Dirty Harry: fascist? (1 Viewer)

[RobertR]

Along those lines, I remember listening to the commentary track on the Criterion Robocop, and hearing the filmmakers describe it as "fascism for liberals". Apparently, the seeming oxymoron had to do with the Bad Guys being the stereotypical (as previously discussed) Evil Corporate Types, and how satisfying it was to deal with them in a "fascist" manner. Of course, dealing with corporate baddies in such a manner is hardly unusual in film.

 

[Daniel J.S.]

Didn't they say on that track that the "fascism for liberals" descriptor came from the fact that the film was extremely violent, yet had an "it's just a joke" attitude? To go with what you're saying, when Kinney gets absolutley slaughtered by ED-209, it's played in such a ludicrous way that leftist types get a nice chuckle out of the Corporate Stooge getting "chewed up" by the Corporate Machine.

 

[Lew Crippen]

Does that mean that the chardonnay was served on time?

 

[Anthony Neilson]

It's certainly true that Eastwood's a Republican. But frankly, these days - given that we have such a narrow band of political opinion (at least for electoral purposes)- it's much more prescient to me whether people are libertarian or not. That seems to me the real divide.

The very existence of violent, profane, frequently crude films like DIRTY HARRY is in itself an argument for libertarianism. So is Callahan actually a fascist libertarian ?
You may be perverse but only if your perversities are mine.
You may be violent as long as I agree with your choice of victim.

"There's nothing wrong with shooting, long as the right people get shot "

 

[Jeff Gatie]

As to why he carries the .44 Magnum as opposed to a .357 or .38 - ".357 is a good weopon, but I've seen .38's bounce off windshields. Me, I like to hit what I aim at."

 

[george kaplan]

I don't think either the movie or the character are fascist, per se, but they are both certainly very right-wing. Fascist as a shorthand for right-wing is in many cases no more correct than Communist as a shorthand for left-wing. Relatively few Americans who are on either the left or the right are fascists or communists.

But clearly the lack of respect for civil rights is something that Dirty Harry the character has, and the movie certainly promotes the idea that civil rights are unnecessary, both of which are appealing ideas to at least some people on the right.

 

[Mike-M]

Ironic that this thread is up because I just rented this dvd. I popped it in, watched the first 25 minutes, and shut it off. The character just wasn't worth my time from what I saw him say and do. Maybe it's just because I'm black and didn't feel like getting offended that day, though.

 

[Seth Paxton]

I'd suggest you avoid Bad Boys 2 then as well, featuring 2 cops willing to abuse criminal rights perhaps even moreso than Dirty Harry, and with racial attacks on all sides to boot (including some anti-black themes too). Not to mention the filmmakers' apparent enjoyment of violent deaths for all the criminals in the film.


I don't really think Dirty Harry was racist in the least, but I suppose a film's choices on the antagonists might still give that vibe. The reality is that there are black criminals who speak some variety of street slang, with jive being popular in the 70's. Heck, NWA made a career out of promoting that image and I rarely hear of them (or the groups that followed that path) being labeled as racist. A show like Cops parades "white trash" criminals on a weekly basis, and it appears that most people simply accept this as one part of reality.

Since Harry deals with criminals of other races I don't see any specific agenda at work.

But as mentioned above, they made attempts to appease the complaints in Magnum Force which backed the idea that Harry was not about an agenda, he just felt his view of the situation was better than the view the legal system/bureaucracy had. He knew what was right, and he knew the appropriate punishment. As already pointed out, it is the fantasy of film that he, as well as the audience, could be absolutely correct about these things.

Harry is justice personified, more like the abstract idea of karma, instant karma in this case, put in the form of a man. He does not uphold the law because of course the law is flawed (all laws are because they are static ideals while life is dynamic). In reality those static laws help provide stability in a volatile world, so we make allowances for the flaws.

And all of this is one reason why filmmakers love to use Nazis as villains, everyone knows the are evil and wrong, so anything done to thwart them requires no moral choice by the characters or the audience (normally).

 

[Anthony Neilson]

Like I said, Mike, I can see how - if you were black - you could get a bit pissed off with the fact that all the petty crimes that Harry "solves" seem to be committed by black folk and ethnic minorities. They're the kind of roles that Robert Townsend sent up so brilliantly in HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE.

However, it's worth noting that the same guy who played the bank robber in DIRTY HARRY ("I gots ta know" - did Afro-Americans actually talk like that in the 70s ?) also cropped up in THE ENFORCER as the leader of a Black militant group that Callahan came to respect and THEN turned up in SUDDEN IMPACT as his partner. Of course he got killed but then all Callahan's partners do.

 

[Jeff Gatie]

Anthony, that actor, Albert Popwell, was also JJ the Pimp in Magnum Force, so he was in the first 4 movies playing different characters. I always heard that he and Eastwood were good friends and Robert Daley (producer) thought he was a good luck charm. But that could be urban legend.



I think Chico only got shot real bad and quit the force. It was every partner before Chico that got killed, except Frank "Too much linguini, Harry" DiGiorgio.

 

[JonZ]

I think Harry has no sympathy for criminals. Early in the film when talking about a man whos attempting rape, he said he "Shoots the bastard".

There was a great discussion in a old X-men comic between Wolverine and Nightcralwer where Nightcralwer questions Wolverines actions - the fact that he's killed and Wolv responded by saying that he has no sympathy for those who try to hurt people hes protecting.That they made their choice and theyll have to live or die with the consequences.

This is basically how I think The charater of Harry looks at it.I think he has a sense of Justice where you give up your rights as a human being when you take somone elses.
While I think hes definitely a pessimist and probally even a misanthrope he does care about humanity in general,even though he might not like to admit it. If he didnt,he wouldnt be a cop - whos job it is to protect civilians.

BTW, Im 1/2 black and never considered Dirty Harry to be a racist or insulting film. I love the film.I think it a real time capsule for the period it was filmed during,which was a period of unrest in America.

 

[Anthony Neilson]

Yeah, Jeff, I suspected he was in MAGNUM FORCE but I couldn't check. In that one, he wears ludicrous pimp gear and pours draino down one of his "ho's" throats.

I've got to say I don't think the DIRTY HARRY films are racist either. It's just the way things were. Go back sixty years and they were still teaching kids that black people were mentally inferior. My Grandmother's opinion was that whilst she didn't mind black people, she wouldn't want them living next door. It's just ignorance ; the best way to deal with this kind of casual racism is to laugh at it.

Serious racists, however, should be shot.

 

[RobertR]

If by "serious", you mean someone who actually violates someone's civil rights to the extent exemplified by, say, the murder of Medgar Evers, I agree with you. If, however, you mean that one should be shot if one merely seriously holds racist views, that seems rather.....er, fascist.

 

[Anthony Neilson]

Yeah - that was kind of a joke. I'm not really in favour of shooting anyone.

 

[Yee-Ming]

OT: For some reason or other, this reminds me of a piss-take in one of the Aces Go Places movies (a rather successful series of comedies in Hong Kong starring Karl Mak, Sam Hui and Sylvia Chang), where the villains have hired a hitman from America, who shows up looking like and sort-of dressed like The Man With No Name -- the actor they used actually did bear a resemblance to Eastwood. At one point, when he spots his target, he says to his team "There's the jerk. Waste him now." in typical Eastwood drawl.

 

[JonZ]

This was on cable yesterday. Something Ive never noticed before - during the bank robbing scene, "Play Misty For Me" is playing in at a theater in the background.

 

[Rob Gardiner]

I agree with the various posters who believe "fascist" is too strong a word to describe Harry. Maybe the term"reactionary" is more appropriate? This film came out just a few years after the Supreme Court's MIRANDA decision, which I understand was not lovingly embraced by most law enforcement agencies. But it's still a great film, at least for Andy Robinson's crazed performance.

 

[Ernest Rister]

"There was a lot of criticsm of Dirty Harry when it first came out because of it's politics.

The makers tried to appease this criticsm by making Magnum Force, where Dirty Harry is going against a gang of vigilante cops who make him seem like a bleeding heart in comparison. He refuses to join up with them & even utters the line 'I hate the damn system, but until someone comes along with changes that make sense, I'll stick with it.' "

See, that's why I love the Home Theater Forum. I read the inflammatory topic title, think of how "fascism" has very little to do with Dirty Harry, while Harry actually battles TRUE fascism in Magnum Force...and from that point on, it is just a horse race to try to post that thought before someone else. Why is it a horse race? Because there are so many knowledgeable film buffs here...viva la HTF!

p.s.

The less talk about how John Wayne's films are "bad" because his politics were "bad" the better. Don't make me go Jacob McCandles on you.

 

[Ernest Rister]

"The reason I call Harry a fascist is because of his apparent belief that the government needs to take the reins off of the cops in order for society to function correctly."

Fascism is government partnership and control of industry, with the citizens marshalled into that paradigm as cogs in the machines. Government "taking the reigns off" is hardly fascism, that is anarchy.

"When he says stuff like "I'm all broken up about that man's rights" and "the law's crazy," it implies that how criminals should be dealt with should be the sole purview of the police, or more specifically Harry."

Actually, it is common sense - remember when you were a child, and a bully stole your ice cream? The bully should be punished and your ice cream returned. Simple, but that is justice. The wrong-doer punished, the wrongs righted. Harry sees the world in those simple terms. That simplicity is what people connect with in the Dirty Harry movies. There never is any sort of nagging doubt as to the guilt or innocence of the antagonist in Dirty Harry. It's as cut and dry as Star Wars. Maybe if the killer had dressed in black, and wore a Nazi helmet and a respirator, we wouldn't be so concerned with his civil rights. Maybe if he dressed himself in the skins of his victims, tucked his organ between his legs to imagine himself as a woman, and was shot - not by Harry Calahan - but by Clarice Starling, maybe then we would have no antipathy about his rights being violated.

If I was handed the task of writing a new Dirty Harry movie, with Harry retired, I'd start the film with Harry invited to speak at a Criminal Justice class at Berkley.

"The changes to the system that Harry hopes for in Magnum Force are likely such that his destructive methods would be not only acceptable, but encouraged."

No, Harry does not long for mayhem. He only acts an agent of Justice, and is impeded in that cause by others. Classic film writing structure: protagonist vs. multiple antagonists - man, nature, himself.

No different than Sherrif Brody in Jaws, who has to battle govt. power in the form of the Mayor and Amity City Council.

"Of course, since Eastwood is playing the character, and we see how ineffective his colleagues methods are, we side with him..."

Daffy Duck could have played Harry Callahan. After we see the evil of the antagonist, we'd be on Daffy's side.

"regardless of whether we approve of what he's doing (which I'm willing to guess is why critical reaction in 1971 was so vitriolic)."

I truly don't think the screenwriters set out to make a "civil rights = bad" movie...they set out to make a movie where a cop is hindered in his work by the government, where buearacracy is almost as negative a force as the murderer at large. Hey - Steven Spielberg did the same thing with The Sugarland Express and Jaws. Distrust over government authority isn't exactly a stranger to 70's films.

Dirty Harry vs. Billy Jack.

Discuss.

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

OK, who do we talk to in order to get Ernest to write the new Dirty Harry?