Someone with the name “Fitzwater” came across my social media feed the other day and made me think of someone I had met years ago. She was a waitress at a local Thai restaurant. I’m not sure of the exact circumstances, but we ended up going on friendly date together. We talked about her autistic son. She was a single mom. And how she struggled to make ends meet. Life eventually took us different directions, she fell off my radar as her presence on social media ended, and I had forgotten about the “Nikki” in my phone contacts.
That is up until Friday, when I decided to do a deeper look into her whereabouts. Since we lacked any common friends (other than Adam Bartlett who is deceased) and maybe that is why I never got the news. My hope was that she was married, got her feet back under her, and wondered about that kid she loved so much that she borrowed money to give him an exceptional Christmas. It was a total shock to come across an obituary for Nicole E. Welton. I opened the link and the picture was the Nikki I had known. She was dead for over five years now—only 32 at the time of her passing.
Was it a drug overdose?
She never told me she was a user. She did tell me I was “too good” for her and was so thin that I had to wonder.
So I continued my search, and pondered a bit about what had come of her son after she passed?
And a few clicks later I would find the tragic truth. This kind and wonderful human being died in a murder-suicide. She shot her own son before turning the gun on herself in the motel room two hours south. Her son was her faithful companion, she told me, “My son is with me. So I never feel alone” That is where her heart always was—which made wince when I saw this in the article:
Diamantoni said he was not releasing the boy’s name. He said the boy was living with his father not his mother.
She lost custody?
What a terrible thing for a single mother, in her thirties, to lose a child she brought into the world even if it was for good reason. It does not justify what she did. And yet she was in despair and her 11-year-old boy was probably the only reason she had holding her back from suicide. In that she couldn’t leave him behind as the only soul that she felt loved her anymore. Selfish? Perhaps. But maybe a distorted effort to ‘protect’ him, an autistic (ADHD according to an article I’ve read since) child, from having to deal with her choice to end it all. I’ll never know, I just feel she was never going to leave him behind.
I had to go read through our conversations and several things jumped out. First, what she told me about her nasty C-section scar and how unattractive it made her. Although I never saw for myself, she was a beautiful and attractive person—both physically and otherwise. This struggle with body image came up several times. Second, I had more or less friend zoned her from the beginning, wuth my impossibility obsession then being a topic in the thread. I never led her on—but I never gave her a chance either.
It’s just so jarring considering how my life has gone since then. I’ve finally emerged from the wilderness. My wife, my 13-year-old son, the baby daughter that brightens my world, all that has happened since that brief moment of connection with Nikki. It makes me wish I could have done more to change the trajectory she was on, although I don’t know what I could have done for her. With her dies someone who said I was an angel and the single platonic moment we had shared. This the second suicide of a relatively young person that I had invested time in trying to help—and could easily have been me had my Bhest not intervened.
Two lives cut tragically short. How else can the tribute to them read? A young boy, born the way he was, the apple of his mother’s eye, and then killed by the one who bought him into the world. His mom, never quite able to get around that corner, dreaming of the fairytale and stuck in the bog of single parenthood—burdened by her lack of self-confidence.
Why someone who was always so kind and considerate to me was not more generous to herself?
My mind simply can’t compute such things.
One thing, before I finish, is the other victim in all of this and that is the father of the boy who was left reeling. She never told me she was married. All I had ever known was her maiden name. And I don’t know what led to their separation. What I do understand now is that relationships are hard work and that we’ll never find the ‘perfect’ one. There are many miserable marriages and I don’t think people should stay in an abusive situation. But being alone to face the world isn’t ideal either. I wish Nikki, Dante, and the grieving dad I’ve never met could have had their own happily ever after together.
After reading a review of Gran Torino, a Clint Eastwood movie from 2008, that dismissed it as shallow in its exploration of racism, I’ve decided to explore some of the depth of the movie that was missed. It was a great story about finding common ground, that takes a bit of twist at the end from the typical Clint Eastwood film. My family (mixed race and culture) could appreciate the themes more than the average viewer—yet is a beautiful redemption story that all people can enjoy as well.
“Get off my lawn!'”
The story is about an angry old man who is not dealing well with change. Walter ‘Walt’ Kowalski, a Polish-American retired auto worker, Korean War veteran, and recent widower—his beloved wife passing right before the start of the narrative.
In the opening frame, he fits a stereotype of an elderly homeowner defending their patch of turf from an encroaching world. It seems every small town has one. That guy who trims his front lawn with scissors and does not deal well with the trespasses of the younger generation, the snarling “get off my lawn” line from the movie became an instant meme.
Why?
It is just too familiar.
The expression captures the essence of a fading dream. The American middle class values property ownership. A lawn, once a complete luxury and exclusively for wealthy estates, had become the mark of post-WW2 affluence. Walt was the beneficiary of this period of economic growth. He had lived a quintessential suburban life.
But now it had become a nightmare. It is not the same neighborhood anymore. The once tidy little homes, owned by people like him, had fallen into disrepair as a new group of immigrants took over. The woman who he built a home with was gone. His sons bought foreign brand vehicles and betrayed the legacy their father had built working at Ford. The world Walt had known was falling apart and he was bitter.
That patch of land, other than the ghosts of his past, was all Walt really had left. To set foot on it was to violate his sacred space. It was a shrine. And his 1972 Gran Torino in the garage likely represented the pinnacle of his productive career. Since the Korean War ended in 1953, this would put this car purchase around two decades into civilian life with a young family and point when the future looked bright. So he was clinging to what was left of his identity and willing to defend it with deadly force.
Demons of the Past
Early on we see Walt, the tough guy, who is playing a part. His racist language is a part of the facade—a barrier he puts up—because the alternative is to be vulnerable—or a victim. He is still haunted by his war experience, in the beginning using it as a threat, saying he could kill without remorse:
“Yeah? I blow a hole in your face and then I go in the house… and I sleep like a baby. You can count on that. We used to stack fucks like you five feet high in Korea… use ya for sandbags.”
However, later, when it comes to stopping the neighbor boy from taking revenge, we see the reality under the surface:
“You wanna know what it’s like to kill a man? Well, it’s goddamn awful, that’s what it is. The only thing worse is getting a medal… for killing some poor kid that wanted to just give up, that’s all. Yeah, some scared little gook just like you. I shot him in the face with that rifle you were holding in there a while ago. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about it, and you don’t want that on your soul.“
Just like today, where Russians are called “Orcs” and portrayed as subhuman by propagandists, racial and ethnic slurs were used against various Asian enemies of US policy in the region. But for Walt, he knew better, he knew that it was not a demon at the receiving end of his rifle. He had murdered a human child and he felt immense regret. Note how he says “poor kid” rather than all of the racist terms he used freely throughout his conversations. It is almost as if, up to this point, he had to reinforce the dehumanizing descriptions to keep ahead of his shame. The truth is Walt didn’t sleep like a baby. No, he was running his sins his entire life and exhausted.
War propaganda then and now. Enemies are always portrayed as evil and subhuman.
Walt’s racism was part of his pretty much equal-opportunity disdain for other people, including the young parish priest, and his own family. He was a broken and hurting man, who had driven away his children and was hiding his own terminal illness. What he needed was some compassion, a safe place where he could finally let his guard down, and it was the persistent effort of a young Hmong neighbor that finally broke through his wall of insults.
Finding Common Ground
The review, that sparked my response, tried to overlay a “white savior” trope on the story and completely missed that it was Walt who was being saved!
*spoiler alert*
Yes, ultimately, Walt sacrificed himself for the sake of the Asian family next door. But this only after Sue, played by an actual Hmong actress (some critics panned the amateurism, others praised), went above and beyond to disrupt his dismal world.
She was his savior.
It was by her effort that he would face the demons of his past and could be at peace with his Creator. It was a redemption story, a story of an old man who had lost his wife, lost his children, lost his religion and even lost his neighborhood, but finds life again by learning to love his enemies.
I can feel this character. My own life didn’t go as planned. I had to leave the religious culture where my hopes had been built. I had a beautiful Asian woman who was patient with me while I was still lost in delusion and did not give up when times were difficult. Now we have a blended-culture home. Yes, my Filipino wife and son are different from me in many regards. However, after seven years of knowing each other and now over a year of being married, our love has only continued to grow. Some of my happiest moments were with her family in the Philippines and recently while visiting her relatives in Canada.
I am Walt.
My ‘Sue’ did save me.
The real story of Gran Torino is an old man who finds more common ground with those he had thought were strange than he does with his own children. Once Walt had got past the superficial differences he realized he had more connection to these Hmong people than many who looked like him. Unlike the war, he was now defending real people and not political ideologies. He was fighting for the local community, against those within who are destroying it, and not gunning down random boys thrown into a conflict not truly their own. The storyline is a comparison between perspectives and shows us what really matters in the end.
It is about relationships, not race.
It is about building bridges.
The ongoing dialogue between Walt and his priest demonstrates this. The priest, who is of European descent based on appearance, is at first scoffed at by the grizzled military veteran for his youthfulness. The baby-faced “Padre” is bluntly rejected by him:
“I think you’re an overeducated 27-year-old virgin who likes to hold the hands of superstitious old ladies and promise them everlasting life.“
But, despite this insult, Father Janovich will not go away. And eventually, with his persistence, he does earn the respect of Walt. The bond, built over a few beers, culminates with Confession and Walt is finally able to have the guilt that had plagued him since Korea absolved. Now he is free and at peace, ready for a last act that goes contrary to expectations and confirms the redemptive arc.
It was faith that saved Walt, both that of the young woman who withheld judgment and didn’t allow his wall of nastiness to stop her and finally of the persistent outreach of the Church. And it is only because of this concerted effort that we get to see the protagonist do what is right. By the end of the film, Walt has overcome those demons driving his anti-social behavior and also has gained a son worthy of his prized Gran Torino.
Now To Review the Reviewer…
Why did the critic miss the obvious?
The reviewer who inspired me to write my own was projecting their own worldview onto the script. Eastwood is a rare conservative Hollywood producer. In fact, so conservative he spoke at a Republican National Convention and gave a mock interview with an empty chair, used to represent Obama, and he calls Biden “a grin with a body behind it.” Perhaps it is this that the review is responding to? But I think it goes a bit deeper than that.
The Marxist left sees the world as being a zero-sum game, or that for some people to gain others must lose, and thus everything is a competition for power. But, not only this, but everything is divided up into strictly bounded categories based on their skin color, financial status, or sexual classification. If someone cooperates across these lines then they are an “Uncle Tom” or traitor. So the themes of Gran Torino just do not compute. Asians are collaborators. Walt is an irredeemable privileged white man, he needs to be canceled—not humanized.
So, since we can’t have everyone come out as a winner, the only thing the woke reviewer has left is to hallucinate something color-coded and negative. Thus they see a movie that tells us to reach across lines of age, culture, and race as just another “white savior” trope. It is bizarre, such a narrow and distorted perspective, to entirely miss everything and then to insert what is not actually there. Yes, Walt saves, but in the context of others saving him, and that’s not even the point. The point of is that color (or age) doesn’t matter, finding our common ground and community does.
Gran Torino isn’t a perfect movie. It may go a bit overboard with ethnic slurs at times. But, then again, the comedic relief of the barber and Walt exchanging these insults as terms of endearment is also great commentary. Why do we let words be “violence” when the same utterances can be laughed at in another context? It is because these words have the power we give them. What this is suggesting is that we can go further when we reframe the conversation.
The left wants to believe that our behavior is determined by what others have done to us—Eastwood says we can be free to live above their rules.
Politics may be all about power, in-group and out-group, but love overcomes all.
There is only one kind of love. Hate to break it to you. But, once the special categories, warm fuzzy feelings experienced and those pesky mystical overlays are removed, love is attraction. When we love something we will want more of it, to keep it for our selves, and to protect it. If we love ice cream, we will work for the opportunity to spend more time with it, there will be cravings and desire. If we love a fine piece of art we will take great care to preserve it, so we can continue to enjoy it long into the future.
We love other people in the same way—we are drawn to the people we love.
We perform complex rituals to make ourselves more attractive to the target of our affection and in hopes of gaining their attention, thier mutual affection, and possibly a longer commitment. It is like the pangs of hunger when this is denied. If only they could see past my shortcomings and see my heart. Of course, they never do. Had it been possible he/she would have already been digging into a conversation like a bowl of their favorite ice cream. I mean, no, that’s not to say that you couldn’t be an acquired taste, as in the asparagus and lard a la mode that just happens to be delicious. But generally if something looks disgusting most will avoid it.
We do not control what we love anymore than we do what we find revolting. Do you hate snakes? Did you choose that intense feeling of disgust and that initial recoiling reaction at the first sight of this beady eyed slithering creature? No, it’s just an instinct. A primal fear. And this reaction was probably to the advantage of many generations prior that had avoided the encounter with the deadly venom by their appropriate response to the stimulus. It is good, as in very beneficial, to be triggered by dangerous critters—having a little anxiety and fight or flight response to something that can and will kill you is a healthy response.
So, love is what triggers the feelings of love and what does this is those things we find to be delectable. Sure, we can love at different levels. We often start by loving the object of the person. Is he tall? Is she beautiful? Do they inspire our confidence, motivate us and give a reason to be a better version of ourselves? Most people, honest about it or not, start romantic pursuit by loving what is visible outwardly, on the surface, and only after that progress onwards to those things of spiritual substance. We love what gives us the most and despise what only takes from us.
We will donate our time and devote our energy—be completely okay with delayed gratification—if that final prize at the end of our commitment seems big enough.
Why does absence makes the heart grow fonder? It is because love is all about things we want to have more of and limited access to. This is why we crave sugar and salt (to our own peril) they were once hard to acquire in the quantities we needed. We don’t love oxygen until we are without it, gasping for breath, and a person who has whatever they want without any effort and sacrifice can’t truly cherish or love anything. I mean, the saying, “familiarly breeds contempt” points to the reality that availability deceases love and scarcity builds it. If you happen to be one of the last two humans on the planet there is more reason to spend time with the other one.
If people love you they want to spend more time with you. Love means willingness to sacrifice one thing for another. If someone claims to love another, yet avoids them completely or rejects a deeper relationship, then they are a liar. Sure, we might love people for their appearance, we might love them for their soul, but love is always about attraction and who we want to spend more time with. This is why I never care about the profession of love some make. I only ever care about the actuality of love. If a person loves us they will call us to make sure we made it home safe. And it is because they are attracted and want to see you again.
This is why “love your enemy” is really an oxymoron. If we truly love someone then they aren’t an enemy anymore. We can’t actually force love, it comes off as fake, all we get is that uncanny valley of niceness and people will see right through it. Having seen how vicious that the Christian ‘faithful’ can be, I would settle for loving our brothers and sisters. But I’m not sure we can, we love our own ideologies and sectarian divisions more than we do unity or seeing our own sin or faults as equal to their’s. If I could see the impossible love that bridges the divides that are within the Church, I might see loving our actual enemies as being possible.
What is more evident is that we’re in love with ourselves Opposites attract is more or less reserved for the world of sex, at least for those of urge to do what is needed to further the species, otherwise the rule is that birds of a feather flock together. And it is because we’re mostly in love with ourselves and thus love those who reflect our own base values and/or have things we see as being valuable to us. The reason why most Christian missions ultimately fail is because the people ‘evangelized’ are a mere tool to get to heaven and not truly loved.
When we love we are attracted. We want to spend time together, not as an obligation or a religious duty, but as a real impulse. The divisions of romantic versus familial, or that of crush as opposed to committed, are really not all that important. What matters is if our love is genuine or a counterfeit that we use in hope of scoring points. We can mimick loving actions, like a psychopath, but not actual love.
While there are certainly different ways to love each other, there are no different levels of love. Without exception we will always want more of what we love, more in quantity, closeness or intimacy, and less of what we do not. We’ll never say no to a visit with family, our beloved, or those things that we truly love. We have cravings and a need for the things that we love. If you don’t love someone like the food you eat, then you’re probably not really all thatloving of them. If we love someone we’ll fight for them, long to be with them and let nothing come between.
Irregular Ideation 