Much as Roosevelt did in the nineteenth century, President John F. Kennedy tapped into another crisis of identity in the mid-nineteenth century. In his 1960 speech he refutes the idea that all “horizons have been won, that there is no longer an American frontier … the New Frontier of which I speak … is a set of challenges… uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered pockets of poverty and prejudice.”1 Much of Kennedy’s point about unconquered social ills has faded in order to embrace the mythical frontier that persistently seduces the American imagination. Rather than heed Kennedy’s nuanced plea to curb the poverty that destroys cities, America has increasingly blamed the victims of poverty and racism for their own failure to realize the American Dream . In other words, the myths are not flawed, only those who criticize them and the social order they represent.
Like other crossroads in history, multiple forces were challenging American society, although the profound consequences did not seem irreversible until the late 1960s. By then an array of social and cultural ruptures accompanied growing opposition to the Vietnam War , helping to galvanize disparate groups toward a fateful choice: to merely question authority or to advocate counterrevolution. Intense struggles were underway concerning black power, gay and lesbian rights, the women’s movement , the plight of Native Americans , the environment, experiments in Eastern religions, and the New Left’s reinvestment in Marxism as a means to envision radical changes to the system—or its overthrow. President Richard Nixon moved to check the reach of such movements, describing a “silent majority ” being terrorized by potent challengers to “establishment” America. Even Americans sympathetic to the anti-war crusade or other social movements grew increasingly concerned about the escalating violence. By the end of the tumultuous 1960s, the frontier metaphor was less about hope and more about aggression in reaction to the many inner cities and college campuses now appearing as lawless as a fabled Deadwood , and in dire need of a gunfighter -type hero to restore law and order.
Beginning in the supposed “summer of love”—the same summer urban ghettoes burned—several films were released that signaled a shift in Hollywood as well. In particular, the crime film Bonnie and Clyde (1967) touched off a cultural brawl, using the crime story’s best conventions and a tale from the 1930s to comment on the growing tumult, portraying the infamous couple as more folk heroes than criminal bank robbers. The film also features Texas ranger Frank Hamer , who far from heroic, is depicted as their unrelenting tormenter; he eventually orders his agents to ambush the couple, their massacre serving as the film’s ultra-violent finale, at least for its time.2 Hamer resembles real G-man Melvin Purvis , who had pursued such Depression era outlaws as Floyd (dubbed the “sage brush” Robin Hood ), and whose methods prompted even fellow lawmen to accuse him of shooting first and asking questions later.3
One critic at the time, building on Siegfried Kracauer’s view that cinema often engages a “national fever chart,” noted, “In the thirties in Germany, the disease was authoritarianism; in the sixties in America, it is anarchy.” Charles Thomas Samuels accuses Bonnie and Clyde of further encouraging that outcome, adding, “Those who riot against conditions in the Negro ghetto or the war in Vietnam can claim precisely the moral validation for their acts which the Barrow Gang so conspicuously lacks.”4 Within a year of Bonnie and Clyde , real life violence overshadowed the Hollywood version. An “apocalyptic year of a momentous decade,” 1968 chronicled the sharp escalation of the Vietnam conflict, with the anti-war movement reaching a theatrical pitch in response.5 The year also included the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, as well as the melee outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which the government’s Walker report later concluded was more of a “police riot.” As urban disorder grew more acute, Hollywood realigned its focus to reflect those threats in its storytelling, which would not only involve a new cast of Others to fear, but also a crimefighting hero who could match their potential for mayhem.
Dirty Harry: A Wild West Cure for Urban Savagery
Much has been written about Dirty Harry (1971) and its title character, but it is vital to recap those key elements that continue the patterns introduced in Chap. 2 and which provide the foundations of contemporary crimefighters such as Jack Bauer who extend such a character’s influence and utility. The film features homicide detective Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood ) and his rogue approach to pursuing criminals, specifically, the sociopathic sniper, Scorpio (Andy Robinson), who intends to continue killing innocent people until the city meets his ransom demands.
Callahan is shown having to work around a spineless mayor’s office and a police department obliged to follow the law. After being suspended for, among other things, torturing Scorpio, Callahan ends Scorpio’s reign of terror by acting alone, matching the criminal’s intensity and creating his own rules to see justice served. In the original film and four sequels spanning seventeen years, Callahan faces two types of real but also symbolic enemies. The first includes criminals who represent an array of radical types befitting the era, with Scorpio and his peace sign belt buckle hardly masking the Charles Manson figure he clearly resembles. Harry’s other nemesis is the amalgam of social and political pressures embattling the system, which seems strained trying to accommodate such aggressive demands for change.
Perhaps reacting to some critics’ complaints that Dirty Harry had fascist overtones, the next film, Magnum Force (1973), “cleans up Harry’s own act.”6 In this film, Callahan ends the killing spree of four rookie traffic cops who—with the help of a corrupt police official—wage a war on society’s undesirables the system has failed to prosecute. This time Callahan explains how he may hate the weakened system, “but until someone comes along with some changes that make sense, I’ll stick with it.” Here, faced with anarchy, Callahan makes clear the only choice left is an imperfect but enduring American justice system. He also insinuates that these cops’ tactics are un-American, resembling more the Brazilian “death squads” operating in the 1970s as auxiliaries to the legal police.
In the next sequel, The Enforcer (1976), Callahan stops a terrorist organization comprised of disgruntled Vietnam veterans and their accomplices—their reasons for attacking the government left unexplored, as are the objectives of black militants , whom the police harass for crimes actually committed by white radicals. Next, in Sudden Impact (1983), which Eastwood directed, Callahan is banished to a small California town for his most recent excesses but becomes involved in the hunt for a serial killer: a rape victim exacting her revenge. In the final sequel, The Dead Pool (1988), Callahan solves a mystery related to several murder victims, whose names appear on a list meant to be a game. Added to his enemies list in the film is an insatiable media, a trope that will be enthusiastically embraced by future rogues.
Much scholarship has examined how these films reflect key social and political clashes, many of which remain unsettled. One conflict relates to procedures that first grew out of the Supreme Court’s 1966 ruling in the Miranda case that altered the way police make arrests.7 Controversy over the Miranda rules has been included in numerous crime films ever since, often depicted as shortchanging the goal of restorative justice , even though such rules honor the letter of the law. In Dirty Harry, Scorpio is savvy enough to exploit the new technicalities of arrest, smugly informing Callahan , “I want a lawyer.”8 After Callahan violates Scorpio’s rights, Scorpio is released to kill again, leaving Callahan to complain that “the law is crazy” for being able to trump the rights of the victim who was “raped and left to die.”9
Callahan not only serves as an urbanized Ethan Edwards for a changing nation, but also for reflecting identity factors that reaffirm him as an American hero. His masculinity is constructed in opposition to the Other , including what is deemed feminine. In keeping with the ancestry of loner heroes, Callahan is introduced as a widower with no further need for intimacy, even close male friends; like knights of old, he is focused only on his mission. Against this masculine norm , Sudden Impact includes a vicious portrait of a “deviant”: a “dyke” named Ray (Audrie J. Neenan), who helps deliver the female victims to her male friends and watches (and laughs) while the rapes occur. The story’s plot is also about Callahan ’s control over Jennifer, whom he eventually sets free (overturning his earlier oath to remain loyal to the system, right or wrong). She expresses her gratitude, telling Callahan he is “an endangered species” as a traditional American male who follows his own instincts, and whose approach brought her “justice”—in contrast to the overtaxed system of the 1970s that failed her.10
“Dirty” Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) wielding his 44 Magnum at a “punk.” Screenshot from official 1971 trailer for Dirty Harry, Warner Bros
Dirty Harry is not a presentation of unchanging masculinity , as each film reveals a subtle shift in his performance of gender. Like his enemies and storylines, Callahan is continually refreshed, learning to adjust to each new “challenger.” Similarly, his approach to race evolves; rather than seem patently racist, Callahan is shown negotiating with each person of color on a one-to-one basis. This approach, in keeping with the nation’s penchant for individuated responses, manages to subdue any systemic examination that would reveal enduring, large-scale inequities based on race. Having Callahan direct his politically incorrect labels at anyone who is not a WASP gives the impression that he is not so much a racist as an individual taking care to avoid singling out anyone in particular for prejudicial treatment. Given this spin, Callahan is not the problem, these thin-skinned “others” are, being so easily wounded by mere words. Callahan , as the Scotch-Irish everyman , is inoculated against similarly abusive epithets (outside of being called a “pig” as a cop), and accounts for his inability to relate to this type of injury. Thus, Callahan ’s disdain for minorities ’ “special” requests to adjust the American system, including its language, is seen not in defense of whiteness , but in defense of a system that is assumed to be color-blind . The only characters conscious of color are those demanding “affirmative action ” (to reverse centuries of unacknowledged affirmative action accorded most whites). Meanwhile, as one character notes, Callahan appropriately bleeds “PD blue.”
To complicate the race card being played, multiple versions of blackness are included. In the original film’s most famous scene, Callahan hovers over a wounded black man lying on the street, asking, “do you feel lucky, punk?”12 He challenges the man to grab for the gun near him on the street, the “punk” declines to gamble on how many bullets have been fired. As Callahan starts to walk away, the man calls out, “I gots to know.”13 Callahan then turns around, points the gun in the man’s face and pulls the trigger, revealing that no bullets are left. Later a black doctor appears to patch up Callahan ’s gunshot wound, revealing a congeniality with Callahan that suggests the men are indifferent to color even when the film is not. Race, among other prejudices, is also used as a frequent plotting device, including having Scorpio vow to include “a priest or a nigger” among his next victims (later targeting a gay man as well). Albert Popwell , who portrays the original film’s “punk,” appears in The Enforcer , this time as the compromised black militant , Big Ed Mustapha, whom Callahan blackmails into becoming an informant. It also goes unremarked when black militants are falsely arrested as “terrorists,” an injustice that outrages Callahan only because it ruins his deal with Mustapha. Popwell makes his third appearance in Sudden Impact , portraying Callahan ’s sympathetic and friendly colleague, Horace King, who like previous Others attached to Callahan , winds up dead.
Callahan and his multicultural partners also help to introduce the loosely defined, interracial “buddy ” film. What has now become a cliché was viewed at the time as novel, if not progressive, by some observers.14 Callahan ’s first non-white partner is a college-educated Latino named Chico Gonzales (Reni Santoni ), whom Harry initially calls “spic” and “college boy,” but whose sociology degree, warns Callahan , will not keep him safe on the street. After being shot, Gonzales admits he lacks the mettle to be a cop (like Moore , he becomes ill at the sight of dead bodies). He resigns to become a college instructor, which further emasculates him, betraying Hollywood’s code about masculinity being defined in terms of action not sitting behind a desk. In Magnum Force , Callahan is paired with a black male, “Early” Smith (Felton Perry ), whose best quality is loyalty but disappears from the story after being blown up by a mailbox bomb. Smith also cannot handle the uglier aspects of the job, unable to eat after seeing a dead body, compared to Callahan who casually finishes his hotdog while shooting suspects on a crowded street. In Sudden Impact , the franchise’s final film, Callahan is assigned the Asian American Al Quan (Evan Kim ), who is skilled in the martial arts (a nod to the era’s popular martial arts films, especially those starring Bruce Lee ); but Quan proves no match for Callahan , who continues to vanquish his enemies with little physical effort, outside of pulling the trigger.
The Dirty Harry franchise, rather than present a portrait of stable white masculinity , is illuminating for how he adjusts in reaction to these Others, demonstrating how the norm is able to absorb challenges. Others are allowed space in the story, but key myths about normative gender and race are largely reiterated and reinforced, while their demands are investigated and ultimately contained, failing to alter Callahan ’s superior status. Like hegemony itself, Callahan is not the simple reflection of a fixed system of domination, but the continual renegotiation of the parameters of power.15 By enabling women and people of color to participate, Callahan , and the power structure he represents, also dictate the extent of their participation.
Callahan ’s lack of class consciousness is also vital to his identity construction. Although he clashes with superiors, the conflict is based on their complicity with the corrupted system and not any class position above him. As Peter Lehman and William Luhr note, “mainstream movies tend to presume an invisible norm of middle-class life and values,” including working hard (not simply for the money) as a reflection of moral strength. Moreover, “[u]pper-class people are often portrayed as exotic, crazy, corrupt, immoral, selfish, and unhappy; lower-class people as desperate, dangerous, and also immoral.”16 At one point Callahan gripes about how a raise would be helpful, but which says more about his autonomy to complain than an interest in money as reward for his labor.
Moreover, although Callahan is a city employee with bosses, he seems an autonomous being, even contemptuous of authority, making him a type of self-made man who transcends the historical moment to link him to this venerable American ideal. Another predecessor of Callahan ’s, Steve McQueen ’s hip detective Clancy in Bullitt (1968), arguably not the rogue Callahan becomes, is similarly positioned in contrast to the upper-class politician Chalmers. As Thomas Leitch notes, Clancy displays just enough “proletarian markers to establish him as a working stiff doing his job”; more importantly, he is “both emphatically middle-class and essentially classless.” Like Callahan , Clancy represents “a uniquely pansocial figure who alone can mediate between the untrustworthy world of political power Chalmers represents and the equally treacherous lowlife world” of the criminals both men are pursuing.17
Dirty Harry was no doubt controversial when released, but rather than merely reflect a specific political agenda of the day, it embodied long-standing cinematic traditions, which as discussed earlier, are already steeped in myths and related ideologies . In that way Callahan reflects a deceivingly complex set of social and political sensibilities that are not so easy to label. Although the film at times makes a particular argument, as Dennis Bingham notes, “it needs to do what Hollywood narratives have always done: make the political personal and hence disavow it.”18 Eastwood explains that Harry adheres to a “higher morality,” and in part is a response to the “big sixties concern with the rights of the accused,”19 but cautions that “Harry is a fantasy character” and more telling about the process of making entertaining movies that please mainstream audiences . Like The Searchers , Dirty Harry’s central core is built on the bedrock of long-standing American mythologies , which it contemporizes with the politics and social concerns of its particular historical moment.
Eastwood , at this stage of his career, knew well the rewards of the cowboy’s enduring mystique, having appeared on television in Rawhide (1959–1965) before earning international fame in the mid-1960s “spaghetti” Westerns by Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone . Moreover, an earlier collaboration with director Don Siegel , Coogan’s Bluff (1968), had already transitioned the cowboy from the mythic West to the modern cityscape, positioning Eastwood as the appropriate bridge between a nineteenth century cowboy and his twentieth century urban counterpart.20 As Nicole Rafter notes, part of Dirty Harry’s success is Eastwood ’s existing persona as a “gunslinger”; and “[w]ithout missing a beat, the Siegel-Eastwood team rescued the superannuated but still compelling hero of Westerns from genre decay by transferring him laterally, character intact, into the cop flick.”21 Even one of Callahan ’s bosses tells him his approach is more like a “wild west show .”22
Dirty Harry also represents the next step along a continuum of rogue heroes that started with the frontiersman , morphed into a fabled gun-slinging cowboy, and now appears in what Robert B. Ray dubs a “disguised Western.” Dirty Harry also reprises the Western sheriff’s disgust in High Noon by similarly throwing his badge away at the end. His numerous resignations and his department’s frequent attempts to suspend him fail because he represents something bigger than one man. Callahan serves as the system’s agent of containment—and its convenient fall guy—his gender, race, and class all called into the service of the nation to progress at any cost. Dirty Harry, while affirming the myth that gives him life, also glimpses the inherent conflicts that accompany deploying such a troubling figure.
Like its usefulness during previous epochs of social and cultural realignment, the frontier myth adapted again, this time to the vagaries of city life. A police detective became the new urban cowboy who could clean up the streets of San Francisco—ground zero for the era’s counterculture —and out-savage the savage to restore law and order. Dirty Harry also kicked off what Stuart M. Kaminsky dubs the era of “white-hot violence,” along with launching a new subgenre, best described as vigilante films . However, films such as Death Wish , with Charles Bronson ’s architect on a rampage after his family is brutalized, lack the legal authority that Callahan so deftly exploits.
The French Connection , also released in 1971, although featuring what seems like another rogue, differs in key ways. Unlike the dramatic circumstances that pepper Callahan ’s typical work day, Det. “Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman ) endures a daily grind of routine tasks, including the tedious paperwork necessary for warrants followed by hours of lonely surveillance. There is also Doyle ’s reliance on a partner who together track a major drug deal (inspired by a real case with customary Hollywood embellishment). Other crime film staples are on display, including the rivalry between local and federal authorities, along with a Bullitt-style muscle car speeding through the city streets, replacing the cowboy’s chase of Indians on horseback.
As another everyman , though, Doyle is similarly constructed in contrast to criminal Others—Italian and Jewish mobsters, black street punks, and foreign traffickers. What prevents Doyle from matching the mythical status of Callahan as a hero of the urban frontier, though, is that Doyle ’s enemies are mere criminals focused on greed, while Callahan ’s foes threaten more profound social mayhem and political unrest. Doyle ’s motivation is also shown to be intensely personal rather than in pursuit of a larger sense of restorative justice , lacking Callahan ’s moral high ground. Rather than a knight on a mission, Doyle remains a foot soldier in a street war. Finally, Doyle ’s battle also ends in tragedy: when he thinks his French “connection” has escaped, he kills a federal agent in his zealousness to capture his target—an act about which he seems indifferent, even scornful. Such an “error” not only diminishes Doyle ’s performance of an American hero, but also disqualifies him as a figure of national efficiency.
The Reagan Era and the Global Frontier
The mid 1970s marked the end of the Vietnam War , but so often framed as a “loss,” compounded its already debilitating effects. This sense of defeat also gave rise to a neoconservatism that attempted to reinvest in American exceptionalism and reestablish “traditional” values.23 As Wilkinson characterizes the period and Ronald Reagan’s election to the presidency, it came at a moment when Americans were unsure of what role they wanted for their country in world affairs. “In crises affecting sensitive national honor, many Americans wanted their president to get tough yet realized the past costs and current limits of such toughness .”24
Reagan is credited with fostering a recuperative image of a bolder America at a key juncture in the nation’s history. Many observers had dismissed President Jimmy Carter as a “softer” male, and “not ‘man enough’ to run a superpower” that created a “crisis that only a return of the … father could resolve.”25 Reagan , who turned 70 shortly after his inauguration, fit the paternal role, embodying “both national and individual images of manliness” reminiscent of Roosevelt’s “rough-rider image.”26 Reagan recouped the nation’s swagger in large measure by applying the frontier mythology to foreign policy initiatives, which testified to America’s renewed interest in “policing the world.” Moreover, as a successful film star before entering politics, Reagan understood the communicative power of Hollywood storytelling (for performers as well as texts), and, in particular, the value of impersonating a western cowboy . Besides often dressing like one, Reagan’s speeches frequently referenced such cowboy-like characters as Dirty Harry, even Rambo—the controversial rogue character introduced in First Blood (1982), appearing again in two sequels in the 1980s. Susan Jeffords considers films such as Rambo one way that 1980s cinema “re-masculinizes” America and rehabilitates its warrior heroes by re-imagining the Vietnam conflict.27 Reagan borrowed the cultural and political capital of such macho characters, applying them to both domestic and foreign contexts to better reflect his own crossover appeal. Before becoming president, Reagan had been governor of California, where he had tried to blunt the anti-war movement and dampen the state’s perceived “permissive” environment, one that mainstream America still considers a breeding ground for its persistent culture wars.
Another way to re-direct the Vietnam memory was to have veterans become cop characters, now turning their military training loose on the urban jungles. By doing so, ongoing challenges to patriarchy , although unable to be completely negated, were renegotiated. Within films focused on war (either at home or abroad), and largely absent of women, white masculinity contrasted itself with masculine Other s. Vietnam had reinvigorated the enduring disdain for “Oriental ” males, which now added drug traffickers and gangsters to existing stereotypes already fixated on so-called Asian cruelty and duplicity. One notable example of a veteran-turned-cop who takes his learned hatred of Asians back home appears in Year of the Dragon (1985), which prompted protests by Chinese Americans for the film’s use of prevailing stereotypes .28
Given the history of race relations, the persistent Other in the American imagination above all remains whatever (and whoever) is black. During what Donald Bogle calls the “era of tan,”29 the 1980s featured integrated casts that expanded many cop films’ box office appeal, increasing the visibility of black males who were “promoted” from screen criminals to the partners, sidekicks, and “buddies ” 30 of the white male lead—ever evolving but remaining at center stage. Many of these match-ups were constructed through the lens of comedy, which sidesteps a more serious challenge to the white lead’s dominion. Noteworthy examples include the set of 48 Hours films (1982 and 1990), with Nick Nolte as a disgruntled white cop paired with Eddie Murphy, his black prisoner-turned-buddy. The film also features the era’s penchant for “action” cinema, which, like noir, applies new elements to established genres. One of action cinema ’s chief features is to emphasize a “hard,” muscular body, which “redefines already existing cinematic and cultural discourses of race, class and sexuality.”31
More importantly, action cinema features “spectacle as narrative,”32 further complicating the messages such films convey. The motives and identities of characters—although now conveyed in spectacularly visual and visceral terms—are still constructed within a mythological framework. Ironically, the era’s new screen “muscleman” 33 combines traditionally masculine qualities with new “feminine” tendencies in being able to display more sensitivity or emotionalism; or as bell hooks would call “eating the other ,” this updated white male was able to devour elements of those vigorously challenging the “unified national body.”34
White Heroes as Lethal Weapons
Lethal Weapon and Die Hard , along with their many sequels, represent the next step on the continuum of rogue crimefighters after Callahan . First, their success as franchises attest to the public’s endorsement of their representations, along with again being the subject of much scholarship. Besides harking back to the western, these action films feature the intense male camaraderie of a war film, with Los Angeles and New York as their battlefields. They also move beyond Callahan ’s short-lived multicultural partners to demonstrate the lasting bonds that are possible between white heroes and their “buddies ,” providing more space for black males, but also limiting their progress.
Lethal Weapon (1987) features the travails of white cop Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson ) and his new black partner, Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover ), a senior detective and family man. Riggs , though, is the lethal weapon, not only for his Special Forces training, but also for his suicidal grief over the death of his young wife. His state of mind prompts his early clashes with Murtaugh , also a veteran, but who, being on the verge of retirement, demonstrates far more restraint.35 During their first homicide case, they face a war with former mercenaries (trained like Riggs ) now trafficking heroin, and by the end of their ordeal, Murtaugh and his family have helped Riggs regain his stability. Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) puts Riggs and Murtaugh at war with a white South African diplomat smuggling drugs into the country and who was responsible for the “accidental” death of Riggs ’s wife. Lethal Weapon 3 (1992) has the duo face-off with a renegade cop selling drugs and weaponry; in this version Riggs also finds love with an Internal Affairs investigator , Lorna Cole (Rene Russo ). Finally, Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) has Riggs and Murtaugh hunting Asian gangsters smuggling Chinese laborers into the country, with subplots involving the pregnancies of Cole and Murtaugh ’s daughter. Cole is a new type of screen female: a fellow cop skilled in the martial arts; her ability to keep pace with the action, though, is arrested after being shot in the third film and pregnant by the fourth. While Murtaugh is a more multifaceted character than most black co-stars to that time, he is still in what Ed Guerrero called the “protective custody” of the white hero.36
The film notices race even though the two principal characters fail to address it directly. When Murtaugh questions a black youth about what he witnessed, the boy stumps Murtaugh , asking, “My mama says police shoot black people—is that true?”37 The boy is able to see beyond Murtaugh ’s blackness to the “blue” cop underneath. In other cases, Murtaugh ’s race is his most salient feature, while Riggs is afforded the privilege of his whiteness going unremarked. Like Callahan , Riggs is shown negotiating race on an individual basis, leaving it to Murtaugh to make larger connections, especial about apartheid, with Murtaugh expressing the desire to go to South Africa to stop the horror. In another scene, Murtaugh asks a gang member if he knows what the word “genocide” means, in this case referring to the devastating effect of black-on-black crime in America (what others might frame as the mass incarceration of black males versus “white” collar crime frequently left intact). Having Murtaugh alone bring up race isolates it from its larger social context, having to carry “the banner of civil rights for blacks and other minorities … [and who] sees Asian refugees as being like black slaves on board a slave ship.”38 The sight of Chinese stowaways inspires Murtaugh to take a family home with him, noting, “It’s my chance to do something about slavery. I’m freeing slaves like no one did for my ancestors.”39 The later sequels are even more vocal about racism , but their more blatant comic set-ups softens any intended critique of the racial order .40
As one reviewer notes, Lethal Weapon ’s ambitions as a war film has the pair foiling “international evil, acting more as global policemen , or agents of American foreign policy, than as LAPD cops .” In the second Lethal Weapon film, foreign threats are represented by an “Oriental ” torture specialist who works for a corrupt military commander, practicing his specialty on Riggs and reminding Riggs (and viewers) of what soldiers endured in Vietnam; at the same time it presents a “stereotypical Asian who inflicts pain on good white people.”41 The wayward commander also presents a portrait of a Vietnam veteran as a villain, although that approach already appeared in the third Dirty Harry film, which presented a veteran as damaged goods and a traitor with designs on overthrowing his government. While Murtaugh is a veteran who successfully reintegrated into civilian life, Riggs is haunted by his past, perhaps for sharing the same murky résumé as the ex-soldiers he is hounding as a cop in one of the films. More than anything, taking his cue from Callahan , Riggs plays by his own rules, and as “long as the ‘larger good’ is served … [his] “smaller violations of law are excusable.””42
Die Hard Cowboys
Off duty and a long way from the NYPD, Det. John McClane (Bruce Willis) on the job in LA. Screenshot from Die Hard, 20th Century Fox
Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990) puts McClane in the nation’s capital for another Christmas reunion with Holly, but whose plane is low on fuel and circling an airport seized by commandos loyal to a Latin American general—once a recipient of American support when he fought communists but now vilified as a dangerous drug lord. In this installment, McClane is a lone hero steeped in “an all-out war” (as the DVD cover promises), battling inept police and military commanders. His loner status, though, is modified in Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995), when McClane, after his Callahan-like suspension is revoked, is buddied with an unlikely partner: a black civilian from Harlem named Zeus (Samuel L. Jackson ). Zeus distrusts whites but comes to befriend McClane after they team up to defeat Hans’s brother, Simon (Jeremy Irons ). Again, using terrorism as a cover, Simon actually intends to steal the gold housed at the Federal Reserve in lower Manhattan.
McClane represents another “hard body” of the era, whether as “the individual warrior or the nation itself.”43 Unlike Riggs , though, McClane’s masculinity is not derived from military training or wartime experience—even though he is engaged in a pitched battle over changing gender roles; after all, as Jeffords notes, it is feminism that puts McClane in harm’s way in the first place.44 He has come to Los Angeles to get his family back after Holly moves there with their children to pursue a career, using her maiden name to avoid what she charges is a cultural bias among Japanese men toward married women in the workplace. After her husband defeats the band of thieves and introduces her by her professional name, she corrects him, reiterating her married name. While his gesture suggests his learned sensitivity (and absorption of the era’s feminist lessons), hers restores tradition.
McClane is also contrasted with the Other . In the original film, it is Sgt. Powell who tries to help him, while a more intense use of racial difference occurs in the third film with Zeus . McClane meets him after Simon orders McClane to stand on a Harlem street corner, wearing a sandwich board that reads: “I hate niggers.” Zeus intervenes, not necessarily to save McClane, but as he explains it, to stop “a white cop from getting killed in Harlem—one white cop gets killed today, tomorrow we got a thousand white cops, all of them with itchy trigger fingers,”45 confirming a history of strained relations between the police and the black community . Yet, Zeus ’s is an isolated voice—he is the one obsessed with race (not society)—even prompting McClane in one exchange to accuse Zeus of being racist, noting, “You don’t like me because I’m white.”46 Making race even more of a personal issue, McClane presses Zeus , “Have I oppressed you? Have I oppressed your people somehow?”47 In this manner, the film “asks us to consider if Zeus suffers from the mythical racial paranoia, or ‘reverse racism ,’ so commonly evoked in dominant discussions of race prejudice .”48 McClane shames Zeus into participating in the wild goose chase Simon has in store for them (much like the folly Scorpio put Callahan through), scolding, “he [the terrorist] doesn’t care about skin color, even if you do.”49 Zeus , though, is a much “shrewder analyst of the thoroughly racial coding of urban geography,” where “the mere sight of him” prompts reaction.50 In one example, after McClane hands him a gun, Zeus fumbles with it, asking how it works. After noting McClane’s reaction, Zeus shouts back, “Look, all brothers don’t know how to shoot guns!”51
McClane is also presented as another working stiff in an era that urged upward mobility and a worship of conspicuous consumption. The “yuppie” persona is embodied by his wife’s coke-snorting colleague, who is not only condescending to McClane, but also foolishly arrogant about being able to outsmart the terrorists, who eventually kill him. McClane—the American Adam in a torn T-shirt—is also contrasted with Hans’s tailored European suits. As one reviewer puts it, McClane is “an ‘everyday’ sort of guy who gets caught up in circumstances that force him to play the reluctant hero ,”52 referring to the long-standing criterion in American narratives that heroes not look for trouble, but once duty calls, act swiftly and decisively. Hans also demonstrates a degree of Old World snobbery, including a disdain for American popular culture , nearly hissing his disapproval at McClane’s resemblance to a movie cowboy after McClane identifies himself as Roy Rogers in their radio exchanges. He calls McClane “Mr. Cowboy” and chides him as “just another American who saw too many movies as a child … another orphan of a bankrupt culture who thinks he’s John Wayne , Rambo, and Marshal Dillon.”53 In their final confrontation, Hans, convinced he has triumphed, warns McClane that this time “John Wayne doesn’t walk off into the sunset with Grace Kelly .” After correcting Hans’s casting mistakes, noting, “It was Gary Cooper , asshole,” he helps Hans fall to his death from the building’s upper floors, adding a cowboy’s whoop of “yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.”54
More than Hans and his fellow European thieves, Japan is the film’s more targeted foreign threat, depicted as a type of economic terrorism. After McClane meets his wife’s boss, Takata, he offers, “I didn’t know the Japanese celebrated Christmas.”55 Takata answers: “Hey, we’re flexible. Pearl Harbor didn’t work out, so we conquered you with electronics.”56 Japan as an economic invader is also included in one Lethal Weapon film, as Riggs sarcastically speculates about the Japanese-made police radio, quipping, “maybe they bought the LA police force as well.”57 This us-versus-them approach is one way of demonstrating that the national welfare should override individual concerns—usually those of females and non-white males—since the white male’s is already woven into the nation’s. Even Vietnam, a reliable symbol of a fractured America is mentioned by one of the FBI agents , who, after watching a helicopter hover over the besieged skyscraper, remarks, “This is just like fucking Saigon, ain’t it?!”58
Such examples of action cinema , notes Yvonne Tasker , depend “on a complex articulation of both belonging and exclusion,”59 and a “placelessness” that enhances the hero character’s flexibility and appeal, not only to domestic but also international audiences, all of whom have been exposed to media messages that stress American exceptionalism . In this way, McClane belongs everywhere his nation has influence, making his frequent furloughs from his New York beat less noticeable and irrelevant. More recent installments of Die Hard, discussed in Chap. 10, include McClane operating on Russian soil. Through the franchise the character remains as much about America’s past as it is about the contemporary issues related to his latest exploits—as familiar as a Western hero or a soldier in a war film. He uses his patchwork references to American popular culture , especially the characters he most resembles, to maximize his appeal. It also helps him (and his conflicts) pass for mere entertainment, seemingly devoid of political ambition, while at the same time, perpetuating an ideologically soaked mythology that he and the franchise so deftly exploit.
Precinct Life and Community Policing
Another variation to capturing this urban cop’s challenging turf were those Hollywood offerings that depict a precinct house as much a dangerous locale as anything that ever existed in the nineteenth century western frontier . Such an environment is captured in Fort Apache the Bronx (1981), which purposely capitalizes on its resemblance to the isolated frontier outpost in the 1948 western, Fort Apache, another John Ford-John Wayne collaboration. This updated and symbolic 1980s fort lies within the decaying, crime-ridden streets of the South Bronx, which as one character notes, has the “lowest income per capita [and] the highest rate of unemployment in the city.”60 A promotional poster for the film, exclaims: “No cowboys. No Indians . No cavalry to the rescue. Only a cop.” These cops, though, can barely keep up with the grim crimes being perpetrated by local “gangs, junkies, pimps, and maniacs.”61
A new level of threat opens the film as two cops sitting in their squad car are shot and killed by a drugged-up hooker—the crime never solved as she later becomes another victim stabbed by a drug dealer. As the desk sergeant warns the incoming, by-the-book Captain Connolly (Ed Asner ), “You’d be better off walking a beat in Beirut.”62 Connolly is also warned that most of the cops transferred to this outpost are department outcasts, sent here to police a forty-block area with 70,000 people packed in and “living like cockroaches.”63 The cop at the center of the story is the lonely, hard-drinking Murphy (Paul Newman ), a cop who has trouble with authority, which his rookie partner, Corelli (Ken Wahl ), believes cost Murphy his detective shield. Despite eighteen years on the force, Murphy retains his sense of justice and treats most people with a measure of decency, saving most of his ire for the pimps and drug dealers who prey on the neighborhood.
The film is rare for depicting just how tenuous the relationship is between the police and a poor, ravaged community, in this case predominantly Puerto Rican , who could benefit from police protection but instead are left with a battered precinct that is barely able to function. While the outgoing captain sounds more like a social worker, bemoaning the lack of jobs and opportunity that help create such a hopeless situation, the incoming captain launches an aggressive campaign of arrests to send a signal of strength that he hopes will let decent folks think the cavalry has arrived. What he gets is rioting and demonstrations that he fights with tear gas and night sticks, which only makes matters worse. In the end, Murphy does the right thing by turning in a fellow cop who threw a young man off a rooftop to his death, then resigns and turns in his badge. The last scene shows him joined by Corelli, and after the two spot a purse snatcher, cannot resist giving chase. Even without a badge, he returns to performing small but significant acts of policing despite the tall odds depicted here of winning any larger war on crime.
The film’s depiction of a precinct under duress is matched by the groundbreaking TV show, Hill Street Blues , which also premiered in 1981 and ran until 1987 on NBC. The show’s expanded scope and intentional ambiguity were novel for the era’s television programming, using an entire season to develop characters and including crime stories without easy resolutions. Previous cop shows, dating back to Dragnet (1951–1959)—with its lead character’s signature tagline of “just the facts, ma’am”—focused on solving each episode’s featured crime, whereas Hill Street Blues treated the crimes as ongoing and rooted in larger, thornier social and political realities. The show also featured a large ensemble cast of characters who report to Captain Frank Furillo (Daniel J. Travanti ), a recovering alcoholic who spends as much time settling disputes among his dedicated but dysfunctional cops as he does navigating gang wars in his precinct, all with the dexterity of a trained psychotherapist and the tactical acumen of a battle-weary general. His personal life also has him sparring with a public defender who later becomes his wife and a high-strung ex-wife who frequents the precinct to demand attention for their son.
Among the precinct cops are two white male underbosses: the erudite but imposing Sergeant Phil Esterhaus (Michael Conrad ) and the trigger-happy SWAT-style commander, Howard Hunter (James B. Sikking ), who hints at the emerging fallout from the increased militarization of urban police . The cast also includes two pairs of black and white buddies : one set that works undercover (as discussed in Chap. 1, cloaks their ability to serve as the nation’s corrective agents); and a set of uniformed cops that include the sensible black partner, Bobby Hill (Michael Warren ), who keeps the excesses of his white partner Andy Renko (Charles Haid )—whom he calls “cowboy”—in check. A few notable depictions of a female and other “minority ” cops are discussed in later chapters.
The above series was the brainchild of Steven Bochco ,64 a prolific creator of cop shows during the era and beyond, including NYPD Blue (1993–2005), which replicates having white males as the lead characters and utilizing the Other as supporting players amid another large, ensemble cast. The latter show expanded on its predecessor’s focus on documentary-style film techniques, prompting one reviewer to compare the show to a Robert Altman movie.65 Its first season pivots around Det. John Kelly (David Caruso ), as the series was intended as a vehicle for Kelly’s personal and work-related troubles. After Caruso left the series following the first season, Kelly’s surly and combative partner, Det. Andy Sipowicz (Dennis Franz ) became the show’s main character. Sipowicz was introduced in season one as a drunken burnout who was confined to desk duty, frequently aiming his hostility at his black boss, Lt. Arthur Fancy (James McDaniel ). This casting practice of putting black characters in authority positions is meant to “balance” the picture, or as Cedric Clark suggests, to serve as proof that racial uplift has occurred.66 Relatedly, it is Fancy who makes clear that Sipowicz is a talented detective despite his personal demons, reiterating the Other’s role to affirm the white’s hero’s essential goodness rather than to challenge or contest such an assumption.
Over the show’s impressive twelve-year run, Sipowicz is matched with several partners—most of who are younger white males, with only Det. Bobby Simone (Jimmy Smits ) a standout. Simon ’s characterization, however, undermines the actor’s self-identification as a Puerto Rican , which comes into play when a suspect assumes Simon is Puerto Rican and Simon corrects him, explaining how he has French and Portuguese ancestry. To the series’ end, Sipowicz remains a site of unresolved conflicts, admired for his occasional passion for helping particular types of victims, but mostly remembered for his embodiment of an angry white everyman who routinely lets loose a stream of ethnic, racial, and sexist slurs. If Furillo represented the enlightened sensitivity and diplomacy of a creature who had benefitted from the era’s women’s movement , Sipowicz remained a portrait of a contentious and wounded white male, who made a degree of progress during the era but was never quite comfortable in an increasingly multicultural department and wider society.