The opening lines in Crash are from Detective Graham Waters, who has just been in a traffic accident, being philosophical about L.A. versus other big cities. He points out that in other cities there are crowds and people bump into one another all the time. But L.A. is a city on wheels. We are always surrounded by steel and glass, and so, he concludes, we crash into each other just to have some human contact.
I live in the L.A. area, but strangely enough, I saw Crash while on vacation in New York, one of those cities where people do bump into each other all day long – trying to cross a street with a mass of people headed toward each other, or on the shuttle between Time Square and Grand Central when you step into an absolutely packed subway car certain that you’re the last to fit in, but a dozen more people get through the door behind you. Those crowds, it seems to me, can be just as isolating as single driver vehicles. You are together, and even touching, but you aren’t really interacting.
(That is not to say that New York isn’t a friendly city; you get to meet some interesting people standing in lines or sitting in a park. But all that vanishes in the world of the crush when you don’t even make eye contact.)
But really, the film isn’t about L.A. (although that city does give the film its character). The film is about how we relate to “the other� – those who are different from us, most easily seen through race. This may be the best film dealing with racism ever made. The only film I’d put at the same level is Do the Right Thing.
What made seeing this film in New York really striking was that the next morning my wife and I visited Ellis Island, the gateway for millions of immigrants through much of the last century. Men, women and children passed through the staircases and halls of Ellis Island wanting a chance in America. They were from Sweden, from Ireland, from Italy, from Poland, from countries that no longer exist. Here the Tower of Babel was not a story, but life. Languages and cultures came together on this small island, and then dispersed throughout the country.
And they weren’t always welcomed. There have often been those who complained about “the others� who were coming into our communities, taking our jobs, filling our schools, corrupting our culture. The Irish, the Italians, the Vietnamese, the Persians, the Mexicans (by which we mean anyone from Central America, regardless of their nationality) all have been targets of the kind of racist venom that fills Crash.
In the opening scene, the two women who were driving the cars in the accident (one Hispanic, one Asian) each claim the other is a worse driver because of their race. One of the ways we often speak of “the other� – their lack of driving ability. I expect that if we’d had as many automobiles a hundred years ago, we’d have said the Irish were rotten drivers.
But the fact of racism goes much deeper than all those bad drivers (be they Asians, women, Arabs, or just whatever race of person just cut you off.) Racism, as shown in Crash, is the melding of our fears, our angers, and our frustrations. It is dehumanizing in that we direct our pain at “the other� – usually without even recognizing that the fear and anger is not from them, it comes from us. “The other� becomes the object on which we project all the pain within us and seek to place that pain on them. It never takes the fear or pain away from us, though. Instead it continues to compound the fears and prejudices we all have of each other. Even without our being conscious of them, those anxieties don’t just damage the ones at whom they are directed; they eat away at our souls and at the soul of our society. We are all victims of racism. Some are affected more than others, but we all have the wounds deep within.
Crash is a violent film (as the title implies). There is physical violence, but even more verbal, psychological violence. Much of the film feels like an assault on the audience. We are meant to viscerally be “the other� that is bearing the brunt of these racist attacks. We are meant to see that even good people are infected by this terrible disease.
There is also a bit of redemption to be found as well. It’s not enough to show that even the best of us are flawed. We also have to know that we can overcome the sinful racism that is a part of us and our society. There are miracles of love and sacrifice that call us to remember that even the most hate-filled person can rise above the hatred to bring light into what seems utter darkness.
Ellis Island represents our past, but also our present. Millions of people in America today can trace their ancestors to Ellis Island. It served as a gateway to America (as well as a barrier to some). Others came to these shores without choice, in the hold of slave ships. Still others continue to come, both legally and illegally. We are a nation of immigrants. We are a nation of “others�. Whether in our cars on the L.A. freeways or in the crush of people in Times Square, we need to learn how to go from bumping into each other to being in contact with each other. In that are the seeds of hope of overcoming the racism in our lives.
