Crash: Humanity Beyond Race \"Human

Crash: Humanity Beyond Race

"Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue. It makes it a requirement for survival"

-Rene Dubos, Celebrations of Life, 1981

The vast majority of movies made in Hollywood and around the world today are poor-quality productions with little though or care put into them and that are essentially meaningless. Amidst this cinematic wasteland, however, rise a very few monolithic films that could truly be considered masterpieces. These films not only entertain their audiences, but also evoke strong emotive responses from -- and provoke deep thinking in -- their viewers. Each of these films is necessarily unique, affecting audiences in sometimes similar ways but through a variety of vastly different means. Some can be difficult to watch at times; provocative movies may shock movie goers with an untraditional view of the mundane realities of everyday life. Such films can confuse, challenge, and ultimately change our standard acceptance and perception of our surrounding world, society, and the individuals with whom we connect. When these films are at their most successful, they transcend mere thought-provoking cinema to become truly philosophical texts, raising and examining important universal questions.

One such cinematic masterpiece is the 2004 film Crash, written and directed by Paul Haggis. This film is truly remarkable both for the level of talent it reflects in each aspect of its production and for the many issues relevant to today's American society that it raises. The issue that is most central to the film's thematic statements is racism, and this plays out in many ways in the plot of the movie. In its exploration of the reality of racism in our multicultural society, however, Crash makes deeper statements about what it means to be one human being of many.

Tolerance is a term that gets a lot of use in our diverse and ever-shrinking world, but the full meaning of the word might not always be appreciated. It is easy to think of tolerance as a way for diverse groups of people to get along by simply not bumping into each other. Many times, tolerance is applied directly to racial and ethnic differences. But Crash shows both of these conceptions if tolerance to be incomplete. Tolerance means more than simply letting others be as a separate group or individual, and it applies to all interpersonal relationships, not just those that are racially or ethnically charged. Though Crash uses such relationships to build most of the incidents of the plot, and it is true that the film is very explicitly and consciously dealing with the current complex racial situation in the United States generally -- and Los Angeles specifically -- the ultimate lesson it provides is that we must all be able to get along with others with all of their and our prejudices and flaws, and that avoidance simply doesn't work.

Almost every incident in the movie can be viewed as evidence of this message. The intricacies of the various interconnected stories that comprise the action of the movie are prohibitive to a coherent summary, but the overall arch of the film also clearly illustrates this message. First, the inciting incident of the car crash is used as a metaphor in the film for the unavoidability of interaction with others when living in a human society, and it also reflects the truth that many of these interactions will necessarily be negative, at least at first. The ability to grow in a positive way from these incidents is the basic outcome of the overall plot of the movie, and of each of the constituent stories. An examination of some of these provides even clearer evidence of the basic message of tolerance in interpersonal relationships.

One of the most touching and poignant storylines involves a young Latino family trying to make it in a new, safer neighborhood. The fact that they are Latino doesn't matter in this regard; the desire to create a better life for one's children is universal. This illustrates the theme of the movie that all people are essentially the same in the ways that count. Of course, the Latino status of the father of this family (played by Michael Pena) matters quite a lot in his interactions with others in his world, but this is precisely the point -- despite the irrational belief in his difference and even dangerousness that other characters view him with, he is at heart just like any other father.

One of the most poignant scenes in the film occurs when his daughter is almost shot trying to save him. A complex set of circumstances allows this to happen -- her father tells her he is giving her is invisible magic cloak that stops bullets, making her fear for his safety when she sees a storeowner threatening him with a gun; meanwhile, the storeowner's daughter had loaded her father's gun with blanks without telling him. The various cuts that show the incident unfolding make this episode especially moving, and it can be easy to miss the parallels of the stories that coincide to make this moment turn out the way it does. The two families involved in bringing the events of this scene to fruition are both resented and even hated because of their supposed status as outsiders, and they find themselves in conflict with each other largely because of this. An even closer parallel is the father-daughter relationships that are so important on both sides -- no matter what one's race or ethnicity, families exists to help each other with their foibles.

There is no character in this movie (with the arguable exception of the little girl) that is completely without flaw. The two men in this scene are bother rather quick to anger; though this is understandable given the level of constant injustice they go through, the film is honest in its depiction of them as imperfect individuals. The same general concept is seen in reverse when Matt Dillon's character, a racist cop, outs himself at great risk to rescue an African-American woman whom, it turns out, is the same woman he sexually assaulted the previous night. His character is showed as deeply flawed, so much so that his partner wants to transfer away from him, and yet at heart he shows his equal and unthinking respect for human life regardless of race. The majority of the scenes that this character is in portray him negatively, and even after this scene of his heroic rescue it is difficult to like him. But this is one of the over-riding themes of Crash; it is not necessary to like someone to tolerate them, to have sympathy towards them, or to understand them. Every human being has positive and negative qualities, as well as different opinions about what exactly are positive and negative traits and different ways of viewing them in others. Perspective and experience makes for difference, not race.

Mat Dillon's character is only one example of the way in which this film creates a complex reaction to incredibly human characters that are both good and bad; heroic and horribly flawed. Another parallel example is Ryan Phillipe's character, who starts out as Matt Dillon's partner on the force. He is presented as a good and sympathetic character, who actually faces difficulties because he is not racist. By the end of the story, however, he ends up shooting an African-American male (the brother of a police detective, it so happens) that he had stopped to pick up, simply because he got spooked. This non-racist kills a man basically because he is black -- one of the many ironies and coincidences that occurs in the film.