The recent capture of Boston crime boss James (Whitey) Bulger after more than 16 years on the run should make us think about why creatures from the dark side have been so popular in American culture. Too often, gangsters are portrayed as tragic heroes. Sure, when they die, it might be tragic; but these are far from great men.
Gregory Peck once explained that audiences love villains because they surprise with their willingness to live by no rules other than their own. It is said that Bulger strangled a young woman, apparently cutting off hands and removing teeth to prevent identification. He was what he was - and no more than that.
That is why the victimized feel no more than "satisfaction and despair," as the relative of one of the 19 people whom Bulger supposedly killed said.
From his first arrest in 1943 on the same streets of Boston where he would later make his name, Bulger spent more than 60 years being a bad boy.
The man called Whitey did it all, from small theft to extortion to the kinds of terrifying murders that cement a reputation in the dark and bloody streets of the shadow world.
And yet Bulger and his girlfriend, Catherine Greig, did not make a big fuss last week in California. They were tricked into venturing outside their home, where the FBI made the collar. It may have seemed overblown, but all the casual killings had made the gangster a true menace to society.
Few of Bulger's "colleagues" share any of the glorified traits Hollywood peddles - and yet the image of the heroic gangster remains.
Gangster films had become petty earners until "The Godfather" reignited the trend when it was released on the silver screen in 1972, delivering iconic characters and phrases that are today known the world over. The trend was most recently reignited in the HBO series "The Sopranos," in which protagonist Tony Soprano updated the image of the Italian-American gangster.
Interestingly, "Sopranos" creator David Chase told me that he was bewildered by the fact that the public loved Tony, even though Chase and his writers routinely reminded their viewers that he was a vicious murderer and extortionist.
Martin Scorsese has never had that problem. He knows that gangsters are excrement stuck to the bottom of society's shoe. Unlike the criminals celebrated in gangster rap, Scorsese's goons never make it to high places - and if they do, they don't stay there for very long.
The casual gore of Jack Nicholson's Irish mob boss in Scorsese's "The Departed" is a far cry from Tony Soprano's suburban drama or Don Corleone's world of familial loyalty, twisted ethics and pervasive violence. Based loosely on Bulger, Nicholson's character, Frank Costello, perfectly shows the top-of-the-line gangster as a poisonous ball of slime, however outwardly shining. There it is.
Audiences may love villains, but they do not misunderstand who those villains really are when artists like Scorsese take on the task of putting them in realistic narratives. Perhaps our greatest living American director, he does not deny them their humanity but also never fails to make it clear that these are indelibly corrupted human beings, without a doubt. Like Bulger, they suffer from advanced ethical cancers that eat them away but also gobble up the world outside of them.
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