Essay: Gran Torino by Clint Eastwood – An Ultimate Sacrifice

An Ultimate Sacrifice
Multicultural communication is a form of study that involves different culture and social group communications. This is a topic choice that many producers are filming in recent years. Gran Torino by Clint Eastwood is a powerful film that shows many examples of cultural context within many cultures. This film is about a Vietnamese war veteran name Walter who battles between destructive social relationships with several races but particularly the Hmong family. After his wife’s passing, Walter is learning to adjust to his personal life and learning to live with other races around his community. When his neighbor Thao joins his cousin’s gang, he is pressured to steal Walter’s biggest possession: his 1972 Gran Torino. This creates change in Walter’s behavior because he will soon become involved in the violent life of Thao and his family. Gran Torino interrupts the need for communication, understanding, and values in the youth, focused on culture involvement around an issue that has been one of many conflict in our society today; racism.
Our culture today is defined by accustomed traditions, beliefs, and behaviors of people during that time of the society. Within the movie, Walter believed that everyone was a burden, full of complications, and bothersome. At the beginning, the first cultural conflict is introduced when Walter goes to church for his wife’s ceremony. Walter’s granddaughter shows up to church with a distracting clothing appeal that angers Walter. Later in the scene Walter catches his granddaughter smoking a cigarette in his garage; afraid of getting yelled at she switches the attention to the car. His granddaughter cares nothing more to have quantifiable things such as Walters car. Her attention and behavior is held responsible by her parents who she followed their exact footsteps. Her parent’s relation with Walter is very distant. This shows a cultural conflict between the different generations that we are involved in every day. More so, elders like Walter have different ambitions to strive for, clearly a different taste in fashion, and they teach their kid respect in their early years. Versus his granddaughter who is more into the today’s generation of electronics, control of parents, and stylish fashion.
As for Thao’s family, they are characterized as religious, respectful, welcoming, and supportive. They believed in the return of the good, healing within individuals’ health, life, and much more. This makes them learn to value friendship, family, and company: Hmong people have a lot of gatherings and spend a lot of time with relatives each day. This is the unity between the Hmong families. These are two types of people that are still represented today around the world. The lifestyle of many Americans differs greatly on how we were raised, and taught to behave and were influenced to live.
Along with influence of our daily lives, it is the historical events that marks the aspects of society. An important event that happened during the year of 2008 was the election of president Barack Obama. Being the first African American president changed the whole history of presidential and the problem of racism. President Obama was loved by everyone, he brought many races together to fix the world and he did his best to bring everyone together.
One of the biggest problem faced during this time was the crisis in finance as a large amount of money was destroyed in real estate, mortgages, and investments. Obama promised to “jumpstart the stalled economy…help restore confidence in financial markets, regulatory agencies, improved transparency for financial disclosure, and cracked down on manipulative trading activities” (Amadeo, 2017). This shows how Obama fought for every ethnicity equally just so they can have their rights and carry on a reason to fight for other people of color. With the true leadership that man of color, our previous pouts in the year of 2008, helped the economic collapse in taking their baby steps to recovery.
This significant event relates the to the movie because of the economic difference between Walter and the Hmong family next door. Walter was more stable and wealthy compared to the Hmong family who had less of a nice car and reputation. In the movie, Thao is an independent boy next door who had no father figure. He was pressured to join his cousins gang since he did not have a ‘clique’ to hang out with or any other brothers to conversate with. After joining his cousins gang, they forced him to complete a mission that they knew he was going to fail. Thao had a mission to steal Walter’s car. Thao failed on this mission; he was caught by Walter because of his loud and clumsiness in the garage. This shows that during that time, the rival gang did not own as much as Walter did. They were cheap thieves who manipulated others’ lives and stole expensive things that they could not afford. Walter is an American who has lived longer in the United States and had a lot of money from his service as a veteran. As for Thao and his family, they were also poor and at a lower standard than Walter, but they were not people who would steal from a neighbor. This leads to another problem in the film that Walter easily misjudged from Thao’s first impression.
Another controversial happening during this time and still going is the problem of racism. The biggest conflict in the film was between Walter and Thao. Walter gave the impression throughout the movie that he did not seem to like Hmong people who moved into his neighborhood. He often called them chinks and fish heads with a tone of disgust. The term ‘Chink’ is used as a racial term to describe the visual size of an eye, but it does not mean that Asian people have small eyes and actual fish heads. It has been proven that “Asian cultural values and beliefs include: collectivism, conformity to norms, filial piety, humility, hierarchical relationships, and avoidance of shame” (Lwamoto). When using racial terms to describe the appearances of Asian American, “it is possible that holding these values may reflect components of group belonging, which may be associated with better psychological adjustment and protection against adverse effects of race-related stress” (Lwamoto). People today still make fun of Asian Americans by saying that we can’t see with our smaller eyes. This shows discrimination that people have towards Asian American’s appearances. By calling Thao and his family names and showing them bothered feelings, Thao felt like they did not belong there and the vibe of hate between the two houses, were strongly felt.
Racism against Asian American is still prevalent in our society today. Many problems are faced more in the facility of workplaces, sports, and in school. In April 2014, a recent problem facing discrimination took place within the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. A study was created to find the “study examining racial gender biases in faculty mentoring” (Eikenburg). The results showed that there was “tremendous bias against Asian students and that’s not something we expected” (Eikenburg). This shows that many Asian American were not treated as equally in academic settings as they believed to be. This discrimination belief towards Asian Americans was found to be puzzling because most would apply and be accepted into higher education. In 1992-2011, the Asian population had doubled in the United States. When taking the SAT test, Asian Americans scored around 140 points and higher than white students who also applied. Although most scored higher, testing politics will still say that “only comprise some 12 to 18 percent of the student body at Ivy League universities” (Eikenburg). The numbers of scores had no meaning for Asian Americans but rather being identified as a “white” applicant. This shows overrepresentation for the following students, and exemplifies how Asian American’s were identified as White.
This drama film was involved in racial problems but also had quite a few conventions such as death, rape, shootings, small community conflicts, gang members and dark plots. This film is about the dramatic life of both Walter and Thao Walter suffers from anger and hate, on the other hand Thao had a tough time growing up as a man and fitting in with other boys. Walter outgrows his hate for Thao helped keep him safe the gang members who wanted to hurt Thao for turning them down. Walter trades his life for Thao to live his life. This fits into the genre of drama film greatly. There are a lot of tensions that frame the film to be dramatic. The producers purpose for this choice of genre is simply to explain his racial message through actions.
Gran Torino wants to convey a strong message that racism around the world is essentially nothing but a skewed and untruthful idea. The film’s main point shown is that racism creates division between cultures and causes violence. This film also “to renounce violence, and to understand how it does not solve problems but in fact creates worse ones than the ones it was supposed to solve” (Beard). Being able to open your eyes and being accepting of one another is good for stopping racism. The storyline of this movie achieves the purpose of pushing other races to stop rivalry. At the end, Walter learns to accept and treat the Sue family like they are his own. He shares his property and his car with the family, along with who he really is as a person. He gives up his life so Thao can continue living his. Walter learns the needs to care, protect, and love Thao as he took many bullets to stop the crime of gang banging involving Thao and the Sue family.
Continuing the positivity of this film, Gran Torino reflected the values, beliefs, and conventions of the culture in 2008 in which we shouldn’t forget. In the year of 2008 money, crime and racism were problems that were happening around the world. This film turns all the bad in life to a good, in which Walter, twists the plot of a drama film to a scarified drama. The usage of different elements in this artwork such as the script, character, choice of actors’ ethnicity, visuals and sounds make this film a great artwork overall. Racism that exist for all ethnicity around the world are based upon the assumptions and dramatic intentions. By primarily choosing the Hmong community to be involved in this film, it has been heralding opportunities for raising awareness and shine light to the existence of Hmong people. This also closes the stereotypical representations of Asian Americans.
When thinking about the future relevance of why this film was made, it is clear that in the long run this movie will exemplify the importance of disruption and resolution. This movie showed fitting examples of how long-lasting friendships between different races can be formed from different beliefs, values and desires in life. When we face racial complications in the future it is within us as individuals to open our mindset and become one like Walter and the Sue family became family. To fix an ongoing problem in the world, the strongest cure to fixing it is by having a community of multiple colors fighting for similar reasons.
It has been pointed out that changes in our culture today such as how and where people raise their children in different society or environment from which their parents were born into will affect the relevance of this artwork. This is because those who aren’t born and raised in their original foreign birth place can’t speak the language of their birth-culture. This may cause a problem for opportunities such as education, college, a master’s degree, a well-paying job, and citizenship for different races. Even through these future issues, understanding decisions in politics, education, and culture will bring less affect for citizens of more than just one nation. All cultures must emerge with the same understanding of crucial importance to highlight the position towards the future’s ability of crossing cultures, and peacefully settle survival issues in the world together.
Reference
Amadeo, K. (2017, July 5). Top 10 Economic Events in 2008. How the World Changed in Just One Year, pp. 1.
Beard, William. “Gran Torino.” CLINT EASTWOOD AS FALLEN SAVIOUR 18 May 2012: 34
42. Document
Eikenburg, Jocely. Debunking the “Model Asian” Myth: Five Ways Asian-Americans Still Face Discrimination (2017): 1. Journal.
Lwamoto, Derek Jeni. “The Impact of Racial Identity, Ethnic Identity, Asian Values and Race Related Stress on Asian Americans and Asian International College Students’ Psychological Well-Being.” 1 January 2010: 1. Document.