Hands That Built America Themes

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Scorsese continues to use the immigrant experience to push the theme that America was born in the streets. It is not a coincidence that the featured song is "The Hands That Built America" by U2. The song’s lyrics mirror the same themes that are depicted throughout the film. As the lyrics go: It's a long way we've come/From the freckled hills to the steel and glass canyons/From the stony fields, to hanging steel from the sky/From digging in our pockets, for a reason not to say goodbye. These words refer to perhaps, the most essential ingredient in the making of America. America, and even more so New York City, is not defined by simply by our skyline and skyscraper; instead, we are defined by the immigrants who come from every corner of the world. …show more content…

For example, in the film, the Nativists and the Dead Rabbits hold their last battle on the same day as the Draft Riots of 1863, however, that detail is entirely fictional – according to multiple historical accounts, the fighting between the two gangs were never that organized and they took place years before the Draft Riots broke out. David Denby, a movie critic, writes in the New Yorker, “Gangs of New York is an example of the fallacy of research. They got the hats and knives right, but the main lines of the story don't make much sense.” Based on Asbury’s account, the Dead Rabbits, as seen in the movie, are identified by their red-striped shirts and their dead rabbit on a pike. It is unclear whether the Dead Rabbits were a separate faction of the Roche Guard or if they were the same gang. Asbury claims that they were two distinct and separate gangs–the Roche Guard was plagued by internal conflicts and during a meeting someone threw a dead rabbit into the center of the room. Following this event, a faction of the Roche Guard formed an independent gang and called themselves the Dead Rabbits. While the Rabbits and the Guards constantly fought each other at the Five Points, they would unite when fighting against the Bowery Boys, who are a nativist, anti-Catholic, and anti-Irish gang. However, historian Tyler Anbinder’s research disputes some of Asbury’s findings. Anbinder claims that there was never really a gang called the Dead Rabbits, rather, the name is a misnomer for the Roche Guard. Furthermore, the so-called Dead Rabbits and the Bowery Boys were more like political clubs than the gangs that are depicted in the film by Scorsese. Most of the members in the gangs had ordinary lives and jobs, but would meet up at nights and on weekends to promote their political candidates. Anbinder states that a lot of the original research that Asbury did was

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