Bronson

Charles Bronson... Wait, what did you say? You like Charles Bronson? How could you like him? Okay, instead of going into a Mike Dodes-inspired monlogue(fuck, shit, fuckn, waiting for the bus, a Vietnam vet, Vanderbilt will have to elaborate) (Editor Elaboration: He was some kid in college who did a strange monologue about a Vietnam Vet where he just cursed a lot and ran his fingers through his hair and pantomimed smoking a cigarette. He also plays MMORPG's. I think he's a wizard), but yeah Bronson, the characters he's played, are quite ludicrous. He spent a lifetime portraying men who are teflon not only on the outside, but on the inside as well. He challenged the way we view the elderly... Wait not really.

Unfortunately, I must make a departure from the pro-Bronson propaganda I have been spitting. Whether a rural cowboy or a western cowboy, the distinctions are interesting. He made a career of slugging it to the other. Whether it be Native American (westerns), the urban poor (Death Wish), or deranged Mormons (Messenger of Death), Bronson was always socking it to someone not white and anglo-saxon. The course of Bronsons career is emblematic of Hollywood's construction of nature, the socially constructed natural, and second nature in the form of urbanity. There is a dialectic here constantly in tension (conceptions of space in the form of rural-urban, tribal-modernized, town-countryside). Bronsons movies are a perfect way of displaying this abstract concept of space tension into actual practice.

The West as we know it was wild at one time. It was untamed, or as I would say not homogenized into the capitalist mode of production as of yet. It was up to toughs such as Bronson to go out there and establish law, or annihilate space (previous modes of production) with their iron guns and iron attitudes. Please don't believe that manifest destiny was a uniquely American phenomenon, or connected to some religious great awakening. It was a phenomenon induced by capitals insatiable appetite for new markets, resources, and labor. It was necessary to subjugate and destroy Native American populations. It wasn't just the production of an Andrew Jackson style Indian massacare that fueled the center driven domination of the periphery, but rather it was the carrying out of these plans that ultimately produced this abstract space(the space of capitalism via Lefebrve).

Like artistic gentrifiers that would follow, men like the ones Bronson portrayed put a foothold into this untamed environment for capitalist production. It was wild out there, just like fires can actually be wild. Doesn't this say something about our view of nature. The western starter town is very much isolated. Nature is truly external here. It is also dangerous and unforgiving. Native Americans, who are conceptualized as part of this external Nature, are also part of the hazard. In this context Nature is viewed as something primordial. Presently, nature has now left the wild(beautiful and valued) and the city has now become the vacant space of lawlessness with Indians being replaced by street thugs. The savage on the horse, has been replaced by the Duke of New York's caddy(Escape from New York).

Similarly, in Death Wish 3, and Kinjite, Bronson is now facing a new harsh environment. One in which his wife and daughter are either killed, or molested by hordes of similarly looking Japanese business men. Bronson now comes back as vigilante outlaw (Death Wish), or sheriff who isn't afraid to work outside the system (Kinjite), to enact some kind of Hammurabian notion of justice. In fact, the last lines in Kinjite, are by Lt. Kroll, Bronsons character. He confidently exclaims, "That's justice(!)". Now, instead of going to the the space known as high noon and fighting a villain to the death in a duel, Bronson makes 'that shitbag Duke' eat a watch. He also blows up his expensive car, and eventually facilitates him getting raped by faceless homosexual prisoners.

Bronson is justified in anything he does in this context. He is protected by this seemingly transparent notion of what is right and wrong. He is now bringing order to Kool Moe Dee's Wild Wild West(Los Angeles) by any means possible.

Bronson is a truly Reagan-era style hero. Bronson's characters are situated in a world where persons are inherently evil. Their station in life, their poverty, their propensity to commit crimes, is not bourne out of the inadequacies of the market system, but because they are socially deviant people. Their absence of middle class values is not attributed to poverty. What is portrayed is quite the opposite. One of the primary themes that underpins these movies is a justification for rolling back Keynesian economic policies. Something that Reagan, Bush, and Clinton were quite good at.

This relational space of the inner city is of primary interest to me. These films are produced to buttress the ideology of people who already believe that the inner city has turned into a wilderness. They took an integral part in the disinvestment of neighborhoods, yet they are somehow surpised the city has turned into a 'bad' place. Of course this isn't only a class issue. This problem of conceptualization is deeply connected with race.

In one of Bronson's diatribes pertaining to the Japanese yellow horde he complains that immigrants are taking what he and his partner have worked so hard for. Yes, very amusing. These movies, like 90 percent of the media, including shows like Mind of Mencia and Chappelle's Show, consciously or unconsciously seek to further rupture the proletariat.

I personally believe that the reserve army of the ghetto has lost significance. The new reserve army is the population of Mexico.

Anyway, these are some random thoughts, no research, just off dome. Plus I really didn't expound this shift from the West to the urban frontier through Bronson like I planned. Perhaps in the future...