Gangs of New York Essay
Martin Scorsese’s movie Gangs of New York captures the essence of the period between 1846 and the draft riots of 1863, but (Where the Gangs Lived) it happened to be more, fictional than actual history. Prior to and in the process of watching Gangs of New York I read and analyzed some enciteful article about the true 5 points. Automatically as I began watching the movie, I could point out some crucial mistake in the portrayal of the scenes. Many of the “accurate” scenes held this mistake, because scorsese put more effort into making a dramatic statement, than a documentary (Fall of Five Points). In Scorsese’s case I don’t think enough research was put into making this movie. A NPR News interview says, “Scorsese says he got the idea for his film (Gangs of New York) 30 years ago when he read Asbury’s book.
Gangs of New York makes some accurate references to history. It also makes some inaccurate references to history. Gangs of New York is accurate through detail, but distorted and mistaken in its characterizations and interpretations (History fiction to historical fact: Gangs of New York and Whitewashing of history). In my opinion, after watching the movie and reading the articles, I think Scorsese put more effort in making Gangs of New York entertaining than accurate. For the purpose of entertaining he increased the gore factor when portraying the riots. While Scorsese was making the riots out to be a total bloodbath, when in reality the riots only resulted in a death or two (Anbinder).
Martin Scorsese may have tried to make some of the scenes accurate as possible, but as many of the articles stated, he just got his dates and the caliber of events wrong. In the opening scene the riot between the Dead Rabbits and Bowery Boys didn’t actually happen in1846, as the movie portrayed, but on July 4, 1857 (Historical Accuracy/ Wikipedia). Some misplaced events would come during the final scenes of he movie. The inaccuracy found was when...