What Does Clint Eastwood Know About Social Capital?

4. January 2009 by Craig Peters

I’d say he knows a lot. At least his character does. Last night I saw Gran Torino for the second time. I don’t usually see movies twice in the theater, but I really like this one. You can’t tell from the trailer, but Gran Torino contains a clear example of developing social savvy and turning that into social capital.

Again, the social capital example isn’t clear from the trailer, but I couldn’t help including it.

First, let me review something that Malcolm Gladwell talks about in his book, Outliers: The Story of Success. He writes that success in life has a lot to do with social savvy. Even if you’re super smart, like some of the people Gladwell details in his book, you’re not going to get very far in life unless you know how to handle yourself inter-personally. You need social savvy.

Gladwell gives an example of an attentive parent coaching her child in the car as they drive to the doctor’s office. The mother explains what to expect and guides the child to rehearse questions beforehand to ask the doctor. This kind of support and modeling by parents, Galdwell argues, is a critical ingredient to success in life. It’s more important than most people want to admit.

I couldn’t agree more. Parents have a huge role in helping develop social skills with children. Unfortunately, not everyone has parents who are able to do that. The good news is that parents are not the only ones who can teach social savvy; anyone can mentor, model, or teach someone else how to improve their social savvy.

In Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood’s character, Walt Kowalski, takes his young neighbor, Thao, under his wing and teaches him how to be a man. From the plot summary on IMDB: “Disgruntled Korean War vet Walt Kowalski sets out to reform his neighbor, a young Hmong teenager…”.

One of the wonderful things about this example is that the movie makes it clear why Mr. Kowalski is helping Thao. He’s not teaching Thao how to be a man just for the fun of it. He’s got a couple explicit reasons: one involves a girl and one involves a job. Without giving too much away–and I highly recommend you see the movie–Mr. Kowalski shows, very directly and explicitly, how to turn social savvy into a job. That’s capital.

The writers of the movie, Nick Schenk and Dave Johannson, along with the director, Clint Eastwood, have given us a great example of what it looks like to teach a kid social savvy.

On a personal note, there’s another reason I love this movie: it’s filmed in my old stomping grounds of Grosse Pointe and Detroit. More than one scene takes place in the church I attended when I was a kid, St. Ambrose, which was a total surprise to me.