Crash Review

Summary
People are born with good hearts, but as they grow up they learn prejudices. "Crash" is a movie that brings out bigotry and racial stereotypes. The movie is set in Los Angeles, a city with a mix of many nationalities and cultures. The story begins when several people are involved in a multi-car accident. From there, we are taken to the days before the crash, seeing the lives of several characters, and the problems each encounters during that day. Later we realize the people’s lives connect in more ways than they will ever know. A racist cop is trying to get medical help for his father, but he is having problems with an African American HMO clerk (Shaniqua Johnson) who won't give his father permission to see another doctor. Frustrated he utters racial slurs to the woman, her stereotypical name is criticized and he insults her intelligence. He in turn takes out his frustration on a black couple during a traffic stop. A bitchy socialite and District Attorney couple are carjacked at gunpoint by two black teenagers. Mrs. Cabot takes out her anger on a Mexican locksmith who is changing the door locks to their home. Later that night, the locksmith is again robbed of his dignity by a Persian store-owner. The store owner has his locks changed by the Mexican locksmith and tells the store owner that he also needs his door fixed. The store owner does not understand and in turn his store is robbed and trashed that night. Who is to blame? The Mexican locksmith. That same day the locksmith and little girl’s lives are threatened but are saved by the magical cloak. Many of the characters switch from being bad-person-to-hero in many surprising ways. Crash plays into the many stereotypes of African Americans, White Europeans, Hispanics, Mexicans, Persians and Asians. This movie has received many prestigious awards, three of which were Oscars)for its boldness to show the realities of life and happenings that otherwise would continue to be shun by the world.

Overall, Crash is a great movie. The movie points out hatred of racism, loathing of man’s inhumanity to man, empathy, self-reflection, and an awareness of how one’s own prejudices may affect others. The movie demonstrates the consequences of widespread attitudes harboring racist, discriminatory, and stereotypical overtones. It is hard to blame any one person in this movie. Everyone is guilty; no race, gender, class, or ideology is spared.

Characters
Sandra Bullock-Jean Cabot
Brendan Fraser-Rick Cabot
Ludacris-Anthony
Larenz Tate-Peter Waters
Don Cheadle-Detective Graham Waters
Terrence Howard- Cameron Thayer
Thandie Newton- Christine Thayer
Laretta Devine-Shaniqua Johnson
Matt Dillon-Officer John Ryan
Ryan Phillipe-Officer Tom Hanssen

Negative Criticisms
Some critics have said that iin the movie, Asians are portrayed in an overwhelmingly negative light, and Asian stereotypes were reinforced and lacked any manner of development of its Asian characters. To an extent this is true. European American, African American, Hispanic, Mexican and Cambodian's stereotypes were challenged and given insight on; but Asian stereotypes were simply noted.

Reviews


In 2004, the controversial film Crash brought to light issues and topics that are usually brushed to the side. It was called, “Thrilling and Provocative!” from Ken Tucker of the New York Magazine and “A Knockout” by Peter Travers of Rolling Stone. Although it received good reviews, the subject matter was offensive to some viewers. This movie showed the raw reality of racism and had no intention of sugar coating it. The movie did not dance around issues or tip-toe around feelings. Because of this, the reactions to this movie were mixed, but the audience could not escape the universal message of discrimination. This movie openly shows that racism is not slanted towards a particular race or group of people. Racism and discrimination affects us all and everyone has thoughts of other people based on their outer appearance and the way they carry themselves. Every character was influenced by the way other people viewed them. It was interesting to see how each character struggled with the roles of their own façade. Rick Cabot, Brendan Fraser, struggled with his actions based on how others would perceive him because he held office. Cameron Thayer, Terrence Howard, struggled with how to identify with his race. The ignorance of people and the unwillingness to educate themselves on other cultures and people becomes a vicious cycle. One wrong deed often leads to another and then another. The actions can not be justified with blame because the results are not possitive. Ria, Jennifer Esposito, begins the movie by insulting the Asian driver and mocking her speech. Then, when Ria is called Mexican, she is offended. We learn that her mother is from Puerto Rico and her father is from El Salvador. She uses stereotypes and she is part of a stereotype. When you hurt others, it often comes back to haunt you. This movie is a morality play about cause and effect. This film addresses the way people impact each other, directly and indirectly. The positive interactions and the negative interactions have weight in the other character’s lives. One small action, like giving a daughter an invisible and protective cape, could lead to the unimaginable, like a death of a child. Knowing the outcome and results of every one of your actions is impossible, but it is important to think that even the smallest of actions can alter someone else. This film brings up the timeless moral of not judging a book by its cover. Possibly everyone has said something a little racist in their lives.


It's True!



Taylor Espy and Dione Hardin

Jazz the music and Jazz the book

by: Clayton Mandly, Emma McGirr, and David Odenwelder

Jazz (the music) and Jazz (the novel) are very similar in style and structure. Both are always changing but rooted in a particular style. Jazz music is improvisation-based and therefore the performers have to feed off of one another. There are many different instruments that are used to play jazz music and each instrument has its own individuality. Just as the performers are individuals, the instruments they play have specific roles and work together. The text is almost rhythmical, giving a variety of different tempos and timbre, which contribute to the distinctive qualities of each instrument or player. Throughout the book, there are many different narrators who are used to enrich the detail of the story. Each character has their own story to tell and the reader can see their individuality, which is pieced together in the novel to form a collective and collaborative piece of writing. This multiple voice and multiple perspectives is the same with jazz music. Each instrument adds a little more something to the big picture of the musical piece that they are performing.

In Jazz the novel, the narrator observes what is taking place in the novel while making presumptions about what the outcome of the characters’ lives will be. But, the narrator learns that their lives were not predictable. In the end of the novel, the narrator was surprised that the outcome he was expecting did not occur. One could compare the narrator to an audience member watching jazz music. Jazz music is not predictable. It is made up of a set path that will be loosely followed and during the journey down the path different instruments will improvise, creating music and rhythms on the spot. The audience may try to guess at what the musicians will do next. But again it is hard to predict an improvisational art. Even the musicians do not always know what to expect.

Morrison’s format of the book is also reminiscent of jazz music. She uses a single blank page to separate the sections in the book. She also does not label the sections or title them. This makes it very similar to jazz music because the music flows from one point to another without complete stops. It has section changes when one instrument starts a solo, but no real apparent or drastic stop to a new movement. In the novel, Morrison makes the sections flow well together. For example at the end of one section, she writes, “She buttoned her coat and left the drugstore and noticed, at the same moment as that Violet did, that it was spring. In the City” (Morrison, 114). Then at the start of the next section she writes, “And when spring comes to the City people notice one another in the road” (Morrison, 117). These sections are connected but at the same time it switches focus on a related subject.

Jazz music began its development in New Orleans during the early 20^th century and then broadened its’ reach to other major cities. The novel Jazz is set in a place called “the City” in the winter 1926. It is set in during the time when jazz music was spreading and very popular. Though the city described in the novel is never specifically identified, it is possible to stay that it was New York City. This novel took place during the time of the Harlem Renaissance, which was an explosion of African American culture in the arts including the blues and jazz music.

The idea of double-consciousness is apparent throughout the novel and can be noticed when analyzing the characters of Joe and Violet. We learned about this idea while reading Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark and Morrison stresses the idea a lot in Jazz. Double-consciousness can also be applied to jazz music and the varied meanings of the musical piece being played. One example from the novel is when Violet is contemplating saying, “No! That Violet is not somebody walking around town, up and down the streets wearing my skin and using my eyes shit no that Violet is me!” (Morrison, 95-96).

One difference between jazz the music and Jazz the novel is the concept of the “not me.” The “not me” is considered to be one way people identify themselves by projecting all the qualities they don’t like onto a person of another race. The “not me” doesn’t exist in jazz music but it does in Toni Morrison’s novel. In Jazz, the character Golden Gray has grown up thinking that he is a white man and when he learns that his father is black he goes to find and kill his father. Golden Gray makes assumptions about what his father is like and gives him all negative qualities because he is of another race. In contrast, Golden Gray’s father Henry Lestory projects Golden Gray as the “not me.” When addressing his son for the first time he says, “Be what you want – white or black. Choose. But if you choose black, you got to act black, meaning draw your manhood up – quicklike, and don’t bring me no whiteboy sass” (Morrison, 173). Henry Lestory is assuming the white characteristics to be weak and prissy. Jazz music is a collaborative art form and calls for everyone to work together despite their differences resulting in the nonexistence of the “not me.”

Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid’s real name was Elaine Potter Richardson. She was born in St John’s, Antigua in the West Indies on May 25th, 1949. She lived with her mother, Annie Richardson Drew, and stepfather, David Drew, who was a carpenter. Elaine never knew her biological father, but was told that he was a taxi driver named Roderick Potter. Richardson was very close to her mother as she was the only child for nine years. She attended school and received a British education in Antigua. Elaine was most often at the top of her class. Elaine’s mother had three more children, all sons in a very quick succession, beginning when Elaine was nine and with this, Elaine relationship with her mother changed. After her brothers were born, she was treated poorly and neglected by both her mother and step-father.

“I don’t know if having other children was the cause for our relationship changing- it might have changed as I entered adolescence, but her attention went elsewhere. And also our family money remained the same but there were more people to feed and to clothe and so everything got sort of shortened not only material things but emotional things, the good emotional things I got a short end of that. But then I got more of the things I didn’t have, like a certain kind of cruelty and neglect. In the end it didn’t matter. When I was first a young person it did matter a lot because I didn’t know what had happened to me. If I hadn’t become a writer I don’t know what would have happened to me; that was a kind of self rescuing.” Jamaica Kincaid

In this audio, Jamaica Kincaid talks about her relationship with her mother. She discusses how she became such a wonderful reader and so interested in books. Since her mother was very interested in reading she taught Jamaica how to read at a very young age. This allowed Kincaid’s mother to still keep her freedom of reading and being involved in stories and not have to be disturbed by Jamaica.

Listen: Web Extra: Kincaid on How Reading Empowered Her
Real MediaWindows

At the age of seventeen, Richardson’s step-father became ill and could no longer support his family. Her mother pulled Richardson out of school, even though she was very intelligent, and sent her to Westchester New York to work as an au pair to an American family. She was supposed to make money for her family but she refused to send it back to her home land, and she did not talk to her family or open her mother’s letters.

Richardson, while working as an au pair, was supposed to be studying to eventually become a nurse. Richardson later resigned as an au pair, quit nursing school and began looking for new jobs. Her first writing experience involved a series of articles for Ingenue magazine. She also had a job as a fact checker with Forbes magazine. She became friends with a professor Myles Ludwig. Later in her life she wrote him asking for a job, and he hired her to work at Art Direction magazine. With this job Richardson went to the New School for Social Research where she studied photography. She also attended Franconia College in New Hampshire for a year, which later leads to her being eligible to work at the New Yorker.

Richardson decided to change her name to Jamaica Kincaid from Elaine Potter Richardson so she could write anonymously. She knew that her family disapproved of her writing and so by changing her name the people of Antigua would not know it was her. Kincaid found a writing job with the New Yorker magazine and wrote in her own column “The Talk of the Town”. She met the editor of the magazine, William Shawn. He encouraged Kincaid to write fiction, which were then often published as installments in the New Yorker. Kincaid resigned from the New Yorker in 1996, after the death of her youngest brother Devon, died from AIDS at the age of 33.

This audio has Jamaica Kincaid explain how she became a writer. At a young she began “writing” and she soon realized that the reason she was fired from many of her jobs because she was not dedicated to these, but instead writing. Kincaid was not confident in her writing, but she knew that “this” was the way that she wanted to write. She doubted that she would ever succeed as a writer, but she would not let this stand in her way.

Listen: Web Extra: Kincaid on Becoming a Writer
Real MediaWindows

While Kincaid was working for the New Yorker and being encouraged by her editor Shawn, she married his son Allen. Together they had two children, Annie in 1985 and Harold in 1989. Kincaid and her family now live in North Bennington, Vermont, where she lectures on African and African American Studies and on English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University. Kincaid has received many awards and honors. From the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, she won the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award for her work At the Bottom of the River. She has also received the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund writer’s award.

Works Cited

Emory University---English Department "Where Courageous Inquiry Leads" 3 Mar. 2009 .

Intersections: Jamaica Kincaid and the Literature of Defiance. 2 Feb. 2004. Npr. 27 Feb. 2009 .

JAMAICA KINCAID. New York State Writers Institute. 2 Mar. 2009 .

By: Sarah Burns and Lindsey Sanders

A Close Reading of Race in Jazz

While reading Jazz I found that there were many times I needed to remind myself that I was reading a story about African American characters. Toni Morrison wrote Jazz in a way that did not make race the main theme. However, race definitely was a theme covered throughout the book. All but one of Morrison’s main characters in Jazz are at least part African American. Each of these characters takes the stage and is in control of telling their own story. They are able to each explain who they are as a person, as well as discuss the experiences that they have had during their lifetime. Some of these experiences include how their race has affected their life, but not all. This is because Morrison wanted to make Jazz not just a story about race, but other themes as well.



Toni Morrison defines race in a couple different ways throughout this novel. She shows the way African Americans are treated by whites to show one type of race. Another type of race Morrison describes is how African Americans see themselves being black. These two types of race occur often throughout Jazz. When race is discussed in either of these ways it is easy to pick up on and understand.

The way African Americans are treated by white people is one of the ways race is portrayed in Jazz. On page 74, Morrison’s narrator is describing Alice Manfred and the story that goes with her. Alice is Dorcus’s aunt and we are told that Alice now feels very unsafe after Joe shot Dorcus and even more unsafe because Violet stabbed Dorcus’s dead body at the funeral. Even though Alice feels unsafe there is nothing she can do, she says “she would have called the police after both of them if everything she knew about Negro life had made it even possible to consider.” This quote shows Alice knows that because she is a black woman the white community, and the things that are run by the white community, for example the police station, will not be able to help her. She has decided that it is not worth her time or effort. The color of Alice’s skin is what keeps her from calling for safety.

Another example of the treatment that the African Americans receive from white people is illustrated on page 102. This page is describing how African Americans from all over were coming to the fields to work. It then goes on to describe how the African Americans were paid for their hard work, “nine dollars a bale, some said, if you grew your own; eleven dollars if you had a white friend carry it up for pricing. And for pickers, ten cents a day for the women and a case quarter for the men.” If the African American worked hard and grew his own he was paid a decent wage, but if he had a white friend carry it up, it was worth more. The workers are the ones that do all the time consuming and hard work, and they receive only a small amount in comparison to what an African American would make if he grew his own. This quote is a perfect example of how the whites treated the African Americans, it shows that Morrison saw that throughout our history we have not been treated as equals.

On page 106, there is another example of Morrison describing the way whites treated African Americans. On this page the narrator is describing the wealth of the whites in the city of Baltimore. The African American narrator explains that “white people literally throw money at you--- just for being neighborly: opening a taxi, picking up a package. And anything that you had or made or found you could sell in the streets.” This passage goes on to say that the African Americans line the streets with items that are either made or used that they can sell to the wealthy white people of the city. Morrison shows the reader that she is aware of how the whites and African Americans are treated differently.

Morrison not only sees race as a difference between two different races, but within one race as well. In Jazz she has the African Americans go through events that would leave them questioning what would be the “right” thing to do. One of the first examples of this occurs when Joe and Violet are on the train headed for the city. The train has just passed through Delaware, a state in which the whites and African Americans had to be separated with a curtain. Now that they are in a free state the attendant came through the car of African Americans and informed them that the breakfast car was open and they could go in as they pleased. It is stated on page 31 that the attendant “wanted the whole coach to file into the dining car, now that they could.” This passage is one that shows just how hard it is for an African American to accept that he or she is a free man or woman. It is very hard for them to just stand up and walk into a dining car, when for so long they were not allowed and they know it will not last forever. I think that this section in the story really shows how the color of your skin could cause many problems, both within society and yourself.

Another example of how Morrison added inner conflict within the African Americans occurs on page 77. In this part of Jazz, Morrison describes the weapons that African American females choose, “black women were armed; black women were dangerous and the less money they had the deadlier the weapon they chose.” This quote portrays more than just the theme of race, but also feminism, economic status and violence. Dealing with just the race issue though, it is clear that Morrison knew that many African Americans were armed and dangerous because they had many unfair opportunities compared to whites. You can tell that this is an inner conflict that Morrison wants to touch base on because after she is finished describing the African Americans who are armed and dangerous, she goes on to describe that they are the ones have “found protection in church and the judging, angry God”. Morrison has the African Americans decide which side they want to be associated with and how they would protect themselves if they needed to.

Morrison, Toni. Jazz. 1992. Vintage International.


By: Sarah Burns and Lindsey Sanders

Race and National Identity

Race and National Identity

“One may question whether the United States ever possessed the common body of ideas and values that some commentators look back on with nostalgia, or if one may point to the exclusions of gender, race, class, and education that enabled such a comforting illusion of consensus” (Clayton 9). In essence, Clayton is speaking of a national identity. In order to say the United States has a national identity, we must agree that race and national identity weave together in the United States. Reading the novels discussed in the earlier blogs this relation of race and national identity becomes clear.

“The collective identity of a nation state can be accessed through the stories it tells about its own history…” (Andrews). Faulkner’s novel “Absalom, Absalom” is one of these stories. Set during the time surrounding the Civil War, the novel could be a story of the creation of America’s national identity.

Consider the main character, Thomas Sutpen. Born in the mountains of the north, Sutpen eventually comes to a small southern town to found his dynasty, a pure white family that will survive long after he is gone. This seems to parallel the founding of the South. Wherein, white settlers eventually moving to the South began to build plantations and their own dynasties, with their own ideals. Sutpen begins his master plan by detaching himself from his past. The illusion of Sutpen’s entry to the town on his horse, “…as though they had been created out of thin air…,” (Faulkner 24) was the first of many ways Faulkner showed this detachment. The parallel here is after years of creating their ideals and fortunes, the states of the South tried to break away from the North.

Sutpen begins his family and becomes wealthy, only to find out that past transgressions with his first wife are coming back to haunt him. The Civil War begins with the North (the Southern states “past”) refusing to allow the South to detach from the nation. At this point Sutpen’s master plan begins to unravel, at the same time the South’s army is begins to suffer defeats.

The issue of race weaves throughout both the novel and the United States preceding and during the Civil War. The idea of a national identity requires that all the nation’s citizens have the both an equal and shared view. In both the novel and our nation, the white race was the bearer of our nation’s “identity.” Blacks were slaves at the mercy of their white owners without rights or a voice, or in some cases seen only as “wild beasts” (Faulkner 10). The white men who had the wealth to own land and slaves became the bearers of the national identity. This shows that not only was the term citizen reserved for the white race, the title was primarily for the wealthy males.

Race and national identity have always been intertwined. The United States has always been identified as a white nation. Other races are often times seen and depicted as being less American than whites. The books that we have read this quarter, especially those by Toni Morrison, really delve into this issue. Morrison often talks about how African Americans are used in literature. They are used simply as an aid to white people, and are usually depicted as something that no one should aspire to be. She also says that what it means to be American has always been associated with what it means to be white. Some people like to say the United States is a melting pot where all different types of people are accepted, but many times this is not the case. Immigrants are often looked down upon, and people get uneasy about different races immigrating to the United States. This shows how much race and national identity are related, and how the white race is seen as being the official race of America.

Manning Marable, in an article from the social issues website wiseto.com talks about the American identity in regards to race. Marable talks about how U.S. nationality is defined historically in that the power and privilege has always been in the hands of a certain race and class: white males. He says, “Despite the orthodox cultural ideology of the so-called ‘melting pot,’ power, privilege and the ownership of productive resources and property has always been unequally allocated in a social hierarchy stratified by class, gender and race” (Marable). This quote is very important in that it shows that America has always hid behind the “melting pot” idea in order to come off as being accepting of all races, and that there is not one true American identity. He goes on to say, “to be an ‘all-American’ is, by definition, not to be an Asian-American, Pacific-American, American Indian, Latino, Arab-American or African-American.” It is because of this “whiteness” within the dominant national identity, that Americans generally make few distinctions between “ethnicity” and “race”---and the two concepts are usually used interchangeably. Americans actually impose a racial identity on radically different ethnic groups” (Marable). This is a great quote and it is a great example of what being an American is defined as.

An article written by Glenn C. Loury entitled “Race and Identity in America” from the book “One by One from the Inside Out : Essays and Reviews on Race and Responsibility in America,” talks about the issues of African Americans finding obtaining an identity in American culture. Throughout the article he talks about passing, and describes himself as been fascinated and disgusted with it at the same time. This got me thinking about the novel we read in class of the same name. “Passing” by Nella Larsen goes hand in hand with this particular article. Loury talks about how intriguing the idea of passing was because it enabled black people to take part in the advantages of white people in society. The African Americans who took to passing were simply trying to fit into the stereotyped American identity. To be truly American meant to be white and to have the privileges that went along with being white. I think that in “Passing” the characters were fascinated and disgusted at the same time with the idea of passing. It meant a better life with more privileges in American society, but it also meant rejecting your race and who you truly were. I think that this was a dilemma that a lot of people of color had to go through because to engage in American society, and to be soon as truly “American” meant to deny your own race and assimilate to the culture of white people. This article was extremely helpful and related to the topic of Race and National Identity in many ways.

Bridget R. Cooks in the article, “Fixing race: visual representations of African Americans at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893” discusses the cartoons which appeared in Harper’s Weekly in the 1890’s, showing how far back the negative depiction of African Americans goes (image at top). There was an exhibit to celebrate America’s achievements since its founding, and this picture shows how many whites did not want African Americans to be there. This particular picture depicts African Americans as being wild, barbaric, and in no way comparable to the white race. They were depicted this way because whites were very fearful that their national identity would be tainted by including African Americans in the equation. Therefore, African Americans were depicted as being savage and completely different from what it was to be truly American at the time, and that was being white. This picture shows African Americans looking beast-like and not very much like real humans. These pictures found in Harper’s Weekly are a perfect example to show how race was so closely related to national identity. (Cooks).

National identity played a different role in Jazz than it did in Absalom, Absalom. Faulkner’s work was mainly about Sutpen’s creation of his own American dream. However, Toni Morrison used Jazz as an attempt to describe, the concerns from an African American community’s point of view and the roots of their collective search for identity. The unidentified narrator remains close to the lives of those in black Harlem, and does not focus the story on any white characters, except Vera Louise, the mother of biracial Golden Gray. The legacy left behind from slavery comes up as a theme throughout the story. In fact, the migrating of blacks to the City demonstrates their distancing from their past.

Characters, such as Golden Gray, demonstrate the conflict between exploring one’s racial past. After Golden Gray finds out he is half black, he decides to find his father and kill him. (Jazz, 142- 143) This search leads him to his father, Henry, who explains to him that he has a choice of which race he wants to embrace. Although Golden Gray’s light skinned appearance led him to be able to have a choice, most other characters in the African American community were not given that opportunity to be “free”.

Finding freedom in the black community, after the Civil War, was a part of finding their national identities. It was a struggle for many African Americans and former slaves. An example can be seen on page 31 of Jazz. The train attendant speaks of how disappointed he was to see that once the train past Delaware- the line where segregation was lifted- few African Americans got up and mingled throughout the train. This can lead one to question were they really free? They finally became physically free, but in their minds they had no idea what it really meant to be free, since they had been in bondage for so long. This bondage of the mind, seemed to hinder some members African Americans in their quest to find their national identity.

MLA Citations

Andrews, Molly. "National identity and national narratives" Paper presented at the annual

meeting of the ISPP 31st Annual Scientific Meeting, Sciences Po, Paris, France, Jul 09,

2008 . 2009-02-03.

http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p254711_index.html

Cooks, Bridget R. “Fixing race: visual representations of African Americans at the World’s

Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893.” Routledge. 2007: 435-465.

Clayton, Jay. The Pleasures of Babel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom. 1936. New York: Vintage International, 1986.

Loury, Glenn C. “Race and Identity in America: A Personal Perspective.” The History Place:

Points of View. 1997. 5 March 2009.

.

"Malcom X Explains Black Nationalism." YouTube. 11 May 2006. 8 March 2009

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO6Co8v2XjY>.

Marable, Manning. "Beyond Racial-Identity Politics." Race and Ethnicity. Ed. Alma M. Garcia

and Richard A. Garcia. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2001.

<http://socialissues.wiseto.com/Articles/FO3020630048/>.

By: Jenn Leever, Michael Viox, and Charlene Winburn