Crash: Fact or Fiction?

LAST week after our discussion in class I decided to rewatch the movie “Crash,” and what I found about that movie is that no matter how many times I watch it, it will never cease to make me cry. After watching how the people in the movie treat each other, how they spurt out racial slurs, how they stereotype one another, and how they each hold so much hatred toward their fellow Angelenos, it made me wonder… is Los Angeles really like this?

Watching the movie, I sat with my hand over my mouth in shock, disturbed by how people treat their fellow human beings. But the worst part about watching the movie, is that it’s not entirely fiction—some version of these stories can be seen all throughout the city. The movie can at times feel overwhelming or exaggerated because all of the stories are compiled into one… but that’s just Hollywood’s interpretation.

But despite this, a lot of the scenes in the movie ring true. From where I grew up in Orange County I saw plenty of racism. In Orange County, the white Protestant is king and all of the other ethnicities are clumped together in a blur of “us vs. them” mentality. However, in L.A. there is a different type of racism. It’s not just us vs. them, but it is everyone vs. each other.

I noticed when watching “Crash” that it wasn’t just Sandra Bullock’s character who was racist towards her Hispanic maid, or Matt Dillon’s character to the black woman he pulls over. But throughout the movie, there are all different forms of racism. Different ethnicities are racist towards each other, and some are even racist towards people of their same race.

Normally when watching this movie, I get caught up in the emotional scene where the Persian storeowner almost shoots the young girl, or the scene where Matt Dillon saves the life of the same woman he assaulted. However, this time I began to look more closely at the relationships between the characters and how close they come to other situations I have been witness to in the city. In particular, I noticed the relationship between Terrence Howard’s character, Cameron and Ludacris’ character, Anthony. Though they are both black men, they are pitted against one another because of their socioeconomic standings, and in an emotional culmination of events, Cameron tells Anthony that he is an embarrassment, not only to him but to himself.

While you might not see blank bullets being fired at children, or women being saved from burning cars every day in Los Angeles, I think occurrences like the exchange between Cameron and Anthony is a common one in this city. Though we like to think of ourselves as accepting and tolerant in our little collegiate bubble, the streets of L.A. are filled with hatred and prejudice, maybe not to the level that “Crash” would lead us to believe, but more than we would like to admit.

-- Megan McMurtrey

(photo via http://www.iwatchstuff.com/mt/mt-search.cgi?tag=dvd&blog_id=1)