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Bonnie and Clyde

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Bonnie and Clyde: Legends or Economics? What accounts for the persistence of the legend of Bonnie and Clyde? For two not particularly distinguished criminals from a bygone era in American history, the staying power in the collective consciousness of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker is nothing short of remarkable. In part, the media has played a substantial role, with the early 1967 Arthur Penn film having been succeeded in 2013 by a television miniseries about the duo and their gang. I hope to demonstrate through an examination of the historical source material that the reason for Bonnie and Clyde’s persistence is explainable in one single word: economics. What Bonnie and Clyde signify for later generations of interested readers is a response (howsoever criminal) on the part of ordinary people to the Great Depression that defined America during the Presidency of Herbert Hoover. Although certain other aspects of their short career—particularly their reliance on automobiles to commit their crimes, in a decade when automobiles were a more or less new national phenomenon—may play a role in maintaining the fame of Bonnie and Clyde long after their deaths, it is as a symbol of economic revolt, particularly in an era when the overall economy must have seemed perpetrated by criminals who operated on a much grander scale than these Texas youths, that their story finds its ultimate resonance. It is worth noting that the economic circumstances of both Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were not exactly deprived. They both came from what would be best understood as lower-middle-class backgrounds. Although America was widely understood as having an economic boom in the immediate aftermath of World War One, the prosperity would prove to be short-lived. But it is worth noting that one aspect of the brief boom—the sudden presence of the automobile—was responsible for what

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