Gran Torino Sociology

The movie Gran Torino from 2008 stars Clint Eastwood as a Walt Kowalski, a Korean War veteran. The film starts at his wife’s funeral and when he goes back home, he notices his neighbors, who are Hmong. Walt’s displeasure with them is clear as he spits when he sees the grandmother of the family. That night, the Hmong boy Thao tries to steal his Gran Torino as an initiation to join his cousin’s gang. His attempt is fruitless and caught by Walt. Thao then tries to avoid joining the gang, but they come back to force him. At this point, Walt comes out to stop the ordeal by threatening to shoot. Slowly, Walt shies away from his racist ways and becomes a mentor and friend to Thao and his family. He teaches Thao and gets him a job, but the gang beats Thao up, shoots up his house, and beats up his sister. Walt was not going to allow this to continue, so he decided on a plan. He went to the gang’s house where he let them kill him. Finally, the gang goes to jail and Walt grants his Gran Torino to Thao instead of his family in his will.

At the start of the movie, Walt showed that he was most likely a racist by using derogatory and offensive language towards his Hmong neighbors. According to the author of the text Multicultural Health Second Edition, “Racism is the belief that some races are superior to others by nature” (Ritter & Graham, 2017, p. 6). Walt clearly felt that Caucasians were superior to his neighbors of a different race and did not even want them on his lawn. After learning more about them, his racism went away, but the racism he showed is a major issue in society