Media Reaction Paper - Diversity in Society - "crash"

Media Reaction Paper

Diversity in society - "Crash"

Diversity and discrimination have forever been an indispensable component of human nature. Whether we move back to the hard times of the Great Depression or come to the modern day's society, we find a strong reflection of racialism everywhere. These aspects have been well reflected in the movie 'Crash'. The movie 'Crash', released in 2005 was directed by Paul Haggis and written by Paul Haggis and Robert Moresco and won three Academy awards.

The movie revolves mainly around the overlapping or interlocking events in the life of whites and blacks, rich and poor, cops and criminals, Iranians, Koreans and Latinos - everything defined ultimately by racism. The idea is that "moving at the speed of life, we are bound to collide with each other". It is based on everyday racial reactions in the human society. How we react to situations adds hue to our perceptions of living life itself. All the people involved are guilty of the discrimination but sometimes through indifference, they rise above these. Assuming something about the person before us is rather a dominant feature in Crash. Crash describes a number of people with almost equal importance and shows the psychological inhibitions each of them has based on these narrowness of discrimination. The movie contains coldness, cruelty and pain, but finally unfolds to generate sympathy from general audience and an expectation that people would learn to share similar hopes and fears.

As far as Crash is concerned, the symbolism revolves around that of the idea of a traffic crash or may be just a crash of lives of different people, coming from various layers of the society. The film begins on the aftermath of a traffic accident, which finally turns out into a clash between several people of different backgrounds. The truth that is highlighted here is that the people in the society ultimately do not like one another and make hard assumptions about people from their outward appearances even if we do not know them. This aspect is reflected in both the films. Two young black men enacted by rap star Chris Bridges and Larenz Tate, who holds lot of surprises and relief for us, emerge from the restaurant and complains that the waitress did not deliver a proper service since they were black and "black people don't tip". Then a white couple, Sandra Bullock and Brendon Fraser emerged and the woman by instinct takes his arm. The men discuss that, "If anybody needs to be scared around here, it's us - surrounded by a bunch of over-caffeinated white people and the trigger-happy LAPD."

Just like Sandra Bullock's electrifying performance, Matt Dillon also grows out from his boyish framework to a racist cop. Dillon thinks that a light skinned black woman (Thandie Newton) is white. This again reveals the superficiality of the thoughts and orientation of human minds. Matt Dillon gives one of the strongest performance as he reflects through his role, a certain frustration or wrath over his inability to save his father's life. He orders for an unnecessary traffic stop as he discovers the black TV director (Terrence Dashon Howard) and his light skinned wife being intimate in the car while driving. He humiliates the woman with a body search and the director cannot do anything due to the guns possessed by Dillon and his companion. The irony comes out as both these cops finally ends up helping this couple. This is similar to a parable where people learn through their own actions.

As we may conclude from the name itself, there was a section of the marketing tactics that during the seminar the do not have surprises.

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