The unbearable racedness of being natural: A dialogue on the Gran Torino production between lead actor Bee Vang and Louisa Schein

Abstract

At the age of just 16, Bee Vang (BV), a Hmong Minnesotan, was chosen from several hundred auditioners for the lead role of Thao in Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino. Now a 22-year-old student at Brown University focusing on global political economy and critical race studies, he dialogues here with media studies anthropologist Louisa Schein (LS) unpacking the dynamics by which the contemporary racial order is engendered and reproduced through the micropractices of film production – from casting, to on set, to the reception of the resulting film text – and reflecting on their insights from two years of collaboration. After the release, Vang and Schein developed a Gran Torino workshop on race, masculinity, sexuality, media and Asian Americans which they conducted at universities, film festivals and museums around the USA. What follows here, in keeping with film editing method, represents a cut, cropped and resequenced version of their conversation, which was originally conducted on skype chat.