Robert Warshow

Robert Warshow, a writer and an editor of New York's Commentary magazine until his death in 1955, wrote and published numerous essays on popular culture during the 1940s and early 1950s. In the following essay, Warshow discusses the role of the nowclassic gangster films of the early twentieth century as tragedies that play to Americans' deep—seated dissatisfactions and fears. He argues that although America is socially and politically committed to an unrealistically cheerful view of life, the condition of most citizens is a state of anxiety. Americans identify with portrayals of gangsters because they express many Americans' desire to reject the qualities and demands of modern life. The gangster, writes Warshow, "is what we want to be and what we are afraid we may become." Warshow concludes that the dilemma of American life is that it allows only two possible...