The Frame

Notes on Gran Torino, You Pussy

I saw Gran Torino a couple of weeks ago and have been meaning to write a few notes about how I read it. I thought Walt’s relationship was Thao was endearing, watching the old man develop a soft spot for someone he shows serious contempt for in the beginning.

That said, I thought the film made an interesting statement regarding race and racism. While it purports to be about a racist who overcomes his prejudices, the film actually might be just as racist and xenophobic as its protagonist.

As the film began, I expected to see both the American Walt and his Hmong neighbors reach a mutual appreciation of each other’s culture. I was disappointed that what the film considered a mutual understanding was really only the foreign neighbor accepting his neighbor’s American masculine values: Thao, Walt’s teenage Hmong neighbor, learns how to speak like working-class White males do, perform “manly” lawn work ( a distinctly American activity) like mowing the lawn—not gardening—and associate his own self-worth with his possessions and maintaining those possessions.

The film portrayed no sense of reciprocal respect. Walt’s most generous comment toward his neighbors is something along the lines of “I have more in common with you gooks than I do my own children.” Now I know that this line is just typical of Walt’s character, and that he might be expressing some real understanding here. My point is that Walt only values Thao inasmuch as he becomes an American—and the film expects its viewer to do the same. By the end of the film, Thao appears to have made the most “progress.” This is racist because the film equates progress with being American and doing things the American way rather than the Hmong way.

But the film isn’t blind to the ugly side of the culture it privileges. Walt’s granddaughter baldly represents the dangers of Walt’s American culture. Walt’s healthy pride in his posessions becomes a sick obsession with material things in his granddaughter. Walt is enraged as he watches his grandchildren making lightly of their grandma’s funeral. They do not show a reverence for the dead or immaterial things. His grandaughter, after the funeral, picks out pieces of furniture she wants from her grandpa for her dorm. Whereas the Hmong show reverence for immaterial things like the soul, Walt’s granddaughter does not recognize anything eternal. She asks her grandpa bluntly, “Can I have your car when you die.” She treats him only as an obstacle to obtaining material things. The film seems to ask the question, Is the granddaughter’s materialism the inevitable result of Walt’s values?

Great Lines (So Far) in Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep

“You broke, eh?”
“I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate.”

I said: “Anybody home, son?”
“How would I know?”
“Go ——— yourself [sic].”
“That’s how people get false teeth.”

“Whoever had done it [killed Geiger] had meant business. Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.”