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SCARFACE : A HIP HOP CLASSIC?

Recently the world has been rejoicing in the DVD reissue of Brian DePalma’s cult classic Scarface. I love this film, and I’m sick of it. Not that I’m sick of the film, I’m sick of the pathetic culture of bling bling that goes around it. I’m sick of seeing laminated posters of Al Pacino toting his ‘little friend’ and shooting at people, being sold on street corners by dreadlocked rastas, and illiterate wannabe gangstas wearing ‘cool’ shirts with pictures of Tony Montana on and the word “Pimp” in lovely pink retro fluffy typescript. The reason I hate that is because Tony Montana was NEVER a Pimp in the film : he’d sell and kill anything but women, which was his downfall after all. Tony Montana was a dealer and a gangster. Not A Pimp. Jeez! Pay attention!

The problem with Scarface is not the film itself : after all, Scarface is a damning indictment of rampant consumerism in modern America, exposing the hollow point of capitalism. It’s the fans : people who take it as some kind of hymn to capitalism, some kind of instruction manual. Idiots basically, so caught up in the urban Bling culture that they think that some kind of film where everyone ends up a dead coke addict is a good thing?

The moral of Scarface is simple : What do you do when you have it all? When you own everything? When you’ve got an enormous amount of money but you’re still the same, fucked up, empty idiot that you always were, you’re just a rich, empty fucked up idiot.

That’s what Scarface is all about. Whilst all you little tiny Ghetto White Trash blingyblingies are out there watching Scarface, thinking its some kind of instruction manual, you’re completely missing the whole point of the film. Having the big house, the big car, the load of drugs – it’s nothing if you haven’t got a soul.

First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women….

On the DVD of Scarface there’s a handy little documentary “Scarface : The Making Of A Hip Hop Classic”. Apparently, Scarface, 1983’s very own damning indictment of having loads of money, drugs, and guns, that ends with everyone being deader than a dodo and more swearing than any film ever until South Park : The Movie came out in 1999, is in fact a hymn to having lots of money, drugs, and guns.

Man, HipHoppers must be brain dead if they think that Scarface glamourises chainsaws and drugs and death. (Maybe that explains why there’s loads of Bling Bling Violence culture and gun fetishisation in Hip Hop). Do they not know how to make sense of a film? Can’t they read a movie? Are they EVEN watching the same fucking movie?

See. Scarface is a fantastic film. A film that now, more than ever, exposes the hollow façade of the eighties more than any film made then, or now. Wall Street was too obvious : Scarface exposed by example. Greed was not good. Greed was evil, hollow. The endless, mindless consumerism.

At the time it came out it was vilified as being obscene, overwrought, excessive. All the things the Eighties were. Scarface held up a mirror to the Eighties. And it didn’t like what it saw. See, Scarface was the Eighties very own Citizen Kane. A film that only be made at that moment in time, and at that place. A film that says far more about that time than it ever meant to, and was not recognised at the time for what it was.

Scarface is a brilliant film : it exposes the Eighties for the decade of greed and obscenity that it undoubtedly was. It is NOT a instruction manual for hiphoppers. It is NOT a hymn to the wonderful powers of money, but a harsh and damning indictment of the excesses of capitalism. The next time you wander about Staines with your Scarface DVD, thinking you’re all Bling Bling cos you want to have a big car and the woman and stuff, remember this. The World IS Yours. And it’s yours to fuck up.

So say hello to my little friend....

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