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Calling Dirty Harry a liar: a critique of displacement theories of popular criminology

2012; Routledge; Volume: 11; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17400309.2012.723964

1740-7923

Neal King,

Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis

Abstract Displacement analyses of popular film purport that Hollywood filmmakers dissemble the morals or implications of their stories in ways that can mislead audiences and gain hegemony. A review of the reception and scholarly analysis of Dirty Harry movies shows that such displacement theories can become influential in the absence of evidence for their central claims. Where a scholarly consensus has it that the successful sequel Magnum Force (1973) was meant to placate liberal critics and affirm its rightist message in a covert manner, accounts of its authors suggest a straightforward anti-liberalism that links bureaucracy to fascism. This paper concludes by suggesting a higher standard of evidence for theories of filmmaker intent, which focuses on industry routines and generic patterns. Where an influential theory of film has led scholars to dismiss many popular films as lies, the study of patterns and production and genre storytelling offers better potential for understanding the origins and politics – right-wing and otherwise – of popular stories of crime. Keywords: Dirty Harrycop actioncrimegenredisplacementhegemonypopular criminology Notes 1. By 'Hollywood', I refer to the commercial video/filmmaking geographically concentrated around the Los Angeles basin (Scott Citation2005). The firms involved are hierarchically stratified, with the major studios of the Motion Picture Association of America at the top, and various independent producers and supplementary firms lower down, though many below-the-line professionals serve various masters (Caldwell Citation2008). My analysis bears on the output of the major studios, whose filmmaking occurs within a dense network of personal connections – a diverse but largely shared subculture that bears study by anyone wishing to test theories of reflection. 2. Superficially, Callahan was based upon SFPD Detective David Toschi who had begun to investigate the famous 'Zodiac' killings the year before and who had also provided slim basis for the hero of the 1968 film Bullitt. The successes of these two films, along with those of others such as In the Heat of the Night in 1967, The Detective in 1968, and The French Connection in 1971, inspired the larger set of sequels and knockoffs that constituted the cop action genre, which maintains steady though mostly disreputable output today. Every few years, one or two of these genre films garners some industry respect, for example, Die Hard (1988), The Silence of the Lambs (1990), Speed (1993), Heat (1995), L.A. Confidential (1997), Training Day (2001), and The Departed (2006). 3. To support assertions about financial crisis and the depiction of heroism that changed to reflect it, Jeffords holds that, by the 1980s, Hollywood studios could 'no longer [could rely upon] a secure audience' (1994, 16) and coped by meeting audience demands for likeable heroes whose stories end well. Histories of the period, however, show no dip in revenues or rate of production but instead that major studios both kept their budgets high and expanded audiences and profits by developing new distribution pipelines into vertically integrated empires (Gomery Citation1998, Citation2003; Prince Citation2002). In addition, my history of cop action (King 1999) shows how the ornery, anti-social hero was just as much a part of 1980s cinema as he had been of the 1970s. Jeffords' theory of industry disruption and reflection of it on screen is widely cited but empirically problematic. 4. Jeffords (Citation1994) diagnoses no displacements in Dirty Harry movies in particular but rather such trends in action cinema as a whole. She argues that superficial depictions of villains as white, male, and powerful mask an underlying logic of crime as caused by people of color (56, 139). 5. Smith (Citation1993, 103) misattributes this quote to Kaminsky (Citation1974). 6. Smith (Citation1993, 93–4) aligns the rebellious employee with state policy by arguing that most generic heroes are individuals, such that an approving characterization of fascism takes individual form no matter what a hero's relations to other characters. 7. For a more general discussion of imputations of coherence and contradiction, see Fuchs and Marshall (Citation1998). 8. Milius is known as a merrily provocative interviewee, lauding battlefield victors from Genghis Khan to Ariel Sharon, with little regard for political tact. He has, for instance, been consistent about flaunting triumphalism and mocking pacifist liberalism (Chase Citation1994; Weschler, Harper's Magazine, 2005), has resisted being bound to other tenets, and is widely reported to have once called himself a 'Zen fascist'. Though a primary source for that self-appellation is elusive and a recent study (Lichtenfeld Citation2004, 150) casts doubts upon the reports, Milius may once have been ambivalent about fascism, perhaps distinguishing between liberal (dishonest, elitist) and conservative (forthright and triumphalist) versions. Whatever the case may have been, Milius rejects fascism in favor of the more libertarian 'Zen anarchist': 'I am not a fascist. I am a total man of the people. They [his liberal critics] are the fascists' (Ken Plume, 'An Interview with John Milius', IGN.com). By focusing on Milius's claims about his intentions with Magnum Force in particular and the Dirty Harry cycle in general, I mean neither to position him as especially coherent nor to privilege his accounts over those of others, but merely to check for signs that he dissembled for the sake of liberal critics, as the displacement theory holds. Given his provocative habits, such a move seems unlikely; and, without direct evidence that he did, I cannot provide support for the hypothesis. 9. Space does not allow placement of this film and its cycle in the larger cop action genre. I note merely that subsequent entries maintained Milius's focus on the stigmatized hero, whose willingness to shoot predators makes him at once a target of liberal scorn, tool of craven bureaucrats, and savior of a needy public. See, for instance, the 2008 Hollywood release Street Kings, in which overtly scrupulous managers manipulate a vigilante cop into assassinating his corrupt commander, whose rapaciousness threatens city fathers. Dialogue bears on the extent to which officials 'need' the hero and his brutal ways, to keep peace in their city, but can never say so in public without risk to their civic standing. Cobra (1986) is a Dirty Harry knockoff, adapted for the screen from a mystery novel by the famously conservative Sylvester Stallone. The film is a cartoonish homage, casts two prominent actors from Dirty Harry in related roles, and maintained the opposition of the hero's dutiful violence to the irrational pacifism and corruption of his colleagues. Furthermore, such publicly right-wing stars as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris, Mel Gibson, James Woods, and Bruce Willis found steady work, at the peak of their careers, as heroes in cop action movies, though their politics are never the only forces guiding production. 10. Clinch (Citation1994) and O'Brien (1996) recount an argument between star Eastwood and liberal director Don Siegel over the scripted finale, in which Harry tosses his badge into the quarry after his unauthorized battle. Siegel read the kiss-off as Harry's acknowledgement that he had become more vigilante than cop and should withdraw from public service. Eastwood, however, read Harry's brutality as good, if unorthodox police work. Eastwood gave in. This anecdote undercuts the consensus view of Magnum Force, in that it shows Dirty Harry to be the more liberal of the two films, informed as it was by Siegel's views. Milius and Eastwood, in cooperation with Cimino, appear to have been more fully in charge of the sequel, in which Harry shows no further ambivalence toward the violence he metes. 11. I use close study of a film, records of production and marketing, and conflicting commentaries by production personnel and their spokespeople, to document the development of such dissembling by a popular filmmaker in King (Citation2011).