Assignment 1-3 Journal Article Analysis

Analyzing a Gangster and a Samurai
Michael Thomas
Assignment 1-3 Journal Article Analysis
HUMN341-E2WW
January 19, 2008

After reviewing the article Family Values and Feudal Codes: The Social Politics of America’s Twenty-First Century Gangster By: Ingrid Walker Fields, I concluded the audience is intended to be for a general audience. I chose general audience instead of specialized audience because she referenced books, movies, television shows, video games, news articles, and music that pertained to with the twenty-first century gangster.
Yes there are subject-specified vocabulary terms, concepts, and theories. The following are examples of vocabulary, concepts, and theories. Don is used through out this article. A Don is the head of a mob family. Kingpin is also used to describe a mob boss. Wise guys are yet another example of a vocabulary term I came across. While reading about Ghost Dog she used samurai to explain what he is. One concept I read about is the concept of a Don. The concept of a Don is they show loyalty, friendship, and respect but also use those things as weapons. A Don will be generous, but at the same time will use violence to get what they want. Another concept is of a samurai. The concept of a samurai is to live and die in an honorable way. Some of the theories is this article are the twenty-first century gangsters are made out to be like the characters in The Godfather, The Sopranos, and Ghost Dog. The movie and television characters are the romantic myth that everyone portrays real mobsters to be like.
Summarizing this article is a little difficult for me, because I kind of got lost reading it. From what I took Ingrid Walker Fields is trying to show how the twenty-first century gangster tries to follow the old school rules that the family is supposed to follow. She compares The Godfather to The Sopranos. In The Godfather, Vito Corleone immigrated to America and worked his way up to where he was. He never tried hiding the fact that he was the head of a mob family. In The Sopranos, Tony is an upper-middle class American, but he always tries to act as if his business is legitimate. Tony also tries modeling himself after Vito Corleone. Ingrid Walker Fields also talks about a movie called Ghost Dog. She compares the main character Ghost Dog, who is a samurai, to street gangstas. Ghost Dog wants to live his life as a samurai and have revenge on the people who harmed him. He wants to exact his revenge and die in an honorable way. Ghost Dog and street gangstas are described as both being street warriors. Both Ghost Dog and street gangstas want to die in an honorable way.
In my opinion I don’t think this article was written in a logical order. I think Ingrid Walker Fields jumps around too much in the article. She starts out with one topic and jumps to the next. The main ideas are kind of unclear to me. She puts too much information in and makes reading this article more complex than it needs to be. I didn’t think most of the article was easy to read, it was too drawn out and made it more boring than interesting. Some of the points in the article were easier to figure out than others. I think if she would have stuck to her topics instead of moving from one topic to another so rapidly and not blended everything together it would have been a lot easier to understand. She starts out the article talking about real mob families and how they are not too much in existence anymore because of RICO statue and the FBI cracking down on them, then jumps to The Sopranos and Ghost Dog. Then she goes back to talking about Gangsta rappers and street gangs. This was a very difficult article for me to read.
The key idea that I took away from reading this article was movies and television shows try to make the mob lifestyle look exciting and glamorous, instead of violent and immoral. Another idea that I took away is she looks at the movie Ghost Dog and compares the samurai to street gangstas and the values they hold. If there were any other key ideas in this article I did not pick up on them. I had to reread this article a few times just to pick out these key ideas.

References
Family Values and Feudal Codes: The Social Politics of America’s Twenty-First Century Gangster Ingrid Walker Fields Journal of Popular Culture, Volume 37, Issue 4 (May 2004) p 611-633