Crash Movie

Throughout the movie Crash the director Patrick Haggis shows a lot of examples of the racial tension that occurs in our society. Haggis depicts different dialectics through separate scenarios of different stereotypical characters that interconnect in contributing to the plot. I am going to illustrate a few key points throughout the course of my paper; reality as motion, appearance versus essence, and contradiction energizing motion.
The first concept I am going to discuss is reality as motion. Reality as motion is whatever appears to be is a moment in the process of becoming. In the beginning of the movie, Officer Hansen requested a partner change because he did not like the racist act his partner has done. Being exposed to the negative talk about African Americans caused him to slowly pass judgment on blacks. All of the negativity influenced the officer into believing that Peter was reaching for a gun, when he in fact was not, this resulted in the black male’s death. If it was not for negative talk about African Americans Officer Hansen would not have assumed that Peter was carrying a gun therefore the motion would not have ended with a death.
Next, I would like to touch on appearance versus essence which is the contradiction between what appears to be and what something actually is. After Jean Cabot is robbed she becomes very irrational and paranoid about everyone around her. She insists on getting the locks changed again because Daniel is of the Spanish race and has tattoos. From his appearance she assumed that he was a gangbanger and would return to rob her house. In essence, he is a good man just trying to make an honest living to support his family. Another example of this conception would be when the producers on the set told Cameron to have a talk with one of the actors about his speech. Because the actor was black they wanted him to dumb down his style of speaking to a less educated manner to fit his appearance, when actuality he was a very proper individual.
The last concept I want to discuss is contradiction energizing motion. This concept means the difference between two things can be the reason for a change. When Officer Ryan makes a racist comment to the insurance company supervisor, Shaniqua, she refuses to help his father. The contradiction in this scenario is that he is racist, but must look to someone of the black race for help. Shaniqua held the superordinate power needed to help Officer Ryan’s father, but all his racist comments lead to a negative motion, his father remaining helpless.
Racial differences caused much of the motion in this film. The scenes in the movie Crash all showed different forms of dialectics portrayed by the stereotypical characters. Reality as motion, appearance versus essence, and contradiction energizing motion were concepts depicted multiple times in the lives of the characters in this film. In this paper I applied these concepts to the events that occurred in the movie Crash to illustrate racism our society.