>a cop who gets the job done his own way. A strikingly unique and original scenario, don't you think? > Death Wish, is another. One of the most controversial films ever about >a man, Charles Bronson, who's wife is killed and daughter raped. Bronson >becomes a vigilante and goes out at night looking for criminals. The movie >is about a struggle between a man and the unjust government ideologies and >problems with the system. This is the basic premise of just about every superhero pulp novel, comic book, oater, cop show, in short the bottomless cesspit spewed out by pop culture over the last hundred or so years. Supposed notions of rebellion against "the unjust government and the bureaucracy's [sic] involved", "government ideologies and problems with the system", etc. are easily sated by spectacles of mayhem like Death Wish and Dirty Harry, except in the case of a handful of sociopaths who may feel emboldened to go out and 'execute' some 'criminals' (or anyone walking around today). The films also reinforce delusions about society that serve the very, "unjust government"/"system" which they purport to be critical of. > Also it's important to remember a big reason why the movie of the >anti-hero like these were popular was because the Vietnam War was ending and >people liked seeing a character that stood up to the system like Eastwood in >Dirty Harry and Bronson in Death Wish. These films pandered to the basically fascist, violent impulses of Americans who felt they had been cheated of victory in Vietnam by those who really "stood up to the system"--a conceptual analog of the Nazis' 'stab in the back' theory on why Germany lost the first world war. David Smith [log in to unmask] (902)454-3087 "Multimedia Design Studio"-- http://www.isisnet.com/dsmith/index.html **Optimized for viewing with Netscape Navigator 2.0b on Macintosh. ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]