Abstract
Taking an intertextual approach to popular outlaw and gangster mythology transcends traditional questions of influence and originality and instead recognizes, and indeed celebrates, the viscous threads between time, space, culture and identities. This analysis demonstrates how various popular cultural, fictional, or mythic figures help us to understand the viscous connections between aspects of human identities and conduct and their cultural context. Rather than providing a unitary understanding of experience and knowledge, such analyses offer nuanced and complex insights based on the interpretation of multiple textual surfaces. Images and representations of outlaws and gangsters produce and reproduce the pleasures, thrills and fears derived from what has been a longstanding fascination with these figures. Outlaws and gangsters are not simply ‘offenders’ or ‘criminals’, they are more than this. It is their entrepreneurialism, code of honour, and need to challenge and avenge injustice that is presented as the motivation for lawbreaking. As ex-armed robber Noel ‘Razor’ Smith wrote in his autobiography A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun (2005), the desire for glamour, respect, money and notoriety came with the realization that the only way to achieve these was through crime.
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Notes
- 1.
The name of the computer game The Sting! is shared with the 1973 movie about two con artists played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford. This film saw the two actors reuniting after starring in the 1969 Wild West film about two outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
- 2.
Outlaws and gangsters transcend geography, age and ethnicity and even, at times, gender. However, the dominant representation of outlaw and gangster figures is masculine.
- 3.
Taken from the 1998 studio album by Pras.
- 4.
See Skeggs’ (1997) analysis of class, gender and respectability.
- 5.
The concept of the werewolf is explored throughout this book, as this archetype is relevant in relation to outlaws, gothic monsters and shapeshifting. The werewolf archetype is explored in detail in Chap. 9.
- 6.
This process of ‘othering’ is also highly pertinent to the situation of the Black Lives Matter campaign in the USA, which argues that black people’s lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise.
- 7.
In support of this, Willis (1978: 1) argues that ‘oppressed, subordinate or minority groups can have a hand in the construction of their own vibrant cultures and are not merely dupes’.
- 8.
Gender may again be important here as women have traditionally been less mobile due to institutional, social, economic and cultural constraints.
- 9.
Slang for a prison sentence.
- 10.
The use of nicknames by ‘motor-bike boys’ is discussed by Willis (1978).
- 11.
It is worth noting that Tupac had no agency in these decisions. The potential for consumption and appropriation, as well as exploitation of such figures is significant.
- 12.
I base much of this analysis on outlaw spaces in the United States. Similar analyses could be made of Australia. It is worth noting the colonial aspect of both these countries in relation to Britain, and their role in the history of penal transportation.
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Farrant, F. (2016). Outlaws and Gangsters. In: Crime, Prisons and Viscous Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49010-0_4
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