Crash and the Three Cs

You know, what’s interesting to me is that someone voted that Crash was a boring, lopsided movie about racial diversity. Or tolerance. Or however I worded the poll. I’m surprised because usually, things which proclaim at the outset that they are moral tales also claim to be beyond reproach and people frequently fall for it. Usually not if it’s about environmentalism, but we’re all so damn fired up to prove that we’re not bigots that we feel obligated to like a movie like Crash.

I didn’t. For one, I put that lopsided option there for a reason. Because I thought it was. I imagine many of you have seen it. Did you notice that the Whites, Blacks and Latinos all turn out to be different than who you thought they’d be, for better or for worse? And did you notice how their storylines kept intertwining? Because if you did, you must have also noticed that the East Asian characters were portrayed as dirty, desperate, law breaking human smugglers who can’t drive for shit and harp on about duty and knowing your place and whatever. If they could have maybe declared that life is cheap in the orient before basting a dog in sweet and sour sauce the image would’ve been complete. For that matter, their storyline was completely off to the side. The best part is that I watched it years ago for a screen writing class. Then we had to get together with these American Diversity (Sociology?) classes to discuss it. I brought up this point and the professor leading the discussion- a thirty something African American woman with a PhD who I’d expect to be sensitive to issues of racial profiling pooh-poohed my assertion.

“There are no wise old men.” She said “no Kung-Fu fighting. Therefore it’s not a stereotype, therefore it’s good for them.” I think my jaw might’ve hit the floor. Lemme at her. I’ll show you Kung Fu. What the hell? So we use negative stereotypes, but as long as we don’t give them any credit for having a culture that values education or discipline we’re good. The stated goal of the movie is to promote understanding and tolerance, but it felt to me like what they were actually saying was “Hey now, whites, Hispanics, and African Americans. We need to stop fighting amongst ourselves and focus on the REAL problem- those slanty eyed yellow bastards.” As you all know, I studied Asia pretty extensively, so for me at least, this shit does not fly.

Rant about hypocritical bullshit aside, even if I wanted to like Crash, I couldn’t because the movie is driven by the three Cs. They’re deadly sins for writers. I am of course referring to Contrivance, Convenience, and Cliché, the triple headed beast of Bad Writing. Crash has a metric crapton of intertwining stories, and everything takes place in just a couple of days. Even in a small city for the same police officer to run into the same guy for two totally different reasons in two totally different parts of town is…unlikely at best. And the whole story is like that. Every single thing that happens has the distinct air of “it happened because we needed it to happen, not because it makes logical sense for it to have happened.” This is convenience- writing a world where logic and commonsense means little. Even worse is contrivance, when your own established logic goes out the window as well or you just drop things on the audience for no reason or without warning. Consider the police officers again. There were two, as I recall. The “good one” is kind, strong and capable, defending an innocent upper class African American couple from his asshole of a partner one night, and then saving the male half of that couple the very next day after that man snaps and creates a huge ruckus. In the real world, he’d probably have been shot in the “altercation.” But wonder cop uses his magic charm to convince the other officers to stand down, equips his IRON TESTICLES to walk right up to a violent, armed man, talks HIM down, then talks the world out of holding anything against this man. And then later in the movie he shoots an innocent man because he’s suddenly very jumpy. Wait. What? He was some kind of ARYAN SUPERMAN until they realized that’s what they wrote and suddenly the world’s most perfect police officer is murdering innocent people and burying them in a shallow grave on the roadside. The other officer, who was a huge asshole turns out that he’s just on edge because his father’s ill. A fact they don’t reveal until almost the end, and which basically doesn’t matter at all to the progression of the plot. The character had all but disappeared in the meantime. And the sad part? He was one of the better characters. These things smack of contrivance.

And cliché? I believe I covered that with the racial stereotyping. In the end, Crash just isn’t a very good movie in my opinion. It holds such incredible disregard for basic characterization or story structure as to make the entire production seem like a disconnected mess.