marți, 19 februarie 2013

De ce e Dirty Harry atat de 'dirty'?


I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?
Dirty Harry, 1971, r. Don Siegel

"Dirty Harry presents a San Francisco overrun by crime and sexuality, as represented by the red-light district, a woman known as ‘‘Hot Mary,’’ a homosexual in the park, a sexual threesome involving two women and a man, a bank robbery which takes place as Harry eats his hotdog lunch, a frequently robbed liquor store, and of course Scorpio himself. Scorpio is a character without backstory, but his long hair and peace symbol belt buckle identify him with the hippies, the antiwar movement, and the social changes of the 1960s. In terms of local San Francisco history, he is also identified with the serial killer known as Zodiac, a notorious figure who wrote taunting letters to the newspapers and was never caught. Scorpio preys on the weak and kills for pleasure, which makes him unpredictable and hard to stop. Only Harry’s fanaticism, equal to or greater than Scorpio’s, is able to stop the killing.
Harry himself is out of control. He is called ‘‘Dirty Harry’’ because of his general misanthropy, because he takes all of the police department’s dirty jobs, and because he does not stay within the limits of law and custom. A relevant usage of ‘‘dirty’’ circa 1970 would be ‘‘illegal, unethical, and violent,’’ as in ‘‘dirty’’ espionage or a ‘‘dirty’’ war. Note that this is a quite different metaphoric use of ‘‘dirty’’ from the ‘‘dirty hippies’’ in Joe, or the ‘‘dirty foreigners’’ in Kristin Ross’s Fast Cars, Clean Bodies. ‘‘Dirty’’ is a rich, multivalent term in modern Western societies. In Dirty Harry, the argument for illegal and unethical operations would be that society is breaking down, conventional lines of authority are ineffectual (neither the mayor nor the district attorney has a clue about how to fight crime), and only heroic action which goes beyond arbitrary rules can stem the tide." (Peter LevAmerican Films of the '70 - Conflicting Visions, p31)

3 comentarii:

  1. pai unul dintre personaje (un coleg de serviciu) ii explica unui novice la un moment dat de ce i se spune dirty, pentru ca preia toate treburile "murdare"

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    Răspunsuri
    1. da, referitor la porecla eroului, treaba e explicata foarte direct. insa incercam sa pun in lumina imaginea mai larga, a intregului film.

      Ștergere
  2. Shoot first, ask questions later :) Interesanta filosofie.

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