Critical Essay on "Crash"
The film "Crash" written and directed by Paul Haggis was taken place in Los Angeles. This movie illustrates how discrimination and prejudice has affected our everyday lives, due to the misconceptions we have of each other. All the characters in this movie are either victims of prejudice and discrimination or are guilty of it. To help us give more understanding about this movie I am comparing the movie Crash to Joseph Healey textbook, Race, Ethnicity, Gender & Class.
In this movie we see a wide range and depth of prejudice and discrimination and it is not only the whites who are prejudice or discriminate but also minorities who are prejudiced and discriminate against other minorities. For better understanding first we need to learn the meaning of prejudice and discrimination. According to Joseph Healey "Prejudice is tendency of individuals to think and feel in negative ways about members of other groups."
Discrimination on the other hand, is actual, overt, individual behavior" (Healey 96). Healey thinks these two concepts do not always occur together.
Healey believes that there are four different combinations of prejudice and discrimination. The first one is Timid bigot, Healey asserts, "A person who is prejudiced but doesn't discriminate is a timid bigot" (Healey 96), An example of this is shown in the beginning of the movie Crash, when Dorri and her father, Farhad, are in a gun shop and the owner of the gun shop makes references to Osama bin Laden and Jihad thinking Farhad was Arab. When Dorri tells the gun shop owner that "You can give me the gun or give me back the money and I am really hoping for the money" (Crash), the gun shop owner gives her the gun because he is in a gun shop business for the...