If you have not welcomed “Gran Torino” into your life yet, two things: It’s time, and don’t see it with just anybody. “Gran Torino” blasts any and every shred of political correctness into some very distant, terrible place where Clint Eastwood does not finish things.
Eastwood’s Walt Kowalski — a disgruntled, lonely Silver Star veteran in Detroit — shoots racial epithets in almost every scene, but he shoots them at friends and enemies alike — hell, he fields racial epithets from friends. Kowalski sacrifices a lot for neighbors he describes offhandedly in words Vanderbilt would expel you for. He just ignores the collective conscience of society toward language. He’s the egalitarian racist with a heart of oddly endearing steel.
“Gran Torino,” like most iterations of the American Canon, revolves around immigration. Everybody has an immigration story — mine originates in Slovakia and arrives in 1920s Central Florida with celery and sugarcane, collusion and lending discrimination. As President Bush said in his farewell address Thursday night, “This is a Nation that inspires immigrants to risk everything for the dream of freedom.” When the personal stories bleed over into the practical concerns, though, the debates surrounding referendums like English-Only can become a tad heated.
Let’s contain the hysteria for a few minutes. The details of English-Only complicate the polarized argument a bit, even on the personal side. Eric Crafton speaks fluent Japanese. He learned it while living in Japan. The first generation of my mother’s family never really felt comfortable in the U.S. or with English; later generations assimilated. Crafton argues his measure expedites the assimilation process and relieves potential burdens on the metropolitan government to be everything to everyone.
Again, examined in a vacuum free from the crazy, streamlined government business garners a little commonsensical merit. If we regard language as verbal currency, it seems impractical to expect governments to operate on multiple currencies, so long as the government protects those interpersonal elements, like health and safety. Casting about for another metaphor, if the federal government mandated that Vanderbilt teach all classes in English, Spanish and Farsi, although hilarious, it would be a little inconvenient for Vanderbilt.
But all this practical talk forgets a critical element thus far not mentioned in the Hustler’s editorials or columns: English-Only is redundant. Tennessee State Law, in 1984, (TCA 4-1-404) established English as Tennessee's official language and stipulates, “All communications and publications … produced by governmental entities in Tennessee shall be in English.” So if this just reinforces law already in place, what exactly will English-Only do?
“Unite Nashville,” Crafton says.
Behind what? Cost-efficiency? Practical foresight? Redundancy? Hardly pursuits composed of the evangelical fervor Crafton parades around. No, “unite” belies a subtext beyond that currency of language and far beyond the confines of government business.
Whether intended or not, “unite” creates a movement, attaching some moral sanctity to the English language. As Soo Yang argued last week, immigrants know realizing the American dream involves English. Still, Nashville doesn’t quite seem trapped in the throes of some Pentecostal terror. But even if Nashville’s existence mirrored 1900s New York, the cultural attack on non-English speakers rejects that core libertarian American spirit. We do not allow anyone else to dictate our lives.
That American spirit and the immigrant story unite in the modern complexities of “Gran Torino.” Eastwood’s Kowalski boasts all the outward trappings of racism but without pretense. Through gritted teeth, he proves himself to be a true American and neighbor in the Christian sense — the specific words matter little in the end. In Nashville, the English-Only movement says words matter most, because that’s all they have in the end. Just some words.
Katherine Miller is a junior in the College of Arts & Science. She can be reached at katherine.m.miller@vanderbilt.edu. She blogs daily at Vandy Right.
