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lapsedmodernistYesterday I watched "Crash."
Only in America are films like "Crash" made to Address the Issues of Race and only in America are they then described by the critics as "complex" and "provoking." It's like that machine in Moscow 2042 which makes shit into food, which is then digested and excreted as shit, which will, in turn, make more food.
I would like to apologize totheophile for deadpanning "wait...do you think this movie is about...race?" every 2.5 minutes
But really, everyone in this movie is both Racist AND Complicated and these two vectors of their personalities are developed along the Pay It Forward axis, sans the satisfying payoff of Haley Joel Osmond's death, but in sundrenched slo-mo. Augmenting the visual semiotics of aforementioned sundrenched slo-mo is the binary soundtrack, which consists of EITHER hip-hop, signifying the gritty urban blackness (but never the XXXTRA Black African Blackness that is brought by Hollywood to its white audience in films like "Tears of the Sun" or "The Island") OR the redemptive/walkintothelight! progressions of "eeeeeee, aaaaaeeeeeee." (It has two mommies: Enya and whoever writes that ER music that plays during, like, Important Moments like when Luka the Bosnian Refugee freaks out and goes to Africa to be all Heart of Darkness Sans Frontiers and is about to be shot by XXXTRA Black African rebels, who at the last moment decide to spare him when they see his little golden crucifix suddenly and prominenetly sunlit in slow-mo, which promps them to fall on their knees).
Anyway, back to "Crash."
Matt Dillon, the racist cop, harasses the black couple and sexually harasses the wife, Thandie Newton (RACIST), BUT later saves the wife from a burning vehicle (COMPLICATED). Then he tells the guilty white boy Ryan Philippe that racism is endemic to everyone (RACIST) but then is partnered up with a hispanic partner, whom he cheerfully greets as "amigo" (COMPLICATED). He is racist towards the woman handling his father's HMO file (RACIST) BUT only because his father, who hired black janitors, when no one else did, and paid them equal wage, lost his business because of affirmative action legislations (COMPLICATED). Said woman seems moved by his father's story (COMPLICATED) but at the end yells at a Chinese woman who hits her car to "speak American!" (RACIST). The guilty white boy Ryan Philippe helps the TV director, who goes all primal after being emasculated by the wife-fondling incident, BUT does it in a way that affirms the dominant white power paradigm (RACIST AND COMPLICATED, all twisted together like a candy stripe) and then he picks up a black hitchhiker to prove to himself that he is Not Racist, but shoots him on an incorrect hunch because he is, in fact, Racist. And Ludacris is blase about running over a Chinaman (Koreaman) (Racist/Desensitized by Harsh Life in a Black Ghetto), but then FREES THE (ethno-checked as Cambodian) SLAVES (trafficked by said Chinaman/Koreaman??) and sets them loose in Chinatown with instructions to "buy yourself some chop suey" (no longer Racist, but Redeemed and Aware, this film's equivalent of, like, a misogynyst action hero prolly played by Mel Gibson reluctantly, begrudgingly, grunting at some female co-hero that she is "a hell of a lady"). There is some insane Cat's Cradle of Racism and Complication with the Persian shopowner/Latino locksmith subplot, at the end of which all I could think of was that the little girl with the "invisible coat" protecting her is totally going to feel free to play in traffic now, and Sandra Bullock is an overprivileged bitch who is Racist, but a Life Crisis (sprained ankle) moment makes her realize that her Latina maid is her Best Friend (Complicated, with a side of Big Blind Spot for Class Issues). Also, really funny, albeit unintentionally so. And so on, and so forth, and, of course, everyone in this film is magically connected, because it is a movie about how Los Angeles is Fragmented (see also: "Grand Canyon," "Short Cuts" and the Baroque not-so-crypto-catholic horror that is "Magnolia") and humanity is conducted through, like, these parallel flows that defy the three-act story arc.
Anyway, If you want to see a really smart, interesting, in-depth American film that deals with racism and ethnicity and history and memory, and not in a Point/Counterpoint "Racism is Bad vs. We Are All Human and Complicated" way, see John Sayles' "Lone Star."" Leave "Crash" to its shit-->consumtion-->shit circle of life, Hakuna Matata.
Only in America are films like "Crash" made to Address the Issues of Race and only in America are they then described by the critics as "complex" and "provoking." It's like that machine in Moscow 2042 which makes shit into food, which is then digested and excreted as shit, which will, in turn, make more food.
I would like to apologize to
theophile for deadpanning "wait...do you think this movie is about...race?" every 2.5 minutesBut really, everyone in this movie is both Racist AND Complicated and these two vectors of their personalities are developed along the Pay It Forward axis, sans the satisfying payoff of Haley Joel Osmond's death, but in sundrenched slo-mo. Augmenting the visual semiotics of aforementioned sundrenched slo-mo is the binary soundtrack, which consists of EITHER hip-hop, signifying the gritty urban blackness (but never the XXXTRA Black African Blackness that is brought by Hollywood to its white audience in films like "Tears of the Sun" or "The Island") OR the redemptive/walkintothelight! progressions of "eeeeeee, aaaaaeeeeeee." (It has two mommies: Enya and whoever writes that ER music that plays during, like, Important Moments like when Luka the Bosnian Refugee freaks out and goes to Africa to be all Heart of Darkness Sans Frontiers and is about to be shot by XXXTRA Black African rebels, who at the last moment decide to spare him when they see his little golden crucifix suddenly and prominenetly sunlit in slow-mo, which promps them to fall on their knees).
Anyway, back to "Crash."
Matt Dillon, the racist cop, harasses the black couple and sexually harasses the wife, Thandie Newton (RACIST), BUT later saves the wife from a burning vehicle (COMPLICATED). Then he tells the guilty white boy Ryan Philippe that racism is endemic to everyone (RACIST) but then is partnered up with a hispanic partner, whom he cheerfully greets as "amigo" (COMPLICATED). He is racist towards the woman handling his father's HMO file (RACIST) BUT only because his father, who hired black janitors, when no one else did, and paid them equal wage, lost his business because of affirmative action legislations (COMPLICATED). Said woman seems moved by his father's story (COMPLICATED) but at the end yells at a Chinese woman who hits her car to "speak American!" (RACIST). The guilty white boy Ryan Philippe helps the TV director, who goes all primal after being emasculated by the wife-fondling incident, BUT does it in a way that affirms the dominant white power paradigm (RACIST AND COMPLICATED, all twisted together like a candy stripe) and then he picks up a black hitchhiker to prove to himself that he is Not Racist, but shoots him on an incorrect hunch because he is, in fact, Racist. And Ludacris is blase about running over a Chinaman (Koreaman) (Racist/Desensitized by Harsh Life in a Black Ghetto), but then FREES THE (ethno-checked as Cambodian) SLAVES (trafficked by said Chinaman/Koreaman??) and sets them loose in Chinatown with instructions to "buy yourself some chop suey" (no longer Racist, but Redeemed and Aware, this film's equivalent of, like, a misogynyst action hero prolly played by Mel Gibson reluctantly, begrudgingly, grunting at some female co-hero that she is "a hell of a lady"). There is some insane Cat's Cradle of Racism and Complication with the Persian shopowner/Latino locksmith subplot, at the end of which all I could think of was that the little girl with the "invisible coat" protecting her is totally going to feel free to play in traffic now, and Sandra Bullock is an overprivileged bitch who is Racist, but a Life Crisis (sprained ankle) moment makes her realize that her Latina maid is her Best Friend (Complicated, with a side of Big Blind Spot for Class Issues). Also, really funny, albeit unintentionally so. And so on, and so forth, and, of course, everyone in this film is magically connected, because it is a movie about how Los Angeles is Fragmented (see also: "Grand Canyon," "Short Cuts" and the Baroque not-so-crypto-catholic horror that is "Magnolia") and humanity is conducted through, like, these parallel flows that defy the three-act story arc.
Anyway, If you want to see a really smart, interesting, in-depth American film that deals with racism and ethnicity and history and memory, and not in a Point/Counterpoint "Racism is Bad vs. We Are All Human and Complicated" way, see John Sayles' "Lone Star."" Leave "Crash" to its shit-->consumtion-->shit circle of life, Hakuna Matata.
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Date: 2005-10-17 01:24 am (UTC)Thanks.
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Date: 2005-10-17 01:33 am (UTC)GOOD!
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Date: 2005-10-17 01:32 am (UTC)if I weren't trying to be academic right now I'd make a proper pun out of the Crash/"strikes me" thing in that sentence.
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Date: 2005-10-17 01:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-17 01:43 am (UTC)dude, that entire movie is like a prolonged painful pun on the literal/metaphorical nature of a symbolic crash achieved, in some Aristotelian grand unifying maneuver, through people('s cars) physically strking other people('s cars).
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Date: 2005-10-17 02:09 am (UTC)ok seriously I have to finish this paper, thanks for the soup
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Date: 2005-10-17 02:16 am (UTC)And that's Ms. Ironiagnosia.
also: you are like Lenin
Date: 2005-10-17 02:43 am (UTC)It wasn't very long before we got in touch with Vladimir Ilyich. In those days people committed for trial were freely permitted to receive books. They were given only a perfunctory examination, during which the tiny dots in the middle of the letters and the slightly changed colour of the paper where milk had been used for ink, escaped notice. The technique of secret correspondence had made swift progress with us. Vladimir Ilyich's concern for his imprisoned comrades was characteristic of him. There was not a letter he sent out that did not contain some request concerning a fellow prisoner. So-and-so had no one coming to visit him – it was necessary to get him a "fiancee": or so-and-so had to be told through visiting relatives to look for letters in such-and-such a book in the prison library, on such-and-such a page; another needed warm boots, and so on. He corresponded with many of his imprisoned comrades, to whom his letters meant a great deal. His letters dealing with work had a cheering effect. The man who received them forgot that he was in prison, and got down to work himself I remember the impression those letters made (I was arrested myself in August 1896). They came written in milk every Saturday, which was book-receiving day...Besides The Development of Capitalism in Russia, Vladimir Ilyich wrote leaflets and illegal pamphlets, and a draft programme for the First Congress (which did not take place until 1898, although it was planned for an earlier date), and gave his views on questions under discussion In the organization. To avoid being caught in the act of writing with milk, he kneaded little inkpots out of bread, which he promptly popped into his mouth whenever he heard the peep hole being opened. "Today I have eaten six inkpots," he would add to his letter by way of humorous remark.
if I am very, very good
Date: 2005-10-21 05:56 am (UTC)John Sayles! (I did like Lone Star.)
I've not yet seen Crash because of exactly this. I was interested, and then I read David Denby praising it, and you know what he's like. And then I heard from friends that it was...like you say, but then I was on set, and everyone but everyone was raving, and I was thinking of seeing it.
I feel freshly inoculated now, thank you.
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Date: 2005-10-17 01:34 am (UTC)There is also the rash caused by stupid female-empowerment or flat-out anti-feminist movies, which looks almost the same but sort of more pink.
Those movies that combine the two, like Steel Magnolias? I have to carry a needful of atropine for those, just in case.
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Date: 2005-10-17 01:45 am (UTC)I have never seen Steel Magnolias, believe it or not. Should I, or will I be borrowing your atropine? Is it like that Boys on the Side movie that's about gender and race and AIDS and indigo girls?
Me three
Date: 2005-10-17 01:52 am (UTC)Re: Me three
Date: 2005-10-17 02:18 am (UTC)It made me want to rewatch "Bamboozled" (sans the last 15 minutes, which just ruined it).
'Cause I...be smackin' my hos...I be SMACKING MY HOOOOS!!!
Date: 2005-10-17 02:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-17 02:44 am (UTC)OTOH I quite liked Showgirls, so what do I know?
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Date: 2005-10-17 02:46 am (UTC)but what if TOM HANKS had been in it, too?
Also I love Showgirls.
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Date: 2005-10-17 02:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-17 02:46 am (UTC)something i always hate in american films about race is the way it always boils down to our sense of courtesy-- how racism is always reduced to a clearly definable faux pas of some sort, like peter boyle throwing around the "n word" in monster's ball... instead of the layered, institutional, intuitive, ever-present mess it is in reality.
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Date: 2005-10-17 02:50 am (UTC)how racism is always reduced to a clearly definable faux pas of some sort, like peter boyle throwing around the "n word" in monster's ball... instead of the layered, institutional, intuitive, ever-present mess it is in reality.
Exactly. But it's not a Hollywood thing to try and deal with racism as something that is encoded in language and air and water. That's why I love "Lone Star," because it actually deals with those layers, and instead of it being a Grand Movie About Race, it tells a story that is localized to an area where people live out racial tensions through a very specific historical narrative, and Sayles lets it unfold, instead of hammering you over the head with the Race Anvil.
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Date: 2005-10-17 03:57 am (UTC)aaah, ok... it's got "monster's ball syndrome," in which a sprinkle of good intentions leads directly to an ocean of "brown-sugar-how-cum-you-taste-so-good"...
i remember liking lone star, but i saw it ages and ages ago. another more or less "hollywood" film that deals with race surprisingly well, if you can find it (and haven't already seen it) is robert aldrich's ulzana's raid. it was made during the war in vietnam, and uses conflicts between settlers and apaches as a way of talking about guerilla warfare and humiliation and things of that sort. i have a growing theory that the best way to make a film "about race" is to show the construction of a racist, rather than the destruction... and this theory is based largely on this movie (as well as those of spike lee, who for all of his potential faults, probably makes the vulnerable and complex films dealing with such issues, IMHO).
great post, btw...
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Date: 2005-10-17 03:59 am (UTC)that should read "makes the MOST vulnerable"...
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Date: 2005-10-17 02:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-17 04:27 am (UTC)the history of humankind is the history of kitsch, and of often-pained interventions into the flow of the lowest common denominator.
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Date: 2005-10-17 06:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-17 07:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-21 05:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-17 04:57 am (UTC)By the way, I thought the shopkeeper was Iraqi. Wasn't that the point of the 'so bad it's unknowable/illegible' graffiti when they got burgled? I figured it was alluding to some kind of, "Sons of alqaeda" or "Arab pig" etc. Of course this was the point in the movie where outside political forces became unveiled from their Human, Complicated veil, so it had to be exorcised. And, of course, the shop-keeper is then moved to perform a kind of 'mad Arab'/terrorist scenario by hurting the innocent -- but not really, so I guess that's okay then. Not.
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Date: 2005-10-17 05:01 am (UTC)And the graffiti wasn't unknowable, it just said Raghead, same as what the gun shop wonder called him in the beginning of the film.
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Date: 2005-10-17 05:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-17 05:12 am (UTC)also, because you liked "Magnolia": I loved it, and am convinced that it was satire in exactly the same way (but on a subtler level) as any Wes Anderson film. and I'm not just confusing Andersonian directors, I swear. so, Q: do you think P.T.A. had his tongue lodged in his cheek for that entire movie?
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Date: 2005-10-17 06:12 am (UTC)One of those movies that keeps going in totally contrived and unconvincing directions, because it fits the scriptwriter's Grand Thematic Design, and that's more important than having characters that act like human beings. (see also: American Beauty).
Also like American Beauty, I wasn't as annoyed by the movie itself as by the generally worshipful public response.
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Date: 2005-10-17 11:00 am (UTC)But I think most of those films split down along the line of whether you read them as Sincere or Satirical. I was frothing at the mouth, as per usual, about how much I hate "Magnolia" to
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Date: 2005-10-21 06:05 am (UTC)But I have a personal theory that boys can hear, or imagine they hear, this satire-layer, more easily than girls, because boys tend to teach each other to bullshit. Girls teach each other to level.
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Date: 2006-03-25 12:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-17 01:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-17 05:40 pm (UTC)It's complicated
Date: 2005-10-29 12:33 am (UTC)By going meta in this way, the film director, Haggis, is of course letting us know that the film is oh so self-reflective about all this. But your hilarious comments about the soundtrack suggest that the film may contradict itself here, critiquing even as it participates in white people's desire for an otherness that is legible ("gritty urban blackness," etc). (Though I would also ask: what's the appeal of "XXXTRA Black African Blackness"?)
To my mind one of the biggest shortcomings of the film was that it reinforces the extremely pernicious prevailing assumption that the problem of racism is primarily an interpersonal rather than a structural problem. Indeed, to the extent that the film takes up structural inequality at all, it frames such inequality as internal to the working class rather than between the capital-owning class and the working class; and in turn this allows it to represent inequality's primary victims as white people (e.g. Matt Dillon's character's father). Or maybe. . . . Maybe the film framed things in this way in order to estrange us from this knee-jerk understanding of inequality. I dunno.
It's complicated II
Date: 2005-10-29 12:36 am (UTC)During that time, as you know, a new generation of Af-Am fictionists (Baldwin, Ellison, Hansberry, Marshall, etc) had begun to criticize anti-sentimental novelists (Wright, etc) for their complicity with the very sentimentalists (Stowe, etc) whom they thought they were writing against. Baldwin's argument was that whether the novel is appealing for interracial sympathy, indicting white violence, or invoking the specter of black violence, its performative effect gets achieved by way of a moral Manicheaism that reduces the black characters (but also the white ones) to one-dimensional stereotypes. So the project of this new generation was to complicate things.
Whether or not Haggis succeeds as well as these authors did is a crucial question. Again, your comments about the soundtrack suggest that under the guise of complicating things he may actually end up simplifying them. But again, too, I dunno. Does the film partake of stereotyping, or does it make of itself a reflexive pageantry of such types in hopes of triggering our estrangement from them?
But in an era... And I should probably re-read my Wendy Brown before saying this. But in an era when even the subjects with the most privilege endeavor to stake a status as victims, it may be important for literary and filmic texts to get us thinking about whether someone who is an aggressor in a first context and a victim in a second is any less an aggressor in the first. Of course, this film is about working-class white guys and bourgeois black guys – a problematic pairing which I'm afraid we haven't seen the last of. How bourgeois white males continue to escape the microscope is beside me, but there it is.
Yet, putting aside the question of bourgeois white males. Putting aside even the merits and demerits of Crash. Could a novel or a film balance complication with performative efficacy? Could it represent persons as being complicated and yet responsible, understandable yet culpable, worthy of an audience's empathy yet deserving of its reproof? That would seem to be the goal of Crash. Or, okay, it's the goal that I would have for it. And if it's not the question raised by the film itself, it's at least the question that the film raises for me. And I am not entirely sure that the answer is yes. Does your annoyance with the film stem in part from your sense that it's no?
I'll definitely be checking out Lone Star.
And hey. F*ing awesome blog! Thank you!!