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May 22, 2005
Racism for Crash test dummies
If there's one thing worse than seeing a crummy movie, it's writing about it days later when you should have put the ordeal behind you. The reason I feel this sense of obligation is that for whatever reason, respected critics (Roger Ebert being a good example) seem to like the film Crash. For the life of me, I'm having trouble understanding why. Do they like it merely for being an anti-gun, multiculturalist advocacy film? It is certainly all of that, but to make a good film you have to have more than just a bias. I saw it with a liberal friend who (unlike me) had no problem with the message the writer was trying to convey, but despite our political disagreements, we both thought that as a film it failed miserably. From any objective standard, the film would seem to have everything going for it: written and directed by Paul Haggis (who wrote the screenplay for Clint Eastwood's Oscar-winning Million Dollar Baby), and very decent if not excellent acting with well known stars like Matt Dillon. The problem is that the writing (while technically skilled) all revolves around a simplistic idea which just doesn't work. An insufferably stultifying sense of boredom sets in early, and never leaves. While I know it was the whole point of the film that almost every character was so blinded by racism as to be unable to see reality, the fact that they were reduced to absurd and unbelievable caricatures instead of characters left me behind. I've lived all over the place, and ordinary people just aren't like this. Racism is far more subtle, and far more denied. Early in the film, an Iranian shopkeeper has a showdown with a Los Angeles gun dealer who balks at selling him a handgun. The gun dealer, an undisguised bigot, calls the Iranian "Osama," mocks his inability to speak English and refuses to refund the money or give him a gun. Finally, he hands the gun over to the Iranian's pretty wife, only because she tolerates his crass sexual innuendo. The dealer was a thoroughly despicable, thoroughly malevolent bigot who wouldn't remain in business for more than a month. Perhaps the director has never known a gun dealer. I have and I've never seen one who would ever, ever behave in his store the way this loony tune did. From then on it gets worse. If you have any friends who are cops, be sure to warn them not to see this film. Matt Dillon's portrayal of an unhinged racist cop (who pulls over an attractive black couple to get his rocks off by sexually humiliating them at gunpoint) would upset almost anyone. I'm sure the director would claim this wasn't meant to be stereotypical, and it certainly doesn't typify real life. Unfortunately the whole premise of the film is that these stereotypes are typical. Over and over again, my reaction was one of, "Come on! People just aren't like that!" And they aren't. But it doesn't stop. It just gets worse and worse. Then there's the soundtrack. Most of the film consists of the same wailing song played over and over again. Talk about belaboring the point! Even if you liked it the first time, by the time you get halfway through the film you'll hate it. On top of that, the director uses an insipid technique I hated back in the 1970s (and which I thought had died) of showing long sequences of no action or dialogue, but just scenery, maybe people walking, to an endless musical score. It's just filler masquerading as profundity, and I wouldn't even let a college film student get away with it. A central "character" in the film is the gun the bigot reluctantly sold to the Iranians. I know it's tough to get a gun to act, but the director almost succeeded, and from a rhetorical standpoint this was the best aspect of the film. For years, I've heard gun owners complain about how the gun control people think guns actually have an evil animus. Well, this guy damned near manages to prove cinematically that they do! The gun -- an evil looking snub-nosed .38 -- lurks malevolently in the Iranians' drawer. They look at it, and it's obvious they consider it stronger and tougher than they are. It's Big Brother watching over them. Always there. And When All Else Fails, and some racist thugs have broken into their store and vandalized it under the mistaken belief they're Arabs, why, the first thought is to check to see if The Gun is still there. And sure enough, there it is, not only in the drawer, but looking almost as if its about to levitate, and Avenge The Crime. Sure enough, All Else does fail. The insurance company refuses to pay the Iranians' claim because the Hispanic locksmith who looks like a gang member (really an innocent family man who happens to sport prison gang-style tattoos) had warned them they needed a new door and not a new lock, and instead of understanding they assumed he was a crook and the door was never fixed. Thinking this over with the assistance of the sullen .38, it became quite clear that the Only Thing To Do was what the gun was there for: the Hispanic locksmith had to be killed. So, with the gun seeming to guide his every move, the Iranian drives to the locksmith's home, and lies in wait for his return from work. Just as the man returns home and is confronted by the Iranian with the gun, his cute little daughter (who, we're told earlier, was terrorized by guns) leaps into her daddy's arms. The gun, of course, reacts instantly to this sudden outburst of love, and fires itself point blank at the little girl. (Ironically, no one is wounded, as the bigot gun dealer had maliciously supplied the Iranians with blanks.) The Gun and the Iranian drive back to the store, and hold each other for an incredibly long time. It could be my overactive imagination, but somehow, I could just swear that the writer/director has a major problem with firearms. What I did not know when I went to see the film was that this film is based on an interpretation of his own experience being carjacked at gunpoint. Over time the story evolved, with his criminal attackers becoming objects of artistic sympathy, even lovers of foreign films: ....[B]eing white and newly privileged, I would gladly have bought a home north of the divide without a second thought; we just couldn't afford one. And as our sprawling Spanish home was five times the size of our former North Hollywood bungalow, we had no complaints. It was a great house. And if we hadn't stopped off at a video store that night, we would never even have had to change the locks.Well, I should at least be glad that the carjackers' appreciation for Norwegian films was left on the cutting room floor. I'm of Norwegian descent, and my tender psyche simply could not have withstood this most unkindest "cut" of all. But it does occur to me that some things shouldn't be given more meaning than they have. If this guy feels guilty about being rich and white, does he really have to portray carjackers as sympathetic characters, and the gun as the much greater evil? Over time, that's exactly what happened in the director's mind: Paul Haggis can't remember the faces of the L.A. punks who carjacked his white convertible Porsche in 1991, but he'll never forget the guns they used. "Snub-nosed .38s," says the screenwriter of Million Dollar Baby, who now owns a Mini Cooper and three Toyota Priuses. "When the barrel is three inches from your face, it's tough to forget."Hell, what difference does it make what he knows about racism? Or guns? They're both bad, and if you're a victim of crime, it's obvious that the root causes are racism and guns. According to Haggis, September 11 was what finally gave him "focus." When September 11, 2001 arrived, Haggis finally found his focus. "I'd seen what happened," he says reaching for the ashtray in a Toronto hotel suite. "And I'd seen our President say that the only thing you can do is watch out for suspicious people." Haggis, a social activist on the board of a number of organizations promoting non-violence, literacy and environmentalism, pauses and feigns a stunned look. "All I know are suspicious people! Look at me, I'm suspicious as you get. And I thought, `That's what we're supposed to do as a nation?'" In Crash, all the characters a gripped by this vague but insinuating fear, and all it takes to stir it are a series of random incidents: a carjacking, a car accident, a robbery, a sexual assault. But when that fear manifests itself, the form it most frequently takes is racism. A robbery victim lashes out at the Hispanic locksmith sent to her home. A cop insults the black hospital official who declines to admit his ailing father. A white gun-shop owner refuses to sell a firearm to a man he's convinced is a terrorist. Fear is the boil these incidents prick, and racism is what spurts out.I get so weary of the increasing tendency of moralizers -- whether on the left or the right (and make no mistake; this film is moralistic in the extreme) -- attempting to reduce everything that is wrong to one simple vision, that if I didn't have this blog I don't know what I'd do. As it is, I am far too busy this weekend with out of town visitors to give this film the attention I should. It deserves a sound fisking, by reviewers more serious than I. Like Crash and Fizzle by David Edelstein. All the coincidences—there are more, involving Persian and Chinese families—make for one economical narrative: Haggis wants to distill all the resentment and hypocrisy among races into a fierce parable. But the old-fashioned carpentry (evocative of '30s socially conscious melodrama) makes this portrait of How We Live Now seem preposterous at every turn. A universe in which we're all racist puppets is finally just as simpleminded and predictable as one in which we're all smiling multicolored zombies in a rainbow coalition. It's strange, but I came out of Crash feeling better about race relations—not because of anything in the screenplay, but because of the spectacle of all those terrific actors (of all those races) working together and giving such potentially laughable material their best shot. And, really, whites in L.A. are at one another's throats all the time, too.Laughable material? But I thought laughter was disrespectful.... UPDATE: Laughter is disrespectful. posted by Eric on 05.22.05 at 04:00 AM
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» Carnival of the Vanities 141 from Blog Business World
Welcome one and all to the oldest and longest running blog Carnival on the internet. Yes, it's Carnival of the Vanities time once again. This is my very first hosting of the Carnival of the Vanities here at Blog Business World. [Read More] Tracked on June 1, 2005 02:46 AM
Comments
Anyway, good to be back here in good old Classical Values. Trying to get used to this new keyboard, it works differently from the old one. I had some problems with that last comment. Whole new system. My brother's a genius. Too bad I'm not. Too bad I can't write like G. K. Chesterton, too. Also read E. Merrill Root, another admirer of G. K. C.. As to your post -- since I, too, hate comments that say nothing about the post -- I can only say that I, too, hate gun control, racism, Political Correctness, and bad movies. Haven't seen any movies at all for quite a long time, been too busy reading. You and I would both be on Aryan's list of the Race-Deniers. Poor Aryan, looks like Dawn but thinks like Mrs. Haight. Even without the computer, I have been continuing to write the story of holy Dawn and her holy Negro wife Norma vs. wicked Wanda and her women (Wendy, Cindy, Sandy, Candy, Brandy, Brenda, Glenda, Stella, Hannah...). Lot of stuff going on there. Too much. Way too much. I see that my name's still on your blogroll. I was afraid you might have thought I was no longer with us. Thank you for a great blog. You are a true friend. Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · May 23, 2005 03:08 AM "Well, they still steal the car, but no self-respecting car thieves would stop to grab a Norwegian movie. Some things are better left for real life." In some ways, this comment sums up exactly what is wrong with this writer. It's the quirky details that make people different from bare stereotypes. If you erase every detail that doesn't seem typical of the role, you are left with a story populated with silly, unbelievable stereotypes. Clint · May 23, 2005 05:54 AM Steven, WELCOME BACK!!! (I was thinking of taking up a collection to buy you another computer.) I can't wait to tell your number two fan! Clint, thanks. You're absolutely right. Statistics show that less than .000238 % of carjackers actually watch Norwegian films. Eric Scheie · May 23, 2005 04:39 PM Dear Eric: Thank you! As to the other comment: I suppose that statistic would be somewhat higher in Norway. Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · May 24, 2005 02:31 PM I knew "Crash" was going to be a stinker when I saw the promo ads: from the writer of "Million Dollar Baby"! That film was one of the most manipulative, phony, sentimental pieces of garbage I've ever seen. Everyone around me was crying a good 20 minutes before the film ended. I wanted to stand up and shout "You're being set up and used!" The writer kept slugging the audience into submission, literally pulling every punch. The only scene I enjoyed was when the family showed up at the hospital with their Universal studios T-shirts for their first visit to the dying patient, after having been in LA for several days. That was so far over the top it elevated the movie into the realm of absurdly bad writing. If you're listening to Roger Ebert for guidance on good films, you're going to waste a lot of money and time. I miss Pauline kael. As for the Norwegian video, that was the inspiration for the entire film. The writer and his wife were carjacked at a Blockbluster in LA about 10 years ago after having rented a Norwegian film. The incident "got him thinking..." Uh oh. It was good to see you... Ug Lee · May 26, 2005 08:18 PM you make it seem as if this movie was made solely to "milk" the emotions out of people. and yes, i do believe guns "are bad" just as i believe that nukes "are bad". no i'm not a bleeding heart liberal. and no i'm not a conservative. i just think people lack the responsibility and mental capacity to handle such destructive things. people ARE insecure and ARE as racist as the movie portrays them to be. people ARE stuck in their own facet of reality. it's not just about the guns, or about racism, or media, but soo much more. the movie doesn't take shots at police men in general but the LAPD. NO OTHER PLACE in the world is as culturally integrated LA (well, maybe new york). i'm wondering myself, if you actually live in southern california. oh yeah, and the shop owner wasn't Iranian, he was Persian. somehow i just think you just love to go against the grain and can't give credit to where it is due. if this movie wasn't satisfying to you, i'd like to know what other movie, that tackles these sort issues, does? tell me, exactly what movie illicits the least bit of emotion out of you. ___ "we live in a reality in which no one is right, but where no one is invalidated either" justice · June 8, 2005 02:32 AM |
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"A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally meant a man who wanted to conserve everything except his own reason for conserving anything."
-G. K. Chesterton (July 3, 1920)
I'm back!
Long story, new computer, we're still trying to get me back on my feet computer-wise. Main problem is with some old e-mails. My typing is even worse than before, having been away for so long. Bear with me till we get squared away, as the old bus driver once said.
"'But I don't say it in a general way,' said Pond plaintively, 'I say it in a particular way, about this particular case. Grock failed because his soldiers obeyed him. Of course, if one of his soldiers had obeyed him, it wouldn't have been so bad. But when two of his soldiers obey4ed him -- why, really, the poor old devil really had no chance."
-G. K. Chesterton, The Three Horsemen of Apocalypse (The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond)