Scarface- Latin American Culture Scarface Term Paper

Open, View, and/or
Download this Document

Total Length: 4742 words ( 16 double-spaced pages)

Total Sources: 14

Page 1 of 16

Both films irritated their relevant critical establishments, and in this way, De Palma's remade was truest to its source. Scarface 1983 savagery and energy united with its political portrait of the illicit drug trade form a memorable and powerful evocation of 1980s narco-corruption (Prince 231).

One of the most striking disparities amid the 1932 Scarface and 1983 Scarface is between Tony Camonte, who makes a fortune through selling bear, but never drinks it, and Marielito Tony Montana, shown at one point collapsing in a pile of his product, undone as much through consuming as by selling cocaine ( Leitch 45) . The 1983 Scarface trades on the forbidden glamour of drug as an indication of the economic achievement that both confirmed the main characters arrival among the upper classes and prepared for their breakdown. The audience proves similarly conflicted in the attitudes towards screen violence. The drugs that mark his rise and success waste Marielito Tony Montana.

The characterization in the two films is hesitant. In Scarface I viewer Manichean world, the characters are confident of the disparities between policeman and criminal Scarface, evil and good, black and white, darkness and light. In 1983 film, the moral status is uncertain, both in the drug world and in the upright society. It is not clear whether, Omar Suarez, Frank Lopez's henchman is in indeed a police informant (Palmar 158). It is unclear whether Omar deserved the lynching that he got from Sosa. Frank Lopez does not believe that Omar is a police informant while Tony does not know what to think about Omar. Moreover, uncertainty shadows other scenes and characterizations, Miami's chief narcotic drug detective, Bernstein, is a familiar face in Frank's private office.

Frank's private office ironically is trimmed with framed pictures of professed law and justice champions among them President Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. This suggests a high degree of corruption, confirmed when Berbstein is involved in a negotiation of money-spinning kickbacks and bribes with Tony Montana and other gangsters (Palmar 158). Moreover, reputable lawyers and bank view Tony as their valued client and they enjoy the gains from his illegal drug trade. Despite the irrefutable evidence produced in the courtroom against Tony, Sosa give surety that his Washington friends, will employ their power influence to release Tony from prison. As a result, in Scarface 1983, the line amid unlawful and lawful, wrong and right is imprecise.

All characters in Scarface 1983 are skeptical and hardened to acknowledge deception and insincerity for what they are. However, Tony is candid to offer such conduct its correct name when he denounces Bernstein, Lopez and a journalist when he refers to them as moral traitors who are " fly straight" and incapable of telling the truth (White 31). Such openness forms part of Tony's virtue that may be used to explain the communist regime of Fidel Castro and his character, besides his obstinate refusal to allow a government to rule his thinking. Tony is deserving of praise and civilized.

However, virtue in Scarface 1983 is far less readily recognized and respected in Montana's Miami than it is in Scarface 1932, Camonte's Chicago. In Scarface 1932, the worlds of the bootlegger and police officer are distinguishable, morally and visually. In Scarface 1983, the underworld's symbolic quintessence and capital, "Babylon Club" signifies ambiguity and duality distilled to their nature.

Named after the ancient city tantamount at once with architectural magnificence, with laudable objective overwhelmed through linguistic and cultural confusion, that is " Tower of Babel," and with grand tyranny and corruption, the Babylon Club is equally multivalent. Its outer front elevation is more conventional Greek compared to Near Eastern; it is smoke-filled internal fogs discernment and vacillates amid intense darkness and bright, kaleidoscopic shades. The patrons of the club range from fun-loving and attractive young adults, who represent the Latin American culture, via police detectives to homicidal drug lords. The patrons alternately dodge tommygun bullets and merrily dance to optimistic music that acknowledges the commerce in 'yayo' (Cocaine) which bankroll both the club and their own ostentatious prosperity besides the grim inspiration and price of criminal world warfare.

The Babylon club is the unauthorized command center of, 'the Cuban crime wave," and Montana is an active person in the corrosive inclination. Through repeated scenes in the Club, mounted mirrors get hold of Tony's image from different angles, De Palma camerawork warns the viewer not to condemn Tony too quickly, but instead invites the viewer to view Montana from different perspectives to comprehend his intricate character (Prince 231). On the contrary, Scarface 1932 does not offer the viewer different perspectives to understand the character of Tony Camonte.

Stuck Writing Your "Scarface- Latin American Culture Scarface" Term Paper?

View All Our Example Scarface- Latin American Culture Scarface Term Paper

Have A Custom Example Essay Written

This is because, Camonte is a one-dimensional hooligan who pursues power and money as fulfilling ends.

Unlike Camonte, Montana is crueler and he looks for rewards that are more spiritual and emotional than material. Power and money according Montana matters only as a way of securing and attracting the best woman as opposed to simple sexual playtoy that sufficed for Tony Camonte. As Tony confides to Elvira, he needs a wife who can bear him children, complete, and sustain his family, the things that he never achieved in the course of his formative years in Cuba, " forget Papa', he reprimand Gina, his sister; we never had one" (Prince 231). Apparently, Tony's family was a typical Latin-American family, which is at once strong and weak. The bond that hold a Latin-American family are extremely powerful, just like the bond between Tony and his sister, but usually biblical family morals are not present. The two are brought up a single parent.

Monolo, Tony's best friend tells, Gina that he and Tony are like siblings and that he understand Tony's conducts and needs better than Tony understand himself. Monolo explains to Gina that Tony's overpowering limitations on her autonomy demonstrates Tony's effort to offer his sister with paternal guidance and protection that she never enjoyed. Tony and Gina lack of some nurturing, confidence-developing father inflicted a deeper psychic wound on Tony. Tony's unpractical and excessive hostility towards older male's authority figures that demean him continues.

For instance, when Omar sneers at Tony as " baggage handler'; when Bernstein mocks him as a contemptible, "Punk" with suicidal irony, and as a single-parent, 'son of a bitch" and when Sosa brands him a "little monkey" Tony does not shrug off the insults or reject them with positive achievements. The sneers exacerbated his inferiority and he admits to Elvira " I come from the gutter," and his instinctual reaction to the sneers is to kill anyone who demeans him.

Tony's strange talent and charm could earn him emotional support as well as healing that a conventional family set in a legal society can offer. The world which he joins, despite promising him material security and high opinion for his friends in crime is questionable through moral confusion, betrayal, hypocrisy and gluttony to fulfill his desperate needs. Tony Montana renounces his wife in the name of her drug use that makes her incapable of bearing him children. In an action of dreadful misunderstanding, Tony murders Monolo his brother who clandestinely married Gina, Tony's sister. While Gina tries to kill Tony out of devastation, Sosa's mercenaries murder her.

Tony act of decorum is evidenced when he refuses to bomb a car that carried Sosa's enemy and his unsuspecting wife and children. Tony's single action of graciousness would have earned him the applause and admiration of law-biding society; in the ethically inverted and even disordered society of illegal drug trade. However, his good deed proves his undoing, besides raising the moral stand of Tony, but he is killed not by police officers like Tony Camonte, but by criminal gang who are punishing his morally advanced conduct that violates the criminal unprincipled code (Palmar 158). Following an extended battle, the Sosa mercenaries gun down Tony from behind reminding the viewer of Omar Suarez's who admonished Tony to, Watch my back" as the pair had carefully negotiated with the double-dealing Sosa. Tony had disposed off his sister, brother and wife and any other potential protect and he had been left with no none to "watch"

In Scarface 1932, Tony Camonte is a straightforward criminal who receives punishment for his straightforward crimes through conformist, effortless and socially approved means. On the contrary, Tony Montana in the extremely gloomed, chaotic and morally indefinite criminal world of the 1983 Scarface is not a tragic hero, but his fate is that of the intricate narrative of an intricate man who pursues a commendable objective through tragically self-defeating and unsuitable ways.

The character trait of Montana suited Al Pacino's bold personality. Scarface 1983 became prominent because of its plot line and theme, as well as because the Cuban community rejected it for portraying Cubans as drug traffickers and criminals. Scarface Al Pacino also received criticism because of its explicit language and disproportionate violence. In the film, Tony….....

Show More ⇣

     Open the full completed essay and source list


OR

     Order a one-of-a-kind custom essay on this topic


sample essay writing service

Cite This Resource:

Latest APA Format (6th edition)

Copy Reference
"Scarface- Latin American Culture Scarface" (2013, April 25) Retrieved May 5, 2025, from
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/scarface-latin-american-culture-scarface-87275

Latest MLA Format (8th edition)

Copy Reference
"Scarface- Latin American Culture Scarface" 25 April 2013. Web.5 May. 2025. <
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/scarface-latin-american-culture-scarface-87275>

Latest Chicago Format (16th edition)

Copy Reference
"Scarface- Latin American Culture Scarface", 25 April 2013, Accessed.5 May. 2025,
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/scarface-latin-american-culture-scarface-87275
   

Open, View, and/or
Download this Document
order custom essay example