Crash (2005) is a hyperlink film calling attention to racial issues in Los Angeles. Writer/director Paul Haggis creates most of the film’s characters based on modern stereotypes of different ethnic groups: the Latino gangbanger with tattoos and a shaved head; a rich white lady scared of black people; the Middle Eastern family that runs a convenience store. Their individual stories all meet at the end and cause the characters to reevaluate their prejudices. That’s the idea.

But as WS350, a women’s study blog, states in a cultural evaluation of the film, “while the movie’s idealistic message of ending racism on a personal level is virtuous in its intent, it also works against itself due to the underlying tones of white privilege and supremacy that are not touched upon, or even acknowledged in the film.”

White people in Crash are the ones doing the best, economically and socially. Rick and Jean Cabot (Brendan Fraser and Sandra Bullock) are the District Attorney and his wife. They’re wealthy and everyone knows them. Tony Danza is Fred, a television producer that bosses people around. John Ryan and Tom Hansen (Matt Dillon and Ryan Phillippe) are LAPD officers, a position of authority.

WS350 observes “All the main white characters are never shown struggling with their financial situations. Meanwhile, many (but notably, not all) of the minority characters are portrayed as destitute or powerless socially.”

While that’s not entirely true (it’s implied that Matt Dillon’s character can’t afford medical care for his ill father), it’s otherwise accurate. Daniel (Michael Pena) is a hard-working blue collar Hispanic father who formerly lived in a bad neighborhood. Anthony and Peter (Ludacris and Larenz Tate) are car-jacking thugs. The Persian family runs a convenience store and has little else to their name. Even the black characters who are doing better financially, like Cameron (Terrence Howard), are shown as being at the whim of white people like Tony Danza’s character.

Feminist and civil rights activist Audre Lorde’s “mythical norm” describes the idealized characteristics of society that hold power and bring about oppression. Lorde explains that America’s “mythical norm” includes those in society who are “white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, Christian, and financially secure.” Those who find themselves outside of this norm tend to attribute any oppression they face to only one of their differences. By singling out one difference, the oppressed ignore other causes and “distortions around difference” that also encourage oppression. The mythical norm within a society greatly impacts how oppression is viewed and therefore how oppression is communicated rhetorically. Women’s movements are an example of this; showing women who focus their rhetorical and social efforts on their oppression as only women, and not race, age, and class as well.

“While Crash holds a touching message on a personal level of human compassion, it unfortunately is also a perfect snapshot Audre Lorde’s “‘mythical norm”

But Crash is just a film, and some would say that it’s not meant to solve the America’s issues with racism and classism. While this is true, it is dangerous for such a prevalent film like Crash, which won three Academy Awards including Best Picture in 2005 in addition to a slew of other accolades, to perpetuate that elusive, intangible type of oppression that we all live in, but some still deny. As Donna Langston writes in Tired of Playing Monopoly?: “In order to perpetuate racist, sexist and classist outcomes, we also have to believe that the current economic distribution is unchangeable, has always existed, and probably exists in this form throughout the known universe; i.e., it’s ‘natural.”” - WS350 again.