The Gangsters End

All great things must come to an end. That sentence is just what people say when one season is ending and another is starting. People are afraid of the future and look back on the past for nostalgia and comfort. Most people would consider that the norm, and I would agree with them. Our memories are our safe place; that's where we go when we need answers, comfort, or a place that is just simple, even when everything is all figured out. This is the same for Gangsters.

In the movie American Gangster, we follow notorious gangster Frank Lucas as he rises and falls from "glory." This story is much more than a gangster's life of pushing drugs and a cop chasing him. This is a story about change. In the first scene, we see Frank talking with his mentor, Bumpy Johnson, who tells him how things around Harlem have changed. This is a theme that persists throughout the movie: that everything is constantly changing. As Frank gets more money, he changes his family situation. They

innovate the drug trade in a way no gangster had before. In the end, when Frank is let out of prison, we find him right back in front of that store from the first scene, and once again, the store has changed, and everything around as well, other structures/businesses, people, and the culture of Harlem.

Change is constantly around us, but even as everything moves, we must adapt to new scenarios in new ways and to old ones. In the era of gangsters, we have circled back to the days of the street gangsters like Bill the Butcher.

This has been a fun blog series, and I hope those of you who have read all the posts through the start have enjoyed. I do not know what the next series will be, but I do know it will be great.