American Gangster part II: white mystification of Frank Lucas

The film America Gangster was budgeted by GE with a $100 million dollar and with some of the best talent money can buy and seven years in the making. Universal Picture consciously designed the screen play to target middle class whites and an international audience fantasy of the Black ghetto. The film’s marketing model is the multi billion dallar Negro folk story Roots which was watched by a record 500 million mostly white viewers over one week on CBS, with less than 10 percent African American viewership. Given the aggressive Asian Internet platform today, almost a billion of viewers worldwide will watch and be negatively impacted by the white racist nature of film the American Gangster, less than 5 per cent will be African Americans.

Most of the viewer audience will be uninformed white youth or developing countries children. Many viewers will watch the film three or four times. For many other viewers from around the world will get their first in-depth view of the drug culture of Harlem of the 1960’s. The film serves to distort and obfuscate the single most important period in post WWII Black history. Since most of the younger viewers of the film were not yet alive in 1968, they are totally unaware of and defenseless to the political distortion and sanitization of the American Gangster by Universal Pictures.

Personality grafting and character insertion
Denzel Washington playing the character of Frank Lucas, has created the under necessary folk hero and romanization of auto-cannibalism and genocide. Rather than Mr. Washington portraying the real character of the ruthless heroin drug Lord Frank Lucas, Universal Pictures, has artificially transplanted or grafted Denzel Washington personality into the character of the drug dealer. The fact is Mr. Washington Hollywood persona as a high profile African American Christian and actor was surgically grated by Universal Picture into the hollowed out character of Frank Lucas. This white racist characterization of Lucas using Denzel’s persona has created serous transference problems of understanding the Universal Pictures creation of Frank Lucas, particularly for mentally immature and underdeveloped children who can not always separate the actor from the role.

Zen and the art of mental distortion
Major elements of even the main character’s personality Frank Lucas have been willfully left out, distorted or obfuscated by design by Universal Pictures in order to mislead uninformed white viewers. These omissions allow the screenwriting team the opportunity to deconstruct (hollow out) the real historical personality of Frank Lucas and then built a white illusionary virtual gangster icon personality that feeds the fantasies white viewers have of the mental state of a Black gangster mind. When the acting skills of Denzel Washington and special effects are added to the screen play the audience is fooled in to thinking the white racist interpretation of a Black gangster is real.

This Universal Pictures virtual created non-human personality of Frank Lucas is then projected on the movie screen as the mental filter that white viewers seek to understand the character of Frank Lucas. According to the New York Times: Theater Review, the character of Frank Lucas was turned by screenwriter Steven Zaillian … “into a figure who seduces instead of repels, an object of directorial fetishism and a token of Black resistance, however hollow, he (director Ridley Scott) encourages us to submit as well”.

The uninformed viewer is seduced by the screen writers into believing that this Universal virtual reality creation of a Black gangster is a real life African American personality. For most whites, middle Blacks and young viewers today, the American Gangster film is viewed through the social prism of their current media conditioned traumatized understanding and fears of ghetto life. In reality, the film is little more than a very detailed virtual reality game with hip hop music overlay.

The critical physiological roots causes of Lucas cold blood ruthlessness and rage, like the cheap video game characters, are never revealed in the film. Lucas is a virtual character, not a human being personality.

Unlike the films “Ray “or the Italian “Godfather”, where the family dynamics and childhood trauma that shaped events of the characters are shared with the audience, the roots character of Lucas remains for the most part without any history i.e. void of human personify content. According to "Entertainment Weekly: Holiday Movie Preview …”Every half hour or so, starting with the film opening scene, he (Frank Lucas) commits some hideous cold-blooded execution meant to demonstrate he’s(Frank) got more stones than anyone else. He fury..is tidy and compartementalized”… His behavior also demonstrates the low value he has for human life, particularly black women. The selective murders every 30 minutes also served to keep the white audience on a primal emotional level of life and death.

Hollywood has historically made a policy of conscious refusal to include personality background of major Black characters. Even with the director’s ear and all his purported power and film input, the great Denzel Washington was unable to force Universal Pictures to humanize the major characters by the inclusion of any meaning elements of Frank's character or personality roots.

Zen and the art of virtual completion
Like Asian Zen art and deception, Universal’s film format forces the viewer to use virtual completion in order to full in the major gaps and fragmentations in the film’s storyline. The viewer is forced to interpret the criminal motives of the character in his own mind, using his own social prism. This is particularly manipulative given the fact that most movie white and middle class Black viewers lack the necessary share experiences (social prism) and social analogies to transfer to the ghetto realities of stories like American Gangster or the political time period.

White viewers are particular culturally at risk of making the wrong interpretation and drawing the wrong conclusions. Because most white Americans have a fear-based distorted view of powerful Black male villain and the ghetto virtual completion is at best very riskily. In addition, most Black male characters are villainzed.

This lack of development character aids the distortion and dehumanization of African American characters in America film framed the American Gangster. Unlike the film “Ray” in which the main characters were developed in depth from childhood and the critical connection with Ray Charles’s mother fully developed. Frank Lucas and most black exploitation characters have no past or future, just a here and now presence void of a real personality. Being in the presence, means that most viewers miss the essences of the Black revolutionary spirit of the period.

The postmodern Hollywood Black characters are better dressed and appear to be socially empowered; some even armed, but in reality remain as superficial in terms of personality as characters in Birth of a Nation. Frank Lucas while clearly dressed downtown, had little more historic expressive than wordless Black characters in Birth of a Nation. From a spiritual standpoint, the lack of background makes it almost impossible to read the stage or level of Frank Lucas’s spiritual development and maturity.

Both the mother and father critical childhood role models and experiences that shaped the foundation of Frank Lucas’s personality are critically missing from the film. The omission of the character of the father or his role was so complete it was never written or included in the list of characters. This sends a very strong subliminal message about African American men that can not be missed. The dynamics of Lucas’s relationship with his mother are also critically missing. The mother is dropped on the screen in from North Carolina as a Black Christians head of a criminal family with no morals. Again the villainzition of the mother lacks any background or personality development beyond a very brief analysis of her warm relationship with Frank’s Puerto Rican wife.

The passive support of Frank’s crime activities by the Black Church is also villainzed, but never developed.

Distortion, Ghettoized viewers
For most apolitical young viewers today, the American Gangster is viewed through the social prism of their current media conditioned understanding of street gang traumatized reality. They see the film via a genocidal unemployment nightmare were over seven million of their peers are either out school and/or unemployed. Black inner city children are mentally or educationally incarcerated by failed public schools and downsize jobs.

The whole of their human experience for increasing numbers of ghettoized young people is contained within a static street corner centric mythical world that is increasing disconnected to the reality world around them.. The difference between the sacred and the profane no longer existed. The TV functions as a portal through which this segment looks at a filtered reality of the outside world. The street corner has become a modern form of the mythical cave like spiritual mimesis—the imitation or (virtual) reproduction of the supposed world around the ghetto that represents his social reality or prism.

The American Gangster viewed by youth through their social prism of despair and desperation is understood as a way out of their hopelessness. The fragmentation of the plot, forces the youth viewer to use their distorted reference points and social analogies to interpret the film and full in critical gaps. At it core, the film’s message is a Godless, unexplained ruthlessness void of compression or love is the key to effective business and personal behaviors in the ghetto drug culture .

From a Christian standpoint, this alternative interpretation is very soul-based and spiritually problematic. The Lucas family, not God is the spiritual center point. Spiritual right and wrong are reduced to us and them. The whole of the spiritual relationship is objectified, based on a ‘thing for a thing’ and everything that goes along with that type of exchange.

Because of the American Gangster by Universal’s design lacks social context, for Christian’s families the film is a major challenge that requires both a political and spiritual analysis and deconstruction of the film and its plot beyond the analytical skills of most fathers and mothers comprehension. The time regression and political economy of Harlem during the 60’s and 70’s is a serious challenge for Christians lacking an African centric understanding of the period of the film and the Black movement.

Myth of the good old days in Harlem
The America Gangster story line seduces millions of uninformed viewer into believing Harlem was a mindless get high, feel good party ghetto during the 60’s and 70’s. Instead of reflecting the political insurgency of Harlem and struggle by the government and other forces to suppress the post Malcolm X revolutionary Harlem. American Gangster gives the image of Harlem as a drug emporium and drug shooting galleries.

The truth is that the period of the late 60’s and 70’s reflected the growth and then systemic destruction of the most revolutionary generation of Black and white Americans since the Civil War.

Denzel Washington transforms the spiritual hardened hearted and soulless Frank Lucas into a ghetto drug over lord hero, taking care of his business fighting the Mafia and white power structure to see who can service (kill) the most inner city addicts in the New York metropolitan area.

Lucas a model German Jewish elder
As stated above, the America Gangster joint “Schindler List”,” The Birth of a Nation”, “Super Fly” and the first part of “Roots” as the greatest racial distortions of ethic political struggle against genocide. Schindler List carefully hides the direct role played by Jewish councils of elders in the systemic genocide of millions of Jews during WWII.

The key to the Nazis highly successful systemic murder and genocide of millions the Jews during World War II was based not on massive raids of Germen forces into the Jewish ghettos, but a systemic national misinformation that poisoned the German population about the Jewish peoples. Also the Nazis the poisoned of the spiritual critical thinking of the Jewish ghetto population thorough moral degeneration, corruption and the use of Jewish councils of elders, Jewish police and Jewish Gestapo agents. The Jewish genocide followed the lost of the spiritual battle for the minds of the Jewish and German people. Once the critical mass of German people were willing to allow genocide, the plan move forward. We see the same process in America in terms of African Americans.

American Gangster, like Schindler List and other white films about the Black drama in America like it serve to poison and distort white America understanding of the real situation faced by ghetto victims. The film allows the growth and development of the critical mass of passive white Americans to move the America agenda for increase levels of genocide. This is done by misleading the concerned segments of white community about the real political economy of the inner city.

As stated in Part I, the world is listening for what informed critical African Americans are saying about the film, particularly for what Christians are saying about the film, American Gangster.

We, as Christians, should understand that the real person and the American Gangster’s characterization of Frank Lucas are two separate and distinct realities of evil that Universal Pictures and Satan are trying to fuse into one idea or person.

The America Gangster joint “Schindler List”,” The Birth of a Nation”, “Super Fly” and the first part of “Roots” as the greatest racial distortions of American ethic group’s political struggle against genocide in the history of American film making.

America Gangster designed for white viewers
One of the spiritually most deadliness aspect of the film “American Gangster” lays not just in its negative effect on African and Afro-Latino American youth in the United States facing 80 percent unemployment rates, but in the film’s willful misleading of ten of millions of uninformed white Americans who will deepen their misconceptions of the real political economy of the ghetto and the role African Americans play in their self-destruction. Thousands of African Americans are becoming part of the growing numbers of numbers of missing people. Ten of thousands of people from New Orleans are still officially and unofficially listed as missing. Law enforcement agencies have stopped looking.

Genocide is fully underway in North American ghetto communities like Harlem. Hi Hop culture and drugs are key tools of the oppressors to keep white Americans in bondage as African Americans are systemically murdered spiritually, educationally and physically. The film will create a new segment of morally desensitized passive white ‘good’ Germens who are no longer looking.

The Ku Klux Klan or Vice President Cheney murder of New Orleans could not mass market a better distortion of inner city reality and the deepening auto-cannibalism and genocide in the Black community during the last period of the Black Revolution. The America Gangster joint Schindler List, The Birth of a Nation”, “Super Fly” and the first part of “Roots” as the greatest racial distortions of American ethic groups political struggle against genocide in the history of American film making.