American Gangster deconstructed spiritually
American Gangster Critical Review
Political economy
GE, Universal Pictures’ parent company, has already recovered the $100 million dollars it has invested in the production of the Black exploitation film, American Gangster, in less than a month. Many of the over 10 million viewers who paid to see the film are ghetto victims dehumanized by the film.
Officially 50 per cent of the theatre viewers are from the inner city and under 30 years old. This massive turn around on investment was made while Universal was fighting a ruthless global war against underground pirate DVD movies. There are web sites from which people can easily download a version of the film, American Gangster... Officially 10 million viewers have to date seen the film, American Gangster, in North America. But over 40 million other people may have viewed illegal copies.
Many of these pirate viewers are underage youth that lack critical judgment and are defenseless against the racist and distorted characterizations of the film. If the film was judged by the new social standards for rap music, the film would be closed down just for its sexually abusive and inhuman objectification of African American mothers and women.
To date, Universal Pictures and GE have somehow politically managed to suppress critical public criticism of even the Black women’s sexual abuse and objectification issues even in major Black and Women’s Rights publications. Few in-depth critical reviews have been made public on the content of the American Gangster. Almost no spiritual centric analyses are to be found anywhere. Mainstream Black media and newspapers have been very non-critical on the racist characterizations in the film.
Why?
Spiritual Analysis
By Universal Pictures design, the viewer of the American Gangster is never allowed time and mental space to really focus or understand the internal spiritual forces driving the plot of the American Gangster beyond the addictive needs and consequences of soul driven desires placed right in front of their eyes. There are no frames in the American Gangster in which the characters reflect on the internal struggle of right and wrong or the moral fight between their spirit and soul.
The audience is carefully led by Universal Pictures writers to believe the Black characters are "de facto demonic" in nature and void of any spiritual conviction or moral consciousness.
The world is listening for what informed critical African Americans are saying about the film, particularly for what Christians are saying about the film, American Gangster.
The inability of the Christian spiritual community to develop a serious collective spiritual critique of the Universal Pictures film, American Gangster, or its major negative spiritual implications is one of the greatest demonic successes of the production. This demonic success is based on the fact that most Christians struggle to separate the spirit and the soul aspects of the film. We struggle because we do not want to see the soulessness of Frank Lucas' character in our own daily spiritual walk with God.
We, as Christians, should understand that the real person and the American Gangster’s characterization of Frank Lucas are two separate and distinct realities of evil (soulfulness) that Universal Pictures and Satan are trying to fuse into one idea or person. The synthetic – hollowed out Universal Pictures characterization of Frank Lucas written by screenwriter Steven Zaillian, directed by Ridley Scott, and played by Denzel Washington, is a white man’s idealization and romanization of an African American gangster designed to become the mythical Black Godfather.
According to the New York Times: Theater Review, the character of Frank Lucas was turned … “into a figure who seduces instead of repels, an object of directorial fetishism and a token of Black resistance, however hollow, he (director) encourages us to submit as well”…
As Christians we should spiritually frame the film, American Gangster, as Frank Lucas and his family being driven by their carnality, i.e. pride, greed, money and power, to seek the American Dream by any means necessary, even at the expense of their spiritual intuition and committing genocide. The murder of Malcolm X, the liquidation of the Black Panther Party and the political assassination of Congressmen Adam C. Powell are testimony to the depth of spiritual resistance and struggle that took place in New York City -- the American Gangster seeks to remove this struggles from the collective virtual memory of this generation. This, as we shall see below, is the same methodology used by the screenwriter, Steven Zaillian in the film "Schindler's List" to selectively erase the memory of the Jewish holocaust during World War II.
From a Christian standpoint, on a spiritual level, the film characters and personalities must be processed on two levels, spiritual and carnal.
Two Kinds of Christians
“The Apostle in 1 Corinthians 3.1 divides all Christians into two classifications. They are the spiritual and the carnal. A spiritual Christian is one in whom the Holy Spirit dwells in his spirit and controls his entire being. What is meant, then by carnal? The Bible employs the word “flesh” to describe the life and value of an unregenerate man. It comprises everything which issues from his sinful soul and body (Rom.7.19). Hence a carnal Christian is one who has been born anew and has God’s life, but instead of overcoming his flesh he is overcome by the flesh (Frank Lucas is such). We know the spirit of a fallen man is dead, and he is dominated by his soul and body. A carnal Christian, therefore, is one whose spirit has been quickened, but who still follows his soul and body unto sin.
"Only when he is growing in grace, constantly governed by the spirit, can salvation be wholly wrought in him. God has provided fully in Cavalry for the regeneration of sinners and complete victory over the believer’s old creation.
The soul must decide whether it is to obey the spirit and hence be united with God and His will or is to yield to the body and all the temptation of the material world.” (from: The Spiritual Man)
Spiritual regeneration
The real person Frank Lucas at the age 77 remains hardheartened and should not be made into a folk hero or condemned by Christians.
The spiritual question for Mr. Lucas from a Christian's standpoint is that of spiritual regeneration. The writer of Proverbs tells us “the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord” (20.27). During the time of regeneration the Holy Spirit comes into man’s spirit and quickens it as though kindling a lamp (increasing the illumination of the light). This is the “new spirit” mentioned in Ezekiel 36.36: the dead old spirit is quickened into life when the Holy Spirit infuses the human spirit with God’s uncreated life.
We, as Christians, should pray for this man, Frank Lucas, and hope that God has his way with him. The more important spiritual issues of the film offers the Christian community the opportunity for forgiveness, repentance and salvation. There are many Frank Lucas’s looking to the Christian Church for salvation and watching the Christian response to the film.
Need for serious spiritual critical critique
The $100 million synthetic Frank Lucas created by Universal Pictures and Denzel Washington should be subject to ruthless examination and critique as a public health danger to the spiritual health and well being of the Christian community, particularly our children.
Frank Lucas had less spiritual texture and historic expression than wordless Negro characters in Birth of a Nation. From a spiritual standpoint, the lack of spiritual background makes it almost impossible to spiritually read into the stage or level of Frank Lucas’s spiritual development and maturity beyond generalizations.
Spike Lee character fusion, personality transference
Mr. Denzel Washington's public spiritual persona/character was subliminally leveraged by Universal Pictures in order to try and synthetically fuse the spiritual personality of Denzel Washington and the Universal Pictures created personality of Frank Lucas. Rather than Mr. Washington as an actor express the evil spirit of the heroin druglord Frank Lucas, Universal Pictures, has artificially grafted Denzel Washington's personality into the character of the drug dealer.
This character fusion and personalization has made it very difficult for many Christians to deconstruct and separate the deeper spiritual issues of the film, American Gangster. This character fusion (i.e., synthetic grafting method) in Black film characters was made popular by Spike Lee. Director Lee forced himself on audiences as a major character in his all his films and Nike ads. This character fusion was particularly destructive in the distortion of the films “Malcolm X” and “The Girl's Got to Have It.”
The character fusion distortion of Denzel, rather than using method acting to create the real Frank Lucas, this Universal Pictures' grafted character was introduced to the audience at the start of the motion picture and is further distorted and strengthened throughout the movie. The film has the sexually textured smoothness of Denzel, rather than the street hardened ruthlessness of the real Frank Lucas. American audiences know and trust Denzel; this trust transference is built into the character of Frank Lucas by the Universal Pictures screenwriter, Zaillian. Denzel Washington characterization of the persona of Frank Lucas has created unnecessary folk hero and romanization.
On a spiritual level the personality transference make it very difficult for some viewers to separate the spiritual and soul aspects of the character of Frank Lucas in order to understand in the deeper spiritual issues of regeneration.
The screenwriters of American Gangster by design want to focus on the audience spiritual consciousness on the most banal racist assumptions that white Americans have about the soulful aspects Black Americans. Given the deeply spiritual bases of African Americans known around the world, this perceptional distortion was a willful act by Universal Pictures.
By screenwriter Zaillian design, as stated above, Frank Lucas and all the other major and minor characters in the American Gangster are made to appear to be heartless and without any human spirit, feeding on the helplessness of heroin addiction of their own people. They are also made to appear to have no moral or spiritual consciousness, driven only by pride, self hate and monetary greed.
This willful distortion by the American Gangster is clinical and spiritual cannibalism. On a deeper spiritual level, the lack of any Godly spirituality in the major Black roles raises serious legal questions about Civil Rights and dehumanization of Black Americans by Universal Pictures.
Scriptural framing of the soul of the American Gangster
The Apostle Timothy talks about the consequences of spiritual inertia: “whose consciences are seared”! (1 Tim.4.2) Frank Lucas and his family (spiritual) consciences appear in the film to be void of conviction! Some Christians genuinely have been baptized in the Holy Spirit; yet being unable to distinguish between spirit and soul they are deceived afterwards. Because of their special experience, they maintain that now that they Holy Spirit is in full control they should not take any active step but remain completely passive. Like Lucas, their inner man is submerged in total (spiritual) inertia. While Frank and his family may have been faithful church goers, but their spirits were captives of their souls.
Satan begins to feed them many excessive pleasant sensations and numerous visions, dreams, and supernatural experience too. They receive them all as if from the Holy Spirit, not realizing that there inert spirit like a magnet draws in these counterfeit experiences….A lack of discernment combined with a passive spirit, they settle deeper and deeper into the enemy’s (Satan’s) deception…By ceasing to employ his conscience (spiritual intuition) and by letting it drop into inaction, the saint is deceived into minding Satan in his daily walk. The Holy Spirit, however, true to His Own working principle, will always retrain from taking over man’s conscience and using it for him.
Satan alone will seize the occasion to replace the guidance of the believer’s conscience and intuition with supernatural voices and other devices.” Prayer and Warfare, Spiritual Man pages 64-65
One of the central Christian insights of the film American Gangster is that while Frank Lucas and his family has both spiritual intuition and souls, their dynamics needs to be separated in order to be clearly deconstructed (taken apart) and understood. Their spiritual intuition in the film had been taken captive of their soul’s desires for the American dream by any means necessary. The Lucas’s behaviors were driven by the soul centric desires, not their spiritual intuition.
Spiritual deconstruction of the film
In order to spiritually comprehended the American Gangster; the Christian viewer must employ his spiritual intuition to deconstruct the spiritual meaning, messages and consequences simultaneously from both the spiritual and soul levels of consciousness. Failure to do so leads inevitably to a superficial, shallow and unreal analysis and conclusion. Spiritual intuition is fundamental to dealing with the flesh and the soul aspects of the American Gangster.
There are many aspects of the film America Gangster that have major spiritual importance and needs to be reviewed. One of the most dangerous spiritual dimensions of the film America Gangster is not looking at the deeper spiritual issue of the renewed mind. The white media and Internet is romanizing the character of Frank Lucas as a soulless person, when is point of fact it is his soul that is driving his behavior.
The film is designed to be processed on a soul or flesh level, not spiritual intuitive or God consciousness level. That is, the film makers and Satan wants the viewer to experience Harlem and its heroin culture and process it though their flesh or soul i.e. fears, curiosity, joy pride, pity, pleasure, delight, wonder, shame, love, remorse, and elation. Universal Pictures screenwriters did very thing possible to strip the various character personalities of any moral consciousness or spirituality in order to prevent the spiritual viewers from employing their spiritual intuition to be able to read in the spirit between the lines to process the information packets and themes of the American Gangster from the stand point of spiritual intuition.
Major spiritual elements of even the main character’s personality Frank Lucas and other characters have been willfully left out by design by Universal Pictures in order to mislead Black youth and uninformed white viewers. This fragmentation of the major characters of American Gangster is designed to introduction subliminal spiritual seduction of the audience by using powerful video game special effects in order to feed the viewers flesh, while obfuscating (hiding) the deeper spiritual implications.
The separating the spirit and soul
The life and consequences of the unregenerate person as graphically detailed in the American Gangster almost entirely is governed by the soul and feeding its additions. The soul’s three main functions are emotion, mind and will. Rational judgment, intelligent understanding, mental acceptance, or the pursuit of the good, the beautiful, and the true are merely soulical activities if the spirit is not reached and stirred. The Biblical new birth occurs in an area far deeper level than human body and soul; it is in man’s spirit, where he receives God’s life through the Holy Spirit.
The writer of Proverbs tells us “the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord” (20.27). During the time of regeneration the Holy Spirit comes into man’s spirit and quickens it as though kindling a lamp (increasing the illumination of the light). This is the “new spirit” mentioned in Ezekiel 36.36: the dead old spirit is quickened into life when the Holy Spirit infuses the human spirit with God’s uncreated life.
Before regeneration the soul of man is in control of his spirit while his self rules his Soul and his passion govern his body. The personality of man is enslaved to the will and addictions of the Soul. Heroin and other drug, have spiritual, mental and physical components that an integrated and reflective in the person’s soul-based addictive personality. Lucas additions were pride, power and money, heroin sales was his means to that end. As the characterization of Frank Lucas and other forms of self-centres demonstrated in the American Gangster make very clear, the Soul becomes the life and focus of the body.
As regeneration man receives God’s Own life into the spirit and is born of God. As a consequence, the Holy Spirit now rules man’s spirit which is equipped to regain control over the soul and, through the soul, to govern his body.
Because the Holy Spirit becomes the life of man’s spirit, the latter become the life of man’s whole being. The spirit, soul and body are restored to God’s original intention in every born-again person. The God-centric human personality becomes Holy Spirit or spiritual intuitively driven. The film never develops the regeneration of any of the main characters. The audience left with believing that there was no salvation.
The lack of an open public spiritual debate of the role of salvation (lack of) should play in understanding Black drug dealers and other participation in the genocide of their own people are central to a Christian framing of the film.
Power of forgiveness, repentance and salvation
Another important spiritual issue of American Gangster for the Christian community is that film offer the Christian community the opportunity to demonstrate the power of forgiveness, repentance and salvation. There are many other Frank Lucas’s looking to Christianity and Jesus grace right now and are watching the Christian response to the film.
We as Christians should welcome them with open spiritual open arms. Why? Because Jesus and the scriptures says so. “There is therefore now no condemnation for these who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom.8:1). “…The cross bears the sinner’s judgment, proclaims the sinner’s worthlessness, crucifies the sinner, and releases the life of the Lord Jesus. Henceforth anyone who accepts the cross shall be born anew by the Holy Spirit and receive the life of the Lord Jesus”… (Spiritual Man, pg. 61 part I).
Lack of any in-depth spiritual
Another major spiritual weakness of the film is the lack of any in-depth spiritual background outline, development or insight into motives. There is no spiritual background of most of the critical characters. The personalities appear of the screen as if they were dropped from outer space. Given the central spiritual role played by African American mothers in their son spiritual growth, failure to develop Frank mother spiritual character leaves too many critical questions unanswerable that are never bridged by other means in the plot. This same spiritual problem is present with his wife character and the eight children she has, that the viewer is never informed of even their birth.
Any one who still thinks the American Gangster is just entertainment is missing a very critical spiritual point. Over forty million Americans will view America Gangster before spring. Many will be spiritually traumatized and humiliated children.
Ask any young Black female that has seemed the film, what they think, better yet ask how they feel about how African American and Afro Latino women were characterized by Universal Pictures in the American Gangster film and note their near salience and quiet rage. Feel their shame. Then ask then what they felt spiritually about the film and you will how just how deadly the American Gangster is spiritually. Millions of Americans viewers of the American Gangster will be spiritually immature children.
If for no other reason but to talk to our children spiritually, the writer hopes you will read this critical review of the American Gangster. Our children are watching American Gangster in large numbers.
As of this writing there were over million hits on Google.com just for the name of Frank Lucas’ Puerto Rican wife Idalia Margarit “Beba” Franco.
Uptown train to Black Hell
The action frames move the viewer on a subway like train making stops in an addictive ‘black hell’ imaginary Harlem. This action packed subway like addictive hell drama carries the audience, by subway stop by subway stop deep into the hell of Harlem’s heroin culture. Some the drama is some connected, some times not. The viewer is never informed about the spiritual forces pushing the train or the social realities feeding the rise in drug addiction in Harlem during the period. The director and screenwriters carefully packs as much background banality and sexual distractions as possible in each subway stop frame of the film in order to hide the deeper spiritual issues.
By design, the film is so spiritually sanitized and distorted that few viewers would know that Harlem was one of the epic centers of the Black spiritual and political revolution. Ellsworth (Bumpy) Johnson, Frank Lucas and Malcolm X were in Harlem at the same time as Congressman Adam C. Powell, also pastor of the most powerful Baptist Church in Harlem, the most powerful elected African American in post reconstruction history as pastor of the most powerful Black Baptist church in the country. Mr. Powell was a personal friend of Dr. S. Howard Woodson, pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church and together struggled against the real Frank Lucas.
The mostly white suburban and international audiences that will see the American Gangster already have a distorted understanding of the inner city culture; will get no texture understanding of any of the above. This Universal Pictures film serves to reinforce the existing white distortion of the inner city struggle by blaming the victims.
Attack on Black motherhood
Lucas‘s and other major characters spiritual relationship (or lack thereof) with God is completely omitted from either the book, screenplay or film. There are only a few frames in the whole film that are taken in a name omitted Harlem church. And no development of any character’s spirituality. Even the world famous African America and deeply spiritual actress Ruby Dee was forced to allow her character of Frank’s mother to be striped of any spirituality. Given the deep spiritual nature of Puerto Rican culture, the omissions of his wife’s Ldalia Margarita Franco spirituality is equally chilling.
Universal Picture forced omissions allowed the screenwriting team the freedom and opportunity to deconstruct the real personality of Frank Lucas and other characters and then built illusionary virtual personalities that fit the emotional fears and fantasies white viewers. These virtual personalities paint the picture white Americans have of what motives and the mental state of a cold blooded Black gangster minds would be. When the acting skills of Denzel Washington and other African American actors and powerful state of the art special effects overlays are added to the virtual reality frames, the audience is seduced and then fooled into thinking the Universal Pictures interpretation is real.
The America Gangster is the first Black exploitation film made that follows the same virtual ghetto formate used in Schindlers's List. That is screenwriter Steven Zaillian uses the same method to create virtual ghetto animated characters in America Gangster to create a white man's illusion, in order to hide the real realities of Harlem, as he did to create virtual American illusion in order to hide the real Jewish role in Nazi Germany in Schindlers's List.
On a deeper a spiritual level, the viewer is slowly, but forceful pushed to a soul-flesh-sexual consciousness. The spiritual realities of the film are deasigned by Zaillian to be process and understood at this banal level. Watching American Gangster is like experiencing a sex-based musical video.
The Universal Pictures artificially created non-human personalities are then projected on the movie screen as the mental filter the viewer seek to understand the character of Frank Lucas and other characters from a historical framework and middle class white imaginations. The uninformed viewer believes that this Universal virtual reality creation is a real African American personality; better yet they believe Luaus is Denzel and Denzel is Lucas. For most uninformed whites, middle class Blacks and young viewers today, the American Gangster film is viewed through the spiritual prism of their current media conditioned traumatized understanding and fears of the physical-soul or flesh. The drug culture, lust, fears and violence of flesh condition of the viewer is brought into focus by Zaillian seductive design of the film backgound and sub-theme.
The fear of the flesh, not the fear of God drives the emotional prism and filters through which the film drama is processed. The viewer is subliminally seduced into a flesh based reality, and the film is little more than a very detailed Universal Pictures virtual reality white sexual illusion of Harlem's drug culture.
The content of each frame carefully designed for sexual and violence to maintain the subliminal fear-flesh primal state of the viewer. The background is filled with oversexed, black women depicted as docile and submissive sex objects to be abused and controlled. This is methodology borrowed directly from Rap musical videos.
The historical traumatic roots causes of Lucas cold blood ruthlessness and rage, like the cheap video game characters, are never revealed in the film. Lucas is a virtual character, not a human being personality. Unlike the films “Ray “or the Italian “Godfather”, where the family dynamics and childhood trauma that shaped events are shared with the audience, the roots character of Lucas remains for the most part without any history. According to "Entertainment Weekly: Holiday Movie Preview …”Every half hour or so, starting with the film opening scene, he (Frank Lucas) commits some hideous cold-blooded execution meant to demonstrate he’s(Frank) got more stones than anyone else.
Both the mother and father characters critical childhood role models and experiences that shaped the foundation of Frank Lucas’s personality are critically missing from the film. The omission of the character of the father or his role was so complete it was never written or included in the list of characters. This sends a very strong subliminal message about African American men that can not be missed. The dynamics of Lucas’s relationship with his mother are also critically missing. The mother is dropped on the screen in from North Carolina as a Black Christians head of a criminal family with no morals. Again the villainzition of the mother lacks any background or personality development beyond a very brief analysis of her warm relationship with Frank’s Puerto Rican wife.
He fury is tidy and compartmentalized… His behavior also demonstrates the low value he has for human life, particularly black women. The selective murders every 30 minutes also served to keep the white audience on a primal emotional level of life and death.
Hollywood has historically made a policy of conscious refusal to include personality background of major Black characters. Even with the director’s ear and all his purported power and film input, the great Denzel Washington was unable to force Universal Pictures to humanize the major characters by the inclusion of any meaning elements of Frank's character or personality roots.
Like Asian Zen art and deception, Universal’s film format forces the viewer to use virtual completion in order to full in the major gaps and fragmentations in the film’s storyline. The viewer is forced to interpret the criminal motives of the character in his own mind, using his own social prism. This is particularly manipulative given the fact that most movie white and middle class Black viewers lack the necessary share experiences (social prism) and social analogies to transfer to the ghetto realities of stories like American Gangster or the political time period.
White viewers are particular culturally at risk of making the wrong interpretation and drawing the wrong conclusions. Because most white Americans have a fear-based distorted view of powerful Black male villain and the ghetto virtual completion is at best very riskily. In addition, most Black male characters are villainized.
Because of the poorly written manuscript and the careful Hollywood obfuscation and the lack of development of his spiritual relationship to his father, mother and faith, no in-depth analysis of Mr. Lucas spiritual matrix can be done. The viewer is forced to transfer his/her understanding (or lack there of) on to the characters and try to understand the various characters inter play from their values system, rather than the social matrix of the situation in Harlem. This method of forced projection is common to Zen Art and video gaming. This forced Zen like virtual projection of alien values onto a very different time and place is designed by Hollywood to give the viewer the illusion of social or spiritual insight.
Covenant of marriage and the unity of African sisterhood
The fragmentation, distortion and dehumanization of African American characters in America film framed the American Gangster is leading to a serious manipulation of the political economy of African Americans and Afro-Latinos. This crisis goes to the core of the African family in North America i.e. self hatred.
That is, the debate on Frank Lucas wife character is just a pretext for the larger debate about the Latino question (i.e. deportation). Scripturally the story of Miriam attack on Moses’ Ethiopian wife is a case in point to start a Christian framing of this issue.
“And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman.
…And the anger of the Lord was kindled against them…
when the cloud departed from above the tabernacle; suddenly Miriam became leprous, as white as snow…So Aaron said…Oh, my lord! Please do not lay this sin on us, in which we have done foolishly and in which we have sinned.”
Numbers 12; 1-12
Next to death, becoming a leper because of its social toxicity was the worst thing that could have happened to Miriam, the spiritual leader of the Hebrew women of her tribe. African women play and have played major role in the Christian revolution.
African women hide Moses and care for him and had his children during one of the most critical period in human spiritual history. The convent between God and Moses that led to his married to the Ethiopian woman was raised alone with his relationship to God. This is one the many examples given in the scriptures of the reverence God have for the holiness of African mothers and women.
Many of the greatest men and women of the Bible were protected, educated and care for by African women. Because of the degeneration of spirituality in the Christian community, this historic lesion is lost to this generation. The following is Black females reaction to the fragmentation of the Universal Pictures virtual reality character role of Frank Lucas wife.
“If you like movies about rich black men marrying white-looking Latinas, draping them in diamonds and fur and living in mansions, and naked black women being shot in alleys and gunned down by cops in heroin factories, then you’ll LUV American Gangster…”
The America Gangster attacks both the covenant of marriage and the unity of African sisterhood.
As much as the Universal Picture film public relations purports to wants to appreciate the business acumen and personal charisma of Frank Lucas, its also function as a brutal counterinsurgency tool toward African American and Afro Latino women unity. The American Gangster by design reinforces the most powerful color stereotypes of Black women of the Americas .The film, via Internet fringe agents has added fuel to the fire between dark colored African American women and Afro Latino women during a time when millions of helpless Latino families are being deported from the United States and disappearing.
Ten of millions of Afro Latino and African Americans from Africa, Caribbean, Central and South America live in silence fear of deportation. At a time when Afro Latinos need African American political and spiritual support, Universal Picture film American Gangster is trying to drive them apart.
Political economy
GE, Universal Pictures’ parent company, has already recovered the $100 million dollars it has invested in the production of the Black exploitation film, American Gangster, in less than a month. Many of the over 10 million viewers who paid to see the film are ghetto victims dehumanized by the film.
Officially 50 per cent of the theatre viewers are from the inner city and under 30 years old. This massive turn around on investment was made while Universal was fighting a ruthless global war against underground pirate DVD movies. There are web sites from which people can easily download a version of the film, American Gangster... Officially 10 million viewers have to date seen the film, American Gangster, in North America. But over 40 million other people may have viewed illegal copies.
Many of these pirate viewers are underage youth that lack critical judgment and are defenseless against the racist and distorted characterizations of the film. If the film was judged by the new social standards for rap music, the film would be closed down just for its sexually abusive and inhuman objectification of African American mothers and women.
To date, Universal Pictures and GE have somehow politically managed to suppress critical public criticism of even the Black women’s sexual abuse and objectification issues even in major Black and Women’s Rights publications. Few in-depth critical reviews have been made public on the content of the American Gangster. Almost no spiritual centric analyses are to be found anywhere. Mainstream Black media and newspapers have been very non-critical on the racist characterizations in the film.
Why?
Spiritual Analysis
By Universal Pictures design, the viewer of the American Gangster is never allowed time and mental space to really focus or understand the internal spiritual forces driving the plot of the American Gangster beyond the addictive needs and consequences of soul driven desires placed right in front of their eyes. There are no frames in the American Gangster in which the characters reflect on the internal struggle of right and wrong or the moral fight between their spirit and soul.
The audience is carefully led by Universal Pictures writers to believe the Black characters are "de facto demonic" in nature and void of any spiritual conviction or moral consciousness.
The world is listening for what informed critical African Americans are saying about the film, particularly for what Christians are saying about the film, American Gangster.
The inability of the Christian spiritual community to develop a serious collective spiritual critique of the Universal Pictures film, American Gangster, or its major negative spiritual implications is one of the greatest demonic successes of the production. This demonic success is based on the fact that most Christians struggle to separate the spirit and the soul aspects of the film. We struggle because we do not want to see the soulessness of Frank Lucas' character in our own daily spiritual walk with God.
We, as Christians, should understand that the real person and the American Gangster’s characterization of Frank Lucas are two separate and distinct realities of evil (soulfulness) that Universal Pictures and Satan are trying to fuse into one idea or person. The synthetic – hollowed out Universal Pictures characterization of Frank Lucas written by screenwriter Steven Zaillian, directed by Ridley Scott, and played by Denzel Washington, is a white man’s idealization and romanization of an African American gangster designed to become the mythical Black Godfather.
According to the New York Times: Theater Review, the character of Frank Lucas was turned … “into a figure who seduces instead of repels, an object of directorial fetishism and a token of Black resistance, however hollow, he (director) encourages us to submit as well”…
As Christians we should spiritually frame the film, American Gangster, as Frank Lucas and his family being driven by their carnality, i.e. pride, greed, money and power, to seek the American Dream by any means necessary, even at the expense of their spiritual intuition and committing genocide. The murder of Malcolm X, the liquidation of the Black Panther Party and the political assassination of Congressmen Adam C. Powell are testimony to the depth of spiritual resistance and struggle that took place in New York City -- the American Gangster seeks to remove this struggles from the collective virtual memory of this generation. This, as we shall see below, is the same methodology used by the screenwriter, Steven Zaillian in the film "Schindler's List" to selectively erase the memory of the Jewish holocaust during World War II.
From a Christian standpoint, on a spiritual level, the film characters and personalities must be processed on two levels, spiritual and carnal.
Two Kinds of Christians
“The Apostle in 1 Corinthians 3.1 divides all Christians into two classifications. They are the spiritual and the carnal. A spiritual Christian is one in whom the Holy Spirit dwells in his spirit and controls his entire being. What is meant, then by carnal? The Bible employs the word “flesh” to describe the life and value of an unregenerate man. It comprises everything which issues from his sinful soul and body (Rom.7.19). Hence a carnal Christian is one who has been born anew and has God’s life, but instead of overcoming his flesh he is overcome by the flesh (Frank Lucas is such). We know the spirit of a fallen man is dead, and he is dominated by his soul and body. A carnal Christian, therefore, is one whose spirit has been quickened, but who still follows his soul and body unto sin.
"Only when he is growing in grace, constantly governed by the spirit, can salvation be wholly wrought in him. God has provided fully in Cavalry for the regeneration of sinners and complete victory over the believer’s old creation.
The soul must decide whether it is to obey the spirit and hence be united with God and His will or is to yield to the body and all the temptation of the material world.” (from: The Spiritual Man)
Spiritual regeneration
The real person Frank Lucas at the age 77 remains hardheartened and should not be made into a folk hero or condemned by Christians.
The spiritual question for Mr. Lucas from a Christian's standpoint is that of spiritual regeneration. The writer of Proverbs tells us “the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord” (20.27). During the time of regeneration the Holy Spirit comes into man’s spirit and quickens it as though kindling a lamp (increasing the illumination of the light). This is the “new spirit” mentioned in Ezekiel 36.36: the dead old spirit is quickened into life when the Holy Spirit infuses the human spirit with God’s uncreated life.
We, as Christians, should pray for this man, Frank Lucas, and hope that God has his way with him. The more important spiritual issues of the film offers the Christian community the opportunity for forgiveness, repentance and salvation. There are many Frank Lucas’s looking to the Christian Church for salvation and watching the Christian response to the film.
Need for serious spiritual critical critique
The $100 million synthetic Frank Lucas created by Universal Pictures and Denzel Washington should be subject to ruthless examination and critique as a public health danger to the spiritual health and well being of the Christian community, particularly our children.
Frank Lucas had less spiritual texture and historic expression than wordless Negro characters in Birth of a Nation. From a spiritual standpoint, the lack of spiritual background makes it almost impossible to spiritually read into the stage or level of Frank Lucas’s spiritual development and maturity beyond generalizations.
Spike Lee character fusion, personality transference
Mr. Denzel Washington's public spiritual persona/character was subliminally leveraged by Universal Pictures in order to try and synthetically fuse the spiritual personality of Denzel Washington and the Universal Pictures created personality of Frank Lucas. Rather than Mr. Washington as an actor express the evil spirit of the heroin druglord Frank Lucas, Universal Pictures, has artificially grafted Denzel Washington's personality into the character of the drug dealer.
This character fusion and personalization has made it very difficult for many Christians to deconstruct and separate the deeper spiritual issues of the film, American Gangster. This character fusion (i.e., synthetic grafting method) in Black film characters was made popular by Spike Lee. Director Lee forced himself on audiences as a major character in his all his films and Nike ads. This character fusion was particularly destructive in the distortion of the films “Malcolm X” and “The Girl's Got to Have It.”
The character fusion distortion of Denzel, rather than using method acting to create the real Frank Lucas, this Universal Pictures' grafted character was introduced to the audience at the start of the motion picture and is further distorted and strengthened throughout the movie. The film has the sexually textured smoothness of Denzel, rather than the street hardened ruthlessness of the real Frank Lucas. American audiences know and trust Denzel; this trust transference is built into the character of Frank Lucas by the Universal Pictures screenwriter, Zaillian. Denzel Washington characterization of the persona of Frank Lucas has created unnecessary folk hero and romanization.
On a spiritual level the personality transference make it very difficult for some viewers to separate the spiritual and soul aspects of the character of Frank Lucas in order to understand in the deeper spiritual issues of regeneration.
The screenwriters of American Gangster by design want to focus on the audience spiritual consciousness on the most banal racist assumptions that white Americans have about the soulful aspects Black Americans. Given the deeply spiritual bases of African Americans known around the world, this perceptional distortion was a willful act by Universal Pictures.
By screenwriter Zaillian design, as stated above, Frank Lucas and all the other major and minor characters in the American Gangster are made to appear to be heartless and without any human spirit, feeding on the helplessness of heroin addiction of their own people. They are also made to appear to have no moral or spiritual consciousness, driven only by pride, self hate and monetary greed.
This willful distortion by the American Gangster is clinical and spiritual cannibalism. On a deeper spiritual level, the lack of any Godly spirituality in the major Black roles raises serious legal questions about Civil Rights and dehumanization of Black Americans by Universal Pictures.
Scriptural framing of the soul of the American Gangster
The Apostle Timothy talks about the consequences of spiritual inertia: “whose consciences are seared”! (1 Tim.4.2) Frank Lucas and his family (spiritual) consciences appear in the film to be void of conviction! Some Christians genuinely have been baptized in the Holy Spirit; yet being unable to distinguish between spirit and soul they are deceived afterwards. Because of their special experience, they maintain that now that they Holy Spirit is in full control they should not take any active step but remain completely passive. Like Lucas, their inner man is submerged in total (spiritual) inertia. While Frank and his family may have been faithful church goers, but their spirits were captives of their souls.
Satan begins to feed them many excessive pleasant sensations and numerous visions, dreams, and supernatural experience too. They receive them all as if from the Holy Spirit, not realizing that there inert spirit like a magnet draws in these counterfeit experiences….A lack of discernment combined with a passive spirit, they settle deeper and deeper into the enemy’s (Satan’s) deception…By ceasing to employ his conscience (spiritual intuition) and by letting it drop into inaction, the saint is deceived into minding Satan in his daily walk. The Holy Spirit, however, true to His Own working principle, will always retrain from taking over man’s conscience and using it for him.
Satan alone will seize the occasion to replace the guidance of the believer’s conscience and intuition with supernatural voices and other devices.” Prayer and Warfare, Spiritual Man pages 64-65
One of the central Christian insights of the film American Gangster is that while Frank Lucas and his family has both spiritual intuition and souls, their dynamics needs to be separated in order to be clearly deconstructed (taken apart) and understood. Their spiritual intuition in the film had been taken captive of their soul’s desires for the American dream by any means necessary. The Lucas’s behaviors were driven by the soul centric desires, not their spiritual intuition.
Spiritual deconstruction of the film
In order to spiritually comprehended the American Gangster; the Christian viewer must employ his spiritual intuition to deconstruct the spiritual meaning, messages and consequences simultaneously from both the spiritual and soul levels of consciousness. Failure to do so leads inevitably to a superficial, shallow and unreal analysis and conclusion. Spiritual intuition is fundamental to dealing with the flesh and the soul aspects of the American Gangster.
There are many aspects of the film America Gangster that have major spiritual importance and needs to be reviewed. One of the most dangerous spiritual dimensions of the film America Gangster is not looking at the deeper spiritual issue of the renewed mind. The white media and Internet is romanizing the character of Frank Lucas as a soulless person, when is point of fact it is his soul that is driving his behavior.
The film is designed to be processed on a soul or flesh level, not spiritual intuitive or God consciousness level. That is, the film makers and Satan wants the viewer to experience Harlem and its heroin culture and process it though their flesh or soul i.e. fears, curiosity, joy pride, pity, pleasure, delight, wonder, shame, love, remorse, and elation. Universal Pictures screenwriters did very thing possible to strip the various character personalities of any moral consciousness or spirituality in order to prevent the spiritual viewers from employing their spiritual intuition to be able to read in the spirit between the lines to process the information packets and themes of the American Gangster from the stand point of spiritual intuition.
Major spiritual elements of even the main character’s personality Frank Lucas and other characters have been willfully left out by design by Universal Pictures in order to mislead Black youth and uninformed white viewers. This fragmentation of the major characters of American Gangster is designed to introduction subliminal spiritual seduction of the audience by using powerful video game special effects in order to feed the viewers flesh, while obfuscating (hiding) the deeper spiritual implications.
The separating the spirit and soul
The life and consequences of the unregenerate person as graphically detailed in the American Gangster almost entirely is governed by the soul and feeding its additions. The soul’s three main functions are emotion, mind and will. Rational judgment, intelligent understanding, mental acceptance, or the pursuit of the good, the beautiful, and the true are merely soulical activities if the spirit is not reached and stirred. The Biblical new birth occurs in an area far deeper level than human body and soul; it is in man’s spirit, where he receives God’s life through the Holy Spirit.
The writer of Proverbs tells us “the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord” (20.27). During the time of regeneration the Holy Spirit comes into man’s spirit and quickens it as though kindling a lamp (increasing the illumination of the light). This is the “new spirit” mentioned in Ezekiel 36.36: the dead old spirit is quickened into life when the Holy Spirit infuses the human spirit with God’s uncreated life.
Before regeneration the soul of man is in control of his spirit while his self rules his Soul and his passion govern his body. The personality of man is enslaved to the will and addictions of the Soul. Heroin and other drug, have spiritual, mental and physical components that an integrated and reflective in the person’s soul-based addictive personality. Lucas additions were pride, power and money, heroin sales was his means to that end. As the characterization of Frank Lucas and other forms of self-centres demonstrated in the American Gangster make very clear, the Soul becomes the life and focus of the body.
As regeneration man receives God’s Own life into the spirit and is born of God. As a consequence, the Holy Spirit now rules man’s spirit which is equipped to regain control over the soul and, through the soul, to govern his body.
Because the Holy Spirit becomes the life of man’s spirit, the latter become the life of man’s whole being. The spirit, soul and body are restored to God’s original intention in every born-again person. The God-centric human personality becomes Holy Spirit or spiritual intuitively driven. The film never develops the regeneration of any of the main characters. The audience left with believing that there was no salvation.
The lack of an open public spiritual debate of the role of salvation (lack of) should play in understanding Black drug dealers and other participation in the genocide of their own people are central to a Christian framing of the film.
Power of forgiveness, repentance and salvation
Another important spiritual issue of American Gangster for the Christian community is that film offer the Christian community the opportunity to demonstrate the power of forgiveness, repentance and salvation. There are many other Frank Lucas’s looking to Christianity and Jesus grace right now and are watching the Christian response to the film.
We as Christians should welcome them with open spiritual open arms. Why? Because Jesus and the scriptures says so. “There is therefore now no condemnation for these who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom.8:1). “…The cross bears the sinner’s judgment, proclaims the sinner’s worthlessness, crucifies the sinner, and releases the life of the Lord Jesus. Henceforth anyone who accepts the cross shall be born anew by the Holy Spirit and receive the life of the Lord Jesus”… (Spiritual Man, pg. 61 part I).
Lack of any in-depth spiritual
Another major spiritual weakness of the film is the lack of any in-depth spiritual background outline, development or insight into motives. There is no spiritual background of most of the critical characters. The personalities appear of the screen as if they were dropped from outer space. Given the central spiritual role played by African American mothers in their son spiritual growth, failure to develop Frank mother spiritual character leaves too many critical questions unanswerable that are never bridged by other means in the plot. This same spiritual problem is present with his wife character and the eight children she has, that the viewer is never informed of even their birth.
Any one who still thinks the American Gangster is just entertainment is missing a very critical spiritual point. Over forty million Americans will view America Gangster before spring. Many will be spiritually traumatized and humiliated children.
Ask any young Black female that has seemed the film, what they think, better yet ask how they feel about how African American and Afro Latino women were characterized by Universal Pictures in the American Gangster film and note their near salience and quiet rage. Feel their shame. Then ask then what they felt spiritually about the film and you will how just how deadly the American Gangster is spiritually. Millions of Americans viewers of the American Gangster will be spiritually immature children.
If for no other reason but to talk to our children spiritually, the writer hopes you will read this critical review of the American Gangster. Our children are watching American Gangster in large numbers.
As of this writing there were over million hits on Google.com just for the name of Frank Lucas’ Puerto Rican wife Idalia Margarit “Beba” Franco.
Uptown train to Black Hell
The action frames move the viewer on a subway like train making stops in an addictive ‘black hell’ imaginary Harlem. This action packed subway like addictive hell drama carries the audience, by subway stop by subway stop deep into the hell of Harlem’s heroin culture. Some the drama is some connected, some times not. The viewer is never informed about the spiritual forces pushing the train or the social realities feeding the rise in drug addiction in Harlem during the period. The director and screenwriters carefully packs as much background banality and sexual distractions as possible in each subway stop frame of the film in order to hide the deeper spiritual issues.
By design, the film is so spiritually sanitized and distorted that few viewers would know that Harlem was one of the epic centers of the Black spiritual and political revolution. Ellsworth (Bumpy) Johnson, Frank Lucas and Malcolm X were in Harlem at the same time as Congressman Adam C. Powell, also pastor of the most powerful Baptist Church in Harlem, the most powerful elected African American in post reconstruction history as pastor of the most powerful Black Baptist church in the country. Mr. Powell was a personal friend of Dr. S. Howard Woodson, pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church and together struggled against the real Frank Lucas.
The mostly white suburban and international audiences that will see the American Gangster already have a distorted understanding of the inner city culture; will get no texture understanding of any of the above. This Universal Pictures film serves to reinforce the existing white distortion of the inner city struggle by blaming the victims.
Attack on Black motherhood
Lucas‘s and other major characters spiritual relationship (or lack thereof) with God is completely omitted from either the book, screenplay or film. There are only a few frames in the whole film that are taken in a name omitted Harlem church. And no development of any character’s spirituality. Even the world famous African America and deeply spiritual actress Ruby Dee was forced to allow her character of Frank’s mother to be striped of any spirituality. Given the deep spiritual nature of Puerto Rican culture, the omissions of his wife’s Ldalia Margarita Franco spirituality is equally chilling.
Universal Picture forced omissions allowed the screenwriting team the freedom and opportunity to deconstruct the real personality of Frank Lucas and other characters and then built illusionary virtual personalities that fit the emotional fears and fantasies white viewers. These virtual personalities paint the picture white Americans have of what motives and the mental state of a cold blooded Black gangster minds would be. When the acting skills of Denzel Washington and other African American actors and powerful state of the art special effects overlays are added to the virtual reality frames, the audience is seduced and then fooled into thinking the Universal Pictures interpretation is real.
The America Gangster is the first Black exploitation film made that follows the same virtual ghetto formate used in Schindlers's List. That is screenwriter Steven Zaillian uses the same method to create virtual ghetto animated characters in America Gangster to create a white man's illusion, in order to hide the real realities of Harlem, as he did to create virtual American illusion in order to hide the real Jewish role in Nazi Germany in Schindlers's List.
On a deeper a spiritual level, the viewer is slowly, but forceful pushed to a soul-flesh-sexual consciousness. The spiritual realities of the film are deasigned by Zaillian to be process and understood at this banal level. Watching American Gangster is like experiencing a sex-based musical video.
The Universal Pictures artificially created non-human personalities are then projected on the movie screen as the mental filter the viewer seek to understand the character of Frank Lucas and other characters from a historical framework and middle class white imaginations. The uninformed viewer believes that this Universal virtual reality creation is a real African American personality; better yet they believe Luaus is Denzel and Denzel is Lucas. For most uninformed whites, middle class Blacks and young viewers today, the American Gangster film is viewed through the spiritual prism of their current media conditioned traumatized understanding and fears of the physical-soul or flesh. The drug culture, lust, fears and violence of flesh condition of the viewer is brought into focus by Zaillian seductive design of the film backgound and sub-theme.
The fear of the flesh, not the fear of God drives the emotional prism and filters through which the film drama is processed. The viewer is subliminally seduced into a flesh based reality, and the film is little more than a very detailed Universal Pictures virtual reality white sexual illusion of Harlem's drug culture.
The content of each frame carefully designed for sexual and violence to maintain the subliminal fear-flesh primal state of the viewer. The background is filled with oversexed, black women depicted as docile and submissive sex objects to be abused and controlled. This is methodology borrowed directly from Rap musical videos.
The historical traumatic roots causes of Lucas cold blood ruthlessness and rage, like the cheap video game characters, are never revealed in the film. Lucas is a virtual character, not a human being personality. Unlike the films “Ray “or the Italian “Godfather”, where the family dynamics and childhood trauma that shaped events are shared with the audience, the roots character of Lucas remains for the most part without any history. According to "Entertainment Weekly: Holiday Movie Preview …”Every half hour or so, starting with the film opening scene, he (Frank Lucas) commits some hideous cold-blooded execution meant to demonstrate he’s(Frank) got more stones than anyone else.
Both the mother and father characters critical childhood role models and experiences that shaped the foundation of Frank Lucas’s personality are critically missing from the film. The omission of the character of the father or his role was so complete it was never written or included in the list of characters. This sends a very strong subliminal message about African American men that can not be missed. The dynamics of Lucas’s relationship with his mother are also critically missing. The mother is dropped on the screen in from North Carolina as a Black Christians head of a criminal family with no morals. Again the villainzition of the mother lacks any background or personality development beyond a very brief analysis of her warm relationship with Frank’s Puerto Rican wife.
He fury is tidy and compartmentalized… His behavior also demonstrates the low value he has for human life, particularly black women. The selective murders every 30 minutes also served to keep the white audience on a primal emotional level of life and death.
Hollywood has historically made a policy of conscious refusal to include personality background of major Black characters. Even with the director’s ear and all his purported power and film input, the great Denzel Washington was unable to force Universal Pictures to humanize the major characters by the inclusion of any meaning elements of Frank's character or personality roots.
Like Asian Zen art and deception, Universal’s film format forces the viewer to use virtual completion in order to full in the major gaps and fragmentations in the film’s storyline. The viewer is forced to interpret the criminal motives of the character in his own mind, using his own social prism. This is particularly manipulative given the fact that most movie white and middle class Black viewers lack the necessary share experiences (social prism) and social analogies to transfer to the ghetto realities of stories like American Gangster or the political time period.
White viewers are particular culturally at risk of making the wrong interpretation and drawing the wrong conclusions. Because most white Americans have a fear-based distorted view of powerful Black male villain and the ghetto virtual completion is at best very riskily. In addition, most Black male characters are villainized.
Because of the poorly written manuscript and the careful Hollywood obfuscation and the lack of development of his spiritual relationship to his father, mother and faith, no in-depth analysis of Mr. Lucas spiritual matrix can be done. The viewer is forced to transfer his/her understanding (or lack there of) on to the characters and try to understand the various characters inter play from their values system, rather than the social matrix of the situation in Harlem. This method of forced projection is common to Zen Art and video gaming. This forced Zen like virtual projection of alien values onto a very different time and place is designed by Hollywood to give the viewer the illusion of social or spiritual insight.
Covenant of marriage and the unity of African sisterhood
The fragmentation, distortion and dehumanization of African American characters in America film framed the American Gangster is leading to a serious manipulation of the political economy of African Americans and Afro-Latinos. This crisis goes to the core of the African family in North America i.e. self hatred.
That is, the debate on Frank Lucas wife character is just a pretext for the larger debate about the Latino question (i.e. deportation). Scripturally the story of Miriam attack on Moses’ Ethiopian wife is a case in point to start a Christian framing of this issue.
“And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman.
…And the anger of the Lord was kindled against them…
when the cloud departed from above the tabernacle; suddenly Miriam became leprous, as white as snow…So Aaron said…Oh, my lord! Please do not lay this sin on us, in which we have done foolishly and in which we have sinned.”
Numbers 12; 1-12
Next to death, becoming a leper because of its social toxicity was the worst thing that could have happened to Miriam, the spiritual leader of the Hebrew women of her tribe. African women play and have played major role in the Christian revolution.
African women hide Moses and care for him and had his children during one of the most critical period in human spiritual history. The convent between God and Moses that led to his married to the Ethiopian woman was raised alone with his relationship to God. This is one the many examples given in the scriptures of the reverence God have for the holiness of African mothers and women.
Many of the greatest men and women of the Bible were protected, educated and care for by African women. Because of the degeneration of spirituality in the Christian community, this historic lesion is lost to this generation. The following is Black females reaction to the fragmentation of the Universal Pictures virtual reality character role of Frank Lucas wife.
“If you like movies about rich black men marrying white-looking Latinas, draping them in diamonds and fur and living in mansions, and naked black women being shot in alleys and gunned down by cops in heroin factories, then you’ll LUV American Gangster…”
The America Gangster attacks both the covenant of marriage and the unity of African sisterhood.
As much as the Universal Picture film public relations purports to wants to appreciate the business acumen and personal charisma of Frank Lucas, its also function as a brutal counterinsurgency tool toward African American and Afro Latino women unity. The American Gangster by design reinforces the most powerful color stereotypes of Black women of the Americas .The film, via Internet fringe agents has added fuel to the fire between dark colored African American women and Afro Latino women during a time when millions of helpless Latino families are being deported from the United States and disappearing.
Ten of millions of Afro Latino and African Americans from Africa, Caribbean, Central and South America live in silence fear of deportation. At a time when Afro Latinos need African American political and spiritual support, Universal Picture film American Gangster is trying to drive them apart.
posted by Nubianobserver at 9:41 AM
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