Preview

Intercultural Analysis of "Crash"

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1151 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Intercultural Analysis of "Crash"
Brian Dragan
Com 200
Dr. Susan Kilgard
10/1/12
Film Analysis Paper #1
Crash

This movie Directed by Paul Haggis who also directed Academy Award Winning "Million Dollar Baby" and had also won an Academy Award for this movie as well puts a twisted story in this film. This movie symbolizes what goes on in the world today in regards to racism and stereotypes. He tries to make a point on how societies view themselves and others in the world based on their ethnicities. This movie intertwines several different people's lives, all different races, with different types of beliefs. Such ethnicities include Caucasians, African Americans, Hispanics, Asians and Middle Eastern. This movie includes conflicts on both sides of the picture from cops and criminals as well from being rich or poor. You become aware of everyone being ignorant and paranoid of the opposite race, creating many clashes in culture and identity. Throughout the movie you view how different races "Crash" and react with other races. In certain scenes you see how each person thinks of other races as portrayed realistically similar to what someone would expect in real life. Their reasons for why they beliefs are structured the way they are coming from either history or the present time of today.
Throughout the movie, Crash, there are many separate instances of examples of aspects of intercultural communication. Some of the many relevant themes are prejudice, scapegoating, culture shock, racial identity, and culture identity, among others. One instance in the movie where prejudice occurs is when the district attorney's wife assumed that the Latino locksmith is a "gang banger" because of the way he dressed, had his hair shaved and had "prison tattoos" on his body. This indicates prejudice because even though someone may look a certain way, it pertains indirectly to how that individual may actually behave regardless of looks. I personally have met someone where they act according to the stereotype given

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Crash Movie Analysis

    • 1018 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Crash was a film that debuted in 2004. The movie told the story of various individuals and families of different ethnic backgrounds. The film showed a lot of different scenarios through the eyes of the people living in Los Angeles, California. This shows that everyone no matter race or other group identity face discrimination in their own right. The message shown was that many people of other ethnic backgrounds either face discrimination directly or acted upon discrimination as their paths cross one another.…

    • 1018 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    I dearly love the film and maintain that it's one of the great pictures from the last 10 years. I don't know what the director of this movie (Spike Lee) intended the moral to be, but my take on the film has always been that NO ONE does the right thing, and this is the cautionary element of the movie. The racial message about racial injustice is very deep and one that every race should see. The climax of the movie is very powerful and deep. The heat is blazing, tensions are running high (especially racial ones), and under this kind of pressure no one behaves according to common courtesy and decency. The entire film is a chain of uncontrolled outbursts of anger that lead to everyone's misery.…

    • 2324 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Movie Crash Essay

    • 1458 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The movie tells stories about racism between whites, blacks, Latinos, Koreans, Iranians, cops and criminals. The different levels of the rich and the poor, the powerful and powerless are also shown in the movie. The lives of the characters crash against each other. The most people feel prejudice and resentment against people of other groups.…

    • 1458 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The 1987 film documentary Ethnic Notions directed by Marlon Riggs, identifies the evolution of African American cultural depictions through ethnic stereotypes and caricatures in American culture. I feel Ethnic Notions exposes the roots of false generalization from the beginning and presents a series of classifications for racial depictions that still are noticeable in today's society. These racial depictions identified with in this film begin in the mid 1800's and continue thought to the 1960's. I now after viewing Ethnic notions agree that there are generalizations and depictions that are exaggerated in American popular culture and entertainment.…

    • 1222 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The narrative is circular, as the film's message about racial discrimination develops as a snowball, the director Paul Haggis shows us how prejudice is the most central issue. The political crime that is shown on the film gives the audience an understanding of how betrayed a civilian can be by the law enforcers. Racist ideologies are perpetuated through discourse, actions and even of misunderstanding. It is possible to understand the interconnected nature of each core characters and how a certain attitude interferes with a subsequent event among others. The racial profiling is also seen extremely harshly. Being in the 21st century these things are overlooked, but there are still many people who classify people because of their race and what they look like.…

    • 772 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    This film deals with the social problem of racism in America. From the very beginning of the movie scenes depicting the harassment of a rural African American family by a group of so called Christian Ku Klux Klansmen show the horrors of racism. These black people had their home burned down, and their father and provider murdered by these so called “god-fearing” people. This injustice also led to the family being torn apart due to the murder of their financial provider. These scenes exemplify the problem of racism because, even though the head of this black family was blatantly assaulted and murdered, the institutional racism of the society in which that family lived, prevented them from seeing justice. The movie is about how a son of this family grows up and constantly deals with racism through his life until he converts to the Nation of Islam and works hard to better the situation and condition of his people.…

    • 592 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The problem with racial stereotypes shown in the movie Crash is the characters have false or partially true ideas about certain groups causing discrimination, language barriers, and abuse of power between them. First, stereotyping races in this film causes discrimination among the characters that represent the different cultures in our society. In addition, in the movie the characters experienced the formation of language barriers. In addition, abuse of power from the authorities is found throughout the film. In other words, racial stereotypes in this movie place its characters in a rut where each race is described only by conventional notions and negative generalization of each individual because of race.…

    • 673 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The Movie Crashis set in Los Angeles and begins when several people are involved in a multi-car accident. From there the movie skips to the day before where we see the lives of several of the characters who were involved in the crash and the racial problems they encounter that day. The moviebegins by showing an Islamic man and his daughter going into a gun shop to by a gun. When the Islamic man speaks in a different language to his daughter the store clerk says to him “Hey Osama, plan your Jihad on your own time.” An argument ensues and the daughter ends up staying in the store and buying the gun, and instead of bullets she accidentally buys blanks asammo, however the clerk does not tell her this. The movie then skips to a couple of young black men who are complaining about the service they received at a restaurant. One of them says it is because of the stereotype that blacks don’t tip very well, and thensays that he didn’t tip anything because of the poor service. As the two black men are walking down the street they come across a white politician and his wife. When the politician’s wife sees the black men coming towards them she gets closer to her husband. One of the black men noticesthis and points it out. Shortly after they pass each other the young black men steal the white couples’ car at gunpoint. The politician’s wife is really upset about being carjacked and has all of the locks in their house changed. When the locksmith comes and she sees that he is Hispanic she takes her anger out on him. The movie then shows a white LAPD officer who is trying to get medical help for his ailing father. The officeris having problems with a black clerk who won’t give the officers father permission to see another doctor. The white officer takes his frustration out on a black couple during a traffic stop and ends up sexually assaulting the woman.…

    • 1908 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    An example of stereotypes in the movie ‘Crash’ are when the Mexican lock smith is replacing the locks on the doors, the owner expects that the lock smith will sell the keys for the house to one of his gang members because she thinks that he is a criminal as he has prison tattoos and a slight Mexican accent. At the end of the movie it is proven that in fact the Mexican lock smith Daniel Ruiz is not a bad guy he is a caring father and is not involved in gangs or criminal action. Another example in ‘Crash’ is when Rick Cabot (the elected District Attorney) and his wife Jean Cabot are walking and they see two African American guys walking towards them, Jean hugs closer to Rick because she is scared and expects that the men are criminals and could pose a threat, this stereotype is not challenged because the African American guys end up stealing their car and holding the poor couple at gun point. Also when one lady is driving and is held up by another lady who happens to be Asian, the lady says that Asians can’t drive because they are far too small and can’t see over the steering wheel.…

    • 1138 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The movie Crash contains the stories of several different groups of people of all sorts of races. Their individual lives are played into one another through links of racism and social stereotypes of each ethnicity. As the thirty-six hour period progresses, the intertwining of the individuals and their partners eventually crash together, and they all become part of a single storyline that tells the tale of how racism exists no matter who you are.…

    • 1286 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Paper on Movie Crash

    • 757 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Paul Haggis’ movie Crash is all about different kinds of social and multicultural differences we observe. We look through a three-category lens made up of race, class, and gender. All of which play roles in stereotypes and assumptions we make about others. The film deals especially with America as it continues to grow as a multicultural society and also explores how racial intolerance and prejudice are collective problems for all of the United States.…

    • 757 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Freedom Writers Diversity

    • 767 Words
    • 4 Pages

    This movie showcases the reality of struggles some minority students face on a daily basis. It starts off with one of the main characters talking about the day that she was initiated into the gang, and how she was the third generation in her family to be a member. Because of some one’s ethnicity they were separated by gangs in the community and because of that there was conflict in the classroom. In the beginning racial and cultural differences was the main problem created in the movie, from the first day of class when the classroom split into their clichés to the violence that happened outside of the classroom. Racism is the act of believing that one race is superior to another. The teacher, Erin, superiors had doubts about…

    • 767 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Crash Film Critique

    • 1866 Words
    • 8 Pages

    The film “Crash” produced and directed by Paul Haggis is a compilation of clever vignettes all throughout the film and for most they undergo some change; however, for the change to occur the film shows the human side of certain characters. The film is a compilation of lives of various characters in a course of a day in the city of Los Angeles. Although racism, discrimination and prejudice is constantly used all throughout the film, Haggis does this bring the message across that “Stretches the boundaries… becomes intensely moving…acknowledges.. The intolerant are human… rage fuels itself and redoubles” (Denby). Scott makes the argument that Crash is “full of heart and devoid of life”; however, Denby’s claims that Crash “Stretches the boundaries… becomes intensely moving” and “acknowledges.. The intolerant are human… rage fuels itself and redoubles” are evident all throughout the film.…

    • 1866 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    I selected the movie Crash to discuss the intercultural barriers in film for my paper. First of all, it is one my favorite movies so it was an easy decision. Crash is set in Los Angeles, California. The city is a melting pot of cultures; an ideal setting to highlight the racial and social tensions within the large cast of characters. The cast intersects in and out of each other’s lives throughout the story’s plot. The movie starts with a cop played by Don Cheadle is in a car accident with his partner and girlfriend played by Jennifer Esposito. He gets out of the car to investigate a scene of a murder; then the movie cuts to thirty six hours earlier. In the next scene, a Persian man and his daughter are in a gun shop attempting to buy a gun. The gun shop owner gets angry because they are speaking in their native language. The owner believes they are…

    • 1251 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    crash

    • 501 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Crash , a 2005 film by director Paul Haggis, begins by saying, "It's the sense of touch . . .we miss . . . so much that we crash into each other just so we can feel something". The use of the word "touch" suggests human connection. "Feel" conjures a sense of emotion. We want to be moved by one another; to feel our common human existence. Our search for this sort of human connection persists despite many peripheral issues which divide us, but it is the search itself, not the issues, which provides the movie's main theme. I will explore this theme from the perspective of sociology, by examining how the movie deals with race and gender issues.Race and gender are not physical attributes. They are social constructions. The movie portrays the district attorney of L.A., struggling to salvage his public image among black voters via finding an African American whom he can reward publicly. He considers a certain "black" firefighter who had recently performed his job heroically, but someone mentions that the firefighter is actually Iraqi. The D.A. responds, "He's Iraqi? Well, he looks black." This scene illustrates clearly that racial categories are created and employed by people, although these categories often say little about a person's actual cultural or national heritage. In another scene, a detective refers to his lover as Mexican. She responds, "My father's from Puerto Rico, my mother's from El Salvador. Neither one of those is Mexico."Crash also beautifully illustrates how rigid gender roles can hinder connection between people. The traditionally male roles of "provider" and "protector" are especially examined. In one scene, a black film director named Cameron is pulled over by a racist police officer named John Ryan. Cameron's wife is with him, and soon begins antagonizing the officer and refusing to comply, even at Cameron's repeated request. So they are checked for weapons. When Cameron responds without aggression as John frisks his wife in a sexually suggestive…

    • 501 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays