Dude, who even knows.

22nd August 2022

Post with 18 notes

Thinking through the implication that when crime ticked up in the 60s-70s the 20s-30s crime wave was still in living memory

I kinda rolled my eyes at fogeys linking it to the romanticization of crime in Bonnie and Clyde (1967) but I’m maybe underappreciating that Bonnie and Clyde were real people, part of a real wave of armed banditry that people really lived through.

And it kind of seemed to be coming back. Patty Hearst – I can think of at least 4 Dashiell Hammett stories on the premise “San Francisco society heiress kidnapped”.

Bikers descending on rural towns like vikings mirrored the way new automobility enabled that crime wave, as does the iconic candy van or even stranger talking to girls walking home from school – rural crime-solving relied on the way the pool of potential perpetrators was finite, known, and recognizable, “the usual suspects” – someone arriving, enclosed behind a windshield, from merely the next county over, criming, and leaving was an untouchable phantom.

Tagged: amhist

  1. humanfist reblogged this from kontextmaschine
  2. choppedcowboydinosaur reblogged this from kontextmaschine and added:
    That’s an interesting aspect. ...I figured the crime wave for the 20′s and 30′s was caused...
  3. kontextmaschine reblogged this from kontextmaschine and added:
    Like an important part of this was that in the period when cars were first introduced they were something only owned by...