E-mail from a /Filmcast Listener about Gran Torino
The following is an e-mail from a /Filmcast listener about Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino, reprinted with permission (check out our podcast review of the film here). Spoilers for the film are included, but since you shouldn’t see this movie under any circumstances anyway, I’m not going to make a big deal out of warning you about them:
Hey Dave and slashfilm guys,
just want to say, I love your show and I listen each and every week since the Kevin Smith episode. I’m planning on going back and checking out everything before that, as you guys are great and the rapport you guys have is really funny.
I’ve never been one to send these kinds of emails, but I just listened to your episode about Gran Torino and I felt utterly compelled to write in. As an African-American male, I was honestly scared shitless by this movie. I live in San Francisco, and very rarely do I feel any sort of overt racism or anything like that. This city is sort of a bubble of liberal tolerance and it’s easy to get lost in that world. Fortunately, Clint Eastwood decided to author this flaming turd of a film seemingly designed solely to bring me crashing back to reality.
This was the most unabashedly racist movie I think I have ever seen in my life. You guys went pretty deep into the racism presented as racism in the actual movie. However, I think it went deeper then that as the movie also unwittingly played into racial stereotypes, like the Asian girl and “trying to be black” white guy that you touched on during the show. And not only that, but seeing this movie in the theater was even worse. Being in SF, I am used to rowdy crowds. There were people dressed up as the entire Zissou family (in powder blue jumpsuits and red hats) when I went to see The Darjeerling Limited. There were resounding boos at the sight of “Directed by Michael Bay” the first time I saw the Transformers trailer. And as for Snakes on a Plane, well, just use your imagination.
The crowd for Gran Torino however, was apparently every single over-50 white San Francisco resident. And me. Lone black guy. Every time I cringed at some awful, completely racist onscreen comment, there was a rise of laughter from the crowd. I found myself really just wishing it was over. The scene you guys played on your show of the black guys harassing the Sue character was particularly hard to watch. My only solace lay with the relatively equal abuse all ethnic backgrounds received. Jews, Irish, Polish, Hmong, and Black were all harassed in this movie, although some much more jokingly then others.
All that being said, ignoring the racist bits, or even pretending they had the weight and social commentary they were intended to have, I would STILL think this movie was terrible. The heavy handedness with which Walter’s redemption was handled was laughable. Each time the priest character appeared was like a pencil mark on a child’s bedroom door charting their growth. The seemingly jocular banter that the head gangster had with his little cousin early on was completely betrayed by his willingness to not only hurt his cousin by breaking his tools, but also to literally kill an entire wing of his own family! The rape that was alluded to was also troubling considering he would have had to allow his gang members to do this. The turn these suburban gangsters took from inept to deadly was baffling. And Walter’s plan in the climax of the movie was absolute lunacy. He more or less committed suicide with no real assurance that his sacrifice would lead to any relief at all for this family he was trying to protect. (Not only that, but he was explicitly told his plan would never work the night before he attempted it!) Combine that with the plethora of one-note despicable characters in this movie (i.e. almost every single white character), and I think I would have been offended no matter what my ethnic background! And the very fact that this movie has been accepted and praised makes me very sad that THIS passes for some sort of viable commentary on race in this country. It’s just sad. And a bit scary.
-Jarrod
