For over four decades, Martin Scorsese has been the chronicler of
an obsessive society, where material possessions and physical
comfort are valued, where the pursuit of individual improvement is
rewarded and where male prerogative is respected and preserved.
Scorsese has often described his films as sociology and he has a
point: his storytelling condenses complex information into
comprehensible narratives about society. In this sense, he has been
a guide through a dark world of nineteenth century crypto-fascism
to a fetishistic twentieth century in which goods, fame, money and
power are held to have magical power.
Author of Tyson: Nurture of the Beast and Beckham,
Ellis Cashmore turns his attention to arguably the most influential
living film- maker to explore how Scorsese envisions America.
Greed, manhood, the city and romantic love feature on Scorsese’s
landscape of secular materialism. They are among the themes
Cashmore argues have driven and inform Scorsese’s work. This is
America, as seen through the eyes of Martin Scorsese and it is a
deeply unpleasant place.
Cashmore’s book discloses how, collectively, Scorsese’s films
present an image of America. It’s an image assembled from the
perspectives of obsessive people, whether burned-out paramedics,
compulsive entrepreneurs, tortured lovers, or celebrity-fixated
comedians. It’s collected from pool halls, taxicabs, boxing rings
and jazz clubs. It’s an image that’s specific, yet ubiquitous. It
is Martin Scorsese’s America.

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