Gran Torino: Kill the White Man
by David Yeagley · June 5, 2011 · 46 Comments ·
The message of the movie, Gran Torino (2008), is loud and clear. The white man must die. The darkies either kill him, or he sacrifices himself, or both, but the point of the movie is clarion: kill the white man.
Clint Eastwood as “Walt Kowalski,” Holloywood’s racism on display.
Gran Torino may be pawned off by Hollywood as a message of “Catholic” styled forgiveness, restoration of good will, confession, etc. It may be cast as a wondrous group hug of evil whitey with the poor “gook” descendant of some tribe of Southeast Asia. But, any good will costs the life of the white man. Oh, yes, there’s that little bit about Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) coughing up blood, or dying of lung cancer, so, he was going to die anyway. Why not make it count, for good? That’s better than J. B. Books (John Wayne) did in his swan song of a gun play at the end of The Shootist (1976). And besides, Eastwood has been imitating John Wayne since The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (1966), when he copied the poncho attire Wayne wore in the opening of The Searchers (1956), but that’s a different issue.
Heroes tend to die in movies, or in any great dramas. That’s all. It makes them greater, to die for their cause. But, the ‘hate America, hate whitey’ Communist cause of Hollywood always makes sure its the white hero that dies. The white American man dies. Disguise it as they may, in high morals, grand causes, overwhelming personal sacrifice and greatness, Hollywood makes the white American die. The satisfaction is apparent. The popularity of the theme in American culture is profound. It is the virtual marketing of white guilt, the capitalistic employment of a guilty white conscience. It is social prick-ism, at the highest level.
Whitney Kua “Ahney” Her, who
played “Sue,” in Gran Torino.
Since Columbus (1492), the European white man’s exploration and exploits into the dark world have been proverbial, momentous, and inexorable. No other race ever had the will, the power, or the ability. One might see it as some strange, abiding Persian spirit, but, essentially, it is European, because white Europe successfully resisted the onslaught of Medieval Islam (with a little help from the incidental Mongolian Empire). Since America (1776), the European white man realized his grandest ideological development (with a little incidental influence from the American Indians). Since World War II, however, the American white man’s involvements in the dark world have been basically a follow-through of the English evangelism of the Third World. America never intended to be a watchman of the world, or to bring “civilization” to the Third World, as the English did.
The bloody aggressions of Communism in the dark world tempted America into myriad involvement in every country in the world. And now America has the blood of the world on its hands, so Hollywood yearns to convince us.
Gran Torino is indeed a touching movie. Yet it is full of deceptive liberal racism (as are most Hollywood attempts to portray humanity). A bull-headed “dumb” Polack (an American of Polish descent) is the frame used to house all supposed white prejudice against the darkies of the world. That’s Hollywood racism right there–against the Poles. The Catholic religion, with its ostentatious, dramatized constructs of right, wrong, and forgiveness, is the justification or sanctification of Walt Kowalski’s involvement with his non-descriptive Asian neighbors. The Hollywood uses the Catholic Church as kind of visual aid prop, or backdrop, of dramatization of “moral” concerns.
Hollywood must give its honor and fame to the lowly Asian tribe of Hmong people, the mountain people of China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. How noble of dear Hollywood. The Hmong don’t even have a nation; they are a like the Kurds of Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. An ethnicity without a nation. Is this not the goal of all liberals, the elimination not of ethnicity, but of nationhood? So, Hollywood strikes big in this one. We have a remote people, a general east Asian group, used to represent all the “victims” of American aggression in east Asia (as long as we forget that all American military activity there was invited, not invasive, and was there to aid in the development of freedom, and in the resistance to a cruel and murderous Communism). Suddenly the people are made the recipients of total compassion from the American fame machine, Hollywood. A psychologically crippled old white man, full of spiritual malady as well as physical ailment, is given a chance to demonstrate ultimate love and forgiveness to all Asians: he sacrifices himself. In his last act, he absolves his guilt, triumphs over racial prejudice, and dies a hero.
This is what Hollywood wants. This is what Democrat Communists want. This is what liberals want. The grand white American must die. He must repent, and die. Yes, Hollywood will let him die heroically, but, the white American male must die. He is just too great to live. He is too much to bear. He is too grand, too mighty, to triumphant to be allowed to live. He must die for the darkies.
Bee Vang, as “Thao,” initiated into manhood
by a sacrificial American white male.
Funny. Of all the “victims” of the white man, the American Indian doesn’t find the same treatment in Hollywood. Oh, certainly, the liberals love to decry the white man’s treatment of the Indian. But, Hollywood can’t find a redemptive story for the white man when it comes to the Indian. He can’t make the white man love the Indian, or forgive himself for his treatment of the Indian, even in fiction. Even in Dances with Wolves (1990), personal admiration for the Indian is the most that can be generated. At least, personal acceptance.
Hollywood doesn’t understand the Indian. Why? Hollywood is weak, morally. Hollywood has no appreciation of strength. The Indian fought against the white man, many times. Indians killed hundreds of thousands of white people, over the years. The Indian was the first and most formidable enemy the white American ever faced. The white American won out, only because he out-numbered and out-gunned the Indians. The real white American doesn’t feel sympathy so much as respect for the Indian. And the fact that the Indian still shows no special desire to be part of the white American’s society, like all the other darkies of the world so desperately desire, leaves Hollywood stumped. What can Hollywood do with the Indian? One thing it cannot do: depict the truth of the story. It’s too complicated, too long, and too personal, and too nationalistic.
Chewing Elk, Comanche, ca. 1872.
Hollywood dare not glorify the Indian in any triumph over the white man. Hollywood allows only Custer (Son of the Morning Star, 1991) Why? It was incidental. The white man dies, of course, but, not really because the Indian hated him, but because he was invading the Indians. Yet, the “wrong” done to Indians cannot be remedied, even in fiction.
I mark this as the greatness of the Indian. I also mark this as the greatness of the American white man. Hollywood can’t handle it. Just like Hollywood can’t handle the simplest Bible story accurately, Hollywood can never market the truth, but only versions, or parts of it, with its own liberal spin, a slosh-bucket emotionalization pawn off as “morality.” Hollywood can never really even tell the truth.
Harry B. Adams, of Yale Divinity, used to say, “Every sermon is a heresy.” It is incomplete, and therefore inevitably misleading. The same is true for movies–especially when they’re not really even trying to tell the truth
Gran Torino: Kill-the-white-man
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