Analysis of the movie “Crash”
The way people interact and relate in the society is unique in every part of the world. People of different races relate differently when they interlace. The movie had several reviews from its audience because it ventured on tough questions concerning interpersonal communication on a personal level and also indicated some ruthless truth that numerous directors fail to address in movies (Guerrero et al. 2005). Communication between races is portrayed in a negative manner by Haggis. There is also a portrayal of self disclosure in some instances. Self disclosure is the reluctance of an individual to communicate with other people in fear that those people may know much about them. The movie shows the truth in a non-realistic manner. Haggis movie portrays interpersonal communication amongst the different races in Los Angeles. There will be an analysis of the ways that races communicate and interact amongst each other in the film “crash”.
Summary
Within 36 hours in Los Angeles, “Crash” depicts how the lives of indifferent people interlink while they tackle the tight relationships of racism within the city. The actors in the film include a district attorney of Caucasian descent and his wife who were carjacked by a duet of black men. Her wife believes that her prejudice of black people is reasonable and may not be regarded as racism. She believes that the two black carjackers had taken advantage of their race and used it as an excuse. There is also another Caucasian police who uses his power to harass people who are not white and there is another one who dislikes his colleague because of the racist notions (Goyette, 2011). There is a black film director and his wife of the same race, who thinks that her husband had failed to support the black people. There is a Hispanic female and her partner of the same race and partnered detectives. There is a Hispanic female and her black partner who are handling a mother who believes that her black partner cannot take care of her daughter’s family.
Analysis
The audience gets to see several black women and men, Persian families, Hispanic people and various Asians. These people interact with each other in different scenes through the movie. A scene only changes to another since the first characters to appear in the story seemed to connect with those characters in another scene. The audience get to know how the Cabot family relates to other people because there are two black men who carjack them. In the same way, the Hispanic locksmith who wishes to earn a living is employed by the Persian man who is struggling with his immigrant wife (Goyette, 2011). These are the main characters in the story, and they interconnect with one another. This interrelationship of the characters is what makes the audience watch the film continuously. The audience watches a scene for just a short while. The audience get to get an idea from a family or a person, and the same idea are extended to other characters that connect in the next scene.
Critics understand communication in the film in different ways. Haggis had some limitations in representing racism in communication. The director gives the characters life situations to make the audience understand their origin. The situations include depression of Jean Cabots, the sick father of Ryans, and the shopkeepers who find it quite challenging to be immigrants (Goyette, 2011). The life situations are always made of racism, self-disclosure, poverty; depression and illness are not given excuses for racism. The movie’s effort to downsize intolerance offers its possibility for strong information regarding racism being shortchanged and incomplete. There are not enough attempts to get a motive for ethical behavior. The movie indicates several races and how they communicate, but the white characters seem less complex and more justifiable than the rest of the races.
The first white characters that the audience interacts with are Rick Cabot and Jean, and the district attorney and his wife. These characters are confident, beautiful and prosperous. Jean holds on her husband when she sees two black men on the street. Anthony notices that Jean is a typical white woman who fears talking to black people even in a safe place. Anthony decides to steal the car (Guerrero et al. 2005). The director shows the lack of communication by Jean to the blacks because she holds on her husband when she sees two black men in a safe place. The audience does not leave the scene knowing that her actions were guilty indeed. This was not the first time that Haggis portrayed the white characters as racists. Jean reaches for her husband because she ought to be fearful of the black men who were about to steal her car. Within the short scene, Haggis indicates the worst that was about to occur. There was no breakdown of prejudice occurred. There is affirmation of the black men to be potential danger for the white man as Haggis indicates in the scene. This may also indicates self-disclosure because Jean does not want the black people to know more about her. The fears of Jean do not seem genuine as the director tries to imply. One watching the scene one might wonder if Jean was being sincere of the threat that the two black men would have posed to her.
Eventually, the movie does not leave the audience with a bad feeling on Jean, as she precedes a stereotyped white woman. While the scene ends, Jean complains a lot about the various domestic assistants who are probably not white, and why they fail to meet her demands. Jean speaks in a manner that the audience can get to know her white concession (Jackson, 2008). In this scene, the audience gets to know that it is not the people who surround her, but she is always not happy or contented with herself. Jean feels that her race is superior to the black race and does not have to communicate with them. When she starts to cry, the audience sees her change. Moments later, she hugs her Hispanic housekeeper and says that she is her best friend. Personal troubles ought not to be a pretext for racism. Haggis was keen to present the white characters with this chiastic formation. He presented the white characters with racist behavior, and they seem to avoid communicate with the black race.
The audience also gets to see this with John Ryan. The audience meets the character when he is talking on the phone and making some racist comments to the receptionist. Ryan is quick to ridicule the name of the caller who is Shaniqua. When he meets the woman, he apologizes and continues to tell the woman of his sick father. This means that the white people in Los Angeles do not care how or what they talk to the black people because they feel superior to the blacks. Ryan simply expected the woman to forgive him and things would be normal (Jackson, 2008). When the director presents more than a single side of his characters, it is quite critical to understand how he ends with every character. When the audience gets to know the good side of Ryan, he had already battered a black woman to prove that his race was more authoritative and dominant. It is quite absurd that the audience can get to sympathize with such a character after proving racial discrimination.
For the remaining scenes of the movie, the audience interacts with the horrific man. He only loves and cares the people he values in his life. He acts differently from the man that the audiences had interacted with, in the first scene. Dillon manages to save the woman that he had insulted earlier. This act is meant to make the audience forgive the man for what he had done to the woman earlier. It seems that Dillon risks his life for that of the woman; therefore, he cannot qualify to be a racist like he used to be in the first scene. The audience later encounters Dillon when he is suffering with his sick father. The audience sees him again as sympathetic person because he is facing a family problem, and he ought to be forgiven for being a racist. Eventually, Haggis knows that the white audiences are always willing to forgive people who have the same problems as theirs even if they had proved to be racists.
Despite of the past, white people in the movie are always the best people. The film brings the audiences to provide what is lacking in their stories by viewing their personal experiences. Haggis fails to show the characters in the means that offer proof of their transformations. The audiences only get to view them in times of troubles (Jackson, 2008). The audiences only get to respond depending on how they feel of their personal experiences. In Ryan’s situation, probably it is bitterness of assenting action that moves within the white viewers since the scheme still develops debate. Perhaps it could be the situation of Ryan’s sick father that makes the audience sympathizes and forgive Ryan. Haggis treats racism in a manner that suggests that he wants to appeal to the white people. The movie lacks accusations, it only has dismissals.
Conclusion
Haggis brings situations when the white people talk with a lot of disrespect to the black people. This movie does not handle the issue of racism systematically since it is set in an environment that is dominated by the white people. Perhaps Haggis knew that the film would be quite popular with the white audience and decided to avoid making the white people as villains. The fact that Jean proves that the black people pose a danger to the white people even at safe places means that the white people dislike the black people. It is a racial act; however, the audience seems to sympathize with her when she has personal problems. Ryan also made a racist statement when she was taking to the black woman on the phone. However, the audiences were ready to forgive him once they realize that he has a sick father.
References
Goyette, T., (2011). White power: Analysis of Royal Tensions in Crash. E Journals, 13 (3). pp
21-45. Retrieved from
< http://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/freshink/article/view/1207/1580>
Guerrero, Laura K., Joseph A. DeVito, and Michael L. Hecht. (2005). The Nonverbal
Communication Reader: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Long Grove, IL:
Waveland.
Jackson, T., (2008). Film Analysis. Retrieved from
< http://homepages.wmich.edu/~t6jackson1/analyses.html>
