Clint Eastwood’s latest directorial effort, Gran Torino, has undeservedly been hailed everywhere from the NY Times to the Golden Globes. His rote, un-politically correct portrayal of a kind-hearted, bristly veneered bigot who teaches a Hmong teen about assimilating into White blue-collar manhood has duplicitously been acclaimed as “bold.”
Throughout this millennia’s Falling Down, Eastwood and the “gooks” he comes to care for are criminally beset by young Brown, Black, but mostly Yellow thugs. In Nick Schenk’s script, Eastwood is portrayed as a last man standing for the red-blooded American way against encroaching youth and minorities taking over his neighborhood and, metaphorically, the nation.
To say that the perpetrator castings, racial paternalism, and Eastwood’s Archie Bunker impersonations are anti-youth and anti-minority is an understatement. Still, unlike Spike Lee and other minority critics, my issue is not Eastwood’s racial politics. I do not happen to believe him a racist (I cannot ignore his mostly color-blind casting record), as much as arrogant with privilege.
I do not begrudge Eastwood’s right to tell the story of legions of unexceptional White men peering out from their porch to see their assumptions about hierarchical standing go unacknowledged by the young and their privileges slipping away into a vat of color and cultures foreign to them, that’s truth.
All Americans today are dealing with unsettling losses of privilege, prestige, and assumption. I do begrudge him telling an un-credible tale about a people who would allow a White man to race bait them daily, a poor Detroit community where none of the poor thugs are White, and a view of America’s young as terminally lost without the lessons of patriarchy, hyper-masculinity, and cronyism. I do begrudge Eastwood for his myopic and pessimistic vision of the future real America as doomed without the instruction, privileges and vigilantism of Dirty Harry.
____________________________________
Gipson also writes for the print issue's Entertainment department. E-mail your thoughts to Gipson.
Now in our 14th year, Port of Harlem is looking for seasoned writers. Generally, we plan one year in advance, meaning you will know your deadlines very early. Writers must be very responsible at contacting the interviewees, conducting light research, providing documentation, and meeting deadlines.
More than 35 Washingtonians gathered New Year's Eve to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution which brought free health care and education to the island including to its large population of African descendants. 
an Architecture Management and Research company featured in Port of Harlem, is holding a construction document workshop for contractors. The cost of the one-hour workshop is $25.00. The workshop is Tuesday, January 13, 4p to 5p at AMAR’s office, 6230 3rd Street, NW Suite #4. For additional information call 202-829-2577.