Conflicts in Crash

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We live with conflicts, which are happening every day in our life. They are quite normal because everybody is so different. However, some conflicts between culture and race can be very serious and aggressive. The movie Crash illustrates several stories of cultural conflicts and racism. Crash tells several stories involving interrelated characters that happen in 36 hours in Los Angeles. All the characters are racially connected, a black police officer with a mother who is addicted to drug and a brother who loves thieving; a white racist police officer, carries a sick father, who always harass African American people; a Hollywood director and his wife who face the harassment of the racist cop; two car thieves who use their race to take advantage from other people; a Caucasian attorney who uses race in politics. The stories in Crash happened in Los Angeles, which is a metropolitan, multicultural and diversified city. According to Simmel’s theory, the modern city, like Los Angeles, is “cold”. People are very indifferent and have a blasé outlook when they are walking on the streets. There are barriers among people. In this kind of society, it is extremely easy to “crash” and bump into other people. Not only crash physically by car accidents, but also crash mentally among people’s minds, like cultural, racial and class conflicts. The movie used several cars crashing to indicate the conflicts among different cultures and the complications of humanity. I can see people are struggling between conflictions and harmony. Racism is the biggest conflict in this movie because almost every story is caused by racism. In addition, they are also experiencing class struggles. America is a country, which is made up of immigrants. If there weren’t a ... ... middle of paper ... ...em as a treasure. Just like at the end of the movie, the police officer Ryan helps the black couple that he insults. There is still hope in the movie that people still have humanity. It is a reflection of today’s social reality that people of different races live together peacefully. Even though it is impossible to say that there are no conflicts at all in today’s society, people are trying to accept and learn from other cultures. Works Cited Rethinking Racism: Toward A Structural Interpretation Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2657316.pdf?acceptTC=true&acceptTC=true&jpdConfirm=true Hybridity in Contemporary Postcolonial Theory http://www.sunypress.edu/pdf/61414.pdf Race, Racism and Discrimination: Bridging Problems, Methods and Theory in Social Psychological Research Bobo, Lawrence D. Fox, Cybelle http://www.jstor.org/stable/1519832

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