Dirty Harry's America: "Clint Eastwood, Harry Callahan, and the Conservative Backlash"
Dirty Harry's America: "Clint Eastwood, Harry Callahan, and the Conservative Backlash"
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Abstract
This book positions the Dirty Harry film series as a key agent and index of the American conservative backlash against 1960s liberalism. The San Francisco–based series cemented Clint Eastwood and his character, Harry Callahan, as central figures in 1970s and 1980s Hollywood cinema. This is the first study to identify the series as an important source for understanding the culture and politics of the post-1960s era. Through close readings of the films and the contemporary political climate, it demonstrates how the series interacts with, critiques, and refracts the legacy of postwar liberalism. It reveals that the films locate San Francisco as the symbolic battleground for the era’s political struggles and maintains that through referencing real events, ideas, and political arguments, the films themselves became participants in these struggles. Particular attention is paid to the films’ representation of crime, family and community, sexuality, and race. The book evaluates Callahan’s long afterlife in American political discourse, cinema, pop culture, and Eastwood’s later political and cinematic career. This lively, thought-provoking and rigorous book will encourage readers to reconsider the conservative backlash in new light and return to the Dirty Harry films with a new appreciation of their political, historical, and cultural significance.
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