When I watched Scarface, the message of the movie was clearly the rise and fall of a charismatic leader through poor life choices - like many of Scorsese’s movies, drugs were shown to have negative consequences in the long run, and ultimately the characters are destroyed by their egos and their addictions. Tony Montana went out not as a “hero” in “a blaze of glory” but as a desperate and disturbed man.
However, Scarface has been appropriated by the youth culture as “cool.” It was not always this way - Scarface only recently became a cult icon in the way it is now. Scarface T-shirts, posters, patches, shot glasses, and every other conceivable bit of merchandising is littered all over the rooms of high school and college students.
Usually the guys that have Scarface stuff tend to be alpha-male types who like to get high and drink a lot, and the girls with Scarface stuff tend to be the girls who are attracted to these type of guys.
It seems like they like Scarface not because they find it to be an interesting movie, or Tony Montana to be a compelling and tragic figure - but simply because cocaine and swaggering bravado = cool in their minds.
I don’t know if it’s connected or not, but cocaine use definitely seems to be trendy right now among college students. And aggressive macho posturing, of course, will always be in style, but for some reason these forces in the youth culture seem to have appropriated Scarface as their patron saint.