghettos. Based on the realities of the 1920s, crime, in movies like Little Caesar and Public Enemy, moved from ethnic ghettos to downtown commercial centres. This enabled criminals to more closely resemble the rising business class. As gangsters started associating with the upper echelons of society, it became harder to tell the gangster from the corporate elite. The Godfather and The Sopranos illustrates a dichotomy in how gangsters are perceived.
Gangsters are guys who try to bypass the system any way they can.
When they're successful, they give us a sense of how things could be if we were our own boss. When they fail, they give us a sense of relief that it wasn't one of us. Gardaphe's talk was this year's McDonald-Currie Lecture in the Faculty of Arts. Published by the University Relations Office, the Reporter publishes bi-weekly during the academic year and is available throughout McGill's downtown and Macdonald campuses.