crash movie essay racism

“Crash” by Paul Haggis: Sociological Concepts Essay

Introduction, sociological concepts in the movie, works cited.

‘Crash’, the movie was released in 2005 achieving recognition on a global scale. Racial discrimination in Los Angeles is the main topic of this movie. This paper will cover all social issues highlighted in the movie along with links found with social theories.

Ethnocentrism, racial discrimination, and discrimination are thought provoking requisites. Many questions arise as these terms are pondered and these questions are answered in the context of races and genders. ‘Crash’ involves fear, racism, ethnocentrism and lack of communication. the central idea followed in the movie surrounds fear of being inferior and the power of superiors being enforced upon people from inferior races. Races and ethnicities define these superiorities and inferiorities. Racism affects everyone in a society. These effects range from psychological to sociological.

Many sociological concepts have been covered in the movie, “Crash”. The movie was released in 2005. It is characterized as a German/American drama, produced by Paul Haggis. The film highlights racial discrimination in Los Angeles. Sociological concepts include race, social class, ethnocentrism and gender. Plot and themes of the movie are undoubtedly thought provoking and implications of socialist theories given by Durkheim and Marx can be observed in the plot.

‘Crash’ has strongly highlighted a community, which is multi-cultural and is dominated by two main races, blacks and whites. Since the 50s, whites are obsessed with their anti-black ideology that surrounds blacks being a curse and a threat to the white society. These ideologies have been practically implemented in the movie and numerous scenes show that whites prove to be superior to the blacks. In order to prove their superiority; derogatory remarks, insults, physical and verbal abuse are used against black minorities. Criminal mindedness takes over the minds of these whites to let blacks down to be evidence of their unwanted existence (Sutherland and Feltey 56).

Fear has been highlighted as a central sociological concept in the movie. Los Angeles is surrounded by lights and glamour, but fear is in the air. Different races live in Los Angeles and these races are categorized. Some races are ‘superior’ to others causing lack of communication between these races. Communication is not dependent on races and ethnicities but in the movie, fear is because of a lack of communication between this cross-cultural gathering. Thus, fear is cross cultural and based on ethnicities. Black people fear whites, American whites fear Hispanics and Arabs.

Violence And Crime: Conflict Theory

Derogatory remarks against races and ethnicities can create frustrations that can lead to heightened violence and crimes. In the movie, a storeowner named Farhad with his daughter Dorri, are mistakenly thought to be as Arabs and are insulted, harassed and threatened by the whites. Not only this, racially motivated social groups in the community destroy his store. These insults increase frustration in Farhad and he targets a Mexican American by shooting him, ironically with blank bullets. As no one is injured, this makes Farhad revisits his racially motivated behavior against an innocent man.

Here, social theory that comes into action is the conflict theory. This is shown as all violent impulses evidenced by Farhad were because of his justice seeking behavior and to gain power in the white dominated society where he and people belonging to other races are insulted and threatened. Farhad faces long tem exploitation and oppression along with long-term threats from people from ‘superior’ races and social groups. Violence for seeking justice was a result of his frustration to seek acceptance in a ‘superior’ community (Vera and Feagin 67).

Social Class Differences

Movie depicts these social issues in the characters of Anthony and Peter. These two people steal from other people, including blacks, in order to make a living for themselves. This behavior touches an issue of class within these societies. Label that has been highlighted here is that black people usually belong to lower sections within the societies and thus are poverty struck. Thereby Anthony and Peter are models of conflict theory in the movie highlighting a reality of an individual or a group of people bound to gain ‘superiority’ or an upper hand in order to face failures later on.

Thomas Theorem

One of the most important concepts observed in this move is reflected in Thomas Theorem. W. I. Thomas formulated a theory in 1928 saying that if situations are perceived to be real than they become real. Thereby consequences of a situation lie in subsequent actions that are taken as a result of the situations and perception of a situation leads to subsequent action. In other words, it is being argued in the theorem that if a certain individual is believed to be acting in a certain way than same results are seen in that individual. In a similar manner, many crimes as well as social issues do not have objective realities. Drug addiction is an example of such victimless crimes. Thomas theorem is reflected in the movie as Jean Cabot believed and perceived from her surroundings that black men are a threat to society, and in one of the scenes when she grips her purse strongly noticing the presence of two black men, Anthony (Ludicris) and Peter on the street. In the next scene, her subjective realities that surround her in regards to black people being a threat becomes objective reality when they are car jacked.

Micro-aggression

Micro aggression is the kind of interaction that takes place between people belonging to different cultures and experiences of these kinds of interactions are more or less defined as non-physical aggression. Micro-aggression in some places has been defined as daily commonplace subtle insults and indignities, intentional or unintentional but these are derogatory, based on racial discrimination. Individual effects of these kinds of derogatory moves can be lesser but on the society, effects are never ending and painful on ‘colored’ minorities. One character from the movie exemplifying this situation is the director himself. This has been shown in the movie when Terrence Howard, a black movie director, faces subtle insults. During movie making, examples of subtle insults include criticism against the black characters not playing as true blacks with an addition of remarks that blacks do not look real as they are not using true black language. Consequently, movie director directs the black characters to make their language more ‘black’. Although these kinds of insults are subtle but these still are insults. In addition to this, his wife being sexually assaulted by a white police officer, makes him retaliate in a way that endangers his own life (Media Review Digest 34).

Sociological Concept Of Ethnocentrism

This is one of the most important concepts reflected in the movie. The concept of ethnocentrism argues that beliefs are associated with certain races being centrally more important as compared to other races along with an ideology that all other races and there importance is comparative. Ethnocentric people and races believe that people belonging to other races and their activities are to be judged in a comparative way including languages, behaviors in the society, customs and religions. Thereby one’s own race is considered as superior. ‘Crash’ has depicted this in one of the scenes when Graham and his Latina friend get into a fight and Graham intentionally calls her a Mexican, thus poking at her culture, when in reality she is not a Mexican but in fact a Puerto Rican. In addition, languages and speech patterns of Asian Americans are laughed upon and mocked upon by whites, thus proving racial superiority. Because of ethnocentric concepts, mutual understanding fails to develop in these races. Cross-cultural mocking is displayed in one of the scenes where officer Ryan makes fun of an African American name Shaniqua (Sutherland Feltey 79).

Mike And The Mechanics sang in 1988, “We don’t listen as well as we hear”. Crash is a movie that has perfectly combined fear and racism and has redefined Americans fear of other races. This has been shown as a fall for regular Americans as they are weaker to have feared other races proving superiority of white race by insulting them in all ways possible.

Media Review Digest. Media Review Digest 2006: The Only Complete Guide to Reviews of Non-Print Media : Film and Video, Audio, Cd-Rom, Miscellaneous . Pierian Pr, 2006.

Sutherland, Jean-Anne., and Feltey, Kathryn . Cinematic Sociology: Social Life in Film. Pine Forge Press, 2009.

Vera, Hernán., and Feagin, R. Joe. Handbook of the sociology of racial and ethnic relations, Handbooks of sociology and social research. Springer, 2007.

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Crash — A Reflection on The Film “Crash”

A Reflection on The Film "Crash"

Categories: Crash Movie Review

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Words: 587 |

Published: Feb 8, 2022

Words: 587 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Works Cited

Bernard, J. (2006). Crash. In The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made (pp. 208-209). St. Martin's Griffin.
Clooney, G., Haggis, P., Moresco, B., Yari, B., Bullock, S., Dillon, M., Toub, S., ... Lions Gate Home Entertainment. (2006). Crash. Santa Monica, CA: Lions Gate Home Entertainment.
Ebert, R. (2005, May 6). Crash. RogerEbert.com. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/crash-2005
Fischer, P. (2005). Crash: Exploring the complexities of race, ethnicity, and identity. Journal of Popular Film and Television, 33(1), 44-53.
Gates, H. L., Jr. (2006). Crash. In The New Yorker Book of Movies (pp. 485-488). Random House.
Haggis, P. (2005). Crash [Screenplay]. In J. T. Johnson (Ed.), Crash: The Shooting Script (pp. 1-136). Newmarket Press.
Haggis, P. (2006). Crash and the self-indulgence of white America. In K. Carter (Ed.), The Film That Changed My Life: 30 Directors on Their Epiphanies in the Dark (pp. 103-108). Harper Paperbacks.
Maltby, R. (2007). Crash (2005): Film and race prejudice. In Hollywood Cinema (2nd ed., pp. 323-327). Wiley-Blackwell.
Pena, M. (2005). Crash: The anatomy of prejudice. Cineaste, 30(4), 48-51.
Tasker, Y. (2009). Crash. In Fifty Contemporary Film Directors (3rd ed., pp. 213-217). Routledge.

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