“You think you know who you are? You have no idea.”

Paul Haggis, director of Million Dollar Baby, brings the world of stereotypes to the forefront in Crash (winner of the Academy Award for Best Motion Picture of the Year for 2004), a complex movie set in Los Angeles. Watching this movie encourages viewers to consciously think about the pictures they have formed in their minds about people of different race, gender, ethnicity and social status. Hopefully people will question the common misconceptions they may have about people of another race or ethnicity.

Crash is a worthwhile movie because it will make people aware of their beliefs and the film works to challenge them. It is a film that will make you question your beliefs, your morals, your outlook on life. As the characters are introduced to you in the film, you will automatically create your own conclusions about them: who they are, why they act and talk the way they do, what they will become. Stereotypes people form at the beginning of the film will be challenged throughout the story. Crash is filled with intertwined lives of characters, stereotypes, emotions, morals and plot twists.

In the film a Persian family’s store is broken into and vandalized. The vandals graffiti the walls with derogatory terms and refer to the storeowners as “Arabs.” Shereen, the storeowner's wife, asks, “They think we’re Arab. When did Persian become Arab?” This leads the family to believe they were attacked for simply being “Arab.” Unfortunately, this is a common misconception that many people share; many people are guilty of grouping people in categories, such as “Hispanic,” “Asian,” and “Arab,” even though people within those groups would not describe themselves as such. People must realize they cannot lump all people into one race or ethnicity.

There are a variety of characters in this film, including a TV director and his wife, two young black men who steal and sell cars, a prominent district attorney and his distraught wife, a Mexican-American locksmith, a Persian family, a Chinese man who sells people into slavery and his wife, two police detectives and a seemingly racist police officer and his seemingly non-racist partner. Throughout the film the characters collide with each other in a multitude of situations that cause them to reinforce or contradict the stereotypes they hold and the stereotypes that are held against them.

Lippmann writes, “Out of the opposition we make villains and conspiracies” (70). People that are considered “different” are labeled as opposition. No matter what they do or how they behave they are plotting against the person who is the same. A person can always find fault with the “opposition.” For example, the district attorney’s wife tells her husband that she wants to get the locks on their home changed a second time after a Mexican-American man changes them the first time. They argue back and forth for a time and when her husband finally says okay, she yells, “And you might mention that we’d appreciate it if next time they didn’t send a gang member […]. Yes, the guy with the shaved head, the pants around his ass, the prison tattoo.”


As the story progresses, the viewers get a glance into the characters’ lives, explaining possible reasons for their actions and beliefs. Each of the characters has a back story that causes their frustration, anxiety, cruelty, happiness, anger, sympathy or hope. It’s left to the viewer to decide whether the characters’ background is sufficient enough to explain their behavior. Most importantly, Crash forces viewers to think about the racism, discrimination, stereotypes and prejudice that still occur today.