Crash Essay
Hadassha Battiste
Professor _________
April _______
The movie Crash proves that a series of events can connect even the most unlikely of people. The movie demonstrated how racism and stereotypes tie people together and how detrimental our ill thinking could be to ourselves and each other. The entire movie is laced with coincidences leading to connections and appears to have a somewhat domino effect triggered by the actions or thoughts of another. Ignorance and intolerance divides groups of people and drives the gaps further and further.
In the beginning of the movie a store clerk and his daughter are purchasing a gun for protection at their store. The clerk at the gun store starts discounting their intelligence and verbally sexually harassing the young lady automatically assuming that they were Arab. This demonstrates the gun store owner’s ignorance and lack of regard for any other culture besides his own. In fact a disregard for others and ignorance seems to be a common thread in this movie. Ignorance and lack of respect for others is part of the reason why stereotypes exist.
The DA and his wife are mugged by two young black men. Coincidentally one of the black men that robbed the couple was a conscious thinker with regard to racism but instead of treating others how he wanted black people to be treated he fell prey to reverse racism. I found it particularly interesting that he commented on the white woman’s fear of black people, but fed into it by robbing them and carjacking them. What if instead of robbing them he had kept walking or even wished them a good night? Maybe that would have changed the mind of the DA’s wife, which was clearly seen in the scene in which the DA and his wife were at home and there was a Hispanic man changing the locks on the doors. Because of his ethnicity and appearance she assumed that he would change the locks and sell the key to one of his “homies” which was not the case at all. The Hispanic man heard the
Professor _________
April _______
The movie Crash proves that a series of events can connect even the most unlikely of people. The movie demonstrated how racism and stereotypes tie people together and how detrimental our ill thinking could be to ourselves and each other. The entire movie is laced with coincidences leading to connections and appears to have a somewhat domino effect triggered by the actions or thoughts of another. Ignorance and intolerance divides groups of people and drives the gaps further and further.
In the beginning of the movie a store clerk and his daughter are purchasing a gun for protection at their store. The clerk at the gun store starts discounting their intelligence and verbally sexually harassing the young lady automatically assuming that they were Arab. This demonstrates the gun store owner’s ignorance and lack of regard for any other culture besides his own. In fact a disregard for others and ignorance seems to be a common thread in this movie. Ignorance and lack of respect for others is part of the reason why stereotypes exist.
The DA and his wife are mugged by two young black men. Coincidentally one of the black men that robbed the couple was a conscious thinker with regard to racism but instead of treating others how he wanted black people to be treated he fell prey to reverse racism. I found it particularly interesting that he commented on the white woman’s fear of black people, but fed into it by robbing them and carjacking them. What if instead of robbing them he had kept walking or even wished them a good night? Maybe that would have changed the mind of the DA’s wife, which was clearly seen in the scene in which the DA and his wife were at home and there was a Hispanic man changing the locks on the doors. Because of his ethnicity and appearance she assumed that he would change the locks and sell the key to one of his “homies” which was not the case at all. The Hispanic man heard the
Cited: Haggis, Paul. _Crash_. Perf. Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Loretta Divine, Matt Dillon, Brendan Frasier. Lions Gate Entertainment, 2005.