Ed's Blog

The Big Picture: The Collage ... Parts and Wholes.

Yesterday I saw "Crash." The film/movie reminded me of one of my film favorites - "Traffic." Crash attempts to give the viewer a glimpse of racism ... but a view of racism requires, essentially - many, many viewpoints, because racism is essentially an artificial concept. We, as humans, try to make sense of our world, so we can reason and problem solve. We categorize everything. Imagine any discipline or scientific area without strict definitions ... no one could communicate or reason in such a world. Everything must be categorized. So with humans ... we go back and forth between our uniqueness as individuals, our own unique slant on things, our own distinct personalities ... versus ... stereotypes. The Hollywood movie deals strictly in stereotypes. Spinning stories of people - well, not people, but stories of 1-dimensional sterotypes. Films on the other hand give us a glimpse of n-dimensional people, shot in abstract reality, at angles, in many situations, dealing with everything from the mundane to the perverse, ... and the film-maker lets us make sense (allows us the flexibility to interpret, to form our own categories), and to make our own, n-dimensional interpretations.

Crash was cool because the film-maker tries to give us a glimpse of the racism concept. Characters are not so simple, black and white. We sometimes use sterotypes ... because, well, when we have limited information, we need to fill-in-the-blanks to reason through a situation. If you're at a restaurant and a female with an apron walks up to your table, you might just say - "Can you get me a glass of water?" Of course, it could just be a female in an apron, right? "Get your own damn water!" (A number of times I've been approached in stores and asked questions simply because I had my tie on from work and I stopped by to pick up something myself. Recall the Seinfeld episode when Jerry is mistaken as a pharmacist!)

Beyond stereotyping is ... racism. Making the categories, fitting people into the categories, making generalizations, judgments, being emotional, ... being weak in our own unique ways.

Crash had to tell the story in parts ... because that's what the concept is all about. We start with the details, we generalize, we fit, we re-categorize, but we de-humanize. It's all about the way humans are, loving, caring, emotional, thinking, thinking, thinking, and hating.

- On a related note, check out:

art imitates life, imitates art.

posted by Unknown @ 7:14 AM