Essay on Crash: Racial Injustices, Socioeconomic Status, and Human Interaction

The 2004 film Crash is written and directed by Paul Haggis and concerns various intertwisting experiences that touch on racial relations as well as the various levels of socioeconomic status in the lives of the characters. It deals with the manner in which human interact and react to different life situations, tacking the way stereotypes and racial injustices affect society. The film supposes that they do so by disregarding human and civil rights and sourcing the division of customs. Additionally, they seek representation for how racism can source economic, moral and cultural distress. The following essay is an examination of the cinematic components of the film with a special emphasis on bias among individual characters regardless of their background or social upbringing.

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Crash engages more than a few diverse narratives as well as plots directing towards somehow hooking up the characters to one another in a sequence of occurrences taking place through 48 hours in California (Higgis, 2004). The city represents the ever-rising melting pot of the United States of America. Some of the notable characters include a white racist hit cop and his trainee partner and a black detective of LAPD. Additionally, the viewer meets a blue-collar Hispanic man together with an adolescent daughter and two mischievous black car thieves. Moreover, the viewer interacts with a white district lawyer and his discriminative wife and a furious owner of Persian shop and his family (Higgis, 2004). Finally, a Black director of Hollywood and his wife also form essential characters in the movie.

Thematically, the film connects to various features of bias and prejudice. The primary theme that accrues from bias and prejudice is racism. One of the characters is a white officer of law enforcement whose father lost his business because of affirmative action. Another character is an African American who spurts the provocative expressions of Black power of the 1970s. Additionally, stereotyping is another thematic element prominent in the movie. For example, the DA's white wife suspects that the locksmith is a member of a gang owing to his background and affiliation. The conflict of cultures accrues from the fact that the owner of an Iranian store construes the well-meant comment of the locksmith concerning a dented door as a shakedown for additional money.

The film highlights the issues of race and how they shape and influence cultural bias among societies. For example, Detective Graham Waters is presented as a racially insensitive person and he is paired up with another racially insensitive person, detective Rio who happens to be his sexual partner as well as a partner at work (Higgis, 2004). The two are almost a perfect match because while he makes insensitive comments about her race, she makes similar remarks about Asians and it seems okay for them even though they are both racially biased. The viewers see the two argue when Waters says that Rio is Mexican. Rio defends herself by saying her father is Puerto Rican while her mother is Salvadoran (Higgis, 2004). It remains unclear how she continues to sustain association with waters after he makes an utterly racially insensitive comment about her.

The association and connection between detective Waters and Ria reveal the dynamics of classic conditioning under one of the theories of counseling, behavioral theory. The theory is based on the stipulation that behavior is learned (Japutraa et al., 2019). For example, the insensitive comments Waters makes about the Ria's race and the comments Ria makes in response reveals that the two characters have adopted the wrong racial perceptions about each other's perspectives. Additionally, evidence of cognitive theory is presented in the way Waters' thinking towards Hispanics changes his behavior towards Ria. On the other hand, it remains unclear why Ria maintains a connection with the detective after his derogatory remarks about Hispanics and the audience gets the impression that it might only have been due to their working relations.

Waters is keen to maintain a distant relationship with his mother. She finds her to be a woman who believes that her younger son, Peter must be a saint because she hardly knows what he does in her absence. However, Peter is a carjacking criminal who carries on vile activities and expects protection from his brother. Her mother constantly begs Waters to find and save his brother because she believes that he is not beyond redemption. Her bias towards her son prevents her from seeing the evil things he does as they are and makes her think he deserves to be given special treatment by virtue of being her son. She blames Waters for his inaction as if Peter is his responsibility. The naivety and Waters' mother makes the viewer understand why he chooses to keep her at a distance.

Although the mother of Waters believes her son is selfish and self-centered, her bias prevents her from seeing the kind acts he goes out of his way to do for her. For example, he secretly fills up her refrigerator with food and maintains a tidy lifestyle for her. Her disdainful attitude does not allow her to see his acts of kindness when it would have been easier for him to avoid her altogether. Her bias makes her assume that Peter is the one filling her refrigerator and maintaining her lifestyle. Waters understands that her mother misunderstands his actions and does not care to explain to her the true situation. The viewer may think that perhaps he would like to maintain her belief about Peter. Although she would hardly be thrilled to discover it, the truth still remains a mystery.

The relationship between Peter and her mother as well as that of Waters and her mother can best be epitomized by the psychoanalysis theory. Sigmund Freud emphasized the significance of inborn drives that determine later development and personality (Japutraa et al., 2019). For example, the connection the mother has to Peter prevents her from thinking that he could be a criminal and to an extent makes her believe that Waters should help him even though he is not in any way his responsibility. Recent research into the field stresses the essentiality of the connection between therapists and patients. All the above processes constitute the concepts proposed by Freud regarding personality traits like the ego, id, and superego as well as the mental functions of which we may not be aware.

Conclusion

Overall, the film, Crash, deals with racial class and individual bias by the way it depicts situations of various characters. It does so in an interesting and thought-provoking manner that leaves the viewer understanding that everyone has one form of bias or another regardless of their background or convictions. Besides individual character expressions, this movie uses the right cinematic constituents to supplement the characters' expressions including the soundtrack, editing, camera movement, sound, lighting, and location.

References

Higgis, P. (Director). (2004). Crash [Motion Picture].

Japutraa, A., Maria, S., Loureiro, C., Molinillo, S., & Ekinci, Y. (2019). Travelers' mindsets and the theory of planned behavior. Tourism Management Perspectives, 30(1), 193-196. doi.org/10.1016/j.tmp.2019.02.011