The film Crash
- Details
- Hits: 21075
The film Crash, directed by Paul Haggis in the year 2004 is about racial relations and their impact on a variety of individuals in the city of Los Angeles. The film asked extremely difficult questions on racism at the individual level. It shows the viewer a number of harsh realities, which are often avoided in movies to avoid antagonizing people from different racial backgrounds. The film promotes awareness of racial factors, but just like all talks about race, the movie calls for deep inspection. The density of the material strikes many audiences in this short film. The way in which Crash depicts realities is not that realistic (Farris, 2007).
Not much can be learnt about the individual characters in the movie Crash. However, it is sufficiently known that the audience can figure out easily how Haggis desires to be understood. The audience is able to experience a wide variety of black American males and females, numerous Hispanic characters, many Asians, and one family of Persian origin. One scene switches to the other solely because the story line of the initial characters intersects with those of the following scene. The audience meets the family of the Cabot as young African men, scene stars, and steals this family’s automobile. Similarly, the locksmith of Hispanic origin looks to get a living for the large family he has acquired lately. Struggling with his new life of a United States immigrant, the man of Hispanic origin secures the job of a shopkeeper with the man of Persian origin. The two, the African and the Hispanic, are the principal characters in this movie. They all become intertwined carefully in the desperate lives they lead. The technique of interconnecting various characters in the movie keeps the viewers glued to their screens. The viewers are not stuck in any scene or story for a period that bores them. An event or idea is always presented carefully from an individual or family perspective. The same event then experiences some expansion when a number of other characters are connected to the initial event.
Many critics have received this film in a way that is extremely different from our own. A Villanueva Victor, for instance, wrote in his College English that there are many limitations as far as the attempt of Haggis to depict racism is concerned. To many characters, the director has ensured life circumstances provided to some of the characters enable them to see the place from which they come. Such circumstances are the Cabots Jean depression, Officer Ryans ailing father, and the struggle of the shopkeepers with the new immigrant status. Each of the circumstances serves as a good excuse for many characters to display elements of racism. Others are also given the opportunity to lessen the severity and impact of tense racial relations. The director goes on, but the circumstances of life often consist of extremely cheap rationalizations connected to overt racism. Villanueva Victor continues to argue that depression, fear, illness, and extreme poverty cannot render any form of racism excusable. Such factors to Villanueva are inexcusable attempts to look for justifiable reasons to support an immoral act. The effort of the film to rationalize prejudice and intolerance among the various races portrays potential for one strong message of United States racism, making the audience feel not only incomplete but also shortchanged. Apart from presenting the various values of each racial group, Crash depicts each of the races and the intersection each have with others. Nevertheless, the Native American characters are apparently less complicated than the other racial groupings and are therefore considered more forgivable compared to the other racial groupings. Haggiss objectives have been analyzed, placing an emphasis on portraying some of the Native American characters (Villanueva, 2007).
Rick and Jean Cabot are among the initial Native American characters the viewers come across. Sandra Bullock and Brendan Fraser play the Attorney of the Los Angeles District and the fiancée he got recently. The characters are beautiful, well off, and confident. Their current social status can be seen easily when the audience is first introduced to them. The wife grabs the arm of her husband when she sees two young African men walking along a Los Angeles street. Played by Ludacris, Anthony takes note Jean is a typical race-prejudiced Native American woman who expresses a lot of fear despite being in an extremely safe street. The African man then steals the woman’s car. Here, Haggis is attempting to demonstrate the racism Jeans portrays by the strong clutch of her husband’s arm in search for protection. Nevertheless, she goes on and justifies the decision when the African men make up their minds to actualize the fears. The viewers are not given the opportunity to know whether the African men’s intentions were to steal the car (Haggies, 2004).
As this scene ends, the viewer is not convinced that the actions of the Native American woman were quite reprehensible. Haggis approval of an action of an American character, whether racist or not, is coming up for the umpteenth time. Ray Sangeeta, also writing in the College English, has criticized such scenes strongly. This has always elicited a lot of laughing from Native Americans, but the exact message it confirms has not been made clear yet. The audience’s prejudices and fears are justifiable while some degree of spatial segregation has become extremely necessary. As this scene rolls out, we see Jean reaching for the man again, fearing she may experience further harm. The subsequent fears are justifiable as Jean has lost her automobile already, confirming the African men had ill intentions (Ray, 2007).
In that extremely short scene, the director has allowed the worst to occur. These do not imply stereotype breaking has occurred. Indeed, the opposite happens. The assertion that the African characters are known for gang violence is the most appropriate illustration of the inability of the movie to delve deeply into the real construction of the so-called whiteness. The viewers’ reaction suggests that the fears by Jean Cabots that Haggis depicts are legitimate. Viewing the scene makes one identify the behavior of Jeans as extremely prejudiced at first. When the automobile gets stolen, the viewer is left wondering and assessing whether Jeans Cabot has been right from the beginning (Ebert, 2009).
The movie fails to leave the viewer with any negative feeling against Jean Cabot. She becomes a stereotypical Native American woman progressively and refuses to work. As the movie ends, Jean Cabot keeps complaining about the various domestic house helps, whom she claim are not obeying her orders and doing as she expects of them. She believes the reason for not being committed to their work is the fact that they were not Native Americans. The way she speaks does not only suggest but also affirms the white privilege she has put on herself. In the subsequent scenes, she realizes that the problem has nothing to do with the fellow United States citizens around her. Instead, she is the one who fails to enjoy her life because she is always sad.
Upon this realization, she starts to cry. This is the only time that she changes significantly. She then calls her current house help, who is of Hispanic origin, congratulates her on extremely hard work, and gives her a lovely hug. She goes on to call the Hispanic woman the best friend she ever had. By so doing, the viewer is taught how prejudice can ruin a person’s life and make them remain sad for a long time. Consequently, this scene manages to take the Native American character, painting her and her husband in an extremely positive light. Personal troubles have been called troublemakers. One can seek all sorts of excuses to remain racist if they have such troubles. The director himself is not left behind. However, he presents the structure well with American characters portraying racist attitude. Ultimately, they are able to undo this when a certain point reaches. In the case of Jeans, she reaches the breaking point when she falls down the staircase (Appenzeller, 2008).
One is driven to forgive the character of Sandra Bullocks because the majority of the viewers are highly likely to be white. This leaves many unanswered questions concerning the American society. One wonders why individual society members cannot accept and cheer the reprehensible actions characters do when they are claiming personal problems. Just like many story lines of Hollywood, the main character has a lot of money, but she realizes her life is not fulfilling when she enters one crisis after the other. The movie makes the viewer feel extremely familiar because the sequence with which bad people are changing into good ones is not linear. Racists are forced to realize they lack some substances in their desperate lives. Nonetheless, the audience forgives them. Haggis tries his best not to allow the Native American characters to turn into villains for the American audience (Michael, 2011).
American characters in the movie Crash have been made to appear on top notwithstanding their pasts. It may look subtle. Nevertheless, the Native American character the audience is forced to hate later becomes the character we cherish most. This is after the character is able to prove that he or she is not bad, after all, and had been experiencing circumstances that made him or her behave the way he or she did. The audience is being forced to forgive constantly. Though they might not be willing to do so, the scenario is presented in a way that demands instant forgiveness (Kampf, 2010).
Christine Farris, also an author, has shown discontent in College English, with how Haggis presents her work to the audience. The content of the movie does not go down with this critic also. She criticizes the director’s use of parables: the lesson the director intends to present is not always the one the viewers learn. The film does not analyze races and ethnicities’ heterogeneity of personal experiences. Rather it invites amiably to supply missing links in some of the stories. The viewer merely sees the characters undergoing extremely tough times (Farris, 2007). Haggis forces them to respond depending on the empathy elicited, based on personal experiences in their lives. Instead, he refuses to unpack his characters progress in a manner likely to provide evidence of the individual changes in mentality through which each character has gone. As far as the case of Ryan is concerned, the resentment he shows towards the affirmative action makes resonator with the American audiences plausible. The reason behind this is that the system may still create much controversy. Similarly, there could be a possibility that observing Dillons father die, unable to access adequate health care he required made the audience sympathize with the otherwise cruel police officer. It has been claimed the movie has merely sowed seeds. The development of the characters as well as the judgment has been left to the audience (Monaco, 2009).
Such hopeful racist treatment is apparently designed to look appealing to Native American audiences. A thorough examination of both the causes as well as the impact of racism in an American patriarchal system is not given much emphasis. The audience may take a lot of ease in the notion that all Americans are racist in one way or the other. The movie Crash has not peddled any accusations against any race; it is one movie characterized by numerous dismissals. The core message appears to racism, everybody is racist in his or her own way. Nevertheless, every person can choose to become a respectable and admirable individual in society. Therefore, Haggis falls short of condemning all instances of overt racism in the movie. He understands having such flaws is part of growing into a normal human being (Rosinski, 2010).
Notably, Haggis meant to entertain predominantly an American audience. For such an audience, it would not be wise to put the race they belong to at fault. The movie does not concern American systematic racism in the United States where white culture is dominant. However, it could turn its focus towards that direction. Similarly, may be Haggis had foreseen the movie popularity among white audiences, making her depict African Americans villains. She feared any other depiction might hurt his most favorable reputation. In one, instance, Haggis decided to share a secret he had kept to himself all along: Crash came as an aftermath of the jacking of his automobile as he walked down the streets of Los Angeles with his wife. He never knew who his jackers were, but one thing was obvious: their skin color was black. Haggis admits the Crash was essentially supposed to talk about fearing any stranger one came across. However, it made a sharp turn and became a race movie following the director’s personal attack. Obviously, this experience of car jacking might have influenced the director’s perception of race.
A television show known as Archer can also be analyzed through a racial lens. In this show, John Ryan is extremely controversial character. The viewer meets the character making a call on his phone. He is making extremely distasteful racist remarks at the receptionist she calls at the office of the doctor. John Ryan ridicules the receptionist’s name, making her hang up. When he later meets the receptionist, he makes an unexpected apology. He then proceeds to tell some story on how the health of his father has deteriorated due to strenuous work. The viewer is forced to sympathize deeply with Ryan, despite the uncouth behavior he had displayed as he called at the dining table. Though the viewer knows that Ryan is an extreme racist, the viewer cannot help but feel sorry for him, as operating normally may become a problem when one’s parent is sick (Flory, 2009).
Haggis makes sure he does not only present one side of most of his characters. Of particular note is how he terminates dealing with each of his characters. Before the viewer is made to see any positive traits in Ryan, he has done many unforgivable things. At one time, the viewer sees him molesting an African woman whose mistake has not been shown. Earlier before this, the movie shows the woman is innocent; only that racial authority and dominance is being established. It is dumbfounding how such a character can be viewed in a positive way afterwards but in moments of grief surrounding the illness of the father (Paramount TV, 1975).
In the other parts of this movie, the viewers see John Ryan interact with this father. To someone John Ryan loves clearly, he exercises a lot of tenderness and he is child-like. In fact, he acts like the character in uniform the audience comes across at the start of the movie. Similarly, in an almost dramatic and fatal heroic act, John Ryan ends up rescuing the receptionist he had once molested. Such an act asks the audience to forgive him. In spite of the disrespect, he had shown to this woman, this act is seen almost to reverse the bad experiences the receptionist has had with him. Apparently, the viewer is forced to feel as if John Ryan offers the woman his life because the risk involved was death. Thus, it is no longer easy to get a racist or sexual assaulter in the character of Dillons (Howard & Phillip, 2008).
The last encounter the viewer is allowed with John Ryan is when he accompanies his father at the latter’s deathbed. For a second time, he comes out as an extremely compassionate person. The viewer should notice John Ryan’s difficulty and the sickness in the family, and consider this before jumping into conclusions that he is a notorious racist. It would be extremely malicious for the audience to continue despising John Ryan even after all these humane acts. Haggis apparently understands that the American audience is likely to forgive an individual whose problems are similar to those of the likes of John Ryan, even if the individual is the most highly ranked racist in the world.
In conclusion, both the movie and television show depicts how races relate with each other in the United States. Each racial group has been shown playing distinct roles, with the humor downplaying some of the negative reactions likely to be elicited from the viewers.