When President Ronald Reagan wanted to thwart Congress’ resistance to his plan to drastically cut taxes in the 1980s, he invoked a shorthand he knew most Americans at the time could relate to: he quoted “Dirty” Harry Callahan ’s famous taunt to “make my day” and invite his opponents to a showdown. Rather than rely on Constitutional measures to referee executive-level disputes with the nation’s two other branches of government, Reagan preferred a cultural weapon that leveraged public pressure on Congress to submit to his will; he effectively equated his tough stance with that of the popular screen enforcer intent on street justice . Reagan ’s invocation not only testifies to the off-screen clout of such a character, but also lends the character political credibility and wider application. In this manner, such a character is performative, using Judith Butler ’s encapsulation of gender, but which is true of any performance of identity, being both cause and effect—the performance having the “reiterate power … to produce the phenomena that it [also] regulates and constrains.”1
This book is about the interplay between popular culture and politics—not politics of a partisan nature, but as the tactics and strategies associated with power and authority and their ties to cultural norms and social control. Both realms are interested in trafficking in myths for their ideological utility, but the “stars” of this book are the myths themselves as well as who performs them, especially as they “dance” together. Reagan did so not only with Dirty Harry, but also with the fictional Cold War hero, Jack Ryan , whom one reviewer even dubbed a “Reaganite hero.” Jack Bauer , described as “the first post-9/11 action hero ,” represents another manufactured hero available for political cover, giving conservative media gurus like Rush Limbaugh talking points to defend the CIA’s use of torture in the War on Terror . Such a symbiotic relationship between popular culture and politics creates a fun-house mirror effect, as the “fake” and the “real” play hide and seek—even to engage what Jean Baudrillard terms the “hyperreal,” noting that once the “real” has been intertwined with fantasy, the “hyperreal” emerges, effacing contradictions between what is real and what is imaginary, as “unreality no longer resides in the dream or fantasy … but in the real’s hallucinatory resemblance to itself.”2 In the current environment of “fake” news and “alternative facts,” it is often difficult to spot the difference, let alone ponder the consequences of such confusion.
This book argues that the fallout from relying on such myths is dangerously real. Joseph Campbell describes myths as “public dreams,” and not without roots in reality, but with facts fudged to create narratives that best match dominating agendas. If perhaps there was a “dream” to achieve white supremacy , then race as a biological fact falls far short; but race as defined by what Émile Durkheim describes as a “social fact”3 delivered the justification for centuries for chattel slavery and its crippling legacy of racism . Durkheim and Campbell forward a similar point: myths and social facts (regardless of how far adrift from a knowable truth) are consequential as they are capable of underwriting cultural norms and informing social structures. Myths that underpin the crimefighter hero in Hollywood stories have deep roots in American history and politics. Whether a western lawman, a lone urban detective, or a clandestine CIA agent, his mission is to embody what is normative and to “police” the Other —real and imagined, at home and abroad.
American Exceptionalism and Stories of Ascendency
Among the most profound American myths in play, including the above examples, is that of American “exceptionalism ,”4 although many observers believe the term has been rendered meaningless by overuse and oversimplification. Space is limited here to provide a comprehensive history of the term’s genealogy or its many contradictory uses, but a recap of its broadest strokes is instructional for its fluidity and availability for makeovers. The term was reportedly in use among communist leaders to describe US resistance to socialism as “exceptional,”5 given its rise in other industrialized nations (Joseph Stalin is often given credit for coining the term, which is far more intriguing, but its credulity suspect). Its next incarnation was by historian Richard Hofstadter who offered the term as a theory to help explain why the nation had avoided war on its home soil during the wars of the twentieth century. Finally, the term was rebooted as a patriotic celebration of American accomplishments, often attributed to Reagan era conservatives but just as enthusiastically forwarded by President Obama in one of several speeches, including a State of the Union address.6
American exceptionalism is among those attempts to explain the nation’s rapid ascension from a former British colony to global behemoth within a few centuries, especially when compared to the longevity and evolutions of other nation-states in Europe and Asia. Two world wars in the twentieth century acutely strained the resources of both the British and French empires, which in a weakened state, invited contentious and often bloody liberation struggles in many of their colonial possessions in Asia and Africa. At the same time the United States emerged by mid-century in a unique position of wealth and influence, in part by converting its auto factories into profitable war machines for much of World War II .7 Its further elevation to “superpower” status accompanied its deployment of nuclear weapons, soon matched by the Soviet Union’s similar capabilities. For the next half century, conflict and competition between the two nations rested on the concept of mutually assured destruction, ultimately producing a more prolonged Cold War —so called for its lack of traditional firefights. In this type of war, ideology and culture products are often a more effective and available weapon (including popular culture products as a means of disseminating ideology ).
As scholars began to study the nation’s rapid ascendency, several theories emerged—one attributed a formula for success to the Pilgrims’ pioneering spirit and their adaptation of Enlightenment ideas to the “undeveloped” New World .8 Others analyzed the Puritans, whose “errand in the wilderness” to establish a biblically inspired “city upon a hill” evolved into a radical democratization of ideas that produced a new society.9 Yet another approach cites the vast environmental riches—America as the New Eden and this former European as the American Adam charged with transforming “virgin land” into civilized settlements that could process tangible commodities. This supposed New World was quickly overrun by pioneers heading West to occupy the expanding nation and to fulfill a Manifest Destiny , along with immigrants pouring into the urban centers of the East to facilitate its rapid industrial growth.10 Other historical narratives rely on the biographies and accomplishments of “a few good men,” including founding “fathers,” inventors, military heroes, and titans of industry (also routinely described by the less-flattering term of robber barons) as most responsible for the young nation’s remarkable rise. None of the above narratives are untrue nor are they singularly able to explain such complex and interdependent phenomena.
Whatever the origins, most writers converge on the idea that this new nation was utterly transformed by its interactions with the supposed untapped and untamed wilderness , which created related myths about a reliance on rugged individualism . It was enough to prompt the French diplomat and historian, Alexis de Tocqueville , who visited the United States starting in 1831, to warn about its overdetermined embrace of individual autonomy at the expense of collectivist behavior, aside from “ad hoc” responses to emergency circumstances. By the eighteenth century, American popular culture featured a steady stream of rugged frontiersmen , determined underdogs, and lone “rangers” who preferred to be the “last man standing”; the American Adam was expressly embraced by writers such as Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson .11 This book utilizes such a figure as it traces the revamped Adam archetype to his incorporation into Hollywood storytelling, first occupying the untamed frontier as a mythic cowboy then migrating to the uncivilized urban landscape as a redeemable rogue crimefighter —each evolution retaining key attributes of that early, quintessential American. The archetype also includes a particular performance of masculinity , an ever-adaptive nod to white supremacy , and the obfuscation of class membership; emerging as the white, male “everyman ” able to prosper in uncharted lands, survive challenges by the Other , and rely on his own discretion to distinguish law from disorder—his gender, race, and denial of class all woven into his foundational construction.
The Frontier Thesis and the Gunfighter
The concept of a frontier and its associated mythmaking also informs the development of the nation and its reflection in the screen character at the heart of this book. As a theory, the frontier was initially used by scholars to narrate (and re-imagine) the post-revolutionary push West that first transformed a nation and its people. The concept’s importance to the American psyche was cemented the moment historian Frederick Jackson Turner dramatically announced at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair that the frontier had, in effect, disappeared. Gone with it was its real and perceived value as a “safety valve” for white communities escaping the increasingly crowded cities of “foreign-born” peoples and “the dangerous classes.”12 He also detailed a critical frontier edge—a meeting point between “savagery ” and civilization —as having been eclipsed through settlement and abuse of wilderness resources. Lost with the frontier was its profound ability to provide Americans with the confidence to “scorn” older societies and to create a new one rooted in “individualism , democracy, and nationalism.”13
Although initially thought canonical, later scholars criticized Turner’s singular explanation for American development, in part, because it required “the observer stand in the East and look to the West.”14 His perspective also ignored other watershed moments and influences, including the South’s complex history and slave-based system that had no place in his model, but which was arguably as significant to the nation’s formation. Patricia Limerick interrogated Turner’s conclusions while also re-mapping the West as a place encompassing diverse environments, cultural histories, and peoples “who considered their homelands to be the center, not the edge” of civilization .15 Moreover, Limerick ’s approach enables Western American history to be viewed “as one chapter in the global story of Europe’s expansion” and the ever-changing frontier as a project of Western white patriarchy .16 “Conquest forms the historical bedrock of the whole nation … the American West is a preeminent case study in conquest and its consequences,” she asserts.17 Despite revisions to Turner’s thesis, the frontier as a useful rallying cry for new adventures, whether voiced by President Kennedy or Star Trek captains, endures. “He would be a rash prophet who should assert that the expansive character of American life has now entirely ceased” with the frontier’s close, Turner prophetically noted, adding, “Movement has been its dominant fact, and, unless this training has no effect upon a people, the American energy will continually demand a wider field for its exercise.”18 In Tocqueville visits to the country decades earlier, he had already articulated that for many Americans the frontier was less about physical space but a “frontier of the mind and senses.”19 The frontier has remained an ever-elastic concept in the American imagination, remaining as mythic as it is real, and usually “over there” or “out there.”
It is not merely an oversight that the frontier myth omits or diminishes the crucial contributions of the black slave and the non-white (or contingently white ) immigrant , who did the lion’s share of the backbreaking labor to transform this fabled New Eden into an industrial giant. Even the yeoman farmer that Thomas Jefferson imagined settling the frontier is forsaken for a figure that is synonymous with its violent conquest: the gunfighter, already a darker rendition of the all-purpose cowboy who had descended from the frontiersmen of earlier popular fictions. Such a figure is essential to the development of the rogue crimefighter as he shares a penchant for “frontier justice ” considered necessary when law and order is non-existent, first being established, or broken down. The works of Richard Slotkin are invaluable for this book’s ability to pull a thread down through history from the gunfighter’s frontier origins to the character’s rebirth in the “savage ” urban centers in the wake of the turbulent 1960s. As Slotkin notes, the frontier myth became an explanation for the “redemption of the American spirit … achieved by playing through a scenario of separation, temporary regression to a more primitive or ‘natural’ state, and regeneration through violence.”20 Consider the phrase, “circling the wagons,” a simple phrase familiar to most Americans or to anyone who has ever watched a Hollywood western, is one with its roots firmly planted in the exceptional circumstances of the frontier thesis, and its justification for particular behaviors. The phrase envisions frightened white settlers fighting for their lives from within a confined space, configured by placing their wagons in a defensive circle, and with savages attacking (presumably unprovoked) from the wide-open spaces of the ever-expanding and perennially lawless frontier.21 Violence in such instances is considered “defensive,” even though the nation’s push westward is now understood as acts of aggression against native peoples who for centuries had already occupied the space. When described as a frontier, however, the meaning shifts back to an interpretation of such space as open land in need of civilizing and that required the removal of Native Americans . Far from being a bloody and contested terrain that the nation takes by force, the frontier mantle engages the myth of American exceptionalism , as well as the supremacy of whiteness , the demonization of the Other , and nation’s rogue behavior framed as noble and righteous—and its gunfighter heroes accepted as the troubling but essential actors to help secure such a version of American history. This frontier mindset endures in the gunfighter’s many offspring, including the rogue crimefighter —no less a construction of American mythologies and that carries forward the New Adam ’s sense of entitlement and noble purpose with this added frontier-bred taste for regenerative violence .
Policing the World, On and Off Screen
Often dubbed “policeman of the world,” US foreign policies and behaviors offer create the very disorder the nation claims it must clean up.22 Part of its frontier mentality requires that American warriors and “enforcers” identify and self-select “freedom fighters” in one locale while targeting others as “communists” or “terrorists” in another part of the world, especially Latin America , located in the nation’s “backyard.” Such “policing” of global hot spots as threats to national security have resulted in profound consequences for the reputation of the United States as the supposed benevolent enforcer on the world’s behalf. As Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies point out, the nation’s politicians and populace often fail to grasp “how intimidating this accumulation of power appears to other people” around the world.23 Such actions also sow the seeds of more threats in need of vanquishing, whether the “cold” variety or included in the War on Drugs and the War on Terror .
Although soldiers have comprised many popular cultures heroes who similarly perform American myths , this book asserts that the global influence of films featuring crimefighters such as Die Hard ’s John McClane or Homeland ’s Carrie Mathison better capture American ambition, and cloak the hegemonic impact that surpasses any “it’s just entertainment” defense.24 Such cultural products have the ability to disarm critical analysis and nurture acceptance of their underlying myths as a reflection of reality. Moreover, McClane , as an off-duty cop, becomes a hero by accident rather than a bully looking for a fight—the reluctant hero already a familiar trope in American popular culture . McClane is later transformed into a one-man army and his unilateralism reminiscent of the nation he represents and performs. Moreover, his cowboy swagger sends no less potent a message than a soldier’s,25 being this humble everyman with a badge perhaps better able to influence hearts and minds.26 Such a character is able to embody what Michael Billig describes as “banal nationalism,” in which the imagined nation is absorbed into everyday routines so much so that they go unnoticed, including within ubiquitous entertainment products.27
American popular culture is often credited with helping the nation reach its global positioning, which some describe as a potent type of soft power or cultural imperialism.28 As Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin noted decades earlier, “Of all the arts, the cinema for us is the most important,” as he fully grasped the power of popular culture when used as an ideological tool during the Russian Revolution.29 Although Hollywood is not an official propaganda wing of the United States government, often accused of being “liberal” and at odds with many administrations, as a business that needs to be profitable, it generally and voluntarily replicates a mainstream orientation that draws from a similar pool of viewers as mainstream voters.30 Alternative perspectives may be the preference of individual actors, but such views do not play well at the box office and, in the end, the decisive factor of what Hollywood stories get produced as opposed to reflecting a purported “liberal” bias.
If the goal of the nation’s “grand experiment” is greater inclusion and perpetual reinvention, perhaps these influential popular culture characters examined in this book will not only provide clues about why the white male rogue stays in power, but also glimpse the possibility of how to contest his dominion and match (or even surpass) his performance of nation.
Not All Crimefighters are Created Equal
The term “rogue” is defined in this book as a crimefighter who breaks the law but only to enforce a higher moral order—to seek justice when other avenues fail or are considered inadequate—and which triggers the use of ugly (violent or extralegal) means. Even if reluctant to transgress a border, violate an international law, or ignore the sovereignty of another nation-state, as an agent of the nation (and its need to preserve and advance its dominion), he becomes as rogue as America needs him to be. By custom and definition, a rogue acts unilaterally and at his discretion, innately understanding what is expected of him, but producing profound contradictions that lie in his mandate to violate the rule of law that he also exists to defend.
A vigilante , however, is not acceptable as a rogue in this study, as he is untethered from official service to the larger community or nation; his actions are too rooted in the realm of the personal and his motivations too steeped in revenge. A renegade is also exempt as a character who runs amok of the system but whose mayhem is rarely connected to duty. Any crimefighter who is corrupt in traditional ways, taking bribes or cheating the system to advance his personal fortune or professional standing, is also excluded. Although some rogues technically become criminals, if their actions are on behalf of the nation’s goals, or in its defense—and is convincingly serving the greater good—then they qualify as acceptable rogues. A “criminal” cop is most often available for redemption if he does the right thing in the end or had done the wrong thing for the right reasons. Given that the rogue must rely on his discretion to determine right from wrong, his determination of the greater good to be served must align with what the prevailing mainstream deems normative or righteous, lest he risk being rejected as a hero figure.
The crimefighter heroes in this book most often appear in “plain clothes,” as in this manner they are better able to represent the “imagined” nation, to use Benedict Anderson ’s constructs,31 and to sidestep any links to the official state—often framed as a repugnant concept in an American context. At the same time, if a “blue” uniform can be easily discarded or ignored, enabling the nation to be effectively mapped onto the character, then a normative white male in a (police) uniform may qualify as a crimefighter hero . In contrast, for females and males of color, the uniform often provides a cloak of authority that is able to override any biases or limitations posed by their “difference.” Private detectives of all stripes, though, are generally omitted from this study as they are usually employed by individual clients and disconnected from the broader mandate to serve the greater community or nation. Undercover cops too can have diminished links to a more comprehensive sense of duty if too much of the story has him (or her) posing in other occupations that seriously disrupt the performance of nation or broader service to society.
More than anything, the crimefighter is a figure of action, and in some cases an “action hero ,” with action defined here as a character’s proactive ability to engage in assertive behavior—to have agency—as well as to possess the ability to exert a degree of control over a story’s conflicts and outcomes.
To Police and “Eat the Other”
The white male crimefighter also exists to “police” those who threaten the normative order—to contain the challenges of the Other who might agitate for greater inclusion in American society. The Other in a domestic setting includes women, people of color, transgendered individuals, recent immigrants , and “foreign” nationals, among others. Given how hegemony works—never a fait accompli but a continual negotiation with challengers to maintain dominance—the rogue crimefighter must adapt by, as bell hooks phrases it, “eating the other” and appropriating aspects of the Other ’s challenge. Such cultural theft or appropriation also silences the challenger whose alternative art or ideas become absorbed into the mainstream, whether in politics, popular culture, or, more specifically, Hollywood storytelling.32 This process impacts ownership, issues of authenticity, and who profits from innovation and experimentation, as the commodification of the Other ’s contributions flow back into the mainstream rather than provide uplift or lessen the Other ’s marginalization. A prime example occurred with Hollywood’s ability to co-opt so-called “race” films that existed in the 1920s and 1930s, which were produced by black entrepreneurs (e.g., Oscar Micheaux ) who subsequently lost their separate (and profitable) “niche” industry once black actors were lured away by Hollywood to work as supporting players in largely white- or mainstream-themed products (discussed in Chap. 4).
Beyond US borders , though, as later chapters discuss, with the expanded enemies list of “foreign” threats to vanquish, the Other is given the opportunity to join the fight “over there,” where he or she can be more clearly interpreted as American, without the homegrown “difference” as baggage. This was especially true in the wake of 9/11, which profoundly shifted what constitutes American urgency, fostering a rebooted rogue who is further unshackled from ordinary rules of engagement (e.g., Bauer ), but who remains framed as a defensive player on behalf of national security, no matter how aggressive he becomes.
This book acknowledges and extends the body of work by those writers who have examined the meaningful progress of the Other in pioneering roles that demonstrated greater inclusion in Hollywood. Several chapters investigate experiments among crimefighters as portrayed by females and males of color, who in some manner, challenge the supremacy of the white male archetype. Unfortunately, such performances often serve to make clear why he remains dominant. It remains problematic for an African American, Latino, or Middle Eastern crimefighter to perform the nation when too often defined as the very source of criminality or threat that the archetypal rogue exists to vanquish. Similarly, any female crimefighter ’s demonstrated violence is often viewed as contrary to her supposed innate need to nurture. In other words, the particular masculine performance, whiteness and other aspects of the archetype have become so encoded into the character at the time of his invention that it is challenging to dislodge the factors of his privilege.
Moreover, the Other as crimefighter is set apart as a “female” agent or “black” cop, drawing attention to their difference when compared to a synopsis of a white male crimefighter , simply described as an FBI agent or a CIA operative without the modifier. In this way the white male crimefighter ’s privilege hides in plain sight. As Richard Dyer notes of race, “As long as race is something only applied to non-white people … [and] white people are not racially seen and named, [they] function as a human norm.”33 As a result, while his privilege is rendered invisible, the Other ’s difference is salient enough to impede his or her ability to represent the nation at large. At best the male or female Other seems badly miscast, and at worst appears to be a dangerous interloper that mainstream audiences are urged to reject, even if they are unaware of why they are doing so.
Interdisciplinary Threads and Border Breaches
The above discussions about identity formations and the intersections of gender, race/ethnicity, class, and the concept of the nation-state (how it is created and defended), are informed by an immense body of work. Scholarship from fields of study expressly focused on race/ethnicity, gender, whiteness , and the construction of group belonging and/or national sovereignty are amply utilized in this book. Most engage the interplay that results in the manufacture of privilege that is also responsible for the Other ’s “matrix of oppression,” to use Patricia Hill Collins’s descriptor.34
Most of these fields of study are inherently interdisciplinary, cited throughout the book where most appropriate and with the goal of their further synthesis to provide as comprehensive an understanding of their interlocking causes and effects. By traversing schools of thought and transgressing academic boundaries, the goal is to provide enough depth and as coherent a road map as possible of the several logical threads that are utilized, and which can identify patterns and discover meanings among the breadth of characters and Hollywood products under review. Such an effort also utilize the lessons of long-standing approaches derived from history, political philosophy, and culture studies, along with more recent scholarship emerging from border studies and the proliferating sub-fields grappling with how best to study film, television, and emerging platforms amid the revolutions occurring in media products and practices. As Paul Smith notes about film, but which can apply to any Hollywood text: it “will of necessity be bound up in a system of cultural and political formations; a film intervenes in those formations even as it emerges from a relation with and among them.” It is these mutually constitutive systems that best inform this book’s approach and its aims, which finds additional inspiration in Clifford Geertz ’s concept of “deep play” that prizes rigorous inquiry, but also allows room for identifying plausible correlations within and among such sprawling and related realms.
To accomplish this orchestration of approaches and fusion of methodologies , several organizational tools are at work—with some overlap and some modifications to accommodate the book’s diverse source material and case studies. The first tool is the concept of genre as a means to create related characterizations. As Steve Neale explains, the difference between genres is not a “question of particular and exclusive elements, however defined, but of particular combinations and articulations of elements … and particular weight given in any one genre to elements which in fact it shares with other genres” [italics his].35 Another consideration is how genres are interpreted differently by various producers and filmmakers, which is especially pertinent when crimefighter characters included may have begun in one decade in a TV show and are later rebooted in a film—or the reverse has occurred. The differences in feature-length films versus multiple seasons in which to develop or alter a character also impacts its generic fit, along with its timing in connection with particular historical moments. From its inception, Hollywood borrowed its genre classification from other forms of popular culture (with a proven track record), and although it is useful to identify why and how texts cluster together, it is equally as vital to consider why a particular text is able to transgress a genre’s borders or to find meaning in the liminal space between and across the borders of recognizable genres.36
Although most scholars consider “crime” too broad a description to qualify as a genre, being more of an umbrella term that encompasses several genres or subgenres, Thomas Leitch argues for crime to be considered a suitable category for analysis if one looks at the essential structure of such a story: “the continual breakdown and reestablishment of the borders among criminals, crime solvers, and victims.”37 Leitch suggests that what matters is the ability of any tool of analysis to prompt novel inquiries, and to move beyond whether a text belongs to a given genre to consider what patterns emerge across texts that tackle—however broadly—a central focus on law and order. That could mean its disturbance or maintenance, but more importantly, who should be included on either side of the so-called thin blue line between criminals and crimefighters. For those reasons outlined above, this book utilizes the generic classification of the crime story while remaining mindful of how difficult it is to distinguish between the crimefighters versus criminals, along with what separates heroes from anti-heroes in Hollywood storytelling. How and why such blending occurs forms one of the vital threads of this book as it attempts to examine and grasp the significance of border transgressions related to the thin blue line, among other boundary breaches in an American context, on and offscreen.
Another organizing tool is to cluster characters and programs by common theme or subject matter, in some cases, while in others to focus on a chronology that situates screen crimefighters along a historical continuum to better account for their ancestry and prior (or subsequent) influences. Such characters may also have horizontal connections—not only in relationship to each other, but also within their specific cultural contexts, which results in clustering productions to directly compare and contrast them with each other. For example, in Chap. 8, three productions from the 2000s that tackle the 1990s LAPD’s Rampart Scandal —the films Dark Blue and Training Day , plus the TV show, The Shield —are grouped together, as a comparative analysis of their common inspiration is the best way to uncover what is affirmed or rejected in these otherwise similar constructions. In other instances, clustering material by the same character over time proves a more efficient way to uncover meaningful patterns. Any application of a particular organizational tool (or in combination) is not indicative of any random sampling or haphazard inclusion, but a purposeful effort to utilize the most helpful tools available to accomplish this book’s ambitious goals. In this way, genre may overlap with considerations of auteur along with their relationship to historical moments as linked to political events and/or particular American presidents—especially those who aptly embody or signal shifts in the nation’s attitudes about itself or the Other —at home and abroad.
A further determining factor is to limit the characterizations under review to those that have earned mainstream notice, and which are usually included in the most financially and/or critically acclaimed Hollywood productions. That coincidence is extended by those Hollywood offerings that usually earn significant media and cultural attention via journalism, political rhetoric, and/or other forms of social commentary. The term Hollywood is being used here to describe those films and programming not necessarily related to a California locale, but which represents the business model whose goal is to create products and programming that satisfy mainstream impulses (in order to maximize profitability). Along with other criteria mentioned, Hollywood is most in tune with what films and TV shows capture mainstream endorsement as measured by box office receipts, ratings, DVD rentals/purchases, livestream orders, or downloads. Whether intended for the local cineplex, Netflix , or PBS, such productions draw from a common pool of paid professionals who belong to the same guilds/unions, that must compensate directors and actors based on their reputations and “star” power, and which audiences repeatedly self-select despite the fog of mass media convergence. No doubt the ever-evolving Hollywood system of production and exhibition, along with the consolidation of media companies, have complicated consumption practices. However, it also remains the business of Hollywood to continually gauge what draws the widest swath of viewership, whether intended for small screen broadcasts or wide screen distribution.
Relatedly, Hollywood producers and filmmakers must persistently consider reinvented platforms and shifting exhibition and/or delivery systems (from livestreaming to binge-watching) when creating content. Recent research also attests to how viewers (as fans) of a particular genre—or who are drawn to a specific director or actor’s career—will use a variety of criteria in making renting/purchase decisions, often tapping into multiple platforms to satisfy their needs, whether about cost and convenience, but also influenced by other social factors (to watch Captain Marvel with friends as a communal event or livestream it alone once the film is available on Amazon Prime).
Such media revolutions have left scholars grappling as well with disintegrating labels once used to neatly describe content as a “film” or “TV show,” some terms now being rendered obsolete in a post-broadcast and/or post-network marketplace.38 Other complicating factors have viewers increasingly consuming content on computers or tablet screens, perhaps considering the original medium or format irrelevant; or the practice of viewers “pulling” content from intended platforms and repurposing it for uses not intended (or “pushed”) by its original creators.39 For its part, Hollywood is trying to respond by experimenting with the release of entire seasons in one batch of new programming, as well as to consider the effects of binge-watching on production, having learned that complicated “cliffhangers” do not translate well to viewing back-to-back episodes, among other commercial devices intended to ensure contract renewal or singular “trending” barometers.40 The point is that Hollywood, as an industry, is still the most galvanizing force with the largest concentration of creative talent and specialists trained and intensely interested in sustaining viewership; it remains the best measure of what matches the mood, fears, politics, and prevailing zeitgeist, especially among mainstream America ns whose perspectives continue to dictate what stories are “green-lighted.” For the reasons outlined above, this book utilizes the term Hollywood and Hollywood storytelling to be as inclusive as possible rather than meant to minimize or ignore any of the above trajectories.
Hollywood was once described as the “dream factory” has, over time, steadily transformed into a mega corporate environment whose business it is to create culture, especially familiar, tried-and-true content that aligns with what is mainstream (and normative) in order to sustain the most stable financial rewards.41 In that scenario, the recurring (white, male) American crimefighter is no accident but a testament to the clout of mainstream privilege—one that demands to see its own reflection accompanied by related mythologies —endorsed anew and continually refreshed in this ever-looping process of cultural reproduction.
Hollywood as a determining factor include incorporation of what products and characterizations earn major awards, especially the high-profile Oscars and Emmys. Such information along with vital data related to box office or ratings systems is included in analyses to further confirm Hollywood and/or audience approval. Mainstream reviews are also considered as well as popular sites such as rottentomatoes.com that provide a “score” by critics (or tomatometer) along with a score among audiences. Although hardly a scientific or empirical measure, in an era of “crowdsourcing” and popular polling that Hollywood and audiences use alike to make decisions, such sources provide yet another supplemental standard to help explain how and why Hollywood products are embraced (or rejected) by viewers and the larger society.
Although historically situated screen crimefighters such as Dirty Harry have generated ample scholarship, more recent films and programs have generated scant formal research. In such cases, other measures have been leveraged, including journalistic accounts, appropriate secondary source, and social media, as they too can attest to a Hollywood story’s ability to circulate among key social and political influencers. In what used to be called the “water cooler effect,”42 such public pronouncements often affirm a type of “national fever chart,” as one reviewer noted of the 1967 film, Bonnie and Clyde , which generated a steady stream of essays and political rhetoric that was illuminating as a snapshot of a nation at war with itself at the time. My aim is to uncover similar evidence of past and current examples in which a particular screen crimefighter struck a nerve, so to speak, and resonated or disturbed the prevailing zeitgeist, indicating a Hollywood character or product’s influence beyond any initial screening or subsequent download.
This book cannot provide comprehensive insights into all of the industry and market forces outlined above, nor can it prove what all the connections identify or definitive meanings they may represent. The collaborative nature of Hollywood’s creative processes along with how viewers negotiate meanings all serve to make this book’s endeavor quite challenging. But, as this book painstakingly lays out, correlations do exist between the rogue crimefighter and his circulated influence within political and cultural contexts; and it is a worthwhile examination to undertake even if the direction and clarity of causality of influence is and will most likely remain elusive. Despite such a disclaimer, any insights gleaned will hopefully be of value, especially if they help grasp how hegemonic constructs maintain their advantage through the production of culture and what some scholars describe as the “manufacture of consent.”43
Chapter Previews
Chapter 2 traces the deployment of the frontier myth by Teddy Roosevelt to reinvigorate American masculinity and to borrow the frontiersman ’s wilderness skills to imagine expanded borders and a global design for the nation. With the dawn of the film industry, the frontiersman is transformed into the screen cowboy and the western elevates the gunfighter to a violent but effective tool of conquest. The classical Hollywood western, The Searchers , is explored along with more contemporary “revisionist” westerns such as Dances with Wolves and The Hateful Eight —the latter portraying the frontier as intensely violent, even dystopic. The chapter concludes with the rise of the crime film with darker stories about lawless urban landscapes and the pliable morality of frustrated G-men and noir detective s.
Chapter 3 explores the emergence of the contemporary crimefighter, especially its rogue variant, Dirty Harry , as a response to social unrest of the late 1960s. Clint Eastwood serves as a pivotal figure who transfers his cowboy persona befitting the mythic nineteenth century West to the streets of San Francisco, where a counterculture was challenging the status quo. As the Vietnam War gave way to Reagan ’s “morning in America,” the hyper-masculine “hard bodies” emerge to dominate in the Die Hard and Lethal Weapon franchises. Such films often showcase the Other as sidekicks and “buddies” to their white partners—still the star attraction. Finally, films such as Fort Apache the Bronx and TV’s Hill Street Blues establish precinct life as a microcosm of the larger, troubled society.
Chapter 4’s focus is on African American crimefighter s from Sidney Poitier ’s iconic Mr. Tibbs , In The Heat of the Night, to the hip hop stars of the “hood” films of the 1990s such as New Jack City , along with Denzel Washington ’s more than dozen crimefighter roles. Given Hollywood’s history of black representation s dominated by criminality —the very target the white rogue exists to police—it remains difficult for a black crimefighter to replicate the archetype’s performance of nation. Also explored are the mega-hit cop films by Eddie Murphy, Beverly Hills Cop and its sequels, although the comic premise undermines any serious challenge to the white crimefighter’s dominion. Other films include Gang in Blue , The Glass Shield , Deep Cover, and several films featuring Wesley Snipes .
Chapter 5 looks at female cops and crimefighters (in and out of uniform), who still face obstacles in the hyper-masculine environment of law enforcement. Films under review include Betrayed, Impulse, and The Long Kiss Goodnight, along with pioneering TV roles that allowed experimentation, including the groundbreaking Cagney & Lacey . More complex roles followed in shows such as Third Watch , along with TV shows that featured a female lead, including SVU, still in production. The chapter ends with a profile of the 2017 TV mini-series, Shots Fired , with two African American crimefighter s exploring the shooting of a white youth by a black cop in a small, southern town. Sanaa Lathan plays a conflicted and competent investigator although her character is still hamstrung by the stereotypical troubled mom trope.
Chapter 6 analyzes the ethnic Other, still acutely underrepresented in Hollywood. A brief look at the legacy of Asian American and Jewish cops , including John Munch from Homicide: Life on the Street , along with the alternative policing style of a young Navajo cop . The most egregious absence involves Latinos, who dominate portraits of gang members but rarely portray lead crimefighters. The exception is Jennifer Lopez , who has portrayed a plethora of cops and federal agents, with the chapter including a profile of her recent TV series, Shades of Blue , in which she is part of an effective but rogue unit that is eventually brought to justice. The series also includes two notable African American male detectives who try to reconcile being both black and blue.
Chapter 7 has American crimefighters crossing the border, with films such as Black Rain about exported rogue behavior made worse by culture clashes. The chapter also explores border breaches with Mexico —often treated as another frontier awaiting American intervention. The Netflix series, Narcos , features agents at the start of the War on Drugs and the shift after Reagan became convinced communists were involved. Also included is Sicario and its sequel, which examine the contemporary context of the drug war and attempts to link it to the War on Terror , also inviting CIA participation. Finally, a comparative analysis of Traffic —the film and a subsequent TV series—both contrasted with the original British series that reveal national differences along with a post-9/11 mindset.
Chapter 8 pivots on the aftermath of the events of 9/11 and its reinvigoration of a white male rogue as embodied by Jack Bauer . He became the embodiment of the American response to the War on Terror , sparking intense political and cultural disputes over the show’s depiction of torture—the ends justifying almost any degree of brutality in its routine use of “ticking time bomb” plots. The chapter also profiles three productions that engage the LAPD’s Rampart scandal , including Training Day , Dark Blue , and the TV show, The Shield . Each finds closure for its rogue in telling ways, but only Washington ’s Oscar -winning character is shown as unredeemable and in need of killing, suggesting that blackness as threat remains part of the equation.
Chapter 9 is about enlisting the female and multicultural Other in the global War on Terror , including Vin Diesel ’s XXX sagas that transform his former criminality into a patriotic rogue who vanquishes international threats. The remainder of the chapter examines two female CIA agents, the first is Maya in Zero Dark Thirty , and the second is Carrie Mathison in Homeland . Their representations often engage comparisons with Bauer ’s hypermasculinity, underscoring how their “difference” plays out in matters of national security. While Maya is devoid of a personal life, Mathison is plagued by mental illness, troubling links to motherhood , and issues with trust and intimacy. Both are effective agents who are often able to perform the nation, offering more progressive representations than most previous iterations, despite the customary gender-based limitations.
Chapter 10 features an analysis of the current Other as crimefighter, a Muslim or Middle Eastern character , with a profile of the 2018 Hulu series, The Looming Tower , about the turf war between the CIA and FBI prior to 9/11 and the key role of Agent Ali Soufan . The chapter also looks at the slew of films and TV shows that still showcase the white male, including more Die Hard sequels, Tom Cruise films, and a reboot of the Tom Clancy hero, Jack Ryan. The chapter ends with a closer look at Captain America , the American everyman transformed into a superhero and the nation’s defender since the 1940s, also made over to be relevant to modern times, including going rogue in the 2016 film, Captain America: Civil War .