No, I am not. I don't do stuff like that. Either we think in fundamentally different ways, or our standards are very different, or we need to define our terms, or something is way off. You watch Dirty Harry and are inspired for war. I look at the facts and think it's a joke to use a Clint Eastwood fantasy as war strategy. That junk doesn't even work in real life for catching criminals, it's just entertainment. And then to use literary references to justify war? How about Kurt Vonnegut or Johnny Got Your Gun? Are they not equally valid? ----- Original Message ----- From: Lawrence Helm To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: 4/8/2006 12:41:28 AM Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Literature as a reflection of life You are just jerking me around now with garbage Irene. Let?s drop it. Lawrence From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Andy Amago Sent: Friday, April 07, 2006 8:52 PM To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Literature as a reflection of life What is the question about Dirty Harry Lawrence? That we should do like Dirty Harry because then all the bad guys get what's coming to them? On what evidence are you basing this? They, and you, claim this is a war. Dirty Harry was one guy in one city with an ending written before the movie was filmed. It's likely Clint Eastwood may even have filmed the ending first. Where is the connection to this real live conflict? The fact that you offer so much literary support for your war strategy is, to me, evidence that indeed this "war" is just a fantasy, life imitating art. In fact, Gore Vidal calls this a metaphorical war, like a war on dandruff. Gore Vidal writes literature, does he not? ----- Original Message ----- From: Lawrence Helm To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: 4/7/2006 10:33:57 PM Subject: [lit-ideas] Literature as a reflection of life An interesting response Irene. Someone with a literary background on the other hand would know that literature can reflect issues in society and life. Upton Sinclairss The Jungle drew attention to the scandal of the meat industry. His novel was fiction but it resulted in the creation of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. In The Brass Check he was critical of the Press. Sinclair Lewis Babbitt painted such a vivid and critical picture of the American social landscape that the term Babbitt entered the American vocabulary in the same way that Philistine did after Matthew Arnolds Culture and Anarchy. And who wanted to live in a tract house after reading his Main Street? Thomas Hardys Tess of the DUrbervilles and Jude the Obscure painted powerful pictures of the inequities in the British society of his day. Dostoevski as a result of such novels as Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov is sometimes said to evince a better understanding of psychology than any scientist (including Freud) could claim. The symbols of Ahab and The White Whale have entered our common vocabulary as a result of Melvilles Moby Dick. H. G. Wells The Time Machine created a very negative prediction of mans future which was heavily influenced by Darwinian anthropological thinking. I could go on. Approaching the matter from a slightly different direction we can observe that much literature and many movies during the Cold War were very pessimistic about the chances of mans survival. In the 1951 movie, When Worlds Collide, the close pass of a planet will destroy human life and so scientists scramble to find a way to preserve life by sending the best people off in a space ship. In the 1959 movie On the Beach, The residents of Australia after a global nuclear war must come to terms with the fact that all life will be destroyed in a matter of months. In the 1962 movie The Day of the Triffids a shower of meteriorites blinds everyone watching it and soon plants shoot up that can walk and have a taste for human flesh. The 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove, or how I learned how to stop worrying and love the bomb was indicative of the common concern of the day: Plot Summary: U.S. Air Force General Jack Ripper goes completely and utterly mad, and sends his bomber wing to destroy the U.S.S.R. He suspects that the communists are conspiring to pollute the "precious bodily fluids" of the American people. The U.S. president meets with his advisors, where the Soviet ambassador tells him that if the U.S.S.R. is hit by nuclear weapons, it will trigger a "Doomsday Machine" which will destroy all plant and animal life on Earth. Peter Sellers portrays the three men who might avert this tragedy: British Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, the only person with access to the demented Gen. Ripper; U.S. President Merkin Muffley, whose best attempts to divert disaster depend on placating a drunken Soviet Premier and the former Nazi genius Dr. Strangelove, who concludes that "such a device would not be a practical deterr ent for reasons which at this moment must be all too obvious". Will the bombers be stopped in time, or will General Jack Ripper succeed in destroying the world ? [We could do a tangent on Dr. Strangelove: Many Liberals have learned how to quit worrying and love the idea of Iran having the bomb.] Again, I could go on here as well. To return to the movie under discussion, Dirty Harry symbolizes the perception of a liberal predilection for coddling criminals at the expense of ordinary citizens. The perception of many is that Liberals worry more about the rights of criminals than they do of the protection of innocent civilians. Dirty Harry is a rather heavy handed presentation of this perception. This perception is popular and Dirty Harry was brought back in several sequels. Paul Kersey in Death Wish goes after the sort of criminals who murdered his wife. He sets himself up as a victim and then kills the criminals attempting to victimize him. Kersey was brought back in Death Wish II, III, IV, and V. Lots of people like the idea of someone dealing violently with those who victimize innocent civilians. And this liking hasnt stopped. Witness 24. Now you are either horribly stunted in your understanding of literature or you are simply refusing to answer a very reasonable question about Dirty Harry. Which is it? Lawrence