So, in the 2008 film, set in a run-down part of Michigan, it is no surprise that Hmong characters (and other such Southeast Asian immigrants) have not done as well as other Asian Americans in integrating or succeeding in American society.
The film, GRAN TORINO, introduces a global audience to the food habits, social problems, and Hmong culture for the first time.
As the world has spent nearly 300 million dollars viewing the film over the last 6 months, I would say the world is interested in the integration story of America.
AMERICAN CONNECTION ON WAY HOME
In the film, GRAN TORINO, Walt Kowalski is a Korean War veteran who still hates himself for some of the horrors he inflicted on others in an Asian war over five decades earlier. This film is ever-in-the-present though. In this way, Kowalski never reveals a flash-back of those scenes that haunt him and make him unable to deal with death—whether it is his own death or the death of his wife.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_alone_071028_vietnam_today_and_am.htm
Kowalski does share one poignant line, though.
Kowalski basically tells a priest, “It is not those horrible things or killings you did [in war] because you were ordered to which haunt [you], it is those horrible things you have done without being told to do them.”
This is a poignant thought, eh?
Too often we (as peace makers) try to awaken guilt for crimes committed by soldiers—regardless as to whether these soldiers are from fascist lands, communist-run countries, or very mentally-confused Islamic tribes.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8039257.stm
The killing guilt is, though, the kind of guilt we have when we know that no demagogue, officer or fascist ordered us to commit them.
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Former_Powell_aide_says_Bush_Cheney_0510.html
This guilt might even include the sense of guilt in building weapons (by our own firms) for some of us if that is the case.
http://www.knowmore.org/wiki/index.php?title=Monsanto_Company
Such a sense of guilt can not be corrected in any straight-forward way because there are so many internal and psychological cover-ups of our own guilt that none of our friends or family may ever scratch the surface or help us transcend the sense of guilt for non-acting to stop violence before it happened(s).
