But after reading these articles (see below) I really want to. I told a friend (who has pretty similar politics as mine [why are politics something someone has?]) I wanted to see the movie, and he told me, “if you just wanted to watch white supremacy, we could go to a mall or something.” Here’s some notes:
Holmes, David G. “The Civil Rights Movement According to Crash: Complicating the Pedagogy of Integration.“ College English 69.4 (March 2007): 314-320.
Middleton, Joyce Irene. “Talking about Race and Whiteness in Crash.“ College English 69.4 (March 2007): 321-334.
Nunley, Vorris L. “Crash: Rhetorically Wrecking Discourses of Race, Tolerance, and White Privilege.“ College English 69.4 (March 2007): 335-346.
Predergast, Catherine. “Asians: The Present Absence in Crash.“ College English 69.4 (March 2007): 347-348.
Villanueva, Victor. “3D Stereotypes: Crash.“ College English 69.4 (March 2007): 348-350.
Ray, Sangeeta. “Crash or How White Men Save the Day, Again.“ College English 69.4 (March 2007): 350-354.
Farris, Christine. “Crash Course: Race, Class, and Context.“ College English 69.4 (March 2007): 354-359.
This was a great collection of essays on race, class, and liberalism in the movie Crash, especially as an artifact of public pedagogy and as a teaching tool. I haven’t yet seen the movie, and I’ve been wanting to because the more radical people I hang out with have discussed it in similar terms as some of the authors in this issue of College English. Perhaps I’ll find time this weekend before the term starts to see it.
Holmes offers what he sees as the lessons that Crash teaches, Middleton discusses it in terms of Giroux’s “public pedagogy“ and understanding “the central role of whiteness in our understanding of racial formation in the United States“ (324). She also explores the way Crash acts to change the viewers’ beliefs about race, moving concepts of racism into prejudice and other problematic changes (326).
Nunley discusses how racial discourse is being domesticated in this country so hat it is depoloticized, but seems more optimistic about the movie’s treatment of African Americans than the other writers are, though noting the limitation of the movie is its “ethos of tolerance, as well as in the desire to humanize and redeem protagonists and antagonists within a liberal humanist paradigm“ (337), which leads to a “tolerance of white privilege“ (343).
Predergast’s essay explores the short and stereotypical inclusion of Asians in the film, and Villaneuva notes that the movie, about stereotypes, fails to ever break out of stereotypes. Noting that “’Race in this film is never about whiteness, it is always about the other,“ Ray explores the way that white men are always saving the day and seem to deserve redemption in the movie (352). I love the sass in this line: “white men can’t jump but they sure can play knights in shining armor“ (353). Farris juxtaposes Crash with a few Spike Lee Joints and concludes that viewers of Crash will see the movie differently because the movie “does not speak to all viewers in the same way“ (358). She concludes:
Merely acknowledging differences and racism is often not enough to get students who write about racism beyond agree/disagree, us/them, or off-the-hook positions, if the various structures and events that determine where those differences come from and what they mean in our culture are not also explored. Spike Lee’s project on Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans might be further seen, then, as a model for reconstructing with our students a history and system of beliefs and institutional practices so as to deepen their analysis. (358).
