When Stereotypes Crash

The movie Crash takes a raw and provocative look at the stereotypes that exist in American society.  The plot revolves around people of many different backgrounds, whose individual stories all intertwine with each other’s at some point in the film.  The film exposes stereotypes that all different ethnicities- not only Caucasians- believe.  Judging, or misjudging, in most cases, someone by their appearance or their accent is the core theme of the story.  This misjudgment of people solely based on physical characteristics ‘others’ every person who doesn’t fit the standard ‘American’ stereotype, and creates binary oppositions.  Binary opposition is a cultural logic that constructs meaning through categories that are opposite and hierarchical, which in this case, is an ‘us vs. them’ opposition.  This causes many negative implications throughout the plot, sending the message to the public no not judge people solely on appearance.  All the characters portrayed in the film, while definitely flawed and quick to judge others, are inherently good people, just trying to get by.  However, their preconceived notions about people different from themselves affect not only their actions, but also the actions of the people they ‘other’.            

Some of the ethnicities portrayed in Crash include Hispanics, African-Americans, Caucasians, and Persians.  Of particular interest is the portrayal of the Persian family, who is Muslim.  The family includes a husband and wife, who wears a hijab, and their grown daughter who works as a professional in a morgue.  The husband is convinced that other people are always cheating him in business, because he does not speak fluent English.  To him, fluent or native English speakers have a certain power over him, which he does not like, and actively struggles against.  When he decides to buy a gun for protection, and is asking his daughter in Arabic about his best options, the owner of the store gets agitated, and tells him “if you want to plan the jihad, do it on your own time.”  Just because he is speaking Arabic, the shop owner assumes that he is a terrorist.  Unsurprisingly, he storms out of the store, leaving his very Americanized daughter to deal with the situation.  Although the husband angers quickly, and can be aggressive, all he wants to do is provide for his family.  He and his wife run a convenience store, and he was buying a gun to protect them. 

Later on in the film, the family’s shop is broken into, and completely ransacked.  The wife finds Arab slurs spray-painted on the walls, and questions, “Since when did Persian become Arab?”  The disparity of the family due to the destruction of their business is extremely evident, especially when the insurance company informs them that they are citing negligence, and are not covering any of the cost of the damages.  The daughter wants to help her parents, but there is only so much she can do, because she has to work as well.

The portrayal of the Muslim Persian family in Crash embodies a few strategies employed by Hollywood directors and producers that Evelyn Alsultany explores in her article ‘Representing the War on Terror in TV Dramas’.  One strategy is the challenge of the Arab/Muslim conflation.  This family, while Muslim, is not Arab, a common misconception that is even seen in the film.  Another strategy used is the sympathizing of Muslims post 9/11.  Even though the husband is aggressive man, when the family’s store is almost completely destroyed, the audience feels bad for this family that has lost everything.  They are not terrorists, they are innocent citizens participating in American society, and embody what Mahmood Mamdani calls ‘good’ Muslims- Muslims who have proven to have the American spirit within them.  This gives them a sense of power, however unseen, over 'bad' Muslims.  However, as Alsultany argues, there is a very narrow idea of what constitutes a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ Muslim post 9/11, and the view of a ‘good’ Muslim is only given when they have proven themselves not as terrorists, but as people just trying to live the American dream. 

By Falina Lothamer

Works Cited

Alsultany, Evelyn, “Representing the War on Terror in TV Dramas,” International Connections, Center for International and Comparative Studies, University of Michigan, Fall 2009, 1-9.

Course Terms List, AC 498/CICS 401.  Dec. 3, 2010.

Crash.  Dir. Paul Haggis.  Perf. Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Jennifer Esposito.  Lions Gate Films, 2004.  DVD.

Aladdin: Looking Deeper

            
Aladdin is a Disney film for the ages.  With an instantly recognizable main character, heavy hitting voice actors, unique story, and catchy music it is all that one could expect out of a Disney film of the 1990s.  Although the genius of the screenplay and production are reflected through the movie’s lucrative profits, many casual viewers fail to see the ways in which with Aladdin Disney constructed an easily consumable package of the “Other” in Arab culture.

            In the opening minutes of the film the storyteller sings of a fictional land of roaming camel caravans: Where they cut off your ear / If they don’t like your face / It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.  Off the bat Disney has begun to construct this desert society of Arabs as one that is a binary opposite to the one young Americans live in.  In the movie world there are no second chances for mistakes.  Hell, Arabs seem like the kind of people that will maim you for no reason other than not liking the way you look.  Their codes of ethics are fundamentally different from us in the West, but it’s okay: they don’t know any better.  To them, this place is simply their home.

            It’s important for the movie to establish itself in a world that is distinctly not close to home for viewers so they can more fully suspend disbelief and buy into the plot.  Even so, it’s interesting that people at large buy so unquestioningly into this dominant discourse about the Middle East.  The fact that the city of Agrabah and the surrounding areas are underdeveloped by Western standards, people starve in the streets, and the homeless prowl looking for food makes it “barbaric”.

            The hero of the film, Aladdin, is an interesting character to examine.  Aladdin’s accent is distinctly American, while the guards, Jafar, and other villains speak Arabic-accented English.  Although Aladdin was born and raised in the same city as the rest of the characters, he has mystically developed his own way to talk.  This distinction perpetuates the false stereotype of foreigners as lawbreakers and the exceptionalism of do-good Americans.  Though these comparisons aren’t overt, they are noticeable throughout the movie and undoubtedly make an impact on the viewer.

            It’s easy to dismiss these aspects of a great film and argue that everyone knows the film isn’t trying to depict reality.  It chooses a fictional venue with landmarks of mixed backgrounds to create a plot that is utterly fantastical.  But even if people do know it’s not real, the fact that these artistic choices make an impression on the viewer is undeniable.  The target audience for the movie is children under 15 years of age who likely know next to nothing about the state of the world outside the United States.  For these children, this movie is a powerful building block in forming the foundation of an “Other” that is so inherently different from the society they know and love. 

As Youmans asserts in Humor Against Hegemony, unless one can get the attention of the masses it doesn’t matter what they are saying.  Even for adults it has been proven that the deepest impressions are made when the subject is deeply interested in the material being consumed.  Although many adults have access to other channels of information, it’s easy to see how an entertaining film with generalized visual representations of an unseen population and culture could be taken to heart.  In short, attention begets influence. 
by Grayson Smith