Ban This Filth - The Warriors

I'm watching American Graffiti. I like to re-watch the film I'm discussing while I write about it but can't be arsed waiting for it to finish downloading. That's right I'm being all illegal again but, this time, it's OK as I actually own a VHS copy of the film in question so it's not really stealing. I just can't be arsed taking all the wires out the telly from the DVD player and switching them round. I think I left that video in my old flat anyway along with Hamburger Hill and An American Werewolf in London. My girlfriend hated all three films at the time so I shoulda known it wouldn't work out. She'd fucking love American Graffiti tho'. The soundtrack's beastin', the cars are bitchin' and George Lucas hadn't disappeared up his own arse yet.

The point being I'm watching American Graffiti and some wee guy has just asked someone to buy some booze for him at a liquor store even tho' he's underage. It's something I used to do years ago and, once or twice in my life, I've actually bought it for other kids once I got over age and they were still lingering in that twighlight between school and pub. I done all this before I seen Harrison Ford in his Chevy. I done a lot of illegal things I've seen recreated on television, films and computer games or read about in books and magazines or heard on records long before I saw or heard or read about them. I done them because I wanted to and, often, because I still want to.

That's not to say I haven't recreated things I've seen on screen. I started skateboarding after seeing Back to the Future and got into baseball because I watched the All Star game a few years back but, really, what made me watch it was the fact baseball is the only sport that can actually translate well into film: (Bull Durham, Major League, The Sandlot, Cobb, etc.). I'm sure we've all made choices, not so much based on what we've seen on screen, but influenced by them; whether directly or indirectly.

There is a difference, however, from wanting to be an archeologist because of Indiana Jones or wanting to wear Converse because one of the guys in Gleaming The Cube did, and wanting to rape, kill, maim, burn, steal and a whole lot of other things that goes on in cinema that allows yer gran to get her panties in a twist for the first time since the miners' strike.

Since Natural Born Killers came out there have been eight murders blamed on copycat killers influenced by the film. Why we don't blame Marky Mark for me having to see emo kids' stripey boxer shorts everytime I go for the train is beyond me. It's far more disturbing. How these murders were blamed on Juliette Lewis, in one of her more annoying roles in a career filled with annoying roles and annoying "singing", goes from stupid to deranged. In 1995 two teenager lovers shot a couple of people and revealed they had been on acid and watching Natural Born Killers when they decided to do it.

A bunch of Parisian students shot a bunch of folk and it turned out they had a poster of the film on their wall and one other daft American kid beheaded a classmate to be famous like "the Natural Born Killers".

Amazingly while googling the names behind the original Natural Born Copycats, Ben Darras and Sarah Edmondson, no-one thinks that the mind bending hallucinagenic is to blame. The Parisian students HAD to be doing it because of the film because they had a poster: a fucking poster! That little twat who beheaded his mate? We'll ignore the violence he was brought up with or even the fact he was probably a fucking nutter.

John Grisham, the useless, boring, pig-ignorant cunt of a hack, was obviously offended that Oliver Stone never finished the film with a liberal, southern lawyer winning a landmark case against big business, the racists or the corrupt city officials and helped finance a civil action against Stone by someone left disabled by a copycat attack. He was actually friends with someone who was killed by those two idiots I first mentioned and I'd wager that's what moved him but I felt like getting a dig in. I do feel for the guy but, let's be honest (I don't), if one of my friends was killed by being impaled, vag first, on a spike I wouldn't sue the director of Cannibal Holocaust. I'd probably just be very upset. I also wouldn't churn out another piece of shit about a liberal, southern lawyer...

Such is the idiocy we have to deal with. People seeking to find blame for such atrocities without actually stopping to think some people are just rotten and will do these things. People were killed long before films, long before books and probably before cave paintings and there will always be murder and nothing we can ever do will stop it. Instead of looking for a fall guy just get used to the fact bad things happen to people whether they deserve it or not.

But idiots beget idiots and there's a never ending cycle. Whether it be muppets killing a homeless guy, a lá A Clockwork Orange, or the people who think that the LA Riots had their seed sown by the ending of Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing and not the hundreds of years of racism in American culture culminating with the beating of Rodney King and the resulting trial everyone has an example to prove their point. So when they were worried about the sight of a black man smashing up a window at the end of a masterpiece they can show that people are stupid enough to copy films "Just look at Clockwork Orange" they would scream and if you did just look at Clockwork Orange you'd find a great film and wouldn't attack anyone with a huge porelain cock. Spike Lee would be too busy hanging out with Flava Flav to care because, let's face it, if you were partying with that motherfucker you'd be too busy enjoying yourself to care what "Mothers Against Screen Violence" are prattling about. I wouldn't care about anything. I'd just think "I'm hanging out with Flava Flav. This is amazing!" Then he'd probably start getting on my nerves a bit.

What further annoys me is I've heard these arguments about films that are clearly created to show that cinema violence is not cool. Funny Games has the brazen cheek to stop, mid-way through the film, and tell you you're just as culpable as the people you're watching. Man Bites Dog goes out it's way to make the main character, a serial killer, likeable so you await his next kill until we find out how evil his actions are and Natural Born Killers is more about our own fascination with violence and the media's hard-on for it. Surely by attacking these films we're attacking ourselves and the institutions that breed our own blood lust. However the people attacking these films just don't get that part.

What about films that do, clearly, do nothing more than show how cool violence is? Where's the outcry over Commando? That fucker kills everything that he sees apart from a black chick and his daughter. Infact practically any 80s action film has more violence in it than any film I'll ever write about. However there was one film that made violence, and gang violence at that, seem cool and got a bit of flak. It glorified the struggle of a gang and their violent struggle to get back to Coney Island. Of course The Warriors violence was "just". They just wanted to get home. The poor muggers.

The Warriors is based on a book by Sol Yulrick. I aint read the book but I have read that it's a very different take on the gangs of New York. The gang in the book is cowardly and, well, crap. The book, however, is based on the ancient Greek poem of Anabasis about a group of Greek soldiers who lose their leader in Persia and battle with honour to get home and the film takes more from the ancient text than the modern novel.

The Warriors is a comic as a film. The violence is comic book stuff: there's almost no blood and we only see one death right at the start of the film. Although others die it's off camera and the fight scenes are just wonderfully choreographed and have more in common with the Batman TV series than Raging Bull. The story is one of courage, bravery and even devotion. It's themes are the same as those in 300 and, to be honest, Swan screaming "Madness? THIS IS CONEY ISLAND!" would have fucking rocked.

There is a meeting announced. Each gang, no matter how big or small, is to take a select few representatives to a park in Brooklyn, a long away from Coney, to listen to Cyrus, the leader of the most powerful gang in the city, and his big idea. He points out there are more gang members than policemen in the city and instead of petty squabbles over territory and bragging rights if the tribes were to unite they could run the city. Everyone is in agreement apart from Luther, the leader of The Rogues, who shoots Cyrus: pretty much for a laugh. As the police arrive and everyone flees, Cyrus dream in ruins, Luther points the finger of blame on The Warriors as one of their number, Fox, has seen the murder. Cleon, The Warrior's leader, is battered to death and the rest of the gang is forced to leg it.

What follows is so close to being shite it's amazing it's so good. The camerawork isn't the best and the acting is work but there's a certain flare and charm about the characters, the location and the story that we root behind The Warriors. The new leader of the gang since Clean's assumed demise is Swan and he decides that although it's close to suicide, they must retain their gang colours all the way back to Coney. The honour of being a Warrior is more important than life or death and battle through the city they must.

The city is the most striking character in the film. It's more like Gotham than New York. It's a deep, sometimes colourful, underworld that doesn't exist in reality and, indeed, there are no "real" people in the film. Only gangs and cops and a DJ keeping "score" of what's going down. Apart from the dozens of unnamed gangs we see at the start the Warriors get caught up with only four gangs on their return home. The first of which are The Orphans, apart from the two ugliest gang leaders in the film and the stupidest afro, they are basically there just to show how shit they are. The Orphans are so crap at being a gang they weren't even invited to the meeting and don't believe the Warriors when they say why they're in Brooklyn and not on their own turf of Coney. They also outnumber the Warriors by about four to one but rather than kicking the shit out of the insolent dogs who have pissed on their territory they offer them safe passage if they remove their colours. The Warriors are far too cool for that so just bust some heads and move on; taking a girl with them. She's the worst actor in the film, however, so I'm ignoring her.

They then meet The Lizzies. An all female, perhaps lesbian gang, who seem to be based on the Psirens in the original poem. Although being the only gang, apart from Luther in The Rogues, to carry firearms they can't actually kill any of The Warriors after getting them into their den through dirty, seductive techniques. Moments later they are attacked by The Punks who are a rollerskating gang. Once again The Warriors kick arse until they bump into The Baseball Furies, who never speak, but do dress like KISS if KISS were playing for the New York Yankees. The choreographed fight scenes are entertaining but you are left with this nagging feeling that if all the other gangs in the city were such crap fighters why The Warriors never left Coney years ago.

They finally get back to Coney and come up against The Rogues. Luther with the film's greatest line "Warriors... come to pla-a-a-ay". There's a stand off, Cyrus' gang turns up and The Warriors survive and their reputation is raised to highest echelons in the gang underworld. It's a simple story and a fairly simple film well made: a lively action film with a relentless pace. It's not socially challenging, as well it could have became, but is a fantasist piece where we leave our brains behind and root for the good-bad guy ahead of the bad-bad guy.

Does it glorify gang violence? Yes it does but only in the same way Adam West glorifies vigilantism. It's an over the top cartoon of a film with nothing to say apart from looking cool. But surely no-one would take it seriously?

The poster never helped. Here it is.

Imagine getting on the Subway in New York and seeing that. It could easily through you into a sense of dread. Despite the fact everything in the film, numbers of gang members included, was grossly exagerrated yer average yuppie doesn't know that. Maybe they honestly thought gangs of top hat wearing, roller skating gangs were ready to smash up the World Trade Centre and steal their fax machine and filofax. The original outcry came from people being offended by the poster. They were, rightly, dismissed as numpties. However after three deaths near theatres showing the movie and the rise of newly created gangs after the launch of the movie the poster was changed to something less aggressive.

So for two articles running I'm not having a go at the censors (don't worry. It wont last). I'm having a go at the idiots who decide to act upon primal urges for acts of savegery and decide to blame films, books and music for it. These are the real idiots. The people who give the nanny brigade and censors the fuel to fight their holy war. Seriously: The Warriors has the campest gangs since the Sharks and the Jets and they want to live their life that way? What is wrong with these people and, furthermore, what is wrong with the people who take them seriously?

Films are more than films when they are good. They can shock and challenge, educate and inform and do a thousand and one other things we need in our lives. They serve a purpose further than entertainment at times and can bring about a change, a good change in our lives. When they actually make numbskulls make a change for the worst I'm going to assume these people were heading along those lines anyway and if the film does happen to be a catalyst then I'll leave you all with this:

Originally Posted by Oliver Stone

You can't blame the igniter. People can be ignited by anything. And yet this is something we're seeing more and more of in America today. It's a culture of liability lawsuits. The whole concept of individual responsibility has been broken up and passed around.Of course a movie can change you. Maybe it inspires you to change your love life, or to alter your wardrobe. But it's not a film's responsibility to tell you what the law is. And if you kill somebody, you've broken the law.