Crash

From Reflective Mirror to Reflexive Hammer: Film, Multicultural Politics, and the Presentation of Alternative Solutions to Fear and Isolation in Post-911 America, by Steven E.S. Bussey (E.38.2078001, Marita Sturken, Department of Culture and Communication, Steinhardt School of Education, New York University, Introduction: Crashing the Party)

“Art is not a mirror to hold up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.”, Bertolt Brecht, (quoted by Paul Haggis during his 2006 Oscar speech for winning Best Original Screenplay

The movie-going world was left side-swept on March 5, 2006, when Jack Nicholson announced that the low-budget film, Crash won the Oscar for best picture. Most projections had pointed toward Brokeback Mountain as being the clear winner. The next day, columnists and late night television hosts throughout America were talking about the film that ‘crashed the party’. When Haggis received his award, he quoted Bertolt Brecht and dedicated his ‘fifteen seconds of fame’ to thanking “…those people who take big risks in their daily lives when there aren’t any cameras rolling and when there aren’t people there to applaud. The people out there who stand for peace and justice and against intolerance”. Why would Haggis use his Oscar moment as a platform to ‘call out’ to a group of people uniquely engaged in multiculturalist politics? Further, when considered in tandem with the film’s mediocre 2005 opening reviews and its average box-office totals, one wonders why this film would receive such an accolade at this moment in time?

I would like to propose that Crash serves as a pivotal pop culture film which represents alternative solutions to fear and isolation in post-911 America. I will interrelate different textual, visual, and musical representations from the film with a variety of theories from popular cultural studies which help to interpret how this film serves as a hammer intended to crash into the drama and everyday politics of American life.

…this film serves as a hammer intended to crash into the drama and everyday politics of American life.

Losing Our Frame of Reference: Gaining Perspective in Post-911 America

It’s the sense of touch…
In any real city you walk. You know? You brush past people. People bump into you.
In L.A., nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass.
I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just so that we can feel something.
Graham, Crash

Graham’s (Don Cheadle) voiceover begins while the opening sequence of car lights and camera lens reflections dance and converge across the screen. His voice begins ‘outside of the frame’ until the camera pans back to identify that what Graham is saying is not simply a voiceover, but the situated words of a victim who has just been rear-ended. He is still in the car, talking with his partner and lover, Ria (Jennifer Espisito). An officer asks if they are OK, and Ria responds:
(Ria) I think he has hit his head… Graham, I think we got rear-ended. We spun around twice, and somewhere in there, one of us lost our frame of reference, and I’m going to go and look for it.

Paul Haggis seems to be speaking to the spectator vicariously through Graham and Ria’s conversation – encouraging them to gain their ‘frame of reference’ when it comes to issues of racism and difference, and to apply this to the larger sphere of America’s social politics.

Los Angeles, the setting of the film, provides the perfect landscape to explore issues of race, nation, and culture. Paul Haggis elaborates, “It’s an odd life we live in Los Angeles, a city that uses freeways and wide boulevards to divide people by race and class… Unlike any real city, we only walk where ‘it’s safe’ – those outdoor malls and ersatz city blocks we’ve created to feel like we’re still part of humanity.” Crash provides a social space that invites Americans to actively think about the challenges of living “behind metal and glass” due to fear, be it in various capacities – whether terrorism, crime, or even difference (Glassner, 2003).

Graham and Ria are in their car when the film begins. The American car functions as an important icon in the film. It serves as an everyday signifier (Barthes, 1972) which embodies a deep American mythology of protection through ethnocentric encasement – or even entrapment. This serves as a modern-day ‘circling of the wagons’ to protect ‘us’ from ‘them.’ Paul Haggis successively crashes cars - and inevitably people - into one another in the film. He employs the “crash” metaphor in order to bring awareness to the biases and stereotypes which keep ‘us’ from interacting with one another. The film itself serves as a vehicle to figuratively crash into the audience – helping the spectator to find her/his frame of reference after the devastation of being ‘rear-ended’ on September 11, 2001. The mythology of the American car is also played out through additional secondary significations in the film such as locked doors, handguns, and religious icons. These objects serve as representations that are used strategically in the film.

Pierre Bourdieu says that “The literary or artistic field is a field of forces, but it is also a field of struggles tending to transform or conserve this field of forces” (Bourdieu quoted by Sconce, 2002, 353). In Crash, it appears that Paul Haggis has used a Brechtian strategy by using the medium of film to actively interpellate viewers to a counter-hegemonic ideology of intercultural relations; and an alternative American identity in post 911-America (Hartley, 2002, 125).

In doing so, Paul Haggis shifts the purpose of Crash from being a race film which is merely reflective - like a mirror, to being reflexive – like a hammer. He utilizes the medium of film to challenge the audience to “refer to themselves” as participants in the discourse of the larger socio-political context while engaging the text of the film (Edgar and Sedgewick, 1999, 332). Sturken and Cartwright state that “Reflexivity… takes the form in postmodern style of referencing context or framing in order to rethink the viewer’s relationship to an image or narrative” (Sturken and Cartwright, 2001, 258). Haggis refuses to allow viewers to “lose themselves in the text,” but rather uses the narrative, music, complex intertwining relationships, and brilliant visual shots (often directly into light) to keep viewers critically conscious throughout the film. Like a deer in headlights, the audience is made to ‘gaze’ long enough in order to be hit by his message. Haggis invites people to step out of their protective spaces to engage in discourse with ‘the Other.’

Like a deer in headlights, the audience is made to ‘gaze’ long enough in order to be hit by his message. Haggis invites people to step out of their protective spaces to engage in discourse with ‘the Other.’

It does not seem coincidental, therefore, that Haggis would quote Bertolt Brecht when receiving his Oscar for best screenplay . Brecht, a playwright and friend of critical theorist, Walter Benjamin, “…proposed the concept of distanciation – a technique for getting viewers to extract themselves from the narrative in order to see the means through which it gets to buy into ideology” (Sturken and Cartwright, 2001, 258). Dick Hebdige argues that “Ideology by definition thrives beneath consciousness. It is here, at the level of ‘normal common sense’, that ideological frames of reference are most firmly sedimented and most effective, because it is here that their ideological nature is most effectively concealed” (Hebdige, 1979, 11). Crash seeks to de-naturalize our most common, essentialized assumptions about racism and difference – bringing them to the conscious level of the visual and written text, and thus to the conscious level of the viewer - hence inviting the participant to engage in this socio-political discourse.

The Politics of Representation: From Xenophobia to Hope

I live my life like a 38 / Pointed straight but shooting blanks
Killing Angels but they don’t die / I’m heading on a course of change
Kansascali, Crash soundtrack

“It’s OK Daddy, I’ll protect you.”
Elizabeth, Crash

In each of the sub-discourses which take place, Paul Haggis is utilizing stereotypes as part of his counter-hegemonic strategy. Throughout the film, he is engaging in the ‘politics of representation.’ Stuart Halls says that:
“Representation is a complex business and, especially when dealing with ‘difference’, it engages feelings, attitudes and emotions and it mobilizes fears and anxieties in the viewer, at deeper levels than we can explain in a common-sense way.” (Halls, 1997, 226)

Richard Dyer suggests that we always use categories, or types to make sense of the world, but it is in the reduction, exaggeration and simplification of these characteristics, that stereotyping occurs (Dyer quoted in Halls, 1997, 258).

One of the most intense moments in Crash is a confrontation between two working class fathers. Farhad (Shaun Toub) is a Persian-American who owns a small grocery shop. Daniel (Michael Peña) is a Mexican-American who works as a locksmith. Both men have daughters and appear to be hardworking-class citizens. Both are labeled and stereotyped.

We first meet Farhad when he is purchasing a gun to protect his business. He speaks broken English, but his daughter, Doori (Bahar Soomekh) – who is more fluent in English – serves as a bridge between her parents and American culture. She appears to be trying to negotiate between protecting her father’s sense of dignity and protecting him from his own self-destruction. Racial volleys are fired by the gun-shop owner – who refers to Farhad as “Osama” and tells him to “…plan a Jihad on his own time.” The shop-owner is clearly xenophobic and justifies this on the basis of the 911 terrorist attacks. According to Martin, such essentializing of Middle-Eastern Muslims as terrorists seems to have recently become commonplace in America’s perception of outsiders (Martin, 2002).

I would interpret the gun which Farhad purchases as representing a form of power. The gun has the ability to both protect, but it also has the ability to destroy. Doori’s secret – the choice to purchase ‘blanks’ for her father’s gun - shows that she is both conscious and active in the process of protecting her father – who is trying to protect her. I would interpret the blanks as representing a form of power through resistance. Doori is not a powerless subject in this film, but rather an active and powerful player.

Doori’s secret – the choice to purchase ‘blanks’ for her father’s gun - shows that she is both conscious and active in the process of protecting her father – who is trying to protect her. I would interpret the blanks as representing a form of power through resistance.

In the film, we witness another father-daughter relationship between Daniel and his daughter. Earlier in the film, we meet Daniel as he changes the locks of an upper-class, Caucasian couple – Jean (Sandra Bullock) and Rick (Brendan Fraser) who were recent victims of auto theft. In this scene, Jean stereotypes Daniel as an untrustworthy gang-member because he’s a young male Mexican with tattoos.

While Daniel may look and sound like the Mexican ‘machismo’ stereotype , we are reminded to ‘not judge a book by its cover’. When at home with his family, Daniel plays the most ‘un-machismo’ character in the film. In one scene, he discovers his daughter, Elizabeth (Karina Arroyave), hiding under her bed. They had previously lived in a neighborhood where regular shootings occurred. A stray bullet had gone through her bedroom window. Elizabeth doesn’t fear people – she is not xenophobic – she fears guns. Daniel proceeds to tell his daughter about a fairy who visited him as a child and gave him an impenetrable cloak. Fantasy becomes reality as Daniel sensitively helps to replace fear by clothing her with protection and hope.

These two fathers - Daniel and Farhad - finally meet when Daniel is called to repair Farhad’s lock late at night. Daniel explains that it is not the lock, but the door which is broken. Farhad accuses him of trying to cheat him. In this scene, Farhad ceases to be the victim and becomes the victimizer, verbally assaulting and essentializing Daniel.

The next morning, Farhad and Doori return to their store, only to discover that it has been vandalized. They are the victims of a hate-crime. Farhad blames Daniel… and is bent on revenge. The scene opens with Farhad waiting in his car for Daniel to return home. As he steps out of his car to confront Daniel, the camera shoots into the light; all we can see is the gun at his side. He walks into the light, blinded by rage. I think it is important to note the irony in the fact that his actions parallel those of the gun-shop owner who was blinded by fear. Elizabeth sees Daniel outside with Farhad pointing a gun at him and is worried that he doesn’t have his protective cloak. She fearlessly runs out to protect her father by jumping into his arms. The gun fires and everything slows down… Elizabeth is still alive! Farhad doesn’t realize that he has fired a blank, and Daniel is spellbound by the fact that no one had been shot. As he carries Elizabeth inside, she says, “Don’t worry, Daddy. I’ll protect you… It’s a really good cloak.”

Both fathers are stunned as fantasy supercedes reality in this scene. Daniel contemplates the miracle of Elizabeth’s imaginary cloak, and Farhad believes a guardian angel saved him from murder and madness. In reality, however, the miracle was wrought through their daughters’ agency. Doori is the only one who knows what really occurred. The ‘daughter-as-protector-of-father’ pattern flips the power-relationship of ‘father-protecting-daughter.’ This breaks the conventional code of what we as viewers might expect should happen. Power shifts in the politics of these familial relationships. Regarding the micro-relations - and multiplicity of points - of domination and resistance, Michel Foucault says:
“Between every point of a social body, between a man and a woman, between the members of a family, between a master and a pupil, between one who knows and everyone who does not, there exist relations of power which are not purely and simply a projection of the sovereign’s great power over the individual; they are rather the concrete, changing soil in which the sovereign’s power is grounded, the conditions which make it possible for them to function” (Foucault in Hebdige, 1997, 393) [italics mine].

Daniel contemplates the miracle of Elizabeth’s imaginary cloak, and Farhad believes a guardian angel saved him from murder and madness. In reality, however, the miracle was wrought through their daughters’ agency.

Doori, in particular, demonstrates how her agency and resistance - as opposed to passivity and submission - provide the intervention necessary to avoid a fatal crash of cultures. This story is not about the politics of despair, but rather, what Henry Giroux calls ‘the politics of hope’ (Giroux, 1997). Although this film addresses a very serious theme, it does not wallow in nihilism, but rather engages in hammering out a multicultural politics which presents a vision of possibility and promise without slipping into mere utopianism.
Blurring the Bifurcation of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ – Multicultural Identity Politics
“You think you know who you are – You have no idea.”
Officer Ryan, Crash

The character who most people love to hate in this film is LAPD Officer Ryan (Matt Dillon). He is an aggressive racist, molester, bigot, and bully… but he is also a sympathetic son, and a rescuer. Officer Hanson (Ryan Phillippe) is the antithesis of Ryan. He is passive, accommodating, a defender and protector of minorities, and he is willing to be humiliated to protect the reputation of his partner… but he is guilty of the most heinous crime in the film. When Hanson murders Graham’s brother, Peter (Larenz Tate), he dumps the body and burns his car. Hanson is both the hero and the villain. Cameron (Terrance Howard) – whose wife had been molested (and ironically saved) by Officer Ryan, was saved by Officer Hanson’s intervention earlier that day.

Close to the end of the film, Cameron sees a car (which happens to be Hanson’s) that has become a bonfire. The burning seems to represent the ultimate protest, resistance and rejection of the isolationist, assimilationist ideology. As he approaches it, it begins to snow. Fire and ice – two opposite elements – converge on the screen symbolizing the blurring of the bifurcation between the characters, the differing aspects of their multiple selves, and even the different cultures represented in the film.

Fire and ice – two opposite elements – converge on the screen symbolizing the blurring of the bifurcation between the characters, the differing aspects of their multiple selves, and even the different cultures represented in the film.

Paul Haggis again forces the viewer from the reflective to the reflexive through his relativization of the binary of opposing elements – particularly when it comes to people who appear to threaten us. Stuart Hall states that:
…people who are in any way significantly different from the majority – ‘them’ rather than ‘us’ – are frequently exposed to this binary form of representation. They seem to be represented through sharply opposed, polarized, binary extremes – good/bad, civilized/primitive, ugly/excessively attractive, repelling-because-different/compelling-because-strange-and-exotic. And they are often required to be both things at the same time (Hall, 1997, 229).

What is unique about Crash is that every character is “the other.” This marginalized position is not relegated to one particular cultural group or person, but to all – indicating that we are all perpetrators and victims. We are all heroes and villains. We are all good and evil. We are all part of the problem and the solution. In Crash, we all are ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Haggis is making the spectator aware of their “constitutive otherness” (Cahoone, 2003, 17).

Edgar and Sedgewick suggest that “The Other may be designated as a form of cultural projection of concepts. This projection constructs the identities of cultural subjects through a relationship of power in which the Other is the subjugated element” (Edgar and Sedgewick, 1999, 266). In making the Other us, Haggis is challenging the spectator to embrace a counter-hegemonic ideology. This is an ideology which is opposed to the post-911 “culture of fear” (Glassner, 2003) which continues to focus on the bifurcation of Americans who come from differing ethnicities and nationalities.

Haggis is involved in what Douglas Kellner has called “multiculturalist politics.” He elaborates:
“Cultural studies thus promotes a multiculturalist politics and media pedagogy that aims to make people sensitive to how relations of power and domination are ‘encoded’ in cultural texts, such as those of television and film.” (Kellner, 2003, 4)

I would argue that the movie Crash helps to uncover the dominant American mythology of the melting pot and presents the image of the mosaic as an alternative myth. Haggis, who is a Canadian living in L.A., seems to be interpellating a Canadian political ideology of multiculturalism through this film (Chametsky, 1989; Bibby, 1990; Bissoondath, 1994). John Hartley defines multiculturalism as:
“Diversity of population and culture as public policy… Rather than projecting an image of the nation as a unified, culturally homogeneous group, multiculturalism recognizes that contemporary society is made up of distinct and diverse groups… The intention is to move away from ‘assimilation’ of migrants or indigenous people towards wider social acceptance of difference as something legitimate and valuable. ” (Hartley, 2002, 151)

Haggis clearly identifies the great diversity which already exists in America and that racial conflict and bigotry is not simply a black-and-white issue, but an inevitable kaleidoscopic part of the human condition. This difference and the process of healthy conflict is both accepted and celebrated through the film. Haggis is not painting a picture of homogenous utopian harmony, but rather a picture that is heterogeneous and realistic. He says “Film enables us to walk, however briefly, in the shoes of strangers. In that sense, I hope that Crash succeeds not so much in pointing out our differences, but in recognizing our shared humanity” (Haggis, 2005).

Haggis clearly identifies the great diversity which already exists in America and that racial conflict and bigotry is not simply a black-and-white issue, but an inevitable kaleidoscopic part of the human condition. This difference and the process of healthy conflict is both accepted and celebrated through the film.

Conclusion: Swimming in the Deep

“Thought you had all the answers to rest your heart upon;
But something happens don’t see it coming, now.
You can’t stop yourself. Now you’re out there swimming in the deep.”
Bird York, Crash soundtrack

As the film comes to an end, Bird York begins to sing In the Deep. During this song, we see both images of reconciliation and representations of failed protection. This transitions into a scene where Anthony (Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges) - who has had to wrestle with the coexistence of good and evil in his own life – releases Thai refugees who were victims of a human trafficking into the streets of Los Angeles. A young Thai boy walks over to a shop window and gazes into a television screen. He too has now been ‘thrown into the deep’ of the ongoing multicultural pool which is America. As Anthony departs, another rear-ended crash occurs, and the final cyclical lines of the film are, “Don’t speak to me unless you speak American!!!”

I began this paper questioning why Crash would receive the accolades it has. I would argue that this movie was released for such a moment as this. Paul Haggis’ art does serve as a hammer which can shape the heart of a nation that is swimming in the deep. The film leaves us with more questions than answers… It is the responsibility of the spectator to become participant now in the larger drama which plays out in the everyday politics of life in America.

Steve Bussey, along with his wife, Sharon, is the co-director of Project 1:17 in The Salvation Army, USA Eastern Territory. His interests lie in youthwork, leadership development, cultural & media studies, missiology, and education. He is currently studying communication, culture and media studies at New York University.

Appendix 1.

Full Cast and Crew for Crash (2004)
Internet Movie Database (IMDb)
http://www.imbd.com/title/tt0375679/fullcredits

Directed by:
Paul Haggis

Writing Credits
Paul Haggis Story

Paul Haggis Screenplay
Robert/Bobby Moresco Screenplay

Cast (referenced in paper)
Karina Arroyave Elizabeth
Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges Anthony
Sandra Bullock Jean
Don Cheadle Graham
Loretta Devine Shaniqua
Matt Dillon Officer Ryan
Jennifer Espisito Ria
William Fichtner Flanagan
Brendan Fraser Rick
Terrance Howard Cameron
Bruce Kirby Pop Ryan
Thandie Newton Christine
Michael Peña Daniel
Yomi Perry Maria
Ryan Phillippe Officer Hanson
Alexis Rhee Kim Lee
Bahar Soomekh Dorri
Larenz Tate Peter
Shaun Toub Farhad

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1 Comment to Crash

1. Hi Rubicon,

   Thanks so much for publishing this paper. My hope is that - like the film - it will aid in fostering a celebration of difference. And that we will cease to perceive tolerance and truth and opposing concepts. The logic of such a bifurcation implies that if we are tolerant we cannot be truthful and that to embrace truth means we are inevitably intolerant.

   Such a bifurcation is not only ridiculous, but it is contradicted in the life of Jesus. We desperately need people who are able to love, listen, dialogue and disagree while maintaining ethical and theological convictions. Such a posture could radically change the world’s perception of God and the church.

   Thanks for creating this opportunity for me to share my thoughts.

   Steve Bussey
Steve Bussey on June 19th, 2006

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