Written, produced and directed by Paul Haggins.
Oscars won: Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing
How timely of Channel 7 to broadcast Crash just before the Easter long weekend, as if to remind everyone the consequences of holding prejudices. Just a year ago, I had watched the film – alone – and felt quite shaken by the blunt commentaries Haggins was making about racial discriminations. It seemed quite impossible for a society to function ‘smoothly’ (harmoniously) without first categorizing the various peoples; yet, as the film had made very clear, the problem lies in the very act of categorizing. When does an Italian or a Korean or a Persian become an American? I applaud Haggins’ brilliant attempt to put up a bigscreen performance if nothing else; his fictional characters were believable. The prejudices were real even if the characters weren’t. This is a problem – for want of a better word -for all societies that provided the conditions for people from different cultural backgrounds to live together. Learning English (they need a common language!) became crucial; yet it does not remove the prejudices and the associating stereotypes implicit in the sheer colour of their skin.
I had found that watching the film a second time more disturbing than the first. I wonder if it had to do with the recent tragedies – in Singapore, in Australia, in America (note the similiarities among these nations!) – where distraught and discriminated peoples had taken to reckless coldblooded self-induced carnage as a form of vengence. The incidences appeared to be getting higher. The perpetrators were cultural victims who were ostracized by the society because they spoke poor English. Haggins’ take on the socio-cultural expressions of racialized migrants in LA, particularly of the African-American characters – Detective Graham Waters (played by Don Cheadle) and inner car thief Anthony (played by Chris Bridges – showed that the prejudices against the “black” (dark-skinned) race had become so politicised that speaking black appeared to be the only way to retain their ‘black’ identity. As much as the film had managed to provide a glimpse on the complexities – the tensions, the raw emotions, the conflicting behaviours – as expected from any society makeup, the message underlying the film was actually quite simple: What does it mean to be an American? Yet, to answer this question, we must first find the answer to another question: Who decides?
A Review of Sorts 