Gran Torino: Challenging Stereotypes

1700 Words4 Pages

The film Gran Torino directed by Client Eastwood challenges The issues of stereotypes through the attributes of contemporary assumptions of status, gender and ethnicity. Exploring the themes of absence of a male dominate figure, enabling protagonist Theo to be a feminine figure exploits the idea of gender portrays the Hmong men to be stereotyped.Ethnicity and status also express multiple meanings through the cinematography and the Hollywood narrative style illustrates many representation of the western and eastern cultures These key terms gender, ethnicity and status all intertwine with each other during the entire film. The Hmong culture have been stereotyped by the western culture concerning that the American way is the only way which evidently challenges the ideas and ideologies of the Hmong society. the film illustrates the idea of realism but underlines the factor that cultures outside of America should obtain the manners and ideas of an American to survive in society. there is clear indication that classical Hollywood narrative, mis en scene and cinematography style can support stereotypes about gender, ethnicity and status.

The issue of gender in Grain Torino portrays gender through the characters of Walt Kowalski as the male dominate figure and Theo as a feminine figure. This symbolizes the attributes that Theo is a form of representation that is a class of a fixed female figure rather than a powerful dominant male. This draws on the ideologies of Walt‘s white American culture versus Theo’s Hmong culture. This is clearly exposed in the sequence when Walt finally enters into Theo’s home, where there are numerous people form the Hmong society are feasting. As Walt travels through the house he is exposed to the lack...

... middle of paper ...

...wood style explains how the western culture and eastern cultural should be observed. Eastwood challenges this idea of realism and stereotypes that underlines the factor that cultures outside of America should obtain the manners and ideas of an American, which is a clear indication of how this film supports the idea of stereotyping multi culturalism in numerous ways in a contemporary film.

Works Cited

http://illinois.academia.edu/KentOno/Papers/206130/Postracism_A_Theory_of_the_Post-_as_Political_Strategy

http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=CcUaPEdHla0C&pg=PA58&dq=womens+role+and+gran+torino&hl=en&ei=U7mbTYyuLcmD0QGE48jJAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://papers.ssrn.com.ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1571713

http://screen.oxfordjournals.org.ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/content/36/3/214.full.pdf

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