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The scene where Ryan touches Cameron's wife shows us that there is this distorted belief white authority posses: that they can do whatever it is they want because they have been given the authority of the law and the authority of society as a superior race. The white authority uses this to its own advantage, to pursue its own desires and interests, all the while denying others the respect that they deserve as human beings.
The problem with the depiction of law enforcement in the movie is that everything seems to be smoothed out by personal acts of kindness -- and tolerance. Officer Jack Ryan saves Christine at the end of the movie -- even though she initially doesn't accept his help -- and we are meant to believe that years of intolerance has been washed away because he decides to act like a good human being (or not even good -- but decent). Overall, the film does not do a good job of depicting the problem of racism in America; it is much too simplistic and this is especially true when it comes to the law enforcement officials and how they have been renowned for acting intolerably and unjust with persons of color (e.g., Rodney King).
One of the best parts of the film and one that is the most realistic, arguably, is where Cameron decides that he has had...
He has lost the respect of his wife because he didn't do anything when she was being assaulted; he has let them -- the officers -- take away his own (and his wife's) dignity. When Cameron and Anthony are pulled over after being chased by police, Cameron points a gun at officers who are aiming back at them. He yells to them, "Here I am...," and Cameron is able to take back his dignity in a sort of Malcolm X kind of way. Cameron was an upstanding citizen before his run-in with the police and he is forced to act in a way that isn't who he is because he has had his liberties jeopardized by corrupt law enforcement officials.
The movie tries to give us reason to justify why Jack Ryan acts the way he does, but the fact is that there is nothing in the world that could happen to him to give him the power to take away the freedoms of someone else -- as a police officer or as a civilian. This sort of simplistic depiction of how people become intolerant is rather insulting to Americans -- and, one would think -- especially to African-Americans. The whole thing is sort of making light of hundreds of years of factual inequality and downright abuse at the hands of white people.
Overall, the film glossed over the critical aspects of law enforcement that need to be dealt with in this country if we are ever to have a more civil society where those in power serve and protect like they are supposed to.
Crash Paul Haggis's 2005 drama Crash is a vehicle for exploring social tensions in the United States. Although a huge portion of the film is devoted to race relations, prejudices, and stereotypes, an important meta-narrative also permeates Crash. That is, the film subverts the traditional Hollywood norm to "present working people not only as unlettered and uncouth but also as less desirable and less moral than other people," as Parenti puts
The author writes "since the disruption of the colonized/colonizer mind-set is necessary for border crossings to not simply reinscribe old patterns, we need strategies for decolonization that aim to change the minds and habits of everyone involved in cultural criticism," so that black women are not, like the author says she was in her twenties, "inwardly homeless." (5; 9) This state of inward homelessness, or lacking a coherent identity
It is about person-to-person interactions, and though many -- most, even -- of the interactions in Crash are racially charged, race itself is not actually the focus. Haggis takes a far more narrow and specific view of the issue, according to UC Davis' Hsuan L. Hsu writing in Film Criticism. He points out that it is not actually any racial factor that leads to the stereotyped views helped by
The old man is involved in a bad accident with his white van, and his wife has an accident on her way to the hospital. We see her being angry and mean at the accident and with the nurse in the hospital, but our feelings are reversed when we understand the pressure and strain she is under having thought that her husband was dead. Then comes the ultimate reversal
Jean believes that because the locksmith is Hispanic, tattooed, and has a shaved head, he is a gang member and will immediately sell a copy of the Cabot house key to one of his associates thereby putting the Cabot's in jeopardy once again even though he is not a menace. While the "menace to society" archetype influences perceptions of minorities, the "manipulator" prototype influences behavior. For instance, Officer Ryan is
' Anthony, an actual resident of the street, sneers at white perceptions of how blacks talk in the media: "You think whites go around callin' each other honky all day?" While Anthony's theft of the SUV is clearly shown to be destructive, socially as well as morally, the film also shows how black inner city views of law and order have evolved in such a negative and polarized fashion: the