--- Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Instead, American movies gave them the impression > that Americans are timid, bureaucratic, passive, > lacking conviction, and obsessed with laws and > permission. > > "Huh? What about Dirty Harry and the Die Hard guy?" > > "Oh, those are the exceptions," they told me. "In > every movie, the hero has to break all the laws > and go it alone. The entire American bureaucracy > is against the lone hero. His friends start to > hate him and won't help. Usually he becomes a > hunted criminal too, or has to turn in his badge. > All the other Americans in the movies are too > afraid of breaking rules to solve the problem." *Actually "Dirty Hary" might be a prototype of a neo-conservative. He is the guy who essentially defends the system by using more aggressive and brutal means than the system has traditionally been willing to employ. (Steven Siegal's films are pretty much like that, too.) As long as you are on the side of the system, everything is permitted, seems to be the idea. However, not all Clint's Eastwood's films exhibit the rigid neo-conservative 'morality.' There is a Westerner (directed by himself, I believe) where he plays a hired assassin. In passing through a small provincial town, he gets badly beaten by the local sheriff. Eastwood runs away and goes on to to do his job, i.e. to kill the guy whom he was hired to kill, but in the meanwhile the sheriff cathes his best friend and tortures him to death trying to make him tell him where Eastwood is. Eastwood, having been informed about this by some decent prostitutes, comes back to revenge his friend. In the final scene, the sheriff is laid on the floor wounded, his pals already dead, and Eastwood is holding a heavy rifle to his head. "I didn't deserve to die like this." - argues the sheriff - "I was building a town." "That doesn't go with whether you deserved it." says Eastwood, and pulls the trigger. O.K. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html