Michael Hanold

ENGL 200H, Section 001

Introduction to Critical Reading
Constructing the Identity of Justice
Throughout the film “Dirty Harry,” justice is treated as a universally persistent category.

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

of justice to a social construct becomes evident.

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

Scorpio, resulting in Scorpio’s death.

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.

As portrayed in “Dirty Harry,” justice seems to be represented as a universal, 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

amalgamation of unrealistic properties. As a hippie, white supremacist, sharp-shooter, Scorpio

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

categories and their inescapable connection to society’s construction of them.

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,

Butler contends, “This repetition is at once a reenactment and reexperiencing of a set of

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

and performative situating. Significantly, if justice is performative, there are no grounds by

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

has, through performative practices, determined justice to be.

 Much to Harry’s dismay, Butler’s position on performative categories would suggest that

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

practices that define its parameters.