Mar 4, 2017

“Politically Correctness” and Clint Eastwood’s film “Gran Torino”

The film “Moonlight” won best picture at the 2017 Oscars. The story of this film is about a black LGBT boy, who grew up in a tough environment. Of course it is of great value to bring attention to such a life in order to eliminate discrimination. Black LGBT people are a quite minority, but at least attention has been paid to them.

Clint Eastwood’s film “Gran Torino” is about Hmong immigrants and an old Polish man living alone in Detroit. Hmong people is an ethnic group from mountain area of Chine, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand, and many of them became refugees because of Vietnam War. I guess they would be most abandoned people in the USA.

Recently it was said that displaced white people supported Donald Trump in the presidential election, and the attention to them is increasing. Clint Eastwood made the film “Gran Torino” in 2008, when the attention to them wasn’t high. Even now the situation of Hmong people isn’t well known at all.

In the interview by Esquire magazine Clint Eastwood said as follows.

When I did Gran Torino, even my associate said, "This is a really good script, but it's politically incorrect." And I said, "Good. Let me read it tonight." The next morning, I came in and I threw it on his desk and I said, "We're starting this immediately." 
CLINT AND SCOTT EASTWOOD: NO HOLDS BARRED IN THEIR FIRST INTERVIEW TOGETHER

I wonder why “Gran Torino” is “politically incorrect”. I could understand that “Gran Torino”, whose story was about Hmong people and an old Polish man, would not make a profit, but why is it “politically incorrect?”

In this interview Clint Eastwood also said, “Secretly everybody's getting tired of political correctness.” If “politically correctness” prevents the film about most abandoned people, what is “politically correctness” worth?

I don’t support Donald Trump, but at the same time I feel that “politically correctness” is quite shallow.