A “Crash” Course in American Racial Ethics: Paul Haggis Didactic Film in a Humanities Context

Year 2008, Issue: 28, 63 - 86, 01.10.2008

Page Laws

Abstract

Crash is a film for anyone who has ever introduced a thought or statement with the phrase, “I’m not a racist, but . . .” The “but” is usually followed by the thinker or speaker’s latest observations of other people behaving badly in some thoroughly stereotypical way. This film, using intertwining narratives, follows for thirtysix hours, much of it in flashback, a pair of thirty-something L.A. detectives a black man and Latina woman and a pair of thirty-something married couples: one the yuppie District Attorney of L.A. and his bitchy wife both white and the other a buppie T.V. director and his bitchy wife both light-skinned black . We also follow a pair of young black carjackers one an Angry Young Black Man, the other more easy-going ; a Hispanic locksmith and his five-year old daughter; plus an Iranian man, his wife and their grown daughter. Peripheral characters—whites, blacks, Asians and Asian Americans— abound, and there are suffering older people, too: the white father of the racist white policeman and the black mother of the black detective. The elderly father has painful prostate problems while the elderly mother is a heroin addict who cannot locate her younger ne’er-do-well son. The rainbow cast interacts with one another as their individual plotlines intersect—sometimes violently.

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