Howard Ratner is a jeweler in New York's diamond district with a good business, a family and a mistress. And an addiction that devours him: gambling. He does not play to win money —he has it—, but for the unbearable rush of risking everything and being left suspended on the brink of disaster. He piles up impossible debts, dodges his collectors, launches one deranged scheme after another, always chasing the next hit. For the theory of subterranean values, Howard is the search for excitement —that value all of society hides— taken to its self-destructive extreme.
// The theoryThe value we all hide
The theory of subterranean values by Matza and Sykes holds that the offender does not live by values foreign to ours, but by those that respectable society keeps hidden —among them, the search for excitement: the love of risk, of adventure, of the kick—. Howard embodies it without alibis. His value is no different from that of the stockbroker who risks millions or the extreme-sports enthusiast; it is the same love of risk, only exercised in a form and to a degree that destroys him. The film shoots it with an exhausting physical tension precisely so that we feel his addiction: the viewer recognizes, with horror, the appeal of that vertigo.
Excitement as the end, not the means
Howard demolishes the idea that crime always pursues a profit. He does not take risks to have; he takes risks to feel. Money is the chip, not the prize: the prize is the unbearable state of excitement he lives in when everything hangs by a thread. The theory of subterranean values explains why theories of the rational offender —which weigh costs and benefits— fail with profiles like his: for Howard, the possibility of losing everything is not a cost that deters him, it is the appeal itself. It is the same mechanism that hypoarousal describes in the sensation seeker, but seen from the side of culture: Howard is not a biological oddity, he is someone who has taken seriously, to the point of suicide, a value that all of society celebrates in its weekend version.
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// The subjectThe man who cannot stand winning
The tragic thing about Howard is that, when he finally wins —when the impossible bet comes off—, he does not find peace: he finds emptiness. Calm is unbearable to him; he needs to bet again. The theory of subterranean values, combined with the psychology of addiction, illuminates that sentence: when the excitement of risk becomes the only state that gives meaning, victory is not an ending but the prelude to the next bet. Howard is not after the money or the security it would bring; he flees the gray life he would have if he stopped. His tragedy does not absolve him of the debts he drags others into, but it explains why he was incapable of stopping.
Howard Ratner
// The crackNeither "he is a hopeless sick man" nor "he only ruined himself"
The crack with Howard is twofold. The first is reducing him to a passive patient: "he is a compulsive gambler, he can't help it." Addiction explains the compulsion, but Howard makes lucid and shrewd decisions all the time —he plans, deceives, calculates—: his search for excitement does not cancel his agency, it steers it. The second crack is thinking that "he only ruins himself." No: his vertigo drags down his family, his associates, the people he owes money to and those whose lives he pawns. The subterranean value of excitement explains his motivation; it does not erase the damage his addiction spreads around him. Sharing the love of risk with half of society does not exempt him from where and how he exercises it.
That the film ends with Howard winning the bet of his life just before dying for it is the perfect synthesis of the theory: the one who makes excitement his supreme value obtains, at best, an instant of glory in exchange for everything else. The kick, taken to the extreme, does not liberate: it consumes.
The society that sells what it punishes
Howard matters because he points to the hypocrisy the theory exposes: the same society that treats gambling addiction as an individual pathology fills its cities with casinos, saturates the culture with betting, and tirelessly sells the excitement of risk as a synonym for being alive. The subterranean value that destroys Howard is not an anomaly of his own: it is a product that was sold to him through every channel. The preventive reading is uncomfortable but clear: gambling addiction is not fought only by treating addicts, but by ceasing to manufacture and glorify the vertigo that hooks them. Howard is the extreme face of a value the culture celebrates in everyone except those who take it too seriously.
Three key takeaways
- Howard Ratner embodies the search for excitement of subterranean values: he risks his entire life not for money but for the rush of the edge of the abyss. The "kick" as a self-destructive addiction.
- Excitement is the end, not the means: that is why theories of rational calculation fail —the possibility of losing everything does not deter him, it attracts him—. He is not a biological oddity: he took seriously a value the culture celebrates.
- Neither "hopeless sick man" (his search for excitement steers his agency, it does not cancel it) nor "he only ruins himself" (he drags down his family and creditors). Society treats gambling addiction as a pathology while selling the vertigo that creates it.
Sources · further reading
- Matza, D. & Sykes, G. M. (1961). «Juvenile Delinquency and Subterranean Values». American Sociological Review, 26(5).
- Katz, J. (1988). Seductions of Crime. Basic Books.
- Custer, R. L. (1984). «Profile of the Pathological Gambler». Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 45.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
¿Quién es Howard Ratner?
Howard Ratner («Howie») es un villano de Diamantes en bruto, analizado en KRIMINIS con la lente de la criminología. He could quit and live in peace.
¿Por qué Howard Ratner (Howie) se convierte en villano?
Howard Ratner and subterranean values: the search for excitement pushed to self-destruction. A man who has everything and risks it again and again, because only risk makes him feel alive.
¿Qué teoría criminológica explica a Howard Ratner?
El caso de Howard Ratner se analiza desde la Teoría de los Valores Subterráneos. The theory of subterranean values (Matza and Sykes) holds that the offender shares the hidden values that all of society admires, among them the search for excitement. Howard Ratner, from Uncut Gems, takes it to a pathological extreme: a jeweler who risks his entire life on impossible bets, not out of greed, but because only the edge of the abyss makes him feel alive. The "kick" as an addiction.
