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Regardless of the methods the film’s protagonist uses, a certain noble justice is fulfilled that
transcends the legal and social constructs that suffocate it. However, as Butler argues in “Gender
Trouble,” this supposedly transcendent category is subject to the society that sets its parameters
and defines its boundaries. Thus, through applying Butler’s argument to the film, the reducibility
In “Dirty Harry,” we’re presented with a tale of a grizzled officer who fights for justice
unconditionally. In search of an unimaginably sinister sociopath, the film details the extents to
which Harry, the protagonist, must go to in order to capture the criminal. The film represents
rules and orders to consistently deter the just pursuit of Scorpio, the villain. Harry is injured
when following orders to meet with Scorpio and Scorpio fails to be prosecuted due to his rights
being violated. Harry is only able to foil crime when he takes the law into his own hands, by
killing several bank robbers in a brash manner or by viciously and chaotically hunting down
In “Gender Trouble,” Butler provides an explication into the nature of identity. Initially,
Butler addresses the feminist concern of how someone may advocate for a gender, if that gender
is difficult to define or perhaps even impossible to identify. Somewhat dismissive (or perhaps in
defiance) of this problem, Butler pursues the underlying factuality of the binary opposition
between men and women. Proceeding to another binary opposition between true sex as a factual
matter (i.e. biological, logical, objective) as opposed to gender (i.e. presumably constructed by
society), Butler relates this distinction to the mind/body distinction which leads to the
culture/nature distinction. It’s commonly perceived that gender (or mind, or culture) imposes and
inscribes itself upon the “true” sex (or body, or nature), thus confusing the underlying “real”
term with its fake counterpart. Something like gender is established through repetition and other
social reinforcers, but is ultimately a “performative” social practice, rather than an “expressive”
category that reflects an objective fact. As Butler describes, “[t]hat gender reality is created
through sustained social performances means that the notions of an essential sex and a true or
abiding masculinity or femininity are also constituted as a part of the strategy that conceals
gender’s performative character (Butler 2553).” Thus, Butler contends that the performative
nature of gender (meaning that gender is not some universal, permanent category) would
transition and apply to all categories, including the category of “real” sex that is generally
thought to be objective.
category. The film would suggest that justice, somewhat mystically, supersedes all social
barriers. Constantly acting on behalf of this category, Harry is the grand warrior of this true
category of justice, while society fumbles with its needless and arbitrary false constructions, like
civil liberties or due process. Harry possesses access to the true justice, as society has long
forgotten and confused justice for its social constructions. Yet, Butler maintains, “power
appeared to operate in the production of that very binary frame for thinking about gender”
(Butler 2540). According to Butler, society is what ultimately produces binary frames of thought.
It’s beneficial for power to dismiss and relegate those who seek to overthrow power, by citing
some objective truth. Power would like to suggest that women possess a lesser status in society
because women are somehow objectively deserving of that lesser status. “Dirty Harry” fails to
acknowledge that society constructs justice, as it serves the purpose of maintaining order and
status quo power. Thus, Harry’s access to justice is no different from society’s access. The
notion of justice is bestowed to Harry by the power structures of society that developed its
concept.
“Dirty Harry” would similarly like its audience to reject the social situating of criminals.
While the film has no quarrel with displaying aspects of society as dysfunctional (such as
excessive bureaucratic regulations), it portrays the main villain of the film as a strange
isn’t intended to be grounded in some realistic representation of who actually commits crimes.
Rather, he is a fantasy of what a criminal could be; he’s inherently and undeniably evil. As a
fantasy, he provides Harry with an objective evil to vanquish. Society didn’t truly make Scorpio
even if it failed to prosecute him or enabled him in certain ways. Scorpio’s existence as an
objective evil obliges the necessity for an objective justice that opposes that evil. For, without an
objective evil, there would be no ground on which a universal justice could be claimed.
To distinguish societal rules from true justice, “Dirty Harry” commonly represents these
rules to act in the disinterest of justice. When Scorpio is let off due to police brutality (after
Harry tortured him) and when he tries to take advantage of police brutality rules by staging
police brutality afterwards, the film submits these instances of rules gone awry as evidence that
society’s rules are not equivalent to true justice. The film insinuates that the disparity between
society’s rules (the false justice) and the real justice is clear proof that such a distinction exists.
Despite the blatant circularity of the film's reasoning, Butler still addresses its inadequacy,
stating, “[t]he abiding gendered self will then be shown to be structured by repeated acts that
seek to approximate the ideal of a substantial ground of identity, but which, in their occasional
discontinuity, reveal the temporal and contingent groundlessness of this “ground”” (Butler 2552).
For Butler, the disparity between a society’s rules and a supposed “real justice” does not suggest
that they are distinct. On the contrary, this disparity signifies the ability for these categories to
change in accordance with society. The impermanence of gender categories, the category of
justice, or any category for that matter, substantiates Butler’s claim to the subjectivity of these
Harry’s obsession with defying bureaucracy is rooted in this claim to objective justice.
Society is too concerned with maintaining its impotent rules, whereas Harry is truly concerned
with enacting justice. However, the nature of justice is necessarily intertwined with the rules that
society deems to be just. In fact, justice is entirely the product of its determination by society,
therefore, making justice performative. Referring to the manner in which gender is performative,
meanings already socially established” (Butler 2552). Ironically, the very justice that Harry
desires, according to Butler, would be constructed from this aforementioned process of repetition
which Harry can claim to be a distributer of divine justice, as such a justice is no more than
whatever society has willed it to be. Additionally, Harry’s resents those who decry his ruthless
methods. Once again, Harry justifies his usage of any means necessary to enact justice, by
referring to the grand objectivity of the justice he services, while dismissing the rules he violates
as merely social constructions. Nonetheless, the society’s decrying of his methods dictates what
justice is. Therefore, Harry is assuredly in violation of justice when he acts against what society
the societal distaste for certain cruel methods, process by which criminals are produced, and
bureaucratic rules are all what construct justice, not what distorts it. Justice, therefore, is not
some transcendent category. It is, like gender, grounded in the individuals and reinforcing