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Crash

CRASH

Through the analogy of car crashes, the movie Crash attempts to bring matters of race in America to the foreground. After being rear ended, Graham, an African American detective, sets the tone when he says "In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much that sometimes we crash into one another just to feel something". The illusion of feeling safe and impermeable to everything when we are in our car is destroyed when we crash into someone and are forced to deal with what just happened. In reality, we think we are unaffected by racism simply by avoiding certain encounters. We pretend we are impermeable to its effects. But if we were placed in a particular situation, we would be forced to deal with our prejudices. Only when we recognize and admit our prejudices can we begin to deal with racism in our society.

I think what Paul Haggis, the co-writer and director of Crash, wants us to believe is that racism is inherent within all of us, but this doesn't necessarily make us evil. Some of us are aware of this and are not afraid to expose it, while others go to great lengths to conceal it. Some people are not aware of their prejudices at all. Sooner or later, we are all confronted with our prejudices, and how we choose to react to them is what really matters. Crash examines the racial interactions between several ethnic groups through cleverly constructed scenarios. It also identifies individual struggles with racial prejudice and how it affects choices they make in their personal and professional lives. I have illuminated several examples from the movie as well as my interpretations of them.

Some characters in the movie are explicitly racist. Jean, the wife of a politician, makes very pointed racial remarks within earshot of Daniel, the Hispanic locksmith changing the locks in her house after she experiences a frightful carjacking. She stereotypes Daniel as a gang banger because he's Hispanic,...