Crash Reflection

Racism Reflection The movie I chose for this assignment was the Hollywood film Crash. I really enjoyed watching this movie even though I have watched it previously before. Crash is the type of movie where you need to watch it more than once to understand the real meaning it is trying to portray about racism. There are many acts of racism that is being shown in this movie in different ways through the many characters revealed. In this movie I found there to be a lot of themes that took place, however the top three I felt was most important were stereotypes, oppression, and prejudice. Stereotype is defined as the popular belief about a specific type of individual. In the movie there was a scene with the locksmith was fixing Jean’s locks in the house. She was arguing with her husband and brought up the point that she knows the locksmith is going to rob their house and give his keys to his ‘homeboys’ the moment he leaves. Since she knew he was from a poor neighbourhood and was Spanish she used that knowledge to judge him and categorize him as a thief like everyone else from his neighbourhood. The second theme is oppression which is defined as the exercise of authority or power in a cruel or unjust manner. In the movie there is a scene where oppression is shown very strongly. In this scene the cop pulls over the wealthy black couple and begins to frisk the women down. The husband could not do anything to defend his wife because he feared for his reputation. The cop abused his authority figure and committed a crime however no one could justify it because of his position. Lastly, the third theme used is prejudice and it is defined as the process of making a judgment or assumption about someone or something even before having enough knowledge to be able to do so. In the movie one of the first scenes shows a white couple named Jean and Fred who are walking down the street together. Jean see’s two black people walking towards her on the sidewalk and instantly wraps her