Themes in American History

I agree with many of the comments above that Hollywood has destroyed the historical integrity of the era to produce a inaccurate film to attract viewers.  Even the reviewer, DiGrilamo states how can historians compete with Hollywoods effects, plots, and depictions of history (P126).  Although the plot during Five Points seem sensationalized, it does concentrate on a important period of New York City; the Draft Riots.  The reviewer points out that Scorcese does a good job portraying the conflict and tension between Irish immigrants with the natives and the division between Catholics and Protestants.

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Reading the review shed light to the the conflicts that exist in movie making in respect to historical events. The facts were altered to boost movie image. This alteration distorts key aspect of the time exaggerating groups such as Asians in NYC at the time and underplaying social ills such violence against women. It makes me very concern for the large budget public presentation of facts tells an untrue story with weak character depiction. I expect the film to be highly creative with great cinematography used to make up for the fact that the characters and event description distorted the image of the melting pot of five points NYC. More or less more quantity but less quality.

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I read all of the above comments, and I am agree with them. To me, the movie review is itself a thriller while the movie fails to preserve and protect the glorious past. The movie does not focus on all of the real issues; however ,the movie review clarifies many important issues. The reason behind creation of gangs were  to survive and preserve their own races from growing political discrimination and competition, and from the unsustained economy; But, “hollywood” mostly represents only the competitions (blood and violences) between gangs. There was a sentence in the movie review that “historian can compete the work”. And i think the writer already did it; Reading the review i knew many gangs’ namse: The roach Guards, Chichesters, kerryonians, Shirt Trails, Daybreak Boys, true blood American; and how their clothing and languages were; they had different accent regarding their Gangs. And I acknowledged the importance of the five points by his narrative description.

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2) Read this movie review of Gangs of New York.

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