Crash Paul Haggis's 2004 Film Term Paper

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The author writes "since the disruption of the colonized/colonizer mind-set is necessary for border crossings to not simply reinscribe old patterns, we need strategies for decolonization that aim to change the minds and habits of everyone involved in cultural criticism," so that black women are not, like the author says she was in her twenties, "inwardly homeless." (5; 9) This state of inward homelessness, or lacking a coherent identity is something, hooks acknowledges, that can be experienced by all marginalized peoples and ethnic groups in contemporary society -- and only by acknowledging the fact that we are all potentially, inwardly homeless, can the pain of past prejudice be assuaged.

The flexibility and instability of perceptions in "Crash," is not simply stressed in the script's continual, structured contrast between media representations and 'the real.' Even within the context of "Crash's" 'real life,' individuals who are non-white are continually misread in the eyes of those who attempt to ascribe conventional cultural narratives to the identity of 'others.' Pre-existing assumptions prevent individuals from seeing the actual person standing before them. For example, an Iranian man is misread frequently as an Arab, although Iranians are Persian, because of the misleading American cultural narrative that sees all Muslims as 'the same,' even if Muslims do not perceive other Muslims of other sects and nations as such. The Iranian man is similarly subject to accepting misleading cultural narratives when he sees a Mexican locksmith as a thief, because of the man's perceived ethnic identity.

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This suggests that culture is itself based on lies, and even perceived 'outlaws' can buy into it. The only solution, hooks suggests, is "to fully integrate the love ethic into a vision of political decolonization that would provide a blueprint for the eradication of black self-hatred," and the self-hatred (which is sometimes directed outward, at other marginalized groups as in the Iranian's case) caused by prejudice. (236) Only when one accepts the mutability of one's self and identity, and one's ties to perceived 'others' as well as accepts the differences between one's self and others (such as nonwhite and white women) can the institutionalized conceptualizations of racism affecting American culture begin to be undone.

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