Cultures of Walt and Hmong people are almost entirely different. Walt’s culture is chiefly formed and influenced by his military past as a Vietnam War veteran. Throughout the movie Walt repeatedly demonstrates strong signs of racial bias, especially towards the Asian people he used to fight against during the war. For instance, Walt constantly mispronounces names and words, most likely on purpose, including “Humong” instead of Hmong, “Yum Yum” rather than Youa, and so on. Also, he holds certain racial stereotypes; for example, that Asian people can only excel at math. As Sue puts it, Walt is a very “old-school” American citizen. This leads us to another element of his culture – patriotism. For example, Walt has worked for Ford for a very long time, and thus despises people who drive Japanese cars that became incredibly popular in America. The culture of Hmong people, on the other hand, is heavily based on traditions and spirituality. There are several examples of that present in the movie: you should never touch a Hmong person on their head because soul resides there, or you should refrain from making direct eye-contact with a person, as it is considered to be rude and disrespectful. Another aspect of the Hmong culture is a very high degree of privacy, especially when it comes to unfortunate events inside a family. Father Janovich says that Hmong people tend to “keep their mouth shut”. Even when Thao and Sue’s family got attacked, they did not tell anything to the police.
Walt’s communication style derives from his culture, and therefore is very conservative, simple and straightforward. Walt is not a big fan of small talk, especially with strangers. The messages he sends when communicating are very clear, short, and “straight to the point”. However, when he is in the mood, Walt can easily communicate even with a young Hmong girl like Youa, making funny jokes and being a great interlocutor. His verbal communication skills against those of Sue are still a little poor, though. Sue demonstrates outstanding communication skills, regardless of the situation, whether she talks back to a gang member or breaches Walt’s seemingly impregnable communication barrier. Thao is much more constrained than Walt in terms of verbal communication. He is very humble and lacks confidence, especially when it comes to initiating romantic relationships.
The meanings and purposes that Walt attaches to talk are usually rather simple and direct, and serve the plain purpose of delivering a message. However, Walt’s words do not always mean what they seem to. For example, Walt constantly swears at his friends, but he does not actually pursue the purpose of offending them. Rather, this is just the way they communicate with each other, a certain peculiarity that separates friends from strangers.
Being at his late adulthood years Walt only has a small circle of same-sex friends of his generation, whom he trusts and knows well, and he does not make many new friends. This is quite typical for this life-stage, according to Beebe, Beebe and Redmond (320). Qualities of friendship that Walt values the most are openness, respect and trust. Additional possible reason of his cautiousness towards new people is his problematic relationships with his sons and their families, who only remember about Walt when they need something from him. Relationships of Walt with his friends are based on a fair “give and take” principle. For example, when Walt helps Thao to find work by asking his friend who works in construction for a favor, the friend says “you owe me one” after hiring Thao. Sue and Thao are much more open-minded in terms of their friendships, and have friends of different cultures and sexes. Key qualities of friendship for them are self-disclosure, helping behavior, positive evaluation, and concern and empathy.
In terms of initiating friendships, Walt uses a strategy of observing and acting on approachability cues. When Thao tries to steal his Gran Torino, Walt obviously develops a highly negative opinion about him. However, when Walt’s lady neighbor is having trouble with her bags and only Thao ends up helping her, his opinion on Thao starts to change. Unlike Sue and Thao, Walt does not really follow initiation norms. Sue is open and self-disclose, and employs affinity-seeking strategies when initiating friendships. In spite of Walt’s strategy, he teaches Thao to initiate friendships by communicating and cultivating attraction, mainly by focusing on other-involvement and commonalities strategies of affinity seeking. When it comes to maintaining friendships, Walt’s strategy seems to focus on providing all kinds of support. Although he seems hard-hearted, rude and somewhat ungenerous, Walt can sacrifice anything, including his life, for a friend that he genuinely respects, values and trusts. Thao and Sue use a wider spectrum of strategies to maintain friendships compared to Walt. Sue expresses emotions and concern, and communicates. Thao also expresses concern for Walt’s health, and advises him to quit smoking. Also, he provides support and behaves in a tolerant and tactful way.
Works Cited:
Beebe, Steven, Susan Beebe and Mark Redmond. Interpersonal Communication. Relating to Others. New Jersey: Pearson, 2014.
