My wife and I found an idle moment to watch Crash a while back — I think it was a free weekend on Showtime or something. It features a large cast who with a couple of exceptions play racists of varying race and ethnicity. I thought the racism was exaggerated for effect, as you will find few people who are so openly and unconflictedly racist.
I don’t know that I can say that I enjoyed it since it is a pretty bleak movie, but I was pleasantly surprised by it. I didn’t find it an indictment of American society as racist, but an indictment of racism, or better yet to use the words of Andrew Young, ethnocentricity itself. Crash is the best endorsement of color blind society I’ve seen, as the message I took away from the film is that people who are obsessed with race/ethnic origin make their own lives worse. They just pass the hate around. They were in prisons for their own making. As I’ve observed before, if virtue is its own reward, vice is its own punishment. There are three characters who aren’t racists — the DA played by Brendan Fraser, the locksmith played by Michael Pena, and the daughter played by Karina Arroyava — and while they are affected by racism, they aren’t actually hurt by it like the others are. In fact, one is even saved by another. They do not pass the hate around. But while the racist cop played by Matt Dillon is able to rise above his hatred at a critical moment, the movie ends with more hatred all around.
Another thing that struck me was how desperately lonely all these people were, but were unable to reach out past the bars of their own making. Their lives were hell. Which put me in mind of this.
