...In the 2005 block buster movie titled “Crash” one of the three sociological perspectives can be observed in this movie regarding to equality and life in America. Set in Los Angeles, this movie probed social and cultural stereotypes, race and social biases, and the conflict perspective that often ensues as a result. The blatant manner in which these sociological issues are revealed is often startling for the viewer, but the shocking nature is intentional in order to promote self-examination and reflection. The conflict perspective is presented in this movie dons on tension between groups over power or the allocation of resources, including housing, money, access to services and political representation. This movie uses tension to advance the story line of each character forcing them into positions of conflict as well as dependence, and emphasizes the status of equality in America. In order to progress to a more equal society it is essential that Americans examine the biases presented in the movie Crash, especially those most often seen in modern society such as stereotyping, hate crimes, color blind racism and ethnocentrism. Stereotypes are defined as unreliable generalizations about all members of a group that do not recognize individual differences within the group. From the opening scene the movie depicts a car crash involving two police detectives and an Asian woman. The stereotyping begins immediately when the Asian woman tells the police officer writing the traffic report...
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...Final Film Critique: Crash (2004) Jay Dennis ENG 225 Introduction to Film Instructor: Cicely Young April 13, 2014 Final Film Critique Draft: Crash (2004) There are many different critical elements and artistic aspects to examine when analyzing and critiquing any film. In 2004 Paul Haggis wrote and directed the award winning drama Crash about various intertwining experiences involving racial relations and the socioeconomic status levels of the diverse cast of characters. This film addresses how humans being deal with real life circumstances and addresses how racial stereotypes and prejudices impact our society by causing a separation of customs, ignoring human and civil rights, and demonstrating how racism can cause moral, cultural and economical suffering. This detailed essay will address the cinematic elements employed throughout the movie, and provide a critical analysis on the various components and techniques used to create this compelling and powerful film. Crash is a movie that involves several different stories and plots that all manage to somehow connect the characters to each other in a series of events that take place during two days in California. America’s ever-growing melting pot is distinctly represented in the film as the audience is introduced to a black LAPD detective, two black mischievous car thieves, a white district attorney and his prejudice wife, a white racist beat cop and his neophyte partner, a black Hollywood director and his wife, an...
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...Social Constructs Found In the Movie “Crash” The aptly named movie, “Crash”, is a depiction of how humans crash into each other, collisions in personality, attitudes, and understanding. In the opening scene we are introduced to the premise of the movie as the man says “We crash into each other, just so we can feel something.” This is the thesis statement for the movie, setting up the idea that our interactions with each can be as traumatic and life changing as a vehicle collision. Each character in the movie played a role in showing the viewer the different influences and behaviors the numerous cultures have towards their very own culture and that of others’. Ethnocentrism, prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination are the core themes presented in the movie “Crash.” At the very beginning of the movie, two African American men are seen leaving a coffee shop, Anthony, the obviously more dominant of the two, and Peter. Anthony is complaining about the poor service they received, blaming the poor service on being African American. Peter is quick to point out that the waitress was also black. Anthony expresses to Peter that black women can also think in stereotypes believing that they, as black men, would not her leave a tip thus not putting forth the effort to provide them with good service. This is an example of stereotyping within a culture. This ties in to the social-conflict theory in that the woman did not see them as worthy of her effort because they would not enhance her...
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...2014 Racial Profiling and Stereotypes Issues In a city such as Los Angeles, racial profiling takes places constantly throughout the day. In this film, “Crash”, Paul Haggis follows the lives of over 10 people from different backgrounds, and how they are faced with racial profiling or stereotypes. This movie is not only thought provoking, it shows the reality of such a complex world. The director, Haggis, shows how each character is faced with racial profiling/stereotypes and how it creates a snowball effect in each of their lives, as well as affecting the lives of others. The film “Crash” assumes that profiling is a bad but that people do it anyways. Self-serving attributions, revenge, victimizing, scapegoat, etc., can motivate stereotypes. Haggis wants us to feel guilty by watching all the different stereotypes that exist in today’s world; he wants us to realize not to judge a person by their physical appearance and/or race. Even Haggis illustrates anger and sympathy towards people that use stereotypes on other people. Most will say that because we are human it allows us to be imperfect but it being human doesn’t allow us to discriminatory towards other imperfect human beings. Racial profiling is when a person is judged by their race or ethnicity. The movie allows it’s viewers to see how racial profiling is a moral issues. It is projected be people of all races and classes. We can still see in today’s world people are still being judged; meaning stereotypes still exist. In the film...
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...Crash: A Disturbing Mirror on Humanity Does everyone hate or dislike a certain type of person? Do people continuously make snap judgments of others based upon their appearance? Do people really believe in stereotypes they hear about other ethnicities? Are individuals naturally afraid of unfamiliar cultures? These questions are explored by Director Paul Haggis in the provocative 2005 film Crash. Set in contemporary Los Angeles, Crash is an explosive exploration of prejudice. The plot of Crash consists of a series of inter-related vignettes about people of assorted ethnicities and socio-economic groups who come into contact with one another—often violently--over a 36-hour period. In the film the interaction of the characters causes viewers to question stereotypes while at the same time acknowledging the grain of truth they contain. Because the vignettes are all related, with characters in one reappearing in another, viewer are able to see various sides of a character: a character shown committing a racist act in one scene is depicted in an act of kindness in another. This structure stresses the interrelationship of human-beings and underscores the complexities of prejudice and racism. The title of the movie Crash is a metaphor for the content. The most obvious meaning of the word crash in contemporary society is an auto collision, and the movie begins and ends with car accidents. But the idea of collision, as it pertains to the film, has a much broader application. This...
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...Racism in "Crash" Physical Characteristics and racial differences are distinguishing traits that keep people in our world apart from each other. Crash is a movie that showcases prejudice and racial stereotypes. The movie is set in Los Angeles which is a city with the cultural mix of almost every ethnicity. Crash is a perfect analogy of how the different people intersect with others in society. The movie crash shows differences between the lives of different people. It displays the interactions of several multiethnic groups such as African American, Caucasians, Asians, Latinos, and Arabs. All of the groups are striving to overcome their fears as they weave in and out of each other’s lives. They are all tied by an invisible chain of events, so the movie shows how we all have an effect on one another whether we realize it or not. The basic premise is that we can not live our lives without crashing into others. Others may look different and come from all walks of life but ultimately we are all the same. We are ultimately connected and the sooner we realize this, the better society as a whole will be. The opening scene begins with a crash and the statement is made that we don’t touch each other enough, so we have to crash just to interact. We need each other to survive, so connections have to be made. The ultimate goal should be to touch each other’s lives in a positive and lovely way and not to violently “crash” into one another. This makes one question their own personal prejudices...
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... Typically people in society are somewhat discreet about their racism and it is not something they openly admit to. The movie Crash, daringly tackles the issues of intercultural communication, and race in an unconventional way. It takes racism and makes it an open conversation amongst the characters to ensure the viewers can clearly identify each characters racial bias. As the characters in this movie communicate, there is frequent use of racial slurs, profanity, as well as racially driven insults and stereotypes, to further exaggerate the bigotry present in the film. Crash provides a series of examples that show just how powerful effective and ineffective communication can be when it comes to social relations. This film touches on various communication theories and concepts, in which many of the scenarios presented in Crash can be explained. These theories and concepts include: symbolic interaction theory (self concept), assumptions of communication accommodation theory (indirect stereotyping), assumptions of expectancy violations theory (violation valence), and cultural communication. Synopsis Director Paul Haggis’s, 2005 explosive film, Crash, tells a very provocative story of how absolute strangers can impact each others lives in both negative and positive ways. In a seemingly coincidental chain of events the multicultural characters of this movie are in one way or another connected. Within a thirty – six hour period in Los Angeles California, about eight main characters...
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...Bryant Smith February 7, 2012 Cultural Diversity Crash Movie Paper The movie Crash is a drama film that shows you several life experiences of different people living in Los Angeles. All the characters in the film are somehow inter-related to one another. A police detective who mother is strung out on drugs and has a brother who likes to kill, two car thieves, a white district attorney, a racist cop, a black Hollywood director, a full Persian descent father, and a Hispanic locksmith are all the characters in the film. This film has some sociological problems that occur everyday in the United States. One of the problems in our society is institutional discrimination. Institutional discrimination refers to the unfair, indirect treatment of an individual embedded in the operating procedures, policies, laws, or objectives of large organizations. This situation can be recognized as widespread because certain jobs are all over America and therefore they might perform the same type of discrimination to somebody. One example of this would be when the racist police and his younger co-worker pulled the successful Hollywood director and his wife over after just retrieving that somebody was car jacked. The Hollywood director was driving the same type of car that was reported stolen. However, the police operator gave the racist cop the stolen car license plate number so to pull these people over was no connection in their earlier call. It was the same exact car but had a different...
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...Crash Misty Ward University of Phoenix August 15, 2009 The movie Crash interweaves several stories during a 36 hour period in Los Angeles involving a variety of characters, an up and coming police detective with a two time felon for a brother and a drugged addicted mother, two car thieves that constantly discuss race and society, the white district attorney and his typical stay at home wife, a white veteran cop who does not hide his racist feelings from his young non racist partner. Also in the movie is a successful Hollywood director who coming home from a party with his wife crass paths with the white racist cop, a Persian-immigrant father who buys a gun to protect his store, a hardworking Hispanic locksmith and his young daughter trying to escape a dangerous neighborhood. Through what could be considered daily coincidental interactions, the movie seeks to describe and examine not only racial tensions, but the stereotyping that each ethnic group faces on a daily basis. Crash address the various types of diversity in America by illustrating basic stereotypes of each character’s cultural background for which they represent. The movie also address how society handle racism on a daily basis through interaction with each other, and how the view various races. For example the white district attorney and his wife were walking down the street. At the same time two African American men were walking towards them When the D.A’s wife sees them walking towards them, her immediate...
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...Crash Kendra Koelsch SOC1101: Human Behavior Instructor Robyn Milliken-Setser August 17th, 2015 The movie Crash (2005) is intended to be a nature of life in America in regards to equality. It is set in Los Angeles, it is about social and cultural stereotypes, race, and the conflict that often ensues as a result. The movie is presented in the conflict perspective which according to Richard T. Schaefer (2009) "assumes that social behavior is best understood in terms of tension between groups over power including housing, money, access to services and political representation". Crash uses tension to the story line of each character forcing them into positions of conflict as well as dependence, and emphasizes the status of equality in America. In order to progress to a more equal society it is essential like Americans presented in the movie Crash, especially those most often seen in modern society such as stereotyping, hate crimes, etc… Schaefer defines stereotypes as "unreliable generalizations about all members of a group shows a car crash involving two police detectives and an Asian woman. You can see from the beginning of the movie that the stereotyping begins immediately when the Asian woman tells the police officer that is writing the traffic report that "Mexicans don’t know how to drive. She brakes too fast!" (Haggis, 2005) A verbal struggle ensues between the Latina police detective, who is driving and the Asian woman. RIA mocks the lady about her incorrect pronunciation...
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...Rowland CRASH: SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES “Sociology is the study of human behavior in society” (Kimmel and Aronson 2012). Sociologists study humans in their environments and the social interactions that occur in those environments in order to develop theories of how human behavior is shaped by groups of people and or how life is affected by those individuals. Paul Haggis’ movie Crash (Haggis 2005) contains both social and multicultural differences that we as humans experience in our society and in our world everyday. In the movie, he takes us on a journey through a sociological process made up of racism, social class, and gender which all play roles in stereotypes and assumptions we make about others. Crash is set in the city of Los Angeles, California as it continues to grow as a multicultural society, exploring how racial intolerance and prejudice are problems for all of the United States. The movie Crash (Haggis 2005), explains many of the sociological concepts that explain how one’s behavior or actions can have a direct effect on another persons life, shaping it profoundly and changing the outcome forever. The first few lines of the movie basically set the sociological tone for the film. Graham, played by Don Cheadle says, “It’s the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each...
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...The American drama film, “Crash”, which is co-written, produced and directed by Paul Haggis, highlights many social psychology concepts. One of such concepts is stereotypes. Stereotypes as term by Baron, Branscombe and Bryne (2006), refer to the beliefs about social groups in terms of the traits or characteristics that they are deemed to share. Stereotypes are cognitive frameworks that influence the processing of social information (p.571). In the movie, stereotypes which are distinctively directed towards race are evident. The Whites and Persians all created stereotypes based on race; thus, the aim of the paper is to discuss how this social psychology concept is illustrated in the movie. Firstly, stereotype is evident in the scene where the Persian man (Farhad), along with his daughter, visits a shop with the intention of purchasing a firearm. The owner of the shop, a white Caucasian, refuses to sell the Farhad the gun and assumes he is an Arab. The shop owner goes as far as to theorize that Farhad may even be a terrorist; this is evident when the shop owner states: “Yo Osama, play the jihad on your own time”. When Farhad tries to declare that he is Persian, he is thrown out of the store by the security. In this scene, Farhad is being stereotyped because of his accent and the fact that he does not speak English well, but in fact, Farhad is only interested in having a gun for his safety. In addition to the encounter with the shop owner at the gun store, Farhad is once again...
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...Stereotypes are the organizational factors that virtually shape the way we think in 20th century America. They somehow manage to categorize some of life's most complex matters into nice distinct sections. Classifications and organization, at first glance seem to be useful in distinguishing various aspects of modern life. However, these grouping methods can be very inaccurate, leaving erroneous ideas in the minds of citizens on a global level. Stereotypes, though originating as convenient sorting mechanisms, instead, influence our thinking process. Crash depicts numerous characters and brings them together through carjacking, car accidents and shootings. The movie Crash represents the nature of race relations in America. Most of the characters depicted in the film are racially opinionated in some way, and become mixed up in conflicts which force them to examine their own discrimination. The films show how one stereotype, one miscommunication or lack of communication, could turn into an unstable situation. Through these characters' connections and lack of communication, the film tries to show prejudice and racism is frequent and common in present America. Problems of race and sex make a group of strangers in Los Angeles to psychologically and physically crash in the drama. Graham is a police officer whose brother is a street criminal, and it hurts him to know his mother cares more about his good-for-nothing brother than him. Rick is an L.A. district attorney whose...
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... how at work, when I treat a Persian or Armenian patient I immediately expect them to request royalty treatment as if they all had a sense of entitlement. These are merely thoughts I would never act upon, yet there they are in back on my mind like an old blood stain on my scrub top that I will never be able to get rid of. These are thoughts based on biases and misperception that sometimes I tend to forget about, and sometimes, it takes a good someone else for me to be reminded. The film Crash that came out on 2004 cannot depict any better how many of us, if not most of us, see the other cultures. The location where the story takes place also cannot be any better. It takes place in Los Angeles where the lives of these Angelinos crossed paths causing a collision of race and cultural prejudice. The director, Paul Haggis, did a nice job reminding all of us, especially me, as how we treat each other among cultures letting our judgment be mislead the could be acts of racism. Although the movie may push reality beyond its limits, it is something that to some extend happens every day and cannot be overlooked. Sometimes while reflecting on the film and its message, I found myself drifting away remembering the times that I was judged based on my personal appearance and cultural background. I also recollected those times I have done the same and judge others based on their color or race. My most significant memory is one of a sweet white lady that was a regular patient for the doctor...
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...The movie “Crash” and its intercultural sub-context Intercultural communication occurs when people or groups from different cultures communicate. The actual process of listening and responding to people with various cultural backgrounds can be difficult. The movie Crash demonstrates a number of diversity problems and intercultural barriers. It tells a story of multiple different individuals and families and how they are all intertwined, even if they want to think they are not. Most obviously, the characters come from different races, but race set aside they are each a part of different subcultures of the Los Angeles area. Crash used excellent interpretations that showed how pre-judging and stereotyping have the power to influence other people and their own behavioral patterns. Three scenes in particular stood out to me as examples in which intercultural barriers were present. The Hispanic man that was a locksmith with his child, the Caucasian police officer (played by Matt Dillon) and his judgment of an African American female (played by Thandie Newton), and finally the scene of a notable instance occurs between a Caucasian gun storeowner and a Persian man and his daughter. Other people that were portrayed in the movie had a different opinion, but the Mexican locksmith was a man who was very family-oriented, docile, and good-hearted. Throughout the movie though, he was viewed as a bum, gang-member, and menace to society. The people in the movie formed their pre-determined...
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