Gran Torino: the old American Dream
Gran Torino is an American drama film directed and starring by Clint Eastwood as Walt Kowalski. He is a cantankerous, retired Polish American assembly line worker and Korean War veteran who has recently been widowed after 50 years of marriage. His Highland Park which formerly populated by working-class white families, is now dominated by poor Asian immigrants and gang violence, Hmong family. Adding to the isolation he feels is the emotional detachment of his family. Since he rejects a suggestion from one of his sons to move to a retirement community, by the time he lives alone with his elderly dog, Daisy.
According to Ward’s scholarly, the moral order of the actors and directors of “Gran Torino” is a standpoint theory and exploring the ideas which revealed by Robert Wuthnow in a symbolic moral order. The film is a great movie that upholds American dreams. Likewise, the film characters and their ethical order during the shooting are assured by the commitment to God and service to their family. In any case, one can agree with the reviews by the people who have seen it and affirm that it is great regardless of the fact that American dreams seem apparent that misses vigorous tones (Ward).
Gran Torino received general critical acclaim upon its release. It was about Americans of different races growing more open to one another in the new century. However, not everyone enjoyed the film. Mark Harris described it as "fantasy pretending to be social commentary," and accused it of peddling "the delusion that even the bigot next door has something to teach us all about heroism and self-sacrifice" (Harris). It is nevertheless a humorous, touching, and intriguing old-school parable. Since Davis examines Gran Torino in his scholarly article, he focuses mostly on the racism that Walt shows in Gran Torino. Besides focusing on the racism Walt shows, he also focuses on the masculinity of the character and the actions he takes throughout the...