Scarface Journal

Scarface: Who do you feel is the target audience 

for the film, and why?

In this report I am going to be talking about the different conventions that Scarface has, the way the characters are portrayed and the narrative. Scarface was a mainstream film, it was aimed for a large audience because it had well known stars at the time e.g. Al Pacino, Michelle Pfeiffer and Steven Bauer. This film has many conventions of the gangster genre. When watching Scarface I thought the target audience would be aimed at males because gangster movies are generally watched by males and also the content of this film is very violent e.g. when you see constant fast pace cuts between a close of Tony's face and a close of the man holding the chainsaw closer and closer towards Tony's friends arms and eventually we get a extreme close up of Tony's friends face a gory blood splatting everywhere, this will appeal more to males than females. Also some males might look up to Tony because even though he become paranoid like when Tony sees Gina with a male and it zooms into a extreme close up of his face and cuts repeatedly from Gina to Tony and we hear high pitched non diegtic music, and also very violent towards the end of the movie, he still shows loyalty and some morals through-out the movie like when they are supposed to assassinate politician but the wife and children were in the car so he didn't go through with it and also because Tony stuck to his word this is why I think that males particularly would be the target audience for this film.

The main target for film for me was gangster film fans but as the years have passed, the hip hop community have seem to embrace the film a lot. A lot of Hip hop artist have made Scarface reference in their songs like Nas – The World is Yours (Tony Montana’s motto), Raekwon – Criminology (has dialogue from the movie at the beginning), Big Pun – Leatherface (samples from the movie in the song) and more. Hip hop artist have said that this is more of a ghetto tale then a drug movie and I feel that they can relate to this movie a lot becoming it is about coming up and becoming big and making a name for yourself. Eve, a female rapper has said she ‘loved that he (Tony) was so determined to get where he needed to get’. In some way the hip hop community seems to idolise this movie even using a slang word ‘yeyo’ meaning cocaine which was featured in this movie.

The hip hop community also says that Scarface shows how society treats the ethnic minorities and also show that the ‘American dream’ can come true, so you don’t have to ‘conform to society in order to make it’ says Mekhi Phifer. Hip hop is also about the come up of a rapper which is similar to what Tony Montana was doing. A lot of hip hop like the fact that ‘Tony Montana embodied being an opportunist, having morals and loyal’ and even this Tony was a drug lord he was ‘genuine’, ‘stuck to his word’ and ‘to respect his drive’. The hip hop community liked this film because they felt that this film was relatable and had a lot of things that they could learn the positives and the negatives.

One of the main conventions of a gangster genre that Scarface incorporate is the ‘the rise and fall’ of the gangster. The rise and fall is when the gangster slowly becomes rich and power after being very poor, then things starts to go wrong and then end up dead. This is something that you will see very often in gangster movies. Tony comes from being an immigrant from Cuba to a drug lord then he started taking drugs and then things started going downhill from there. Another convention of gangster film is that there is always some type of discrimination towards an ethnic minorities like black people, Hispanics, Native American and Asians. Most gangster films are about these ethnic minorities who started out poor and work their way to the top, you never see a middle class white person as a gangster in this genre, they seem to be a person working in law enforcement.

Also in this genre there is also the guy that falls in love with the boss’ girl, kill the boss and take over. Elvira Hancock was Tony’s love interest since he saw her coming down from the elevator. In that scene you see a low angle shot of Elvira getting in the lift then pans to a middle shot of Tony looking up at Elvira, who is wearing a silk aqua blue dress, you could see by the way the camera was close up to Tony's face expression that he was interested in him. Falling in love with the gangster's girl happens in almost every gangster movie, he gets the girl. But in another gangster movies the girl generally seems to be interested in the gangster whereas with Elvira Hancock I felt that she went along with the person who had the most power at the time. This genre is always based on the life experience of a male, this is because these films tend to show a lot of strength and power which I feel is more of a male aspect. The males want to more masculinity whereas I feel that females are shown to be more emotional and this wouldn't fit into these type of films. There is also a lot of violence in this genre which leads to the death of the main character, this is to so a message that what goes around comes back around. This is a perfect example of Tony because he kills a lot of people in this film for example in the scene where you see an over the shoulder shot of Tony's face expression when he sees Gina at Manny's house and the scene goes in slow motions and the it cuts to middle shot of Manny falling on to the floor, this was the beginning of his downfall. You also hear a non diegetic music in the background suggesting that something bad has happened. This shows that there are consequences to the things that you do. This can also be an anti-drug as well saying that no matter how much money you could make of drugs, it will also lead to death.

In Scarface, the men and women are represented differently. The men are showed to be more superior, aggressive, stubborn and fearless. These aspects show the men's masculinity, the men in Scarface would rather die than to seem weak. On the other hand Frank Lopez (Tony's mentor) was seen to be weak at his last moments in his death because in this scene you see a long shot of Frank begging for his life and . Frank Lopez was represented negatively at this moment because it show that he was weak and fearful compared to the other characters in this film. Tony and Manny were represented to be what I described earlier which is fearless, aggressive and stubborn, their goal was to become powerful so they could gain wealth and women. The men treated the women in this film as objects, the women are only there to look good especially with Manny but towards the end you see that he develops genuine feels for Tony's sister Gina. Tony was represented to be good guy with good morals at first but when the power and the drugs came, you could see Tony beginning to change. Tony started become more paranoid as we see because he install camera everywhere in his house so he can view what is happening outside. He also started to develop at short temper and started to become over protective especially with his sister for example in the scene where Tony slaps Gina because he saw her go to the toilet with a guy.

The women are portrayed to be sexualised every time we would see a women in Scarface they all seemed to be wearing bikinis. The women were seen to be properties and the things with wealth and power. The women in this film are also seen to be very emotional especially Gina, she let her emotions control her for example when she starts shooting at Tony at the last scene because Tony kills Manny. In this scene you get a long shot of Gina so you could see the revealing bathrobe she was wearijng Elvira Hancock was seen as something that came with power. When Frank was at the top, Elvira was there and then when Tony had power Elvira married him. Elvira seemed to be what Tony was telling Manny that 'In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women'.

The narrative in Scarface is very similar to a lot of gangster movies. We see how Tony and Montana were refugees and they were poor with no power in society then you see them slowly become more and more powerful and rich then as soon as they get to the peak of their power things seem to go wrong ending in the death of the main character, in this case Tony Montana. The typical conventional narrative for gangster movies is for the main character to fall in love with the boss' girlfriend or family member which is seen in movies like ' Married to a Mob', 'Spike of Bensonhurst', 'The Fast and Furious' and many more have use this narrative in their movies. Another narrative that you would normally see in gangster movies is a drug deal going wrong resulting in a lot of people dying.