Wow. Did you see the movies nominated for Academy Awards? I only saw one on the list. As you all know, I really only rent movies because I can’t stand to be in a movie theater with the typical movie going public. Stinky, mouth breathers all of them. But that’s not my point here.
I will probably rent the likes of “Good Night and Good Luck,” “Capote”(PS Hoffman rules) and possibly “Munich.” I’ll even rent “Brokeback Mountain” but I’ll only watch it in the company of my wife so I don’t catch the gay from it. My wife said I’m afraid to watch it because I’d probably get a boner. Maybe so. No, I’ll see it because by all accounts it supposed to be a good film. And I hope it wins because that means another film on the list (the one I have seen) won’t win.
That film is “Crash.” A movie made by assholes for assholes.
“Crash” is such a terrible movie I am completely shocked that it’s even mentioned in the same breath as the Academy Awards. Sure the Awards are usually for crappy movies and are just an industry hand job, but I really thought that a film of such amazing shitty-ness couldn’t possibly have gotten itself nominated.
This movie is such a turd; you can smell it within five minutes of pushing play on your DVD player. My mom asked me today if I had seen it and I went into exacting detail on how bad it was. She said, “I heard it was good.” Well, mom, you and the rest of the country heard wrong.
“Crash” is not only a heavy handed and ridiculous exercise in exploring the most outrageous racist situations; it’s just a crap movie. There’s no doubt that racism exists, but “Crash” shoves it in your face and crams it down your throat as if you didn’t know that. Everyone is a racist and a stereotype in this movie but it’s so over the top that you can’t see anything but the racism. Sure, it’s about racism, but there’s absolutely no character development because everyone is too busy being racist. I’m mean seriously, even racists aren’t racists 24 hours a day right? Not in writer/director Paul Haggis’ world.
The black cop is racist to the female Latino cop. The white woman is racist towards the Mexican locksmith, the Iranian guy is a dick, the white cop shakes down black people, the black guy the white cop humiliated tries to be a white guy….it goes on and on. There is nothing subtle to it and when something is this obvious it typically means that the writer was not skilled enough to deliver his ideas in a way that will make you think for yourself, but in a fashion that only jerks can understand.
There’s part where a white cop asks the black cop “what is it with you black people?” or something to that effect. Who says this? I’m sure someone has, but for that, and all the other examples to happen in one movie just seems like an orgy of racist fantasies. It doesn’t work.
I used to work in elevators. I would wipe them down and take out light scratches. I worked all over the downtown Denver area and saw all kinds of people. I was working in a building one day, riding up and down the elevator, cleaning the metal when people would get off. There was a phone company or something in the building and it happened to employ a lot of black people.
On a side note to this, the black people who work in these buildings were always very nice to me while white people were snide, rude and typically offended by my presence in their elevator. I don’t consider this a “Crash” (or is that “crass”) style generalization because I worked all over, for a few years and it was always the same. The white people, on the whole, fucking sucked.
So I was cleaning an elevator one day and after a group of black folk got off, it was just me and one white guy left. He said something like, “that’s a fun job,” (I always hated that because it made it seemed like their crappy phone job was soooo much better) and I said “yeah, there’s a lot of finger prints on these doors that are hard to get off.” The door opened, he started to get off and turned back to me and said, “yeah, monkey prints.”
The doors closed and I just kind of stood there with my mouth open. Here was this white guy who worked around a large group of black people and had this amazing amount of hostility built up toward them. He finally was able to let it out to a “fellow white guy” and he probably felt pretty good about it. To me it was horrifying.
Outward racism is obvious. It’s loud, unintelligent and usually takes care of itself because it’s just so outrageous and bizarre. But the subtle and quiet racism is what scares me. This type has a much more sinister air to it and I believe is more dangerous.
The dickheads who made “Crash” couldn’t be bothered to write about real racism; they had to do a cartoon version just to appease dumb wankers who can feel good about themselves because they haven't openly said "nigger" in over a decade. Making a movie like that would have been challenging and after seeing “Crash” (actually I turned it off ¾ of the way through because it smoked so much pole) these fuckers couldn’t have hit a burning cross with a wadded up Klan robe.
If “Crash” wins, I will never watch another movie again. Ok, maybe that’s a bit too hasty. How about “another movie written and/or directed by Paul Haggis again”? If “Crash” is this bad, what’s that say about the other movies? When I finally watch “Broke Back Mountain,” I’ll let you know if it gave me a boner.
JR
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