Two Words, One Answer.
season filled
 Seasons Comfort EOF201, Seven Fin Oil Filled Radiant Heater, White $47.88 7-Fin Oil Filled Radiant Heater  American Gangster - The Complete Second Season $22.99 For public consumption, BET contends that 'American Gangster' "explores without glorifying, and investigates without celebrating" the black criminals who are its subjects. In practice, 'American Gangster' wears its admiration for such thugs on its sleeve. In Season 2's first episode, devoted to the Philly Black Mafia, Barry Michael Cooper shows how it's done. Having written the screenplay for the 1991 Wesley Snipes crime thriller 'New Jack City,' Cooper serves as an authority on all things street for 'American Gangster.' "Maybe this sounds twisted," he says, "but I think there was a sense of accomplishment that we could organize and get things done amongst ourselves. Now it just happened to be that the milieu was crime. Maybe this is a twisted version of having the Dream and overcome [sic] it." Cooper is right about one thing. This is twisted. "As young black males, we grow up saluting and celebrating death," remarks rapper Mistah F.A.B. in the episode devoted to Oakland heroin kingpin Felix (Fee) Mitchell, stabbed to death by fellow inmates in Leavenworth Penitentiary two days before his 32nd birthday. "We grow up idolizing these street icons. You know, we don't grow up sayin' I want to be a lawyer, I want to be a doctor. We say, man, I want to be like Fee." Delivering a similar testimonial outside the projects decades after Fee met his untimely demise, a resident named Shamu swears, "Felix Mitchell was the guy. Straight up. The man loved his people. You know what I'm sayin'? When we was growing up in here, you can't tell me one family that went hongry in these two projects. Not one family!" No word from Shamu as to how many of these well-fed families paid with their lives for the heroin that financed Mitchell's largess. But this silence is in keeping with 'American Gangster's pretense that the only victims of black criminals are the criminals themselves, who are persecuted by the white power structure. In an episode dealing with multistate bank robber Chaz Williams, for example, narrator Ving Rhames asserts, "All of the banks that Chaz's crew robbed were federally insured. No citizens lost savings." Say what? Evidently Ving thinks that the FDIC, which guarantees deposits in member banks against institutional failure, also covers losses due to theft, which is untrue. Moreover, who if not citizens does Mr. Rhames suppose pays for the insurance policies that banks buy from private carriers? Slyly weaving such falsehoods into elaborate conspiracy theories, 'American Gangster' has propelled BET (which reaches more than 88 million households in the USA, Canada and the Caribbean) to the highest ratings in their 26-year history. But not everyone is thrilled. "Some of these Satanic Jews have taken over BET," railed the Nation of Islam's Minister Louis Farrakhan, deploring the image 'American Gangster' presents of black people. "See, we look like we're the murderers; we look like we're the gangsters." Anti-Semitism aside, Farrakhan has a point. 'American Gangster' isn't out to instill black pride. (Four of the show's five executive producers are white.) The show's mission is to score big ratings for Viacom, the $22 billion conglomerate that owns BET. By that standard, 'American Gangster' is a smashing success. Not only is it cable's #1 weekday original series among black households, it has crossed over to the white market, with A&E airing reruns on both its international Crime & Investigation programming and its domestic Biography Channel, and Paramount Home Entertainment attending to worldwide sales of DVDs. Obviously, lionizing black gangsters is big business, and crime after all does pay. |
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