The World is Theirs: Scarface Follow-Up

In my most recent article on Scarface I talked about liking the film for the wrong reasons and others I had seen liking the film for similarly wrong reasons. As I was talking to a friend of mine about that first piece, they mentioned something I failed to address in the article, and it’s something I can’t not address now that it’s been pointed out to me. Here’s part of what my friend texted me:

“The reason this movie resonated so hard in the rap community — who really spearheaded its cultural rise — is because he’s a poc. The avenue TM takes is the only one afforded to him. If anything, when I watched it this time around through the lens of 2020, It felt like it’s a tragedy. The only option for a person  of color to gain status in white america is to claw your way to the top, but if you climb too high they’ll cut you down.”

So while one element of fandom may well be best represented by Eric Cartman performing that “say goodnight to the bad guy” scene in an episode of South Park, that only scratches the surface of Scarface‘s cultural presence and what it means. As with any work of art, there remain as many interpretations as there are viewers, but I can’t continue to overlook the way racism and xenophobia impact not only Tony Montana’s rise to power (and his downfall) but his interpretation in the American consciousness. There is no right way to see Scarface, but any interpretation that overlooks those aspects of the story is certainly wrong.

In fact, as my friend mentioned later in discussions of this follow-up piece, the ability to overlook those angles “serves as a pretty perfect example of racial blindness as a huge part of ‘white culture’.” Thus, while this piece is an admission of my own unconscious racism, it’s also a systemic critique: I fell very easily into the post-racial trap, that aspect of whiteness that allows white people to not only ignore race as a structuring force in society but even to feel good about such an omission, as though to mention racism would be the very thing that brings about its existence. For whiteness, and white people, ignorance is bliss.

At best, there’s a kind of race unconsciousness at play, but at worst there’s a silent racial through-line in the vilification of Tony Montana: as a person of color, it’s easier for white critics and viewers to take him for “the bad guy”, as Montana himself implicitly suggests to a room full of wealthy restaurant-goers. In reality, Tony Montana has been trapped in a cycle of violence since the beginning: forced to undertake an assassination for his freedom from an internment camp, he has no choice but to use force to seek a better life because the tools of class mobility, to the extent they exist at all (that is to say, minimally), are unavailable to a Cuban refugee.

What makes the film, and those famous words — The World is Yours, emblazoned in neon light on a giant globe — so powerful, then, is that for people like Tony Montana, the world isn’t supposed to be yours but theirs. Tony sets out to prove them wrong and is punished for the attempt to rise to power in a fundamentally racist society.

Thanks again to my friend for pointing out the blind spots in my first take and the ramifications therein and allowing me to quote them here.