Dirty Harry and Race

January 18th, 2009 · No Comments

by Elizabeth A. Leib

Slant, gook, spook, wop - just a few of the racial epithets used by Clint Eastwood’s character in his new movie Grand Torino. As Mark and I watched the movie last night at the Starlight Muvico, I was a unsettled by the audience laughter each time he spit out the nasty slurs; why did they laugh?

Possibly because Eastwood’s character is cartoonish and two-dimensional. As a veteran of the Korean War he is ridiculously out of date with the world around him. I admit I enjoyed watching his face contort into frustrated spasms; once most memorably when a receptionist in head-scarf escorts him into his doctor’s office where he discovers his doctor has retired and is replaced by a young Asian woman.

Although I didn’t find humor in the slurs I could relate to the the character’s frustration. The world is changing so fast and in so many ways; its hard to imagine keeping up even as a relatively young person. Journalist Michael Tomasky writes that American’s white population is expected to drop from 68 percent to 61 percent between now and 2020 and then fall to 50 percent by 2050. My son’s first grade teacher is Muslim and his doctor is Indian. This is probably to his benefit.

Video sent out by Chip Saltsman, a Tennessee candidate for the Republican party chairman, “Barack the Magic Negro”:

In conversation with an African-American friend she asked me why people hate the Jews. She said, “I understand why they hate us, we look different, but why the Jews?” I could only shrug and reply that much wiser and smarter people than I had explored the question without any definitive answers. It was the first time we’d talked so intimately about race. It felt like a leap of trust made possible by the growing strength of our friendship and our shared involvement in the election of Obama.

Finally, no one was laughing in the last scene of Grand Torino when Eastwood’s character, who during the course of the movie accidentally befriends an Asian family living next door, finds a way to bring justice after they’ve been violently victimized. Written and directed by Eastwood, the movie is a perfect coda to his work in the violent racially stereotyped Dirty Harry movies of the 1970’s. Now that we’re about to see our first African American take office maybe we’ll have many more such conversations.

Scene from Dirty Harry: Do You Feel Lucky?