University Film Studies: Black and Irish Conflict in Gangs of New York

This assignment analyzes the Black and Irish conflict depicted in Martin Scorsese's film, Gangs of New York, based on Herbert Asbury's non-fiction book. The journal entry explores the role of this conflict in the movie, focusing on the historical context of violence and discrimination against African Amer...Read More

Running head: BLACK AND IRISH CONFLICTS IN GANGS OF NEW YORK MOVIE
Black and Irish Conflicts in Gangs of New York Movie
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1BLACK AND IRISH CONFLICT IN GANGS OF NEW YORK MOVIE
Gangs of New York was a period drama film releases in the year 2002 and directed by
award winning filmmaker Martin Scorsese. The film was in turn adapted from the non-fiction
book of the same name by the author Herbert Asbury. The film speaks about the Catholic-
Protestant violence which emerged in the streets during that time and how an Irish immigrant
family protests about the low wages due to a large number of slaves that were freed from
their slavery. The film got nominated for ten Oscars at the Academy Awards.
The purpose of this essay is to describe the role of the Black and Irish conflict in
the film The Gangs of New York.
The movie Gangs of New York presents to its readers a number of conflicts through
the screening of the story of the movie itself but one conflict that plays an important role in
the entire movie itself is the conflict that takes place between the Irish and the Black people.
This particular conflict plays an important role in the movie itself because the director of the
movie wanted his audiences to see the violence as well as the discrimination that still takes
place against the African Americans in America itself. But the audiences of the film have also
noticed that the Director puts his blame on the protestant protestors for the violence rather
than the white skinned Irish family (Lohr, 214). In fact, some of the audiences might claim
that the director had actually presented the shared experiences of the Irish immigrants as well
as the African Americans by showing the conflicts that they had to endure from the rest of the
American society.
As stated by Lohr (214) however, there are conflicts between the Irish and the African
Americans as shown in the scenes when an Irish criminal becomes angry on seeing an
African American man in a church when it was the same Irish criminal who had betrayed his
own people. Therefore, it can be said that these conflicts are caused by the prejudices that the
two different cultures seemed to have for each other in the movie. The director ha payed

2BLACK AND IRISH CONFLICT IN GANGS OF NEW YORK MOVIE
homage to the part of the history of America when the Blacks as well as the Irish were
fighting with each other, but also about how the same Irish and the Blacks were fighting both
the police as well as the protestant protestors in the country. The conflict played the role of
showcasing the similarities as well as the dissimilarities between both the cultures (Lohr,
213).
From the above discussions, it can be concluded that the director of the fil had indeed
portrayed an important message in the film itself. The director has shown the violence and the
discrimination that is being faced by the African Americans, the Irish and the people from
other cultures who are not “true Americans” during the America of the time period in which
the movie itself is set in.

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Reference List
Lohr, Matt R. "Irish-American Identity in the Films of Martin Scorsese." A companion to
Martin Scorsese (2015): 195-213.