Paul Haggis’ movie “Crash” creates a social commentary on race, race relation, and the perpetuation of social stereotypes in everyday life. With a diverse variety of characters of all races and class status “Crash” brings into question the use of stereotypes in real life.
A stereotype is a widely held, often oversimplified, idea of a particular type of person, thing, or culture. Social stereotypes are concerned with highly visible and distinctive personal characteristics such as race and sex. These stereotypes are often the first thing to be noticed in social interaction and often influence how the stereotype holder processes information and how they act in social interactions. (Berscheid, Snyder, & Tanke, 1997, pp. 660)
These types of social stereotypes are very obvious in the movie character Jack Ryan, a white cop, and his interactions with blacks in the film. This can be seen when Ryan pulls over Cameron, a successful black director, because the vehicle he was in fit the description of a stolen vehicle and the driver was black.
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(Berscheid et al, 1997, pp. 660) This is clearly seen in the characters of Anthony and Peter and partially in Cameron as well. While he is clearly above the two carjackers in a socioeconomic setting he still can be seen confirming the stereotypes against him as he is overpowered and bullied by whites. Though he is a well-established director, he allows another person to force him to reshoot a take based the premise that the token black character wasn’t ‘talking black’ and sounded too educated. Cameron did not have to take this advice and could have simply moved on, but instead because he had been so exposed to the idea and stereotype that white men are more powerful than black men that he allowed himself to be