An Analysis of Racial Tensions in Crash

I think the main theme of the movie is racism occurs between all races and anybody from any race can be racist towards anyone from a different race. Racism takes many forms and can happen in many places. It includes prejudice, discrimination, and hatred directed at someone because of their color, ethnicity, or national origin. The movie shows racism between the races an example is a Mexican locksmith and the Persian store owner, the locksmith was changing the store owners’ locks and told the store owner that is was the door that was broken and not the lock they go on to argue back and forth, the store owner says rude racist comments towards the locksmith.

Racism is something that has been going on since the beginning of time it is the belief in the superiority of one race over another, which often results in discrimination and prejudice towards people based on their race or ethnicity. The word crash means “collide violently with an obstacle or another vehicle”, which we see in the movie four times with the main characters getting into car crashes but also crashing into each other lives whether they want to or not.

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We see within 24 hours all our characters come together somehow or another.

Foreshadowing is a be a warning or indication of a future event. We see many examples of this in the movie. In the opening scene we arrive at the site of Graham and Ria's car crash, upon exiting the vehicle, Graham finds a grey Puma shoe in the brush on the roadside.

This scene foreshadows the discovery of the death of Graham's brother Peter. This scene relates to our theme of racism because here you see a young black male who is shot by a young white police officer who is off duty. The white officer gives the black man a ride when the black man starts to laugh and reach into his pocket, the white officer thinks it’s a gun and shots, but we then see that the black was pulling out the St. Christopher the same one the white officer had on his car dash. The white officer thought that the black man had a gun and it was that stereotype that all black people are thieves and have guns that got him killed.

The full circle is through a series of developments that lead back to the original source, position, and situation or to a complete reversal of the original position. This happens in the movie for some of the characters like Jean Cabot a rich housewife and married to the District Attorney. She is aggravated with her Latina housekeeper, Maria, daily. She snaps at Maria for failing to put away the clean dishes that remain in the dishwasher, and she calls her friends to complain about Maria’s long visit to the grocery store. These behaviors indicate that Jean resents her housekeeper. However, when Jean falls down the stairs and is stranded awaiting assistance, it is Maria who comes to her rescue. Although Jean calls her husband and her friends, they are unavailable to come to her aid. Following this event, Jean recognizes that Maria is the “only true friend” she has. Another example of full circle is officer John Ryan. He first pulls over a black couple and sexually assaulted the woman, later you see him being racist towards Shaniqua Johnson and medical insurance manager, by him being racist to Shaniqua his dad suffers by not getting the help he needs. Next we see the black woman that he sexually assaulted get in a car crash with the first responder being officer John Ryan, the car was flipped over and her seat belt was stuck making her unable to get out, officer Ryan comes to help noticing that it is the black woman she goes on to stop him from helping her making his job of getting her out very difficult almost causing both of them to die but thankfully they get out just in time. We see that by him being racist and sexually assaulting her that it in the end it almost killed him and that it wasn’t right to do what he did.

Character development can refer to the change a character undergoes during the course of a story. In the movie Crash we see many different characters all of which change in some way or another. An example of a character changing would be Jean Cabot a rich housewife and married to the District Attorney who goes from insinuating that she isn't racist to calling her locksmith an 'amigo' and referring to his friends as 'homies,' thereby stereotyping him as a thug. She also falls down the stairs injuring her ankle. Jean calls her 'friend' who won't take her to the hospital, since she is having a massage, but Jean's housekeeper Maria drives her even after Jean is extremely rude to Maria. When this happens, Jean gives Maria a big hug and says she is her best friend. In that moment we see Jean change from a racist house wife to someone who’s just scared, and she realizes that she is useless in her own life. Another character who changed is officer Tom Hansen ex partners with officer John Ryan. He tries very hard to not be racist ad stereotype people he even stopped being partners with John Ryan because he was racist, but he then goes on to shoot a young black man, because he was scared that he had a gun, but he just had the same St. Christopher that Tom had on his dashboard. Tom tries so hard not to believe in the stereotypes but then finally did and he was wrong. We see his character develop not in a good way but in away that was how everyone else acts.

Flashbacks is are interruptions that writers do to insert past events, in order to provide background or context to the current events of a narrative. We see that in the movie the whole thing is one big flashback that all leads back to the opening scene. During the movie we see that the whole thing is one big flashback that leads back to the opening scene of where we arrive at the site of Graham and Ria's car crash, and the murder of Peter the brother of detective Graham. The whole movie is trying to show us how we got where we were when we first started the movie, but once we see how Peter dies, we jump to the present where we see Graham and Ria in the hospital with Grahams mother crying, she blames the death of Peter on Graham. We also see Anthony the friend of Peter helping the Chinese people and Shaniqua Johnson getting into a car crash is the ending scene.

I like to think that this movie helped people see that we have racism going on between all races and not just black and whites. The events that go on during this film are horrifying and disgusting, yet it is all stuff that happens everyday in our world that not many people like to talk about, but we must in order to stop it. The movie shines a light on the stuff we don’t talk about and opens everyone’s eyes to the fact that all this stuff is an issue and it needs to come to an end.