What's Your Analysis of the Mysterious Ducky Boys Gang

While, there seems to be some confusion over the ethnic identity of the Ducky Boys Gang. I don't think there should be any doubt that the Ducky Boys Gang in the movie 'The Wanderers' are in fact of Irish descent. After all, there's a Ducky Boy wikipedia page, and a book called "Lost Boys of The Bronx - The Oral History of the Ducky Boys Gang", all stating that the gang was made up of predominately Irish gang members.

However, I think the more important question concerning the Ducky Boys, as depicted in the movie, is not so much what ethnic group the gang represents, but what the Ducky Boys gang represents in terms of Philip Kaufman's overall cinematic vision that's centered around the daily lives of urban ethnocentric tribal street gangs of NY city in the early 60's.

I think that it's important to note here, that while all the other gangs, The Wanderers, The Fordham Baldies, The Wongs and The Del Bombers, might project a hardened ethnocentric persona's. However, in the end, all the gang members that aren't Ducky Boys display very human characteristics. Usually, in the area of humor or fear, even with the Fordham Baldies who are depicted as the biggest and toughest gang members to the point of being psychotically hyper-macho at times, but they also seem to be the most racially diverse gang in the movie, and doing incredible stupid human things, like getting drunk and volunteering to serve in Vietnam.

Now, compare that general description to the Ducky Boys Gang, who seem to appear in mass out of no where just before they start beating, stabbing and killing people without ever stating a reason or a cause for their violent attacks. In fact, no Ducky Boy ever says anything at all during the entire movie. And, their sudden unexplained appearance during the football contest between the Wanderers and the Del Bombers is as mysteriously surreal, as the first appearance of the Monolith was to the chimps in Stanley Kubrick's, '2001: A Space Odyssey'.

I suggest here, that the depiction of the Ducky Boys Gang sudden appearance at the football game and elsewhere isn't merely the director temporarily departing from the films unambiguous narrative form, in order to simply show off his sophisticated visual style, and philosophically nebulous emotional story telling ability. A talent that Philip Kaufman is well known to posses.

But, instead, the director/screenwriter (Philip Kaufman) is intentionally using the very real world Irish Ducky Boys Gang as a transcendent symbol linking the long violent history between New York's ethnocentric gangs, to all the other ethnic gangs depicted in 'The Wanderers'. After all, the first official gang of New York was an Irish gang called the 'Forty Thieves' of Five Points around 1825.

Suggesting here, that while all of the immediate conflicts between The Wanderers, The Baldies, the Del Bombers and the Wongs may seem important and significant at the time to all of their gang members in the early 60's and beyond. They're all in fact, simply a more modern temporary apparition of the long history of violent urban ethnocentric tribalism that eventually forms the various ethnic gangs.

And, it's that anthropological and sociological urban history that all the Italian, Black and Chinese gang members band together to fight against on the football field, after being surprised and attacked by what seems to be, the disembodied spirits of inhuman gang members from decades past in the form of the very real Ducky Boys.

You don't have to agree with my analysis, but I would like to hear your analysis on the matter.