I have never seen Scarface...
by Seamus Sweeney
[ opinion - april 10 ]
I have never seen Scarface. Or rather, I have seen bits and pieces of Oliver Stone's gangsterathon on TV; it looked quite good, but I was going out, or was too tired or something. I watched once to the point when someone was going to hack off someone else's leg, and another time I watched Al Pacino as Tony Montana moodily pout in a nightclub.
And yet, I have actually seen it, for the film contains some of those lines - "say hello to my little friend", "in America, first you..." and so forth - which have become part of cinema culture. Even more so, I have seen the images. Al Pacino as Tony Montana, his face contorted with rage, spraying bullets from his little friend. Al Pacino as Tony Montana, in clothes that seem far too big for him, looking both impossibly young (compared to the Pacino of today) and weatherbeaten, reclining in a nightclub - edgy, sharklike. I've seen these images at student poster sales. I've seen these images for sale by pavement hawkers. I've seen these images framed, sold along with that version of Edward Hopper's nighthawks with Marilyn, Elvis, Bogart and Jimmy Dean featuring, available for immediate hanging on the wall. I've seen these images rendered in pen-and-ink, "artistically."
If The Godfather - moody, dignified, majestic - is what gangsterdom would like to see itself as (for, as John Dickie has written, the Sicilian mafia has modelled its conduct on Puzo and Coppola's creation, rather than vice versa), Scarface - heavily armed, manic, murderous - is what it really is. But Scarface is more than a gangster film. It is an immigrant film, a refugee film, an aspirational film, an American Dream film. I know this without having seen (much) of it, and this is a marker of its power. What is interesting is how the imagery of Scarface permeates our visual culture to such a degree that, even without seeing it, I am as familiar with its iconography as the most avid fan.
I founded a blogscarfaceproject blog with the intention of photographing Scarface images in what odd places they turn up. Unfortunately, I never remember my camera when I go out where Scarface imagery may be found (mainly in markets, in cheap shopping centres, on the pavement) and even if I did, recalling which USB cable leads to which and will allow me to upload these images is another task entirely. Thus I began to take the lazy man's route, and use the internet to find examples of Montanaiana. The spring is deep. I've found Tony Montana rendered in Etch-a-Sketch. I've found Tony in jacket form. I've found a Tony enslaved to the 9-to-5. I've found Tony-as-tattoo and Tony-as-bedspread. I've even found Tony as salesman for Insulated Concrete Forms and, rather more predictably, in graphic novel form.
This is just what's on the net. One of the most interesting images I came across was one from Flickr of an oversized dollar bill portrait of Tony on sale to tourists in Mexico. American tourist predominantly, presumably. The ironies are manifold, and this is closer to what I originally intended with the Scarface Project. But I have resolve to leave the theorising to one side, and to issue a call for images; all around the world, in the First World, in the Third World, in the USA, in Ireland, in Colombia, in Russia, in France, in Australia, in Nigeria, in Argentina, and even - one imagines - in Cuba - the image of Tony Montana is reproduced as an icon of - well, what exactly? I hereby ask the readers of nthposition to send me their own found images of Tony Montana, of Scarface, via email to inamericafirstyouandsoforth@gmail.com and I will post them. Together we can compile the underlife of this unsettling dream of power and riches, all around the world.
