"Crash"

[Jimmie Higgins]

Sorry if this has already come up...

Has anyone seen this movie? THis was the worst film about race I have ever seen... it's like the "white liberal" version of "Birth of a Nation".

Maybe I just didn't get this movie at all, but it seemd to be totally pessimistic ans superficila in its presentation of race in the US. It seemed to say 1) that everytone is rascist and predjudiced (hence racism dosn't really matter and can never be overcome) 2) Racial profiling of young black men is correct 3) Pigs are racist and sexist, but it's ok, because they might save you from a buring car one day.

What a piece of crap! And all the white liberals leave the theater feeling so good about themselves for having watched a "challenging film about race".

[Janus]

Yeah, I saw it and I also made a thread about it a while back as did ML.

Not everyone in the movie was racist, I thought that the whole point of the movie was to challenge racial stereotypes. For example, the cop shoots the African-American due to his false belief that the man was dangerous simply because he was black. I definitely wouldn't think that this movie was great in any sense but it does try to comment somewhat on the racial situation in the US.

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

I enjoyed the movie because I rarely get to see something dealing with race. Sure, it doesn't have a revolutionary message about race, but it discusses it in a liberal way - which is considered outrageous by many people. You have to keep in mind that the world doesn't revolve around us revolutionaries.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I don't care if it's not revolutionary (well, I wouldn't expect that anyway), but it was totally contrived and pessimistic.

Rich white lady:"Oh, my latino maid, you are my only real friend"

Maid: "Then give your best friend a raise and some frickin' healthcare goddamnit!"

THe movie "Storytelling" was better - well, the part when the maid burned down the house of her employer anyway!

[Invader Zim]

Gravedigger, the film wasn't remotely contrived or pessimistic. It was a collection of individual stories, some ended in a pessimistic fashion, others did not.



THe movie "Storytelling" was better

Are you talking about that Sema Blair movie? You critise Crash and then tell us to watch that movie? :huh: If you want to watch a good Solondz movie watch Happiness.

[Scottish_Militant]

I thought the film was very good, best i've seen in a while

[Jimmie Higgins]

Not contrived!?

...two young black men talking about how white people always suspect that they are going to mug them, and then suprise! they actually mug white people. So the rich white woman suspected they were going to rob her but didn't say anything beforehand because she wa afraid of not seeming P.C. so now she concludes she was right to suspect black youth in a white area

this movie defends and justifies racial profiling

It also suggests that cops who harass minorities and women are not all that bad because they might save someone someday.

The rest of the stories were a series of stereotypes and then they put a twist on each story.

But politically, the fims says that the source of racism is ourselves (human nature ... actually, in this movie, the isolated nature of urban living in LA) not things like inequality and poverty and so on. So social conflict comes out of people "crashing" into eachother in order to break out of the social alienation they feel. I think it's postmodern garbage.

I am not a fan of 'storytelling' or Solondz's other films, but like I said, at least the maid got revenge in that one.

A good film I saw recently that delt with themes of race and class was "Dirty Pretty Things".

[Janus]

two young black men talking about how white people always suspect that they are going to mug them, and then suprise! they actually mug white people. So the rich white woman suspected they were going to rob her but didn't say anything beforehand because she wa afraid of not seeming P.C. so now she concludes she was right to suspect black youth in a white area
That stereotype was presented and then taken down.


this movie defends and justifies racial profiling
I thought that the whole point of the car scene was to warn viewers of its dangers. The white cop developed that view due to the incident with the movie producer and the chase. When the hitchhicker whom he had picked up pulled into his pocket, the cop assumed that it was some type of weapon.


It also suggests that cops who harass minorities and women are not all that bad because they might save someone someday.
That is one part that isn't really clarfied on in the movie though some viewers may assume that the cop has a change of heart.

Gravedigger, it's a movie. People are bound to have different interpretations. At least it actually focuses on an important issue in order to spread awareness.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Of corse it's a movie and I don't expect Hollywood to have a radical viewpoint, but what's the point of a movie focusing on an important issue if people don't then debate the issues raised by the movie and the viewpoint of the movie itself?

If the point of a "challenging" movie is to simply stare at it for 2 hours and then sleep well that night with a good feeling of having "seen something that talked about important issues"... if the point of the movie is just to feel good, then I would rather just watch plain old escapism.

"FH 911" was a pretty well-made movie and entertaining, but it also spurred lots of debate... the same with "Brokeback Mountain", but the rest of these movies just seem like the point is to go and feel good because you saw something "important".

Of corse, the outcome is not in the hands of the filmakers (if people debate the issues they raise in their "issue-films" or not), but I'm just throwing it out there.

[Janus]

but what's the point of a movie focusing on an important issue if people don't then debate the issues raised by the movie and the viewpoint of the movie itself?
True but it's up to the people whether they want to discuss it or not, the movie producers are simply raising awareness concerning the issue as you stated.


but the rest of these movies just seem like the point is to go and feel good because you saw something "important".
Perhaps. Let's get our own cameras rolling and make our own film rather than sit through a lot of the Hollywood crap. :lol:

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 23 2006, 05:52 AM
3) Pigs are racist and sexist, but it's ok, because they might save you from a buring car one day.
I didn't see it, but that's exactly what I was wondering about.

In general: challenging films don't win Oscars. Films that reinforce what well-to-do liberals already think win Oscars.

One good movie about some of the complexities of race in the U.S: Lone Star, directed by John Sayles.

It has the line: "It's always heartening to see one prejudice defeated by a deeper prejudice."

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

Originally posted by [email protected] 26 2006, 11:06 PM
It has the line: "It's always heartening to see one prejudice defeated by a deeper prejudice."
hmm...
what exactly does that line refer to?

[anomaly]

I actually rather liked this movie. I thought it was fantastic. I see other people think differently. :P


Originally posted by Gravedigger
1) that everytone is rascist and predjudiced (hence racism dosn't really matter and can never be overcome)
Well, it just says a lot of people are racist. And the movie is all about racism being overcome.


2) Racial profiling of young black men is correct
The opening scene is more irony than anything else. But, again, the entire film is explicitly anti-racist. It just deals with racism of many varieties (white on black, white on Middle Eastern, black on white, black on Middle Eastern...)


3) Pigs are racist and sexist, but it's ok, because they might save you from a buring car one day.
More irony. The pig in question was racist, as was the black woman he rescues. But, because of that experience, they both learned that 'racism' is nonsensical. That whole scene deals with the idea that racism is superficial and illogical, and will be overcome in such a situation. Basically, we all may be of different colors, but we can all help each other out, too.

The entire film is deliciously ironic, and the statement, as I said, is explicitly anti-racist. It just faces reality--racism does exist, but it shouldn't exist.

Didn't you notice the ending? Ludacris saves all the Asian kids from basically being sold into slavery. Similar experiences happen to all the other characters. It is a fim about overcoming racism, and it is very anti-racist.

[Jimmie Higgins]

That was the problem. In the US, there is no black on white racism - unless you believe the likes of Rush Limbaugh and O'Reiley. Sure induvidual blacks hate the shit out of induvidual whites or whites in general, but this is not racism!

Even if every black person joined black separatist organizations, there would still not be any so-called "reverse-racism" because racism is a sytematic opression of one group, not just biotry or mistrust of one group or another. If the black middle class took over the US and then suddenly told banks to give blacks better home-lone rates and to devalue rates for whites because their neighborhoods tended to be bad investments and drove down home-prices, then we would begin to see anti-white racism. If the Black Bill Gates started moving manufactureing to tradditionally black areas of DC and Oakland and Compton and shutting down factories and offices in Seattle and Portand and San Jose, then we would see something that could be called anti-white racism.

I have lived in LA for many years and there is lots of anger and hatred and bigotry by workers of all stripes, but the problem is not "human nature" or existential lonliness or whatever. A recent study came out concluding that 70% of black males who did not graduate High School are either unemployed or incarcerated. At the same time LA is cutting back on schools in poor areas, will not build another one for more than a decade and is horribly underfunded... hmm, connection!?

This is what racism looks like in action. "Crash" is a movie that adresses "bigotry" and bigotry in a superficial way at that. Because it confuses bigotry with more systematic racism, I believe it is politically very terrible and leads to pessimistic liberal conclusions that "we all can't get along" because people just naturally hate eachother and that must be the source of racism. Maybe if we all got some tea and sat around and talked, racism would vanish... BS!

[Jimmie Higgins]

Originally posted by [email protected] 27 2006, 05:11 AM
Didn't you notice the ending? Ludacris saves all the Asian kids from basically being sold into slavery. Similar experiences happen to all the other characters. It is a fim about overcoming racism, and it is very anti-racist.
The movie wants to show that there's potential for good in each of us and there's potential for bad... so it's up to us people, we can just will away slavery and war and capitalism just by being good to eachother! Come on let us sing!

I made a sequel to "crash" which is all about thoes asian kids - it's more pessimistic than the first and it goes something like this:

The kids esscape and one runs away and becomes homeless until a member of the LAPD plants crack on him and shoots him under a freeway overpass. Two of the girls have to resort to prostitution to survive. 3 other kids become day laborers until they are detained by the INS. The last one finds someone who speaks his language and they give him a job and a cot to sleep on. He works for them for years and learns english and saves money little by little. Some of the money he is able to send home to his family. He meets a yound lady roughly his age who works for $7 and hour at a deli and eventually they get married. They each work 2 jobs to make ends meet and plan on having children. THe immigrents wife gets pregnant, but their undocumented status as well as their poverty prevents them from getting any medical attention and the wife becomes malnurished and the baby miscarrages. The wife never really gets over this and becomes very depressed and refuses to try for another kid. Then the minutemen are given governmental powers by Democratic president Bill Richards in 2016 and they use their forces to attack whats left of the union movement for supposedly planning on organizing immigrents. The official unions are destroyed and activist rank and file members are rounded up. Some scattered, but hardcore, members of the UFW and ILWU along with revolutionaries try and build a defensive coalition to organize workers and fight back while other induvidual undocumented workers go underground (including our protagonist and his depressed wife) and join the ALA, a maoist-leaning group of rebels who engage in small battles with the INS (now under direct control of the chancellor of the American Minutemen and National Gaurd Corps Pinkerton Agency for Homeland Security - as it is now called) and Cops. the revolutionary farm and dock workers organize their forces for a strike/occupation and confrontation at the docks - many are slaughtered and the back of the working class is finally broken. Now the ALA rebels are easily isolated and picked off little by little.

[Invader Zim]

Originally posted by Severian+Mar 27 2006, 05:06 AM--> (Severian @ Mar 27 2006, 05:06 AM)
[email protected] 23 2006, 05:52 AM
3) Pigs are racist and sexist, but it's ok, because they might save you from a buring car one day.
I didn't see it, but that's exactly what I was wondering about.

In general: challenging films don't win Oscars. Films that reinforce what well-to-do liberals already think win Oscars.

[/b]

I didn't see it, but that's exactly what I was wondering about.

Then what are you doing in this thread, other than proving you haven't seen it?



The movie wants to show that there's potential for good in each of us and there's potential for bad.

Bollocks, thats nothing like what the film was about. The film was about different extreme reactions to different scenario's the linking theme being racism. Your very pretentious attitude aside; which is apt for ridicule, when you manage to work out the message of the film, then maybe you can comment on it.

Ironically, you have managed to get the message for Schindlers list, rather than Crash.


so it's up to us people, we can just will away slavery and war and capitalism just by being good to eachother!

Why are you bringing slavery, capitalism and war into this? The film wasn't about any of those subjects? I guess you were just producing yet another strawman argument, because you are floundering in water which is far to deap for you.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Originally posted by Enigma+Mar 28 2006, 03:13 AM--> (Enigma @ Mar 28 2006, 03:13 AM) Why are you bringing slavery, capitalism and war into this? [/b]
I'll freely admit I am being totally belligerent about my dislike of this film - I'm also being silly, I mean, did you read my little treatment for "Crash 2: Electric Boogaloo"?

But come on, racism isn't connected to slavery, war and capitalism? Racism has everything to do with these things. Besides, my original point was mocking the idea that problems in society simply come from "human nature" and can be overcome if we look into our souls and act "good".

Several posts ago said what I though the movie was trying to say:


"I"
But politically, the fims says that the source of racism is ourselves (human nature ... actually, in this movie, the isolated nature of urban living in LA) not things like inequality and poverty and so on. So social conflict comes out of people "crashing" into eachother in order to break out of the social alienation they feel. I think it's postmodern garbage.

I'm no more a movie expert than anyone else, so if you think it was saying trying to say something different about racism, let's hear it.

[pandora]

[QUOTE=Gravedigger,Mar 23 2006, 05:52 AM] 3) Pigs are racist and sexist, but it's ok, because they might save you from a buring car one day.
I didn't see it, but that's exactly what I was wondering about.

In general: challenging films don't win Oscars. Films that reinforce what well-to-do liberals already think win Oscars.


My thoughts exactly. He felt her up, she should have kicked his ass in the balls after they escaped. Same old bullshit. Little lady don't beat up that White Father Figure Officer Pig who molests you you may need him some day.

I guess resistance to this is why I often bite the hand that feeds me. Not because I hate them, but I am fiercely independent and need to be as a sexual abuse survivor to feel safe. Although I appreciate when someone is kind and compassionate to me, I get scared by the system of give and take, and favors, because it has historically been for me and many women a form of sexual repression and ordinary oppression to keep me quiet.

One of the reasons I fear silence is for me it does equal death. For some reason like many of my Act Up friends if I don't act with integrity suicide is right around the corner, I must speak or self destruct I have no choice but to tell the truth. For this I will probably be hated all my life by those in power. I can only hope that those with some power whom I count as my friends understand my need for honesty in creating global change.

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

so i finally saw the movie
as a piece of social commentary, i completely denounce this film as bourgeois trash

for the simple fact that the black power movement is openly and blatantly condemned. First the guy is saying how much he admires Huey P. Newton and Fred Hampton, and the next moment he's committing some horrid act of violence and gross negligence against a helpless crash victim. WTF?

Also note that all the white people in that movie, at some point or another, committ disgusting acts of racism or say incredibly racist things.

As a movie, however, it was excelent. Great filmography, screenplay, music, acting, etc. Don Cheadle pwns.

[kjt1981]

thought it was absolute shite myself - corny as hell. badly made, about as subtle as a french kiss from Mike Tyson, and the acting was rubbish. im sure there have been better films about race issues than that?! surely? American History X?