Crash, and The Forest, The Trees, and The One Thing

The movie Crash tells the story of many seemingly unrelated people who are trying to live their lives in Los Angeles, are actually intimately intertwined with each other. The article “The Forest, the Trees, and the One Thing” elaborates on the theme of interconnectivity by using the analogy of the individual trees, and how they come together to make a forest. Both the movie and the article show how people who are just trying to go about their daily lives affect others in more ways than we realize. The locksmith played by Michael Pena was the easiest to empathize with, because he was one of the only characters who was genuinely a nice person. The scene where he gives his daughter the invisible, impenetrable cloak was easy for most people to empathize with because he was being a good father by making his daughter feel safe. He is one of the most touching characters because even when the Iranian man is yelling at him and treating him badly, he tries to explain to him that the door needs to be fixed, and not the lock that he keeps requesting. Sandra Bullock’s racism visibly disturbs and insults Michael Pena when he is fixing her lock, because Sandra is yelling at her husband that the man “with the jail tattoos” is going to go give their keys to one of his “homies” so they can break in and steal from them. Michael does not say anything though, but he makes sure to leave all of the keys on the counter in front of her when he leaves to show her that she is wrong. Sandra Bullock’s character is a great example of how racial attitudes shape behavior. When Sandra and her husband are walking home from dinner, she instantly grabs his arm when she sees two black men walking towards them. She is racist so she immediately assumes that since they are black, they will try to rob them, which coincidentally is exactly what happens. This incident only serves to strengthen her already racist beliefs. When they get home, she is so paranoid that she makes her husband get their