William Cutting, AKA Bill the Butcher, is an exaggerated caricature of William Poole. He considers himself a 'real' American, because his father died fighting for his country in The Battle of New Orleans. Even though he detests Irish immigrants and is vicious towards his underlings, he takes several Irish immigrants under his wing, including former Dead Rabbits.
Table of contents
- Themes
- 19th Century slang
- Footnotes
- Links
- Possible points of contention
Tribalism
Catholics versus Protestants/Christians
Bill the Butcher and his merry mob of Bowery Boys on the battlefield - here, they throw their iconic hats in the air before starting the fight.
The film, taking place in Lower Manhattan’s “Five Points” district circa 1850, depicts New York in a less-than-flattering light. Territorial war is being waged between a self-purported Nativist party, consisting of Dutch/English Protestant settlers, and an Irish Catholic mob consisting of Irish immigrants. In the opening scene, we see the Irish preparing for a decisive battle with the Natives that will decide who holds sway over the Five Points.
In the ensuing battle, the snow-covered streets flow with blood until William Cutting, leader of the Natives, strikes down his Irish adversary, Priest Vallon. The winner, William Cutting, to one’s surprise, shows signs of following a certain warrior’s code:
Ears and noses will be the trophies of the day. But no hand shall touch him! No hand shall touch him! He’ll cross over whole, in honor.
The young child of the slain Dead Rabbits leader, Vallon, is forced to watch his father die and is shortly thereafter dragged to a nearby orphanage center. William Cutting, declaring himself tribal ruler of the Five Points from this point on, declares the Dead Rabbits outlawed and orders a respectful burial of his opponent. The camera zooms out to show us a bird’s eye-view of the setting, and a subtitle appears reading ‘NEW YORK, 1846′. (as if reminding the New Yorker watching: no, this was not ‘Dante’s Inferno‘ you just watched, but your own city’s forgotten history)
Anti-Lincoln sentiment
Gangs of New York is unique in that it is one of the few films where we get to see a less than favorable portrayal of Abraham Lincoln. While the 16th President of the United States is never shown in the movie (well, besides a stage actor portraying him), a large amount of time is devoted towards covering the political shenanigans of his administration.
Conscription Act
The draft was met with huge resistance in New York, culminating in the New York City Draft Riots of 1862.
That the Commander in Chief was welcoming an influx of immigrants to go and fight for Uncle Sam, was one thing. That he was willing to go so far as institute the first draft in Union history, was quite another. In the narration, Amsterdam says:
‘You could buy your way out for 300 dollars. But who had 300 dollars? For us it had might as well been 3 millions.’
Indeed, just as the Iraq War today, popular sentiment was that this was ‘another rich man’s war’. The sons and daughters of the wealthy elite, such as the Schermerhorns in Gangs of New York, dodged the bullet by buying their way out (this is where the term ‘300 dollar man’ came from). The Irish immigrants, upon arriving at the dock, were expected to enlist as a token of appreciation for their newfound citizenship. At least this ensured them three square meals a day – a rosier prospect than they could expect in the barren slums, lest they became involved in crime or prostitution.
Abolition
Unbeknownst to many, the Civil War was not really about ending slavery. Lincoln’s first inaugural address says as much[1], as did an excerpt of a letter he wrote in 1862 to New York Tribune editor Horace Greely[2].
But it could be argued that the Civil War was sold as such (as other wars in history have often been sold under a premise different to that of the actual intent). In the movie, we see that the idea of ending slavery does not sit well with the whites, especially the so-called ‘Natives’/’Bowery Boys’, of which Bill the Butcher is the ringleader.[3]
“They are trying to say, we are no different than niggers!”, yells McGloin, one of Bill’s henchmen at a parade. Other commentary that can be heard in the background: “Down with the Abolitionists”, “New York should secede from the Union!”, “Lincoln will make all white men slaves!”.
The abolition movement’s favourite tool, ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin‘, is portrayed sarcastically in the form of a theater production. We see a levitated Lincoln addressing the crowd:
My children, my children. We must heal the divisions between us! This war must cease.
North and South must stand united.
Mr Legree, lay down your whip.
Miss Elisa join hands with Mr. Shelby.
And Topsy. Dear little Topsy.
Cradle Uncle Tom’s head.
Immediately after one member in the audience shouts “Leave the nigger dead!”, the whole theater degenerates into a “rowdy dow”, as Bill puts it.[4] Bill eggs it on by repeatedly yelling “Down with the Union!”[5]
Left/right paradigm
In the movie, there are no major distinctions between the left and the right: both are crooks, and pay only lip service to ’serving the public good’. Monk points out the obvious when he’s running for office:
“Our elected representatives are a gang of thieves, who swear to better our lot while dipping their hands deep into our pockets.”
Republicans
Know-Nothing Party
'Native Americans beware of foreign influence' reads the flag of Know-Nothing Party leader Bill the Butcher. Embittered by his party's defeat, he sits solemnly at his dinner table, looking at the flag with a thousand-yard stare.
The Know-Nothing Party is the predecessor to the Republican Party, and the successor of the Whig Party. Their platform: fierce opposition to Catholic Irish immigrants[6], foreigners holding office[7] and being taxed for an influx of immigrants every year. You could say they had a point: part of the reason why the Five Points became one of the poorest and backward places in the Union was due to the many immigrants flooding the place (and driving down the wages) and the nationwide shift towards mass production of goods, thus rendering obsolete the handcrafted labor in the Five Points.
Bill the Butcher would later become a member of this political party. In the movie, we see them losing the office of sheriff to Monk, part of the Irish Dead Rabbits/Democratic Party faction. To add insult to injury, he is the first Irishman to hold the office of Sheriff. Bill, clearly disillusioned by this, settles this problem using the only language he knows – violence. (‘That, my friends, is the minority vote’)
Democratic Party
Tammany Hall
In the movie, William Tweed (a politician part of the Tammany Hall/Democratic Party machine) and Bill the Butcher (Bowery Boys/Natives/Whig) form an alliance at the beginning of the film. This initially appears contradictory considering that Tweed welcomes the Irish immigrants at the docks with open arms (part of ‘building a political base’ as he puts it), while Bill would like nothing more than to shoot ‘each and every one of them before they set foot on American soil’. But they both understand that partisan politics means little when their own personal power is at stake, at which point maintaining power becomes the priority:
There’s a power of money to be made in this city, Bill. With your help, the people must be made to understand that all these things are best kept, in what I like to call the Tammany family.
That is why I am talking about an alliance between our organisations.
When Bill asks him why he can’t use the police to enforce his rule, Tweed tells him that the ‘appearance of law must be upheld, especially while it’s been broken’. The message is very clear: politics and crime go hand in hand. Bill gets his hands dirty so Tammany Hall doesn’t have to.[8]
True to the real-life figure on which this character is based on, Tweed would later drop his alliance with Bill and instead ally with Amsterdam and the Irish mob.[9] It is not clear if the real-life Tweed actively participated with Bill or if there was indeed a fall-out between them at a certain point.
Corruption
Gangs of New York depicts a total breakdown of society in New York’s the Five Points, an almost dystopian/post-apocalyptic setting that regrettably was not that far removed from reality.
Living standards were below par and infant mortality rates were high. The lack of a sewage system meant that tons of human excrement was piled-up (making for a horrible odour) and left for the pigs to eat. The only way to get by for men was to join one of the numerous warring gangs or join the army. Either that or starve to death were the available options. Women made less of a chance in this dog-eat-dog society than men: prostitution and pick-pocketing were among the most profitable.
Above all, the Five Points was corrupt.
Depravity
Immigrants' living standards were deplorable in the Five Points. They often lived in apartments the size of a small bedroom, and with no windows to boot.
Firefighting
The territorial warfare extended to the firefighting as well. With more than 37 amateur fire-brigades in the Five Points, there was a lot of competition over who would get to quell the fire.
In the movie we see Tammany’s fire brigade arriving to the scene of a house set on fire, only to get into a fight with a rivalling fire brigade, the Black Joke. (the latter is famous for starting the Draft Riots[10]) While the two firefighting companies fight over who gets to extinguish the fire, the house is burning down in the background, and looters make their way in to steal any of what’s left of worth[11]. In a hilarious scene that is unfortunately true to history, we see the exchange between the victims of the fire and fire brigade chief Tweed:
FAMILY: For god’s sake. They’re taking everything!
TWEED: In your next time of trouble ma’m, call Tammany first! (handing a business card)
FAMILY: It’s not too late. You can still save my house!
Of course he can, but that’s not what he is here for. With the house still burning, the two fire ‘tribe’ leaders, Tammany and the Black Joke chief, quarrel casually over a territorial dispute:
Actual fire-fighting was rare in the Five Points, and the arson was often used by firefighting companies to settle territorial disputes. The crook William Tweed, of course, had his fingers into every pie, and chief among those pies was fire-fighting.
BLACK JOKE CHIEF: May I point out that this building is burning to ashes?TWEED: And may I point out that this area is the provenance of my own America’s firebrigade. And that you lot only belong in the Bowery.
BLACK JOKE CHIEF: May I point out that you are outmanned, outmanouvered, and at the moment outfought!
TWEED: Am I?
Upon which the reinforcements arrive on the scene, Bill the Butcher and his army of Natives. When Bill remarks that the fire has burnt near everything of value in the house, Tweed orders his firefighting ‘thugs’ to ransack the next house. “Mustn’t lead it [the fire] spread!”, he notes with a wink.
Vote fraud
On Herbert Asbury’s site, it can be read that both the Whig Party and the Democratic Party employed gangs to ‘persuade’ people to vote for a certain candidate at the polling booth. (‘persuade’ being an euphemism for harassment, bullying, blackmail, coercion) According to Frances Carle (Asbury):
These gangs were then later repaid by the respective political parties or governmental authorities with offers of choice jobs, money or by allowing the gangsters to run their vices without harassment from the police.
Tammany in the movie makes a mockery of the ‘democratic’ process, William Tweed lecturing his colleague when he is informed that Monk (Irish Dead Rabbits/Democratic Party candidate) has already won by 3,000 more votes then there are voters, and that they are short of additional ballots:
“Remember the first rule of politics, ballots don’t make the results, the counters do. Keep counting!”[12]
The disparity between the amount of votes being cast and the voters is not by accident, but by design: the mobs employed by both political parties bully the people into voting multiple times, for the same candidate at that. As soon as they have cast a vote, they are dragged into a barbershop, given a shave and sent back to the ballot box.[13]
Illegal boxing
In Gangs of New York we see the reformers attending an illegal boxing match organised by Tweed and Bill, with illustrators trying to draw graphic depictions of the two for use as evidence of illegal wrongdoing. The covert way in which they operate suggests they are relatively powerless against the local mob bosses and the conniving politicians.
When the Metropolitan police force raids the apartment hosting the illegal boxing match, they initially get into a fight with them, but Amsterdam quickly comes up with the idea of hosting the boxing match outside the city’s jurisdiction.
Political assassinations
William Cutting assassination
Bill wrapped in an American flag. In a personal conversation with Amsterdam, he reflects on his fight with Vallon. At this point, Bill has yet to discover that his new-found surrogate son is actually Vallon's son, planning to kill him.
By Irish immigrant
The Uncle Tom’s Cabin[14] theater performance foreshadows both Lincoln’s eventual assassination by John Wilkes Booth (which is not shown in the movie) and Bill Cutting’s own assassination (which is foiled by Amsterdam, of all people). It’s at this point that Bill comes to view Amsterdam as a surrogate son, which makes his betrayal all the more painful to him.
By Amsterdam
Gangs of New York clearly contains a revenge motif. From the moment he leaves the reformation center, revenge is on his mind. His plan: to become a close confidante of Bill, and to eventually assassinate him at the annual celebration of the Native’s victory over the Dead Rabbits.[15]
19th Century slang
Lots of guttersnipe slang is used throughout the movie. Information on the terms used in Gangs of New York is available.[17]
Footnotes
1. [^]Lincoln: “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so.”
Link:: http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/williams120298.asp (Jewish World Review: The Civil War wasn’t about slavery)
2. [^]An excerpt of the 1862 letter to New York Tribune editor Horace Greely reads as follows:
“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery.”
3. [^]The movie has been criticized for portraying the Irish in a favourable light. They argue that the Irish were among the most blatantly racist people in the Five Points at that time, many actively participating in the lynching of several blacks during the Draft Riots.
4. [^]This related blog post explores audiences’ behaviour throughout history, and finds that audiences ‘weren’t always so sedate’, to put it mildly.
Link: http://www.metafilter.com/49327/Then-we-have-ourselves-a-rowdydow-Aint-you-never-been-to-the-theater-before (Metafilter: Then we have ourselves a rowdy-dow. Ain’t you never been to the theater before?)
5. [^]This 1852 opinion piece in the New York Times defends the South when it comes to slavery, stating:
“Every nation has its “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Sentimental Germany had its “Sorrows of Werter,” which caused floods of tears to be shed.
Without going into the region of sentiment, but looking no further than sad reality, both in England and the United States, and every civilized country of Europe, display their “cabins” under circumstances a hundred times more distressing than the worst of Southern slavery.
You can read the article in full here.
Link: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9E06E2D7143EE13AA1575AC2A9649D946392D7CF (New York Times: Slavery in the south; Uncle Tom’s Cabin)
6. [^]Bill the Butcher tells Tammany at the docks:
‘They vote how the archbishop tells them. And who tells him? Their king in the pointy hat, who sits on his throne in Rome,’
This fear of the Catholic Church continues to this day amongst Americans Christians.
7. [^]According to the US Constitution, a foreigner cannot become President of the United States. Several proposed changes to the Constitution to allow a foreigner to become POTUS have been fiercely opposed in the past, primarily by grass-roots organisations on the right of the political spectrum.
8. [^]When Tweed is on Fifth Avenue socializing with the rest of up-state New York, Mr Schermerhorn says to Tammany regarding the draft riot mob:
Now, what is it you are so fond of saying, Mr Tweed?
And Mr Greely, you won’t like this… but what is it?
‘You can always hire one half of the poor to kill the other half.’16
This is an actual real-life quote from Tweed.
9. [^]Don’t take this literally, as the archetypal character Amsterdam never existed and is not based on an actual real-life counterpart, such as William Tweed, Horace Greely and William Cutting/William Poole.
10. [^]This book publisher derives its name from the famous Black Joke fire department, and tells the tale of the Black Joke’s involvement in the Draft Riots.
Link: http://www.blackjokepress.com/frameset.html (Black Joke Press: The Story of Black Joke)
11. [^]In a Q&A session with director Steven Spielberg, film director Martin Scorsese is asked to elaborate on the firefighting in the Five Points, and comments:
“What would happen is that [at a fire] they would put a barrel over the [water] pump until their fire brigade got there. It was really territorial, and a lot of it was plundering. Massive battles. Growing up downtown, if there was a fight on the corner everybody would run and see.”
Link: http://www.dga.org/news/v27_5/feat_gangsofny.php3 (Catching Movies With: Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg – On Gangs Of New York)
12. [^]The quotes of the real-life William Tweed speak for themselves..
Link: http://www.quotesdaddy.com/author/William+Tweed (Quotes Daddy: William Tweed)
13. [^]Today’s William Tweeds have more sophisticated methods of cheating at their disposal. See the documentary Hacking Democracy.
Link: http://www.hackingdemocracy.com/ (Hacking Democracy)
14. [^]Recently, Ralph Nader, Green Party presidential candidate was chastised for his remark that president-elect Barack Obama could either become Uncle Sam or “Uncle Tom”, Fox News accusing him of race-baiting. Perhaps the Fox News host wasn’t aware that Uncle Tom is a popular term that refers to a black man selling out his own people, and not a racist smear.
Link: – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibsP6XN2dIo (YouTube: Ralph Nader asks if Barack Obama will be an Uncle Tom)
15. [^]Interestingly, the plotter(s) of the Lincoln/Kennedy assassinations followed a rule of conduct similar to that of Amsterdam:
“When you kill a king, you don’t stab him in the dark. You kill him where the entire court can watch him die.”
(I’ll leave it to the reader to ponder the similarities between Amsterdam’s attempted assassination of Bill Cutting and the killings of the two aforementioned presidents)
16. [^]The concept of ‘hiring one half of the poor to kill the other half’ was prevalent in upper circles – Jay Gould, business tycoon, uttered the same famous line.
Link: – http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jay_Gould#Attributed (Wikiquote: Jay Gould – Attributed)
17. [^]See this article for further information on the slang used in the movie.
Link: – http://www.observer.com/node/46911 (The New York Observer: Breaking the Code of New York’s Gangs)
Links
DGA Magazine – Catching Movies With: Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg on Gangs of New York
Script-o-rama – Gangs of New York – Transcript
Herbert Asbury Homepage – Gangs of New York
November 14, 2008 at 12:54 pm
[...] post by Popular Symbolism 14 November 2008 in Casino Orleans [...]