Yes, Dirty Harry Callahan is extremely politically incorrect. And no, the movies are certainly not Eastwood's best performance. But fascist? No.

But one has to recognize that Dirty Harry became an icon nevertheless, an instantly recognizable reference point of the age. IIRC the motto Terry Pratchett put above the gate of his Nightwatch station was FABRICATE DIEM MEUM PVNC -- and he could count on it that the joke would be understood even by people who knew no Latin. (Question for Pratchett fans -- is Sam Vimes based on Harry Callahan? I think he is, but Vimes keeps his dark forces under control.)

It's a dark fantasy. But it's not a fascist fantasy. People granted Dirty Harry iconic status and felt affinity for this rather nasty character, because Harry Callahan is very much an individual character -- cartoonish, but unique. In a fascist fantasy, individualism has no place. It's impossible to imagine Dirty Harry in a black uniform and jackboots. If only because he is far too undisciplined and refuses to fit in and merge into the mass. Sure, he is somewhere to the right of Timur the Lame, but one can be right-wing, even very far right-wing, without being fascist. Dirty Harry believes in violence. Fascists believe in organized violence.

Nasty? Yes. But this has to be seen in the context of the real America, which gruesomely tortures people to death on the electric chair, instead of some ideological fairly-tale land in which people cheerfully respect each other constitutional rights. For better or worse, Dirty Harry actually embodies real American values. Nobody is obliged to like them, but shutting your eyes doesn't really help.

AGREED, Changeling.

We need a collective reeducation on the difference between art and life, between fantasy and command.

Besides, it's not as though leftist utopian fantasies are any less frightening than the intentionally dark ones. Do the sort of blindly leftist buzzkills who berate fun movies like this ever stop to think what torturous means we would have to employ to eliminate completely the criminal and vigilante elements from society? Can they imagine how dull and long life would be if we couldn't all let our minds wander to dark places every now and again? How hard it would become to differentiate darkness from light if all we saw were deracinated visions of politically corrected bliss?

I mean, who would teach us how to eat hot dogs or drive on the streets of San Francisco?

I think you are both right about this-particularly where Hollywood certainly has been just as likely to make criminals the "hero" (Resevoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and even the Eastwood movie Escape From Alcatraz all feature criminals we root for in the theater).

The point I think the author was making concerned the subtle but obvious enough things like the idea of the SF legal syste being soft on criminals and like the hippie community easily allowing the criminal to blend in as indications of a movie made to demonize the liberal world albeit indirectly. But then how was law enforcement portrayed in the Blues Brothers-yet no law enforcement people were complaining about an anti conservative theme........

Hell its a movie people......

Funny thing: the script for "Dirty Harry" was originally set in New York City. But Siegel and Eastwood had made (the inferior) "Coogan's Bluff" there in 1968.

Wanting to avoid San Francisco "Bullitt" comparisons, Siegel and Eastwood looked at Seattle next. But then they threw in the towel (cost, I think) and set "Dirty Harry" in San Francisco anyway.