Wishful Thinking IS Wasteful Dying

CHARLES BRONSON — DEATH WISH 1–5–1974–1994

Cinematographic archaeology. It was a time when violence, gangsterism, urban gangs, and ethnic gangs of any sort were some kind of sport and entertainment for young people though it was most of the time manipulated by some adults or older adults for their own interest. Originally, in the first two films, it was nothing but bullying that turned into rioting when the gangs became bigger than the audience of a local football game. Drugs were hinted at, but it was not essential.

But with the third film in 1985, drugs became the essential argument, both the traffic of it and the gangs going along with this traffic, and the victims of the drugs, dead people by overdose on one side and by conquest or defense of a territory against rival gangs or at times the police, though this institution preferred keeping the traffic under control rather than eradicate it. And how could they eradicate it since at the same time, in the same period, the famous contra operation to support both anti-revolutionary movements in Central America and the opposition to the Islamic revolution in Iran? Some military and CIA personnel, kept underground as much as possible organized the drug circulation in order to recuperate some money needed to finance the fight against anti-us movements all over the world.