During this course, we have studied several legendary Americans who have enjoyed fluctuating levels of fame. For various reasons, Harriet Tubman, Davy Crockett, and Sacagawea, among others, have risen and fallen from the spotlight due to media influences and changing contemporary values. While the bandits in this unit, it could be argued, have enjoyed less mercurial fame, the reasons for their infamy have nonetheless changed over time.
As White indicates, fear played a large part in building the reputations of bandits such as Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, and Jesse Jones. While this may have been relevant during their heyday, it would have ceased to be a factor once the bandits were killed or apprehended, so cannot be seen as an influence on their current reputations. Additionally, White outlines three types of supporters who would have played a role in maintaining the outlaws’ reputations: kin supporters, active supporters, and passive supporters. (389) The first two categories, again, are insignificant in modern times, but the still-prevalent recognition of the outlaws suggests that the third category of passive supporters, or at least passive acknowledgers of the bandits, has grown. This is most likely due to the increased speed and span of modern media, which allows the outlaws’ stories to reach more ears.
Despite these changes in the nature of the criminals’ fame, however, the readings suggest that the actual reasons of their notoriety remain the same. According to White, “it is said that those who romanticized these characters admired their toughness, loyalty, bravery, honor and daring among other qualities.” (407) These features are just as prevalent in modern hero culture as they were in the past. So, too, do we prize and obsess over the idea of extreme masculinity (as evidenced by the numerous contemporary letters to the Smithsonian referenced in Gorn’s article), which propelled John Dillinger’s reputation in the past just as it does now. If the bandits were touted as protesters “against either excessive exploitation from above or against the overturn of traditional norms by modernizing elements in a society,” (White) their status as brave souls running outside of society’s lines would still be appealing to current audiences, since (as I argued in the Crockett unit), there is something inherently appealing in the idea of an adventurous renegade, regardless of the time period. Additionally, the argument that the media’s influence is one of the major changes in the reasons for the outlaws’ fame, we must remember that journalistic spin is not a recent invention. As Gorn points out, newspapers contributed greatly to the promotion of Dillinger over the police, just as the movie Bonnie and Clyde helped their reputation and as would any modern source that unfairly romanticized the bandits’ lives.
Therefore, I conclude that while the people and methods behind the bandits’ fame has changed over time, the inherent reasons for the legendary status of such criminals has remained unchanged.