Clint Eastwood’sGran Torinowas a huge success upon its release in 2008, grossing over $148 million in the U.S., but Eastwood’s costar Bee Vang doesn’t look back on the film fondly.
Amid the rising attacks against Asian-Americans, especially the elderly, the actorwrote a personal essay for NBC Newscondemning the repeated use of racial slurs in the Eastwood-directed movie for furthering discrimination.
“At the time, there was a lot of discussion about whether the movie’s slurs were insensitive and gratuitous or simply ‘harmless jokes,’ " Vang writes. “I found it unnerving, the laughter that the slurs elicited in theaters with predominantly white audiences. And it was always white people who would say, ‘Can’t you take a joke?’ "
Eastwood’s representative didn’t immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
Warner Bros./Everett
Vang describes his own family’s experience as Hmong refugees escaping Laos after America’s “secret war,” in which the South Asian country, tucked between Thailand and Vietnam, was subject to endless bombing in the ’60s and early ’70s and “doused with millions of gallons of toxic herbicides.”
This and the Vietnam War forced many Asian families to relocate to America. Vang slamsGran Torinofor not explaining why exactly Eastwood character’s neighborhood was filled with immigrants, leading to his rampant racism against the Asian community.
“Gran Torinomay have elided the crisis in Asia that birthed our diaspora and many others across the Pacific. But more concerning was the way the film mainstreamed anti-Asian racism, even as it increased Asian American representation. The laughter weaponized against us has beaten us into silent submission,” Vang writes.
bee vang/ instagram
In the essay, Vang also writes about the rising racial hate and violent attacks against Asian-American and Pacific Islanders in America and around the world as they are blamed for the COVID-19 health crisis, which was first identified in China.
“A microscopic virus was replaced with a recognizable target. And once again, in this pandemic, anti-Asian sentiment has turned us into a faceless, invasive peril to be extruded from this country,” he writes.
The hate incidents, which included the murder of84-year-old Thai immigrantVicha Ratanapakdee in San Francisco, are the latest in a troubling spate of attacks and discrimination since theCOVID-19pandemic came to the United States last year.
To learn more and to report crimes, go to:Asian Americans Advancing Justice(advancingjustice-aajc.org)Stop the AAPI Hate(stopaapihate.org)National Council of Asian Pacific Americans(aapiern.org),Asian Americans Advancing Justice-LA (advancingjustice-la.org) and Asian Pacific Policy & Planning Council (asianpacificpolicyandplanningcouncil.org).
source: people.com
