The Countercultural Messaging of Gran Torino

In a culture that has plenty of chick flicks to go around, it is rare for there to be a true “dude flick” that isn’t another war movie. However, Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino is a dude flick if ever there were one, and it is marvelous. While the violence, crude language, and derisive humor may put some viewers off, these factors accentuate the exaggerated but thoroughly masculine feel of the movie and its characters. Like any movie that displays strong masculinity or a traditional message, Gran Torino was snubbed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but I argue that Gran Torino presents a blunt picture of modern young men’s predicament, and a beautiful and inspiring image of what our manhood can be.

Many of the scenes that set the mood of Gran Torino are deeply cathartic for a man of Generation-Z. Its establishing shots show a beautiful local church where people congregate surrounded by neighborhoods dilapidated in poverty. Based in economically depressed Detroit, young men are shown involved with gangs and dealing with the cultural confusion of mass immigration among poor Hmong migrants. Among the rich urban socialites like main character Walter Kowalski’s children, immodesty and a dearth of tradition are shown in the lack of any respect that Walt’s son and granddaughter have for their home city, even at the funeral of Walt’s wife, which opens the movie. This is life for the young American man: a world lacking modesty, economic guarantees, religion, or culture—a world without meaning.

The film does not name the illness that underlies these symptoms, but it can be clearly seen by the watchful eye. The problem with our declining America, Eastwood outlines, sounds like a Jordan Peterson lecture: we are burdened by chaos unbridled by traditional and sensible masculine order. All of the perpetrators of decay in this film are agents of this untraditional, insensible chaos. The antagonistic women in the film are nagging like Walt’s daughter-in-law (literally named Karen), or entitled like his granddaughter Ashley, whose first major conversation in the movie is to ask if she can have Walt’s car after he dies. These typical examples of unbalanced feminine chaos are countered by the unbalanced masculine order of street thugs, like the movie’s antagonist Spider, or disrespectful and out-of-touch Gen-X’ers, like Walt’s son Mitch.

Through Walt’s relationship with Thao Vang Lor, a young, fatherless Hmong boy whom he takes under his wing, our young men see the image of the life we wish we could have. Thao is the archetype that modern young man sees himself to be: effeminate, weakened by exile from the masculine order of his home culture and deprived of the birthright that is his father’s presence in his life. However, Thao still has a deep sense of honor and an underlying knowledge that there are things worth standing up for. The goal for the young man is the masculine life Thao achieves by the film’s end, complete with a father figure, a grill fork in one hand and a beer in the other, and roots in a community. We want Thao’s virtues—a hard working job, competence, experience, a pretty girl on the arm, and strong friends across racial and cultural lines to boot.

What is the medicine that cures the unbridled chaos of the young man and gives him this life of true, fulfilled masculinity? This medicine is represented in the image of the Gran Torino itself. This classic car symbolizes to the young American man watching this movie exactly what it symbolizes to Walt, and eventually to Thao. The Gran Torino is the spirit of American masculinity, built on the factory lines, informed by centuries of culture, and carefully maintained by an experienced man, with all his tools and habits, over a complete lifetime. That car is the very virtue that lives in the heart of the American man, dormant as it may be. This creature of the American male soul brings not only freedom, competence, and mobility, but it is also just undeniably cool. Thao is a stand-in for us, the next generation of American boys and young men, and like Walt’s prize and joy, we are being called to build true masculinity from the ground up, and it is only at that point that, like Thao, we inherit the ownership of the Gran Torino.

Featured Image Courtesy of K嘛 via Flickr