Communication and stereotypes in the film Crash - Essay Example

Communication and stereotypes in the film Crash The film Crash (2004) won the awards for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Editing at the 2005 Academy Awards ceremony. While the film has created a controversial interpretation of its own use of stereotypes, the primary theme of the film is based on stereotype narratives that frame the racial experience within the United States. Through direct confrontations with both the politically correct, and the psychologically interior frameworks of racial biases, the film reveals a truth about how the public discourse and the private discourse diverge. Looking at the film in context with the district attorney’s wife as an example of several frameworks of the perception of the self, the film reveals how biases are relevant to daily life. Through communication styles that are intended to reveal truths that are otherwise kept hidden or shadowed; the film Crash (2004) creates a narrative on the nature of racism in the United States. The film takes place in Los Angeles over the course of several days in which worlds collide and break open cracks and fissures in the pretenses that are maintained in ‘polite’ society to reveal dark truths about belief systems. What people will say about what they believe usually does not reflect the depth of true belief systems and this film peals back the façade, approaching belief systems for their raw essence. While the crash of vehicles into each other, into people, and the damage of the physical world is a part of the film, the damage of the underlying discourse on race becomes the mire in which the communication of the themes are expressed. According to Roman (2009), New York film critic A. O. Scott wrote of the film “So what kind of movie is Crash? A frustrating movie: full of heart and devoid of life; crudely manipulative when it tries hardest to be subtle; and profoundly complacent in spite of its intention to unsettle and disturb” (p. 374). This commentary can be easily transferred, however, to an understanding of the race relations within the United States. The frustration of the film provides context for the frustration of the public discourse, that over polite rhetoric that overlays the deep seated truths that are communicated in the every day, but are generally unspoken. Using the example of the Johari Window model, the concepts within the film and the nature of the self can be examined. The Johari Window is based upon a four panel model in which the self is divided into the open, the hidden, the blind, and the unknown self. Each of these selves is manifested, but not all are understood by the perceived self or the public self. The window also changes as the relationship is defined between two people (West & Turner, 2011). An example of this can be seen in the character of the district attorney’s wife. On the one hand, her open self seemed very generous and warm. She presented to the world as someone who was lovely and with pure intentions. However, when examined in a different context, her hidden self was seen to be highly fearful of those of differing racial backgrounds. Her blind self most likely had no true understanding of this aspect of her personality, feeling justified when it slipped into her open self in relationship to how she communicated it to those with which she was intimate through the guise of a belief system that embraced stereotypical representations. Blind to her own feelings of prejudice, this was also unknown to anyone outside of her own internal self in regard to how deep these feelings were imbedded within her essential self. Much of what the district attorney’s wife was doing within the many roles that she had being the wife of a semi-public figure was to utilize impression management. She tried to manage the impression that she was exhibiting in front of the two young African American men who were approaching as she and her husband were walking down the street, but her body language screamed her fear as she more aggressively took her husband’s arm. Impression management is the effort to try and manipulate how an individual is perceived through actions and words that portray the desired impression (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2007). The district attorney was organizing a more blatant attempt in offering up spin scenarios that would preserve both the African American vote and the hard on crime vote (with the assumption being made that those two types of votes were vastly different), through creating a publicity event that would overshadow the impression of having been car-jacked by two young African Americans. The idea that the African American social group would think he was being prejudicial by accusing two African Americans of the crime, despite the truth of the event, and believe that this meant he was prejudice. His wife’s prejudices come screaming to a head as she insists that they change their locks in the morning as at that moment, in an effort to regain control on her security when they had called a locksmith in to change the locks, her perception of the young locksmith was that he was a Hispanic gang member who would sell her security to his gang members. Her language and communication has dropped all of its politically correct defenses and is falling into stereotypical assumptions. The irony, of course, had been made perfectly clear earlier in the evening as the two young African Americans had a discussion about their typified roles in society, only to fulfill one of those stereotypes. The message that is put forward is that stereotypes exist because of stereotypical behaviors that perpetuate the myths associated with belief systems about race. The question that is raised is whether they are hi-jacking a car because they are African American, therefore it is in their nature, or if they are hi-jacking a car because from a socio-economic point of reference, lawless behavior has been developed in order to promote financial security. The answer, of course, is significantly more clever. They are hi-jacking a car because the communication that the scrip-writer had in mind was to create irony about the nature of stereotype as this is a piece of fiction with no informative research other than the stereotype from which it has been created. The film is a commentary on the irony of stereotypes and it communicates to the audience that the ignorance of racial slurs and the facts of modern life have created a quagmire in which assumption creates beliefs, but stereotypical actions are supporting those beliefs. Near the beginning one of the young African American men turns to the other and says “And black women don’t think in stereotypes?” (Forgas, Williams, & Wheeler, 2004). This indicates that the characters acknowledge that the stereotypes are pervasive both through racial and gender biases. Communication about bias based upon social grouping is through verbal, action, and reflective techniques that create a complex web of cultural adaptations to stereotypes. The conflict between stereotypes and belief systems that try to present as non-biased is approached through the collisions, the crashes between cultural worlds that bring forth the gory underbelly of those belief systems. The film presents a great deal of fuel for discussion. During conversations about the film, the point of views that were expressed brought about the realization that even in the attempt to present cultural belief systems; these beliefs were still only reflecting the perceptions and interpretations of the movie makers and not the actual situations that are culturally relevant within the United States. Further discussion turned towards understanding that any project that attempts to categorize a social group then define their behavior is going to create a sense of stereotypical bias that is then also a reflection of the bias of the researcher. Frameworks of studying any social group essentially define how the group is presented which is essentially how this film approaches its topic, creating an irony that reflects the duality of consciousness about race within the United States, both through stereotypes that are grounded in the dark underbelly, and in desired narratives of American life that reflect a world without racially defined social groups. References Forgas, J. P., Williams, K. D., & Wheeler, L. (2004). The social mind: Cognitive and motivational aspects of interpersonal behavior. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haggis, P., Cheadle, D.Schulman, C. Yari, B. & Harris, M. R., (2004). Crash. United States. Lions Gate. Hellriegel, D., & Slocum, J. W. (2007). Organizational behavior. Mason, Ohio: Thomson/South- Western. Howard, P. S. S., & Dei, G. J. S. (2008). Crash politics and antiracism: Interrogations of liberal race discourse. New York: Peter Lang. Roman, James W. (2009). Bigger than blockbusters: movies that defined America. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. West, R. L., & Turner, L. H. (2011). Understanding interpersonal communication: Making choices in changing times. Boston: Wadsworth. Read More