Crash is a complex movie with a simple premise: set in Los Angeles it follows eight main characters from all walks of life and races whose lives intersect at some point during one 24 hour period. These people are all different yet all alienated, to the point of breaking, so much so that when they come together, things explode. The complexity of the film comes from the encounters between characters and their tangled lives and worlds. In the film the narrator says the characters “Crash into each other to feel something,” since lives rarely touch in metropolitan Los Angeles. Crash features an affluent white housewife Jean Cabot who lives in Brentwood, California with her white District Attorney husband Rick. A Persian store owner, Farhad, who distrusts anyone he perceives gang affiliation, particularly his Hispanic locksmith with a young daughter. Police officers Tom Hansen, a white rookie cop on the force doesn’t like his racist white partner John Ryan. An African-American film producer Cameron Thayer and his wife Christine who is sexually molested by the white police officer named John Ryan, who …show more content…
According to a blog by Anne Helen Petersen, she comments on a People magazine article regarding Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel’s wedding where a short film was shown that had homeless people in Los Angeles wishing the couple congratulations. Entitled White Privilege Wedding: Justin Timberlake + Jessica Biel (2014), Peterson goes on to discuss her own white privileged life. In doing so she also quotes the work of Peggy McIntosh, who authored a list of things white people don’t have to be concerned about. Among them at number 25 on her list she says, “If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race.” Unfortunately for the Thayers, that was not the