Conservatives’ Bizarre Readings of Gran Torino
Andrew Breitbart offers up an Oscar wine:
This year Gus Van Sant and his gay marriage public service announcement “Milk,” garnered eight nominations while Clint Eastwood and his objectively conservative box office titan “Gran Torino” got completely shut out.
I liked Gran Torino a lot. But consider. Milk is about a small businessman who goes into politics and takes a stand against firing people for actions irrelevant to their job; the implicit subtheme is that couples who love each other should get married. Naturally, conservatives hate it. But that’s their problem. The idea that Gran Torino is a conservative movie is, meanwhile, bizarre. In its main plot arc it’s very clearly a subversion of Dirty Harry-style right-wing vigilante fantasies. You should see the movie, so I’m putting the rest below the fold:
You’re set up in a million ways to expect a just such a storyline. But then at the crucial moment, the hero’s tactics turn out to be just the reverse—he baits the bad guys into excessive violence, thus turning the problem into one the police can handle easily. In the end, the film affirms the value of nonviolence and of refusing to take illegal shortcuts merely because your opponents are bad people. The only “conservative” element to the film is the somewhat-loving satirical portrait of Eastwood as a racist crank. But this is both clearly satire of Eastwood’s views and more to the point clearly racism. It’s not like he’s some “politically incorrect” regular ol’ guy who liberals would call a racist. He flings around all sorts of obscure ethnic slurs! Constantly! These are funny, enjoyable scenes. But they’re not a positive portrayal of racism. And even if you do want to confuse them for a positive portrayal of racism, what kind of conservative would think that being racist makes a movie conservative? Isn’t that something a liberal would say?
68 Responses to “Conservatives’ Bizarre Readings of Gran Torino”
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February 24th, 2009 at 8:50 am
You can’t very well characterize someone who totes a pistol around and waves it in peoples’ faces, albeit in a good cause, as committed to non-violence. Eastwood resorts to non-violence at the end out of practicality, not any moral determination. An ending where he stormed in and shot everybody, Dirty Harry style, would have been stupidly unrealistic — he is clearly outgunned by the gang. It’s true the anti-Harry ending is Clint having fun with the expectations of his audience.
I liked the movie too. I’ll leave the dissection of the race thing to others.
February 24th, 2009 at 8:56 am
Breitbart came not to praise GRAN TORINO but simply to bury it in the same old Bad Bad Liberal Hollywood! conservative drivel.
Damn that Heath Ledger! If he’d not gotten the dead cold grave thing (or was that Jerry Lewis?) then Dumbass would have had a true law and order film (if he could get over his Brokeback challenge) to pit against MILK.
As it is he had to stretch for a distant miss.
And was constrained, poor thing, from attacking that Commie Penn for playing a queer.
February 24th, 2009 at 9:01 am
“He flings around all sorts of obscure ethnic slurs! Constantly! These are funny, enjoyable scenes. But they’re not a positive portrayal of racism.”
Well…
Eastwood’s character is both racist and sympathetic.
I’ve got no problem with depictions like that – I like Don Rickles, for example – but the “portrayal of racism” in the film is quite a bit more morally complex than you describe.
February 24th, 2009 at 9:07 am
/i think Andrew Breitbart is just mad because Fireproof didn’t get nominated for any major awards.
February 24th, 2009 at 9:16 am
Though I’m not sure whether the film is “conservatice” per se, it is certainly an appreciation of old traditional themes that used to permeate in the US (value of craftsmanship, loyalty to american brands, and self-reliance)
In that sense, it is more close to the conservatism of someone like Pat Buchanan then the modern republican party.
February 24th, 2009 at 9:23 am
Here’s something funny about Gran Torino: It is a much more anti-suburb movie than American Beauty, which conservatives like Ross Douthat hated. So they too should hate Gran Torino, which lambasts people who drive foreign cars, self centered suburbanites who abandoned the big city, and lost their cultural identity in the process. The fact that they complain about an anti-suburban feel in a masterpiece of acting and directing in American Beauty and simultaneously praise a movie that overtly criticizes the suburbs as being “conservative” leads me to believe that conservatives are philistines.
February 24th, 2009 at 9:26 am
Conservatives are hilarious. When they’re not real, of course.
February 24th, 2009 at 9:32 am
It seems the righties are having some trouble dealing with the fact that Dirty Harry seems to have lost his inner wingnut sometime post-Cold War.
February 24th, 2009 at 9:32 am
Meh, it sounds like it’s a conservative movie. I haven’t seen it – I guess I don’t watch many movies in general – but Miracle Max’s account sounds more persuasive than Matt’s. Many conservatives don’t generally think of themselves as trigger-happy, after all, even if their policies may wind up having that effect in the real world. And Eastwood is reliably Republican. According to Wikipedia, he endorsed Nixon in 1968, Schwarzenegger in 2003 and 2006, and McCain in 2008.
And yet, as duBois points out, his movies aren’t the wankeriffic nuttiness of the Red Dawn crowd. And it looks like some of his work in California government was of a conservationist nature. He may be an example of that strain of right-wing thought that is very rare these days: the sane kind. We can do conservatives the courtesy of admitting that there are some non-crazy people among them.
Although come to think of it, Absolute Power, in which a philandering president abuses his power for personal gain and Eastwood’s character knowingly contributes to his murder, was released in 1997…
February 24th, 2009 at 9:34 am
The movie isn’t about nonviolence. And it offers a conservative take on masculinity, and a conservative diagnosis of social ills. And Eastwood’s character is a politically-incorrect curmudgeon, not a racist.
And the scenes Matt describes as funny were entirely too long and overdone.
February 24th, 2009 at 9:44 am
as duBois points out, his movies aren’t the wankeriffic nuttiness of the Red Dawn crowd.
Interesting how none of Eastwood’s other recent movies got recognition as one of the “top conservative movies.”
February 24th, 2009 at 9:51 am
But it actually contains the phrase “You kids get off my lawn”. I really wonder if the screenwriters are blog readers and this is just incredibly subversive.
February 24th, 2009 at 9:53 am
I think the movie was marvelous in its complexity, in that it really did contain strong conservative and liberal themes. I read the movie as having two main themes. First, it was clearly a paean to certain “traditional values” of 1950’s America – mainly conservative notions of decorum, hard work, and pride of ownership – but notably not “family values.” You can see this in the portrayal of the various gangsters and delinquents that seemed to ruin the neighborhood. His battle against the gangsters formed the core of the film and clearly upheld his conservative values. The second theme in my eyes was a hard critique of isolated nuclear families unconnected from a wider community and a hard critique of prejudice generally. While Eastwood’s disdain for his Hmong neighbors was couched in the language of racism colored by his experience in the war, what I think really drove it was the fact that the family was large and extended, they didn’t seem to take care of their property, didn’t respect boundaries, had weird traditions like bringing all the food to him, and had a bunch of punk kids hanging around. To him this signaled a dramatic change from the relatively placid neighborhood existence he had grown accustomed to. So based on this disorganization, and the presence of the punk kids, he prejudged the moral values of the entire lot of them. But as the movie showed, it was just a few bad apples and the family did hold similar values to him – and even surpassed them in the way the Hmong family and community was so much more loving and connected to each other than his own family. But he was only able to learn this by looking past the surface and getting to know the people. This is definitely a liberal critique of racism.
I guess it’s possible that the racism portrayal could be seen by some as conservative in that while he threw around epithets, these were just a meaningless function of his age and the way he grew up. At heart the movie showed he wasn’t in fact a racist, he just threw around epithets as a cultural marker of status or coolness to which he had grown accustomed. Similar to calling his barber an old Polock or somethings. Just words. So if liberals inveigh against these arcane symbols as the core of racism, they are missing the point. It’s just cranks being cranks and a the heart these folks are not necessarily racist. Kind of like my friend who I know is not racist loves to throw around racist jokes (against all groups) at the bar. He thinks its cool I think it’s stupid and inappropriate. But if I cut him off as a friend because of his “racist” behavior I would be missing something.
But in the end I don’t think that’s the proper reading of the race issue in the movie, but i can see how it could be spun that way…
February 24th, 2009 at 9:57 am
> He flings around all sorts of obscure ethnic slurs!
> Constantly! These are funny, enjoyable scenes. But
> they’re not a positive portrayal of racism
Reminds me of the scene in “Three Kings” where newly-arrived soldiers in Kuwait are being read new policy on correct terminology for the locals: “”Sand-n—-r’ is not acceptable. Please confine yourselves to ‘towel head’ and ‘camel-jockey.’”
February 24th, 2009 at 10:00 am
I liked the movie. Eastwood’s over the top character was Archie Bunker with a handgun. I also liked the fact the young priest never gave up even after a series of insults.
February 24th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Another under-remarked aspect of Gran Torino is that it totally sucked. I went into this movie expecting to love it. Horrible acting. Horrible dialog. Contrived plot.
This general suckiness may have had more to do with its failure to garner dozens of Oscar nominations than any presumed political subtext.
February 24th, 2009 at 10:15 am
And even if you do want to confuse them for a positive portrayal of racism, what kind of conservative would think that being racist makes a movie conservative?
A stupid one.
But I repeat myself.
February 24th, 2009 at 10:39 am
Gran Torino was pretty awful. I’m not sure why anyone would want to claim it. Anyway, the ending is pretty ludicrous, and I suspect that in real life those gang members would get something like 5-7 years. This is not a lot of time. Eastwood clearly provoked them, and any defense attorney worth his salt should be able to get a plea out of the prosecutors that reflects how weak a case they would have.
February 24th, 2009 at 10:44 am
What all you religiously illiterate lefties seemed to have missed was that Eastwood’s character is in the end a Christ figure. This is clearly intended because he falls with his arms outstretched in the cruciform pattern when he dies. This is after he finally goes to confession.
Eastwood’s character comes to embrace his Asian neighbors because he finds them to be more in tune with traditional family values than his own children and debased American culture. The straightforward Christian and even Catholic (quelle horreur!)themes, along with the emphasis on family values made this movie “conservative” and unpopular with the Hollywood crowd.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Eastwood’s “confession” is a bit of a token gesture, presumably out of regard for his late wife’s wishes, a desire to set his house in order before his sacrifice and as a sign that he’s come to respect, to some degree, the priest as a man more than a religious figure. His confessed sins are notably scanty and there’s no reason to believe that he performs any religious acts of atonement. His true confession, for the acts he committed in wartime, is reserved for his Hmong friend.
Eastwood’s character initially resorts to violence and expressions of dominance in order to resolve conflicts, which, with the exception of the run-in with the black thugs, results in an escalation of violence against those he is trying to protect, his Hmong neighbors. The character’s final realization that retaliation will only serve to prolong the conflict, that no amount of diplomacy and neighborhood-building will save his community from violence, that only bringing the law to bear on the perpetrators of that violence will save his community is a huge departure for Eastwood. From the perspective of the character, non-violence is practicality; from the perspective of the filmmaker, whose Unforgiven features an outgunned hero surviving his final battle, it’s an evolution of his worldview.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:49 am
How about his Christ-like self sacrifice when he goes down in a hale of bullets?
February 24th, 2009 at 11:57 am
This is splitting hairs but – do you really think a bunch of gang members are going to get an “attorney worth his salt”? Or do you think they’ll get a public defender who will plea bargain murder one down to man one?
February 24th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Is self-sacrifice a purely Christian act? Sure, there’s a Christ-like pose, but there’s little else in the film (or Eastwood’s recent works) to suggest that Eastwood is staunchly religious. His relationship with the priest never rises to the level of parishioner. As I noted, Eastwood’s confession is very thin and, IIRC, largely regards a sin committed against his late wife, who, as stated in the film, was his sole connection to the church. He leaves his house to the church because it would have pleased his wife, not because he himself reversed his position on it or the priest.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Eastwood plays a unionized autoworker. Don’t conservatives hate these people and their extravagant way of life?
February 24th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Eastwood’s “confession” is a bit of a token gesture, presumably out of regard for his late wife’s wishes, a desire to set his house in order before his sacrifice and as a sign that he’s come to respect, to some degree, the priest as a man more than a religious figure.
So you’re talking Bob seriously, then? I often can’t tell the difference between genuine right-wingers and spoofs.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
It’s probably also worth noting that this is essentially the second recent Eastwood film to feature a kind of assisted suicide, the first being Million-Dollar Baby. Here, Eastwood is dying already, his wife is gone, his relationship with his actual family is strained and this is an opportunity to end his life on his terms while helping his new surrogate family. He is shown going through the steps of putting his house in order, a process which is generally associated with someone contemplating suicide, not martyrdom.
If one regards his sacrifice as, in some part, an act of suicide, that would also undercut any Christian or Catholic reading of his final act.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
And hey, if you want to talk about Christ-like symbolism in movies, how about Spider-Man 2? There’s a scene where he gets carried over a crowd, unconscious, with arms outstretched and wounds in his side. Talk about hitting you over the head.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
I’m for real. I really believe its a Christian movie. That last scene transforms the whole film. “Dusty” above tries to explain away the obvious religious imagery with complex psychological theories about the character that would be impossible to verify. Why not go with the most simple explanation–he has a genuine conversion, makes his peace with God and performs a perfect Christian sacrifice. His confession perhaps isn’t perfect and feels a bit perfunctory but that’s what you’d expect of someone returning to the church after almost a lifetime away. Walt is not a spiritual man, he’s a man of action. He has difficulty confessing his sins but then performs the ultimate act of atonement and sacrifice.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
I don’t know how pure his act of self sacrifice was. It seemed his days were numbered by a looming health problem. The situation did let him go out in a way that he must have deemed worthwhile.
I wasn’t all that convinced by his tactic of getting the gang members, either. He had a history of brandishing a weapon, and went to their place making a menacing move. The gang members never even stepped off their property and could convincingly argue that he was going for a weapon.
The acting was pretty weak overall. And what was with that closing number?
February 24th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Great comments all around- why the change to non-violence? Practicality? I do not think so. The film pans suburbia for sure- the guy is willing to die in the city to avoid the hellhole for heaven’s sake! The writer that said the plot was contrived, the dialogue poor and the acting weak is onto something. The plot is remakably contrived. The acting and dialogue are uneven. I liked the movie. The reason being the story abourt the Cambodian people. I have several theories on movies- on how they need to be developed, themed, acted, filmed, written. Any of these may succeed or fail on the own merits. What I find fascinating is that one element can make or break a film. In other words, a film may be very good despite having a lot failures and the other way around. I recalled watching a movie which I sensed as so so English melodrama: it was very well acted and the scenery and the plot were pretty good. Nevertheless, I would not have recommended that movie to anyone based on tedium until the final credits rolled when the movie became majestic. Quite and amazing feat. The film (it also deals with racism): White Mischief.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
You’re all over thinking this. It doesn’t matter so much what might actually happen in this situation in real life. What matters is what the people who made the movie were trying to demonstrate with it. There are plenty of cues that suggest the Christian self-sacrifice theme.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
The only obvious religious imagery in the film is the Christ-like pose of a man falling backwards with his arms outstretched, which is thanks to physiology as much as to religious symbolism. Beyond that, evidence of Walt’s spiritual conversion is fairly thin, especially, as I noted before, his true confession is reserved not for his spiritual adviser but for Thao.
But this is a work of art and it’s not a particularly unambiguous one. If you choose to view it as a Christian tale, there’s certainly an argument to be made. I just think there’s an equally valid argument to be made that Walt’s sacrifice is not intended to be explicitly Christian, especially in light of the role of Christianity in Eastwood’s other films.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Yeah, I didn’t like Gran Torino very much, mostly because it seemed overtly conservative to me at the time. Matt’s points are good ones, if you see the old man’s behavior as satire. However, I was really disturbed by the feeling that Eastwood’s character had grown to like his Hmong neighbors, but hadn’t really changed his view of minorities or the world in general. It seemed dangerously close to a noble savage paradigm where the Hmong are “all right because they’re hardworkers”.
Also the film is hypermasculine. That scene in the barbershop where Eastwood teaches the Hmong boy how to talk like a man is just ridiculous. Maybe it was satire, but at the time it just seemed awkward.
Mostly, this demonstrates the stupidity of claiming movies as liberal or conservative. The reality is that both liberals and conservatives believe in vage ideals like liberty, but have very different conceptions of how public policy should be utilized to fulfill those ideals. Gran Torino isn’t about public policy, it’s about a retired United Auto Worker and his neighbors. Breitbart should remember that next time.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
If you want to talk about the people that made it, below is a quote from Eastwood:
February 24th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
The point is that Christian people would find in the movie’s end an analogy to Christ, not that the movie couldn’t be read another way. Of course self-sacrifice is not “purely” a Christian act, but the central event upon which Christianity is built, the death of Christ, is an act of self-sacrifice.
And Dusty, the fact that Eastwood prepares for his death, goes knowingly to it, does not undercut a Christian reading. According to Scripture and church teaching, Jesus also knew he was going to die and went willingly. I know that might make the line between suicide and martyrdom uncomfortably blurry, but that’s the way it is.
I don’t think its a shocker that people who are not conservative appreciate the movie for its non-conservative commentary, nor that the reverse is also true. I think the idea that we can easily label movies “liberal” or “conservative” ignores the films’ complexity, as if they were propaganda pieces rather than art. In fact, I think the NRO’s list of “conservative movies” reflects the right’s insistence on judging art/everything on the basis of its supposed ideology far more than it reflects on the movies themselves.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
My point was not that it’s not a self-sacrifice if one goes in willingly, just that Walt clearly performs a series of steps that one would recognize as putting his house in order, buying a new suit, getting a haircut and overtipping his barber, getting a sitter for the dog, fulfilling his final duties to his late wife by submitting to the confession she wanted. That behavior is fairly common for people preparing for suicide. If Walt had not been suffering from a fatal disease, the meaning of his self-sacrifice would be less ambiguous.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
And I did agree that there’s a possible Christian interpretation to the ending. I was initially responding to Bob’s insistence that it’s clearly intended to be Christian and that only “religiously illiterate lefties” would have missed this. Eastwood has never shown any sign of being a religious man, so the film is not clearly intended to be read as a religious film. It may be interpreted that way, but it was not the intention of the filmmakers.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Well said, Bethany. That’s all true.
Clint did not write the movie he only directed it. It’s possible that he could direct a movie uses certain themes he doesn’t happen to advocate himself. In fact, that may be the mark of a good director, one who’s not overly ideological. The Christian image at the end makes it a coherent movie. It ties it all together. As Bethany said its not that helpful to try to lump movies into “conservative” and “liberal” piles. Most good movies will defy that simplistic categorizing. Still given the whole culture wars thing we’ve got going on and the sympathetic view of traditional family values and Christianity, this movie lands more in the conservative pile.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Even when the director doesn’t write the film, he is still the author of the film. Eastwood is a filmmaker of sufficient stature that he doesn’t have to make a project that he doesn’t believe in, especially when that film is intended to be the swan song of his acting career and possibly his filmmaking career as well. The metacommentary on and presumed repudiation of his screen persona (in addition to his final vocal performance over the end credits) all mark Gran Torino as an intensely personal film.
As I noted, Eastwood himself is not a religious man, why would he choose to make a Christian film for his final act? He wouldn’t. Feel free to find Christian interpretations in it, but that’s not what the director intended.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
I think the issue for me is that I’m not denying that a Christian interpretation is possible. If you the viewer found meaning in the film by viewing it through that lens, that’s fine. Art can have many interpretations. But I do dispute the notion that Gran Torino was intended to be viewed as Christian, given Eastwood’s stated ambivalence towards religion.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Walt was dying anyway, whereas Jesus could have married a sweet Jewish girl, settled down, and lived to see his grandkids. Okay. I take the point. As for the “meaning” of his sacrifice…he died so that people he loved could have a chance of a good life. If you believe that’s why Jesus died, too, the connection is still clear. And I don’t think we have to prove that Eastwood “came to faith” in any sincere way in order to call him a Christ-figure in the end.
I think you are right in this analysis. I don’t think this analysis contradicts a religious reading. Jesus was the guy who told us to “turn the other cheek.” While hanging on the cross, he is said to have prayed “Father, forgive them,” referring to those who nailed him there.
I should point out that I do not believe “conservative” and “Christian” are synonymous. In fact, the equation of the two often angers me. The Republicans are no more Christian than the Democrats, if we go by what Jesus actually said and did. Conservatives might find other things to be happy about in this film, and they may be wrong. I in no way believe the film was “objectively conservative.” But insofar as conservatives might be happy with the Christian elements, I have no argument.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
I agree that its not an exclusively Christian movie. Self-sacrifice is a fairly universally appreciated virtue that’s not exclusively Christian. Still I think if you miss the Christian themes as Yglesias and the first 25 or so commenters did, you miss something central to the movie. Clint laments the loss of traditional American values. See this inerview where he discusses our “pussy generation”.
These traditional values historically are closely tied to Christianity and that makes it a good vehicle for his message.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Again, I’m not arguing that a Christian interpretation isn’t possible, just that it’s not what the filmmakers intended. I, for instance, choose to view Jurassic Park III’s Sam Neill and Alessandro Nivola as a gay couple and I can give you an argument as to why, but I would never argue that the filmmakers intended that reading.
He’s a Christ-figure if you choose to view the film as Christian, which you certainly may. It’s also possible to interpret his sacrifice in a secular humanist vein and I contend that that was more in line with the filmmaker’s intention.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Clint laments the loss of traditional American values, but those values are not, to Clint, necessarily Christian values. You’re conflated the two, not Eastwood.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Christian themes are central to your viewing of the movie, but you’ve yet to offer any evidence for your argument that it’s central to the movie’s intentions, as defined by the filmmaker’s intentions. If it’s not central to the movie but rather something personal you’re bringing to the film, then it’s no reflection on Yglesias or the 25 others for not noting it.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Walt Kowalski’s solution to the problem in this movie is distinctively conservative. A liberal in his situation would probably appeal to the federal government for increased spending for pre-K education and after school programs in the hope of preventing people from becoming murderous thugs in the future. Walt would attend mandatory sensitivity and diversity training and have to give up his guns.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Dusty said early:
Physiology? Bahaha. Don’t you think director’s think about these things? Do you think obvious Christian imagery in the climax of the movie that happens to fit perfectly into the plot is inadvertent or coincidental?
I think what’s at the heart of our disagreement is whether the Christian theme of the movie is merely a vehicle for other broader ideas or whether Clint is pushing a Christian agenda. Probably the former is true, but either way its important to understanding the movie.
What say you?
February 24th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Way to engage in the debate, Bob. I believe Christ was also fond of sneering derisively at people who had political disagreements with him.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Of course they do, but I honestly didn’t even notice this obvious Christian imagery at the time. It just looked like a man falling.
I don’t even think it’s the former, but, if it is, it’s only in the vaguest “redemption through self-sacrifice” sense, which is not a uniquely Christian theme.
February 24th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Dusty, I didn’t realize we were discussing Eastwood’s intent.
Bob, I’m not totally sure how your comment (#51) is a response to what I said. I probably shouldn’t have introduced a side topic (relation of conservatism to Christianity) to this discussion about the Gran Torino. My apologies. I would rather just keep talking about the movie.
February 24th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Bethany, my argument with Bob is partly about the filmmakers’ intent, since that’s crucial to the question of whether the Christian themes (specifically, whether Walt is intended to be a Christ figure and/or whether we’re to believe he had a religious conversion in the finale) are central to one’s understanding of the film. I realize you were wanting to engage with a different thread of discussion.
February 24th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
No, you were right to do that, Bethany. This thread appears to be built on a very solid understanding that “christian” = “conservative.” We are, after all, talking about whether the movie is conservative or not, and the christian themes in the movie are cited, explicitly or implicitly, as evidence that it’s a conservative movie.
And that’s just silly.
February 24th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
I enjoyed the film and certainly Eastwood’s performance and direction are masterful. But I remain troubled by a plot where the white guy saves the day — whether by homicide or suicidal self-sacrifice. I’d agree that Eastwood’s thinking seems to have evolved in a positive direction from Dirty Harry, but the white guy keeps the power.
That might be defended as realism, reflecting the real as opposed to ideal balance of power in society. But then the movie would need a higher standard of realism I think. Why did the police, anticipating a confrontation, simply show up to haul off the priest and then let the final confrontation unfold without interference? Why did witnesses apparently appear to support the police arrests of the gang members for shooting ol’ Clint when they were unwilling to testify about earlier gang violence? For that matter, why did the gang members see the necessity to shoot?
February 24th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Fair enough.
Again, fair enough. While there are plenty of spoofs out there, I believe you’re a genuine right-winger. No spoofing needed.
February 24th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Well, if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, we may have to consider the possibility that we’ve found a duck. In modern America, there’s a little breathing room between Christianity and conservativism, but damn little.
To be clear, I agree with you on this – the mere acknowledgement of Christianity, or use of/reference to it in a work of fiction, is nowhere near enough to make something conservative. (Which, is a pretty muddled term when applied to a work of fiction in the first place, but for the moment, I guess we’ll define it as portraying a conservative worldview or politics as admirable…)
It’s just that arguing about the rest of it seems beside the point. Clint Eastwood is a Republican, even through McCain. In this movie – gag me, I agree with Petey – he portrays a racist and sympathetic character, regardless of whether we’re supposed to approve of the racist part. The movie also apparently features him giving lessons to a kid on how to live up to traditional gender roles. If any movies that are more subtle and thoughtful than An American Carol can be called conservative, this seems like one of them.
February 24th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Odd – I thought the film was profoundly anti-war. Eastwood’s character had clearly been deeply affected by his time in the war and the deaths of so many of his buddies during the fighting. His comments to the boy when he locked him in the basement were telling – he didn’t want him to taste violence. Did he sacrifice himself? Obviously. Was the war and his reaction to it the most recurring event in his life? Clearly.
February 24th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Walt’s supposed to be a dinosaur, the last holdout from a earlier time. He’s the last white man in his neighborhood, now surrounded with Hmong immigrants. He’s a retired auto worker whose son sells Japanese cars. And, yes, we’re supposed to sympathize with the man and cringe at his antiquated attitudes. His time has passed.
But, in the end, Walt knows that his time has passed and he sacrifices himself to make way for the future, a more multicultural future, as evidenced by Thao driving off in the Gran Torino with Walt’s dog Daisy by his side.
Eastwood considers himself a libertarian, I guess, which usually means Republican, but there’s a lot of elements to Gran Torino that wouldn’t be in line with the current Republican platform.
February 24th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Look, any idiot can make a “Christ figure” metaphor in a movie. Heck, they did it with Sigorney Weaver in Alien 3. That doesn’t mean it was a done well or that doing so makes it a “Christian” or a “conservative” movie, or, for that matter, a “good” movie.
February 24th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Use of a “Christ figure” does not necessarily make a work “Christian.” The central idea here is that Jesus died for others. If you believe he did so as the savior of mankind, that may add some intensity to your views of his sacrifice, but that doesn’t mean you would just dismiss it.
As someone else said, Christians don’t exactly have the market cornered on self-sacrifice (otherwise, Darth Vader would be equivalent to Jesus). I just want to add that conservatives don’t have the market cornered, either, though they like to think they do.
February 25th, 2009 at 5:34 am
Darth Vader was Jesus, he was the messiah who rebalanced the force by his actions. The parelells are pretty obvious.
February 25th, 2009 at 9:17 am
“And, if one looks, lots of Clint Eastwood movies of the recent past tell that story. Like Million Dollar Baby and Mystic River..”
It’s not even recent. “The Outlaw Josey Wales” is pretty much the definition of the ‘forms a new family after the old one is killed’ movie.
“Look, any idiot can make a “Christ figure” metaphor in a movie. Heck, they did it with Sigorney Weaver in Alien 3. That doesn’t mean it was a done well or that doing so makes it a “Christian” or a “conservative” movie, or, for that matter, a “good” movie.”
Check out the hero’s pose at end of Season 5 of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” to make the same point.
Best Christian-themed movies is the Matrix series anyways.
March 14th, 2009 at 4:20 am
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